Dargan Forum 2023 Provides a Master Class on Digital First Communities and the Power of Collaboration
Eoin Costello, Nada Pupovac, Eva Dowling - Leas Cathaoirleach, DLR County Council, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill - T.D. & Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Killian Costello
Is your community ready for the challenges and opportunities of the next five, ten, or twenty years?
Ireland has achieved remarkable things over the last century, and now we’ve built a stable, resilient economy with achievements in health, quality of life, and life span.
Officially opened by Minister of State Jennifer Carroll MacNeill T.D., following a welcome to County Hall by Eva Dowling - Leas Cathaoirleach, DLR County Council, the fully-booked event with 26 incredible speakers, the Dargan Forum 2023 took place on 6th July in Dun Laoghaire. It brought together thinkers and changemakers from around the country and beyond who are presently building digital-first, sustainable communities that leverage on the progress of the last century to bring our towns fully into the 21st century.
The audacious goal of the Dargan Forum was to share insights and technologies that could help reverse 200 years of depopulation of rural Ireland and setting up people from Dunfanaghy to Dungannon to thrive in what’s to come. But every great project starts with one small step, the Forum’s organiser, Eoin Costello, outlined how himself and his son had got rid of the car a year previously and cycled/bussed everywhere now. He asked the room as he opened the event: “What’s the one small thing every one of us can decide at today’s Forum to make our world a better place?”
Eoin Costello & Killian Costello
Over the next few paragraphs, we will share with you the insights and learnings from the event to get you thinking not only about what that one small thing is, but how you can go out and do it — wherever you live.
Hope for the Future from 100 Years of Progress
To understand where Ireland can go, we need to understand where we’ve been. There’s inspiration to be found in the journey so far.
There are few better people to discuss the subject than Mark Henry, author of the best-selling book In Fact: An Optimist’s Guide to Ireland at 100. In his speech at the Dargan Forum, as in his best-selling book, Mark ran gave the room a quick tour of 100 years of progress in Ireland, and why those achievements are an indication of how much we can achieve in the next five, ten, twenty, and hundred years.
Mark Henry - Author and speaker, communications and marketing lead at Technological University Dublin. Author “In Fact: An Optimist’s Guide to Ireland at 100”
According to Mark’s work, people in the Irish state are healthier, wealthier, and better educated than ever before. Now, rather than looking for parity with the United Kingdom or the United States, our quality of life can be better compared with the Nordic countries. We’ve achieved this, Mark argued, for three reasons:
We’ve had a century of political stability and within that built high reserves of institutional power.
We have high levels of community and social capital.
We’ve pursued and continued to chase an open economy, both in joining the European Union in 1972 and in decisions made today.
These same reasons appeared again when we heard from Digital HQ’s honorary patron, Minister of State Jennifer Caroll MacNeill T.D., Using inspiration from her time in her role as Minister for State at the Department of Finance, she provided pointed insight into why those qualities that have led to a stronger nation will continue to do so.
The future of Ireland is in our communities and in our ability to continue to build and shape them. Digital hubs, which can serve as the nexus for the next wave of Ireland’s transformation, indicate just how true this is.
As Minister MacNeill said, “What you’re doing in digital hubs is speaking to the future of the community. It’s the community thread that will help balance out our country in terms of development with access to technology and financial services.”
“What we have now in Ireland is a stability grounded through the ups and downs of the last sixty years,” Minister MacNeill said.
What comes next is up to us.
Spreading Community Wealth via Digital Growth Hubs, from Dun Laoghaire to Ballinasloe to Tubbercurry
Irish society has become a more equal society on the whole, but how do we ensure we spread the wealth in every sense across the island, from Ballsbridge to Ballaghaderreen and Terenure to Tubbercurry?
The question has never been more important than it is today because the wind is shifting in rural Ireland for the first time in nearly two centuries.
Allan Mulrooney, Interim CEO at Western Development Commission, spoke at the Dargan Forum on the changes seen up and down the Atlantic coast over the last five years.
“For the first time in the west of Ireland, we’ve seen an increase of 6.5% in our population,” Mulrooney said. “At the same time, we now have the opportunity to have work in every town and every village. With the launch of the Atlantic Technological University, we also have the opportunity to keep our kids here in the West with universities up and down the West.”
“We now have the opportunity to have work in every town and every village. With the launch of the Atlantic Technological University, we also have the opportunity to keep our kids here in the West with universities up and down the West”
“Timing is everything,” Mulrooney said. And now is the time for the west of Ireland.
Now is the time, and the work has already begun. But to create a movement that will carry us to where we want and need to go, we heard that the work needs to be actionable, authentic, visual, and sustainable. To understand what that looks like, the room heard from speakers who are hub managers and community builders across Ireland , from Boyle to Ballinasloe to Tubbercurry.
Fintan Kennedy, GAA Performance Analyst talks about building momentum in communities
“Let’s work on our connection and our belonging and leverage the digital opportunity that we have.”
What we learned from these community leaders carries weight for both digital hub managers and community builders of all types:
Digital growth hubs are vital for bringing digital opportunities to villages, towns, and cities across Ireland. Digital growth hubs include co-working spaces and facilities, but they can and should be so much more than this, too. Joann Hosey, Director of Bank of Ireland Life, told us that the digital hub in Tubbercurry boasts the name An Chroi is no coincidence. The digital growth work done by those teams has changed the lives of both remote workers but also local farmers in the community as they’ve helped community members forge connections and build projects with the help of digital technologies, like social media.
From enterprise to community development with projects across digital hubs to ShopBallinasloe.com to Ballinasloe Life Magazine, the Ballinasloe Area Community Development group, with Seamus Duffy, as their chair, shows the breadth of what’s possible with a few committed community doers based around a digital hub.
The Spool Factory in Boyle demonstrates how vital space can be for a community. More than a collection of hot desks and much-needed access to broadband, The Button Factory provides a home to a diverse range of businesses, including a fitness centre, an animation studio, a nail salon, and more.
The panellists at the Forum, Maeve Lyons, Alison Harvey, and John Logue emphasised that digital growth hubs in Ireland have the capacity to serve as exceptional platforms for fostering the interest of younger people in their future prospects. These hubs provide opportunities for young people to explore diverse paths, while demonstrating that success can be achieved through various means.
Next-Generation Tools for Digital Do-ers
In the meantime, empowering digital hub managers and community builders will help us achieve more with less. Bringing the work we’re doing to the street level is and must be the main goal of everyone engaged in this work. Digital technologies are a key part of making the work sustainable by lending a hand with the unending list of action items that come with these projects.
Speakers at the Dargan Forum provided stellar examples of how communities are using digital tools and the practical applications they can have for any project.
Eamon Donlyn, Executive Programme Lead at Trinity College Dublin, together with Gavin Duffy, CEO of RealSim Ltd, demonstrated the power of digital for any community. The Smart Balbriggan Digital Twin project is a key example of digital tools for community engagement and development. The tool allows teams to not only build Balbriggan but to ask the community whether and how to build Balbriggan in the existing community’s image. It bridges the gap between stakeholders and decision-makers to ensure the communities’ perspective is always captured.
Speaking of bridging the gaps and the power of team effort in uniting people around their place for its prosperity, there was no better way to emphasise this message, than listening to discussion among our panellists Philip Doyle, Ger Corbett, and Julian Perez Alzueta. This fantastic trio shared experiences from their own work and examples where collaboration helped in achieving tangible results on local but also international level.
“When we think about Ireland, it is one of the most inclusive countries. There is a huge potential to bring people together in collaborative projects.”
Philip Doyle - MD Reverve Energy Ltd, Ger Corbett - Sandyford Hub, CEO of Sandyford Business District, Julian Perez Alzueta - Head of AI and Analytics at beqom
Using digital tools to enable transformational projects makes them more actionable. At the same time, it’s difficult not to be bogged down in the administrative side of the work, whether it’s letter writing, creating marketing materials, sorting through data, or trying to unblock your calendar.
As we heard from Catherine Butler Weir, Western Europe SMC Technical Director at Microsoft and Dora Mac Elwain, Digi Hub Manager at Enterprising Monaghan, there is help in GenerativeAI for more operational support. Whether you’re a hub manager or in another role, we find people feel limited not by ideas or energy but by time. Using AI tools, whether it’s ChatGPT or Microsoft 365 Copilot or one of the many other tools out there is not only cost-effective but gives you your time back.
With Generative AI, you have a calendar manager, a content writer, and an extra pair of admin hands. You have a spreadsheet organiser, a presentation maker, an illustrator, and a researcher. Best of all, many of these tools are free and can be brought to communities to explore.
Sebastiano Toffaletti, via Zoom from Brussels, Belgium, shared that “We’re looking at different model with digital at the centre of communities. It means we can develop and control technology as opposed to being users of tech controlled by others.”
On to 2024
The world has changed. Rural Ireland is no longer competing with Dublin for mindspace. Ireland as a whole is competing globally with California and with Europe. Twenty-first-century Irish towns can become about self-actualization: liveable spaces with sustainable mobility, and we have great examples of towns in all corners of Ireland on their way to just that.
As our panellists Brian Nerney, Ann O’Brien and Clayton Mooney concluded, what happens next is about more than adopting and evangelising new technologies. The changes close to the hearts of all the Dargan Forum event speakers and attendees require connections at a local level. It’s bringing together hearts and minds and building connections between change-makers in our communities that will help us gain momentum for long-lasting change.
Where does digital come in? We can and must use digital technologies to enable these. However, make no mistake: it’s the connections that are the key to long-lasting change.
Special Thanks
We are extending our special thanks to our pop-up presenters Michael Guerin, a founder of Imvizar, a provider of Immersive Storytelling Experiences with Augmented Reality, Paul McCarthy - Founder Snapfix, a facilities & maintenance cloud platform, and Neil Mylet - Founder of the Rural Urban Center in Camden, Indiana for presenting their new tech solutions for the 21st century.
Chad Gilmer, DigitalHq’s chair and managing director of the Glasshouses for providing a fantastic closing speech and continuous support for all our initiatives in Dun Laoghaire town. Chad, you are making Dun Laoghaire a better place to live, work, and invest in!
Our digital manager, Nada Pupovac for all the hard work behind the scenes to make the Dargan Forum a success.
We are extending our thanks to our fantastic team of volunteers, Rachel Doyle, Sarah Isobel McCormack, and Daniel Noel Dankhazi and Dun Laoghaire’s local businesses, J.J. Darboven and People’s Park Cafe for providing refreshments during the event as well as third generation local Jared Huet whose firm provided the AV for the event.
In that spirit, we’d also like to thank all our attendees at the Dargan Forum 2023 for joining us. The forum wouldn’t really exist without you, and invite you all back next year to tell us what little changes you made every day that made a difference in your locality.
The Dargan Forum was organised in association with Connected Hubs, and supported by Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Failte Ireland, and Irish Rail.