Competition

eircom's second annual Web Innovation Competition is now closed. Thanks to all of you who have submitted your entries, we'll now review all entries and begin the selection process.

We have now short listed eight entries and notified them about the final round. The final eight entrants will be invited to eircom headquarters and given an opportunity to meet the panel of experts. They will be given about 10–15 minutes to pitch their innovative idea to the judging panel, followed by a Q&A session. The final round of selection will be done on the 11th and 12th of June. The final four winners will be announced here on this page soon afterwards.

Winners will receive cash funding to help develop their product, as well as access to entrepreneurship, training and business mentoring. Winners will also be invited to the Golden Spider Awards and all four developed concepts will be showcased here in eircom labs.

Best of luck and thanks again.

The fund aims to target participants according to the following criteria:

1. Irish residents (but not necessarily Irish nationals) aged 18 or over with a RSI/PPS number
2. Non-eircom employees
3. Individuals, teams, commercial concerns or academics with a proven ability to deliver on their submitted proposal;
4. Submissions which consist of graphical mockups, proofs-of-concept or early-stage products in alpha or beta phases, whether pre-or post-public release;
5. Concepts which correspond to the published category list;
6. Entities either capable of receiving funding, or prepared to undergo rapid business incubation in order to receive funding;
7. Entities keen to commercialise their ideas through a contractual relationship with eircom;

There are 7 categories for the 2009 Competition and they are as follows:

1. Content (e.g. video, short films, animations, UGC)
2. Movies and TV (e.g. programme recommendations, listings application, information aggregation, content search, fan communities, recommender systems)
3. Games (e.g. Flash games, game communities, platforms, multiplayer games, persistent worlds, avatar-based social networks, game creation tools, ratings, reviews, gambling)
4. News (e.g. personalised news gathering, news aggregation, news submission tools, communities of interest, domain–specific news services)
5. Music (e.g. Internet radio, streaming / OD services, search / recommendations / personalisation, community tools)
6. Sport (e.g. communities, results aggregation, fan communities, results prediction, betting, games)
7. Widgets (e.g. any widget(s) based on the above or additional categories)

Entry form can be downloaded by clicking here.
Deadline for the competition is 30th April 2009

The fund is worth €100,000 and consists of a combination of cash, business incubation services, mentoring and

1. €16,000 cash sum;
2. One-day business mentoring session from senior eircom execs to the value of €3,000;
3. €1,000 per month for six months post-launch management fee

Additional consultancy, development, training and support from TSSG (see below);

1. 10 days free technical consultancy;
2. Incubation space for one year;
3. Pre-approval for free specialised entrepreneurship training;
4. Free hosting of the final product for 6 months;
5. Training and support in hosting, managing and securing web products/services;
6. Pre-approval at TSSG for the Enterprise Ireland Innovation Vouchers programme;
7. Pre-approval to join in the TSSG start-up network which includes some of Ireland’s leading software companies such as Catch, FeedHenry, Nubiq, ZolkC, Visibility Mobile, GoMoNews and more.