If the mood at this year's eXPO, a technology fair at the RDS in Dublin, could be taken as a measure of the state of the Irish technology sector, reality has bitten for some, but for others it's business as usual.

While there was some tentative talk of bursting bubbles, other delegates spoke of cautious optimism and common sense finally creeping into the sector. Around 8,000 were expected to attend the two-day event.

Thursday's opening day began with the Irish Internet Association's 2nd annual conference in the Shelbourne Hall. The theme of the conference, Back to Business, was reflected in the subjects tackled by the speakers.

Following the opening address by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, Mr Patrick Vittet-Philippe of the European Commission delivered an entertaining presentation, Going global and mobile in the e-economy: the Perfect Storm.

Described as "an evangelist for IT", Mr Vittet-Philippe said that the EU's leadership in the area of mobile phones would likely transfer to eventual leadership in the developing area of mobile commerce. Among his ideas on how to deal with the e-business future were to consider niche markets, understand convergence and co-opetition (competing and collaborating at the same time), and build policy partnerships.

Accountant Mr Ossie Kilkenny, well known for his work with U2, suggested that one of the reasons for many of the recent high-profile technology company closures was a lack of "grey hairs" among the young people typically running such businesses. However, he added that the effects of boom-and-bust cyclical trends would lessen in the future. Thanks to high technology speeding up such cycles, the current generation would learn the hard lessons much earlier than older generations. Elsewhere, there was little to suggest that the technology sector is suffering the effects of a down-cycle. "The demand is still there, but people are a little more cautious about their decisions, and putting them off until maybe the latter half of this year," said Mr Chris Dunne, chief executive of Kadius, a software development company.

Others suggested that the media focus on the demise of several technology companies tended to give an inaccurate impression that all was not well in the Irish sector. Mr Barry Rhodes, director of Esat Business Internet consultants said that while e-business was still growing quickly, it was appreciated that profitability takes longer to achieve than people think. He suggested that some of the recent closures here had helped to alleviate problems.