I was lazy in December - no blog posts, shocking performance by me. But… I have a couple of updates:

• Work

Im working at a company called RocketSpace for the next 3 months. They do really cool things there - I am working with some of the best startups in the world as well as some of the worlds largest companies including Lego and Warner Brothers to name just two!

Im an analyst on the corporate innovation program - it is my job to find the best early stage companies and partner them with our corporate clients. It is a win / win - the startups get to work with blue chip companies and the large corporates know that they are doing innovative things that their competitors can’t do and probably don’t even know about yet. 

• Christmas 

Christmas isn’t like it is at home - there isn’t much of a festive spirit here compared to Ireland and I did miss Christmas in Dublin. That being said, we had a great Christmas here and thanks to everybody for getting in contact - especially my family - they have been a great support. My sister Holly surprised the rest of the Family on Christmas Eve and for me those things are what Christmas is all about. My Christmas day was spent with friends first at the Fairmont Hotel for drinks then on to the Westin Hotel for dinner. 

Pictures tend to tell stories better then the words I write so ill post some up shortly. My Twitter and Instagram accounts are good ways to keep up to date with what I am doing. 

On Saturday I made my debut for the Northern California Cricket Association Presidents XI against Santa Clara Cricket Club 1st XI. Our team was made up mainly of youngsters (under 16s) and the Santa Clara team were way too good for us, eventually winning by about 90 runs in a 20/20 game. So - here are my current 10 favourite things about playing cricket in Northern California. 

1. 10 A.M. starts - the game is over by around 1. Which means you can do what you want with the rest of your day. 
2. Cricket is played 12 months of the year, you can have as much or as little of it as you want. Even in the winter league (the less serious league) there are fixtures every Saturday and Sunday. 
3. Weather - this is an easy one and leads on from number 2 - even though it can sometimes get cold, it rarely rains in northern California, at least compared to Ireland. Last saturday it was “Matt Boylan” as the Belvedere College class of 2002 would say (somewhere between 20 and 25 degrees celsius) and that was late November, so its nice to know that in general, you can count on good weather and if it is going to rain, that usually the games are called off very early in the morning. Cricket is made to be played in the sun. Fact. 
4. Teammates / equipment - I opened the batting with a guy wearing an ice hockey goalkeepers face mask last week. Ridiculous looking thing!
5. The banter on the pitch - my favourite from the weekend was “oh, who is that guy. That was a pretty shot, can i get your phone number… we should go for a drink sometime…”  - Eh, you’re alright mate. 
6. The popularity of the sport - There are 44 clubs in the Northern California Cricket Association - some of these have 3 teams. Who would have thought. 
7. Cricket coverage - many games are streamed live over the internet. Many more are recorded and uploaded to YouTube. They are very TechSavvy over here.
8. TeamSnap - a sports management smart phone application that makes it really for team administrators (coaches / managers/ captains) to communicate with the team. Tried using one of these in Ireland before with my rugby team but it didn’t work - mainly because people in Ireland aren’t as TechSavvy as people in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
9. The Bat Slap - Myself and my good friend and London power broker, Conor Geraghty, have been trying to introduce the bat slap technique into the malahide cricket club dressing room for the last few years, but it hasn’t quite reached the critical mass required for it to become “accepted”. Well, over here, its all about the bat slap. 
10. Im pretty much the only non asian cricket player in the entire league from what I can gather :) 

There is some serious skills being displayed here. I think this video has viral potential. PembrokePong by some of the Pembroke Cricket Club players. Brilliant. 

I don’t know him personally, but Max has style and I think this video is super cool. His blog, livetothemax is well worth a look. I’m not 100 % certain but it looks like House Of Air featured a couple of times in the video - can’t wait to go there! Also - good choice of song and I want a GoPro camera, ill buy one with my first pay cheque. 

The last 7 days have been busy. I arrived in San Francisco just in time to watch the San Francisco Giants win back to back games to secure the National Championship and a place in the World Series. The Giants have subsequently gone on to win the World Series and this Wednesday night (Halloween) there is an open top bus tour and street parade. Should be fun.

I am living in the Soma district, basically start up heaven, which is great because this is exactly why I moved to San Francisco. My accommodation is on 570 Harrison Street and is a “hacker hostel” ; a shared workspace with accommodation. Very cool place to live / work and really nice guys, I’ll post a video. On the way home a couple of days ago I walked past Livingsocial, Techcrunch, Yammer and UStream. The old Twitter office is 50 yards from my front door, Kiip is only a couple of hundred yards away and I can “check in” to Foursquare San Francisco from my kitchen. 

So what have I been doing and how is the job hunt going? Well, I have been busy trying to build a network of contacts. So far i’ve done quite well; I have had meetings with MD’s of Silicon Valley Bank, the main men behind Rocket Space and am now connected with Mark Roberge of Hubspot.

Networking events happen every night in San Francisco - go to meetup.com and type in a keyword, if it is in any way tech related, you can be almost certain that there will be an event on in San Francisco that night. Meetups are great, they’re usually held in cool office spaces, are normally free and every one we have been to there has been free beers too. We were even invited to take some beers home with us after one meetup. So, we’ve been to meetups about blogging, sales and most interestingly “agile marketing”. The agile marketing meetup touched on a numeber of interesting topics being adopted by the modern digital marketer, including the concept of “growth hacking” which, as far as i can gather, means using technology (web and social) to grow a business, kind of like a more tech savvy version of traditional business development. Google have a site about agile creativity which is worth a look for anybody interested. It is still early days so it will be interesting to see what happens in this field. I am glad to be in San Francisco as the term is being defined. 

Here is the video of Startup House. Hermione Way is great!

My first week in San Francisco is done and dusted. Rather then tell you where I have been, I used a data mapping tool to visualise my Foursquare checkins. Zoom in on the map to San Francisco to see the places I have been this week. Not even one taxi either!!!!

I have also made it easier to keep up to date with my goings on by providing links to some social media profiles. I would encourage you all to connect / follow / circle. 

The second part of the Chris Sacca and Jason Calacanis interview. Follow Chris and Jason on Twitter. 

In the last week I have been lucky to attend day 1 of the Dublin Web Summit as well as Get Social. The Web Summit is Europe’s fastest growing tech event while the Get Social conference is run by the Techspectations digital outreach team in Dublin City University. I was a member of this team until recently - the speaker lineup was impressive and for me, Brian Herron, Community Manager for Google + Local was the guy I wanted to see. 

One of the main topics of conversation at both events was where Google + “fits” in the grand scheme of things. Some say that Google never did social well, while others say that they don’t really care about social. Google + has stimulated lots of debate - How good is it? What is it? How do you use it? 

When I first started to use Google + last year I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but, since then, i’ve managed to work out what is going on.  Since then, I have been encouraging my pals to get more active on the platform. I am a Google + fan, you can add me to your circles here. So, here are my top 3 reasons for you to give Google + another try. 

• Hangouts

Google Hangouts are kind of like Skype, but better. Hangouts are like chatrooms where you can call and video chat for free with up to 10 people. Hangouts have a screen share button which allows you to select which of your screens you would like to share with other participants. This can be particularly useful if you are ever giving a demo, training or anything like that. Hangouts also have a cool feature called “Hangouts On Air” which allow you to broadcast your hangout live over your Google + stream and on your YouTube channel. Hangouts then automatically get saved to your YouTube account. 

• Circles

As well as being interested in technology and social media, I also have a huge passion for the sport of cricket. My cricket CV is here for anybody who cares. Now, for those of you who  follow me on Twitter, you will know that I broadly tweet about two topics, Cricket and Tech. Last week, like I said above, I attended the Dublin Web Summit - I sent a lot of tweets using the #Websummit hashtag. Two weeks previously I was in Sri Lanka supporting Ireland in the Cricket World Cup, I sent a lot of tweets using the #WT20 hashtag. However, at any given time, when I sent these tweets I knew that at least half of my followers didn’t really care about what I have to say. Google + has solved this problem with circles.

Finally, my favourite reason for you to try Google + is….

• Social Search

Every time I +1 a post on Google plus, on a blog or anywhere on the internet, Google learns something about my interests. The same is true for everybody, so every time my friends +1 posts, Google learns more about what they like. With this information, Google is able to offer tailored search results. I recently had a great experience with Google, made possible by Google + Local. When searching for restaurants in Malahide (my home town in Dublin, Ireland), Google presented me with the organic results (as normal) but also presented the Local results. The local results display the reviews each restaurant received on Google + Local. So, I can make a more informed selection before visiting a website. You can see from the screenshot below that my friend Alan had been to Siam Thai, and he rated the restaurant as “Very Good”. Over time, as Google gathers even more information about us, these results will become even more personalised. Really exciting stuff. 

I know i’ve been quiet the last few weeks but it has been kinda busy. I recently returned from Sri Lanka where I watched the Ireland cricket team participate in the ICC World T20 event, results didn’t go well for us but the trip was super. The cricket community in Ireland is a small, tight knit one so it was great to meet and spend time with fellow Irish cricket fans. I promise to put photos up as soon as I can. 

When I returned from Sri Lanka I found out that my visa application for the USA had been accepted and I was called to the US Embassy for interview 10 days ago. Thankfully the interview went according to plan and I have been granted a 12 month working visa to the USA with a possible extension for a further 6 months. Being a techie / startup / digital guy  it is only natural for me to move to San Francisco - the centre of the universe for early stage tech companies. I’ve booked into a “Hacker Hostel” in the SoMa district for the first 12 days - I literally could not be closer to the bleeding edge of the startup world so i’m a little nervous and REALLY excited. The last week has been a bit crazy between nights out, finishing up my old job at Dublin City University, updating my Resume and seeing friends I know I have been neglecting my blog, which is bad. 

I should also say a huge congratulations to Irish cricket players Gary Wilson and William Porterfield who cycled the length of Ireland (390 miles) for cancer research raising a total of £30,000, a brilliant effort. Anybody that still wants to donate can do so here. Tell them The Dubliner sent you.    

On October 18th The Dubliner moves to San Francisco for 12 months. Watch this space.