As a people, we Irish are charm, conversation and success personified. We are masters of the modern digital universe and the world's second largest net exporter of software. A country full of digitally minded, righteous people. Universally adored, deified, and lusted after. Top of the world, Ma.
But for how long? Multinational industry giants haven't pitched their tents here solely based on the quality of the stout. They are here for deliberate, measurable, strategic reasons, and as soon as the economic climate changes, which it will, they will leave. Watch our corporate tax regime float off into the new European sunset. An educated workforce? For educated, read expensive. Watch India and the Far East take over there. It's as simple as that.
On the global stage, there's no such thing as a level playing field. It's about time we saw our position in the grand digital scheme of things as something other than our God-given right. We are never, realistically, going to be on the cutting edge of technology development. (Honourable exceptions include the outstanding success of Iona Technologies in Making Software Work Together.) As competition heats up globally, there will always be room for manoeuvre on pricing in this global industry: someone, somewhere, will always offer a better price for the same service.
What do we have going for us? I don't tend toward national stereotypes - punctual Swiss, meticulous Germans, drunk Russians/Swedes/Poles/Native Americans/Irish, that sort of thing - but what we have that no-one else has is the much-maligned, much-heralded gift of communication. It's not all that "red-haired maidens dancing at crossroads" claptrap; nor is it the vacuous mobile phone conversation in the brand new Beemer stuck in the Dublin traffic. It's what comes naturally to us, though the expression of emotion and the relaxing of boundaries. It's that unique blend of fun, laughter, romance and strong drink: what the English enviously call the crack.
The essence, the life-spark, the central promise of the digital age is exactly that: the ease, directness and effectiveness of communication.
That is where Ireland can assert itself on the global stage. There's no reason that we can't become leaders in creating world-class web content. We've all the artistic and creative talent we could wish for, but the wrong attitude. We have to stop thinking local and start acting global: rather than awarding each other self-congratulatory prizes, the Irish web community needs a wake-up call because this industry should be less about coding and insularity, and more about people. I'd like to take all the web developers in Ireland and send them out into the open air - that's right, physically outside, with all its attendant dangers - for a whole day. (The real world, they call it.) Far from VRML, web-safe palettes, self-indulgent conferences and JavaScript errors.
A single charming student working the summer in Rhode Island will do far more for the image and profile of the Irish nation than all the binary detail on a thousand web servers. People travel to Ireland to find their roots, especially from a young country like the United States, a decision rooted in emotion rather than reason. All the government-supported web pages in the world won't help to bring that about unless there's the right information and genuine emotion behind them. Making a difference, emotionally, is what the Irish are good at. Otherwise, all we've have to talk about is the weather and Manchester United.
It's important that part of the reason people love football is because it gives them a sense of community that goes beyond red shirts, stroppy keepers and Brylcreem. That's an emotional difference. The real challenge is to make the Internet relevant to normal people, on their terms - to help them in business, to help them communicate more effectively.
Tip one for businesses: you don't automatically need a web site just because someone in a suit tells you that you do. It's probably not a bad idea, but unless you've a good reason to, don't fret.
Yes, the Internet will become central in our lives, and it is going to be very cool and deeply groovy. But the real trick to this lark is understanding that everything is subject to change. This has been the case since the very beginning, which was only about four years ago anyway.
Tip two: relentlessly self-promoting web gurus who tell you where the Internet is going to be in five years are talking rubbish.
No one knows. Not Gates, not Negroponte, not Dyson. So instead of the millionth magazine supplement preaching spurious wisdom from on high, can I suggest that our native Irish web deities stop boring the pants off each other and start providing real world answers for real-world people. They need to understand that their eventual success will not be founded on how many awards they manage to present to each other over the next 12 months.
They won't find an effective and profitable place to sit themselves until they realise the true nature of the business they are in. This is not about who can stuff the most acronyms into a sentence: it's about bridging the emotional and commercial gap between client and technology. More fundamentally, it's about producing a reality that will bring the arcane world of ones and zeroes home to the man or woman in the street. That can only happen when this backslapping community's heads are taken out of the sand. There's a real world out there, with real problems and real challenges - but with those, can come real money. And money makes the world go round - with Bill Gates's permission, of course.
* felton@indigo.ie