There are hierarchies of boredom within the IT sector. Hip areas such as robotics, virtual reality, games design or hacking the webpages of government parties clearly fall into the always-stimulating category. In the middle are software development and chip design. But pity the poor souls in the truly dull segments, which include the lads and lasses in storage, who enthuse about the merits of tape back-up, security area networks and fully redundant disk storage systems.

Even Aidan Higgins, managing director of Dublin storage services provider Xnet, admitted it: "The conversations are extremely sad if you're in storage," he told the audience at the company's one-day conference in the Conrad Hotel.

But just to prove that storage companies can compensate for their lack of conversational sparkle, Xnet provided top-notch after-lunch entertainment - the team from Bull Island. Although Michael D Higgins turned in a good performance, Charlie McCreevey and An Taoiseach - or rather, their Bull Island body doubles - stole the show. "McCreevy" arrived to the Hallelujah Chorus and ribbed the crowd about his PRSI ceiling, while "Bertie" made a call for advice to The King in "that great Oireachtas in the sky" - CJH. Among the printable jokes was this zinger: "What's the difference between CJD and CJH?" "You can't catch CJH."