Techies to do battle in Dublin city charity treasure hunt

IRISH techies will do battle next week in a fun event where only the most competitive will succeed.

The Techies4TempleStreet charity event will see participants trek across Dublin city centre seeking buried treasure, completing different challenges and puzzles along the way.

AIB has teamed up with the organisers to lead the event — which starts in the Aviva stadium — and the winners will be dubbed ‘Ireland’s Smartest Techies’.

Luckily, you don’t actually need to be a techie to participate — so any Luddites who fancy a crack at the title won’t be excluded.

Head of LinkedIn Ireland Sharon McCooey is also hooked in and said the event is a good way of bringing a team together.

The event has raised €600,000 for the Temple Street Children’s University Hospital since 2015. Tech consultancy BearingPoint won last year and will doubtless seek to retain the bragging rights. Ergo wishes the best of luck to all participants.

Usually these days when Minister Denis Naughten is meeting Enet boss David McCourt there is plenty of space in the room. McCourt, you see, is the last man standing for the National Broadband Plan, which could yet come to define the rural-based minister’s political career.

Eir and Siro are long gone from the process. But when McCourt was launching his new book, Total Rethink, in the Merrion Hotel last week it was standing room only and Naughten had to push his way in from the back to catch a glimpse of the American.

McCourt was speaking to broadcaster Pat Kenny about his early career and repeated a story he had told in an interview with last week’s Sunday Independent about a Boston client who refused to pay for cable laid by his company. McCourt had a simple solution: he started digging up the cable. The client quickly paid.

Now, it may have been Ergo’s imagination, but, as the rest of the room laughed at the ruthless approach, Minister Naughten’s shoulders seemed to stiffen just a touch.