For the last and final time we were back once again for our final conference at DCU in the Helix. It was our Get Digital conference and we had all just come from presenting our posters on our apps and cloud computing, which was going to have relevance to our conference.
Mary is the the CEO of CoderDojo. She spoke about how their aim was to teach kids between the ages of 7-17 
about computer programming and coding. Rather than having kids stare at screens for hours on end they want to get kids to explore technology in a creative way. They wanted tackle two things with CoderDojo. The first was the future of the technology as they wanted to address the potential shortage of tech workers so they expose the youth to ICT at a young age. The second was to give and equal opportunity to all kids to learn and develop technology skills. I thought both of these things were key important things to tackle and it really made me admire what they were doing.
Next up was the Director of cloud business development at Oracle. He spoke about cloud computing and was it really means and how many people misinterpret it. He spoke about reasons to love the cloud which included how it:
- Accelerates & optimises your business process
- Simplifies IT
- Re-engineers the economics of IT spending
He told us how cloud computing can transform your business so you can consume/deliver it as a service and 
support the transformation to the digital age. I felt like he gave a really good insight into cloud computing. I had a basic idea of what it was but i didn’t realise the cloud as a whole and the huge benefits it had. He explained it very well and made it simple ans easy to understand.
John is the Business Development Director at SAP. He mainly spoke about SAP’s transition to the cloud. He told us
about how hard it was for their company to switch over to the cloud. They had to help their workers be cloud savvy and teach them how to use the cloud and they also had to rethink the people they hired. They now hire from universities and Linkedin and have spent €20 billion on mobile, analytics and the cloud. It was interesting to learn about some of the struggles they had switching to the cloud. It made me appreciate how here in DCU we get to learn about theses new technologies and how to use them, which will stand to us in the future and with our future careers.
Our last and final speaker was Shay Garvey. He is a partner at Frontline Ventures. He told us about the cloud B2b model and the positives to it including:
- Quick ramp
- Early proof points
- Sticky
- Recurring revenue model
It was interesting to find out all the many benefits that new companies gain from cloud computing. However he also 
told us about some of the issues including low entry barriers and risks of price erosion. I like how he was honest about the issues rather than leaving them out and saying nothing about them to make it seem better than it is.
Well that was the last of the speakers. I got to learn alot about technology and cloud computing from the different speakers. I realise now more than ever that its going to be a key factor of business in the future and that although it may be hard to fully grasp, its worth getting to really understand it because we all will be using it all the time in the near future. This is the last ever blog post for my DICE module and I must say, I really did learn a lot from it and hope you gained some insight into the many aspects of businesses. Thanks for reading!
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