This year’s Enterprising Donegal Business Week will host a range of high-profile speakers, including RTE Dragons’ Den star Bobby Kerr, Aer Arann CEO Padraig O Ceidigh, Friends First chief economist Jim Power and Google’s Clare Walsh.
Enterprising Donegal Business Week, which is organised by Donegal County Enterprise Board, aims to encourage local people who want to start or expand a business. The programme begins in Letterkenny on Monday, 7 March, and runs until Friday, 11 March, with this year’s theme of ‘Back to basics – key building blocks for growing your business’.
Michael Tunney, CEO of Donegal County Enterprise Board, announced “there are seminars and workshops covering everything from how to drive up sales to developing new products and managing cashflow”.
Dragons’ Den judge and chairman of Insomnia Coffee, Bobby Kerr, will be the guest of honour at the official launch of Enterprising Donegal Business Week. Jim Power, chief economist at Friends First, will host an evening seminar later that day.
On Tuesday, Suzanne Hill of Handel Export Marketing will host a marketing workshop, with contributions from Michael Faulkner of EuroXchanger, Seamus McAdam of i2 Total Marketing and Niall McKeown of Ion Online Marketing.
Wednesday’s guest of honour will be Padraig O Ceidigh of Aer Arann, who will speak at a business lunch in Letterkenny. A morning workshop on branding will be hosted by Carton Le Vert, and a seminar on lean business processes will be hosted by Enterprise Ireland with a case study on Inishowen Engineering.
Wednesday evening will witness some of the top names in the Irish food sector coming to Letterkenny to attend a major seminar, ‘Food – finding your way to the customer’. Guest speakers include Mary Ann O’Brien of Lily O’Brien’s chocolates, Alan and Valerie Kingston of speciality food producer Glenilen Farm and food industry consultant James Burke, former board member and Trading Manager at Superquinn.
On Thursday, there will be a special workshop on effective sales techniques hosted by Stephen Friel of Friel Consulting and a workshop on social intelligence by Mary Keightley, MD of the UK consultancy Mind Associates. The Donegal Women in Business Network is also hosting a special lunch on Thursday with guest speaker Nicola Byrne, the award-winning founder of directory enquiry service Call 11890 Limited.
The week concludes on Friday with a workshop on starting your own business, hosted by Padraic O Maille, with contributions from Malachi Eastwood, MD of Gartan Technologies, and Brian Sweeney, MD of the Swilly Group. Later that evening, Claire Walsh, online sales manager at Google, will deliver the final seminar, ‘Driving and maximising your online sales – the lessons from Google’ in the Co-Lab, LYIT.
