INNOVATION PROFILE/Dublin City Council:This year's Dublin Innovation Festival promises a fortnight of diverse events that highlight the role of creativity and innovation in the city

THE DUBLIN Innovation Festival, which aims to provide Dublin-based entrepreneurs, students, researchers, artists and businesses with an opportunity to discuss, promote and celebrate innovation in the city, takes place again this year from October 15th until October 26th.

Now in its fourth year, the festival has grown to become a platform for seminars, workshops, discussions, tours, exhibitions, performances and competitions on all kinds of topics related to innovation and creativity.

“Innovation Dublin celebrates the innovative spirit of the city,” says Lorna Maxwell, senior executive officer of festival organisers Dublin City Council’s Economic Development Unit. “It’s a fortnight of talks, lectures, debates, performances, screenings and other diverse events that highlight the role of creativity and innovation in Dublin. The festival provides a platform for debate and discussion about innovation and an opportunity to discover the huge range of innovative, creative activity happening in the city region.”

Innovation Dublin’s goal is to raise public awareness of the innovation and creativity that is happening in Dublin, to inspire and stimulate innovation and creativity and to encourage networking opportunities.

This year Innovation Dublin will also support Dublin City of Science 2012 and the festival will focus the spotlight on science in the city.

“The feedback we have received over the past three years indicates that the key thing most people get out of the festival is the opportunity to network and form new partnerships,” says Maxwell. “People who participate in and attend events are making good connections across different sectors and this is helping create more opportunities for innovation in the city.”

While Dublin City Council takes the lead role in organising the festival, Innovation Dublin actually represents a very broadly based partnership of public and private sector interests and organisations.

Previous partners have included the four Dublin local authorities, UCD, Trinity, The Science Gallery, DCU, National College of Ireland, DIT, institutes of technology Tallaght and Blanchardstown, Ballyfermot College of Further Education, IADT, the enterprise boards, Dublin Chamber of Commerce, IBEC, Diageo, IBM, Dublin Web Summit, Dublin Business Innovation Centre, Irish Software Innovation Networks, Microsoft, NDRC (National Digital Research Centre), ScraperWiki, Siemens, Social Entrepreneurs Ireland, and the Royal Irish Academy.

“We are now calling on everyone who wants to be involved in this year’s festival in any way to get in contact with us,” says Maxwell. “But we are not confining events and activities to the festival fortnight in October. We are going to be running events throughout the year.

“Anyone who is running an event or activity which they think is appropriate to Innovation Dublin should contact us and we will promote it through the website and through social media.”

Among these events is the Open Innovation Conference which is being planned by Dublin City Council, NUI Maynooth, and the Irish Software Innovation Network.

“Innovation Dublin and the Dublinked open data and innovation network have both led to the formation of very active innovation networks in Dublin,” explains Maxwell. “Because of this we are planning an event to bring these networks together to look at the potential of open innovation as a process that can lead to better results for both the innovator, the product and the customer.”

Also planned is a highly innovative evening of talks on the lines of the highly successful TED (technology, entertainment, design) format. The event will feature six speakers speaking for seven minutes each before a live audience. Each talk will be filmed for hosting on the Innovation Dublin website.

“This format will enable the best Irish innovators, thinkers, researchers and entrepreneurs to be showcased to Ireland and the world,” says Maxwell.

The speakers will be selected across a wide range of disciplines, including science, engineering, research and development, the arts and humanities, technology and design, and will be asked to speak on their idea which supports Irish innovation. The partners in this event are Dublin City Council, the Royal Irish Academy and Dublin City of Science.

“The main objectives of this event are to stimulate interest and learning in the role of innovation in science, technology, business, the arts and humanities as well as to expand the Innovation Dublin festival and other key events such as the City of Science into year round activity, helping to develop a network of Irish innovators and thinkers,” says Maxwell. “If successful, the hope is that this event will become a regular feature in Dublin’s innovation event calendar and that we can run it up to four times a year.”

Another very interesting event on this calendar is the Hack the City exhibition which aims to explore how citizens, activists, designers, artists and disruptive start-ups can improve city life. Hack the City will look at how new technologies can be used in communications and social networking to shape and improve our future cities.

Exhibits, workshops and events will demonstrate how new technologies and commercial opportunities can arise from the arts, in particular how artists can act as early adopters – testing, trialling and tweaking new digital technology to produce new products and projects.

“It is hoped that through future touring the exhibition will showcase globally the imagination and creativity of Irish artists, designers and entrepreneurs, demonstrating in a very real way the creative output that exists at the exciting boundary of art, science and technology,” says Maxwell.

“We had 122 partner organisations and more than 900 events for last year’s festival,” she says.

“But the 2011 festival ran for a month. The feedback from participants was that a shorter, more focused festival would be better so we decided to run it for a fortnight this year. That means that there will be fewer events – possibly around 450. However, because we are organising and supporting Innovation Dublin related events and activities throughout the year this will not mean any fall-off in overall activity.”

The Dublin Business Innovation Centre (DBIC) was one of those partners last year. “Our experience of the Innovation Dublin Festival is very positive,” says John Phelan of DBIC. “We support innovative companies with advisory services and access to finance. We co-manage the €53 million AIB Seed Fund and we manage the Halo Business Angel Network. To date business angels have been involved in 91 deals worth €34 million.

“We are also one of the partners in the Guinness Enterprise Centre which provides incubation space to small businesses, primarily in software, service orientated businesses, small-scale manufacturing, light hi-tech engineering and international and technological services.”

Two separate events were run in the Guinness Enterprise Centre during the 2011 festival. “We organised a YouTube partner event and a Serious Gaming event. Serious gaming is the area of the gaming sector that looks at the commercial and real world application of computer gaming for areas like training and learning”, says Phelan. “We have had eight start-ups as a result of the event and we now have a small gaming cluster at the Guinness Enterprise Centre. We have also had one or two companies starting up as a result of the YouTube event and we are still getting people approaching us as a result of the two events.

“We are planning a similar event with Facebook on May 11th and we are also hoping to put two events on again this year as part of the Innovation Dublin Festival.”

To submit details of upcoming innovation related events or initiatives in Dublin go to innovationdublin.ie