After a second full day of Startup Gathering events, I wasn't sure how I would even begin to share all we've been experiencing as the social media team. It has been so exciting and completely exhausting all at the same time. Finally, these three words seem to best describe my day.
Wired
From 6:00 am to 1:00 am we've been connected and interacting online. I've been blogging, instagramming, tweeting, facebooking, pinteresting, adding content to the app, and group messaging minute by minute. At home, I'll confess I'm on social media often, but this is like never before. In someways I haven't missed a thing happening with my friends back in the US because I've been on every platform nearly around the clock. We've been pushing out so much content, along with all the conference attendees and speakers, that #startupIRL has trended two days in Ireland now. (Keep up the good work team! ;)) I love the opportunity this technology offers to connect with so many influential people and share stories from anywhere in the world. Every corner I turn, I can't help but see a photo opportunity or status update for social media. Here's one we just had to capture:
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| Rachel and I are two of the three Iowa State students covering the events on social media. She's been a lot of fun! |
Inspired.
Both days so far we've been bombarded with entrepreneur's stories of starting, succeeding and scaling. It's touching to see communities come together, passionate about the startup vision and the economic impact potential in their region. Many important figures have been present at the Startup Gathering events demonstrating their support. The speeches and panels have challenged me to think in a new way about the positive relationships young, innovative startups and established multinational companies can have.
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| This entrepreneur panel was one of my favorite today. Each of them had lots of good advice! |
- “Focus. There are so many things that will potentially distract you, but you’ll benefit from focus.”
- “When you are starting a new business you have to produce something that will cause people to change.”
- “Entrepreneurship is only 10-20% about the ideas, the rest is about executing them.”
- “Don’t give up. Successful entrepreneurs are ordinary people with tenacity.”
After being around all these energizing, visionary people I'm even more excited to get to work on a few things I've been brainstorming for a while.
Tired.
Mom, you can just stop reading here and know that all is well. :) The last 68 hours have been so strange. One minute I can hardly keep my eyes open, the next (particularly at 1 and 2 am) I'm wide awake and ready conquer the world... or order pizza! It may be jet lag, it may be adrenaline. I don't know, but I've decided to enjoy it all. I'm sure come Sunday I'll crash hard, but in the mean time I just want to take it all in. It's pretty impressive what you can accomplish even on 8 hours of sleep in that time with a little mind over matter.
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| The Bank of Ireland has sponsored Startup Gathering, but I think we need a coffee sponsor too! It's a necessity around here! |
On that note, it's about time to try to squeeze in a few hours of sleep before tomorrow's events in Cork. I'll be sharing everything on Twitter throughout the day with #startupIRL or check back later for a follow up blog post. Thanks for reading! Cheers!
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| Good night everyone! |
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