On the 22nd of October, the final for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards was held in Citywest Hotel with 1,100 people sitting down for a gala black tie dinner. The event was televised on RTÉ and the awards were presented by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. I was honoured to be nominated in the International category and it was great to see a company working in the ‘Creative Economy’ stand proud alongside more traditional industries and businesses.
Darragh O'Connell, Cathal Gaffney & Bronagh O'Hanlon
There were two tables of Brown Baggers and everyone looked fantastic (at least at the start of the night!). Darragh and I found ourselves back with Louis Copeland getting measured at the last minute.
As part of the nomination process, E&Y organise a whole range of networking events and the first was a “CEO retreat” to Rio, Brazil earlier this year. It was called a “retreat” but if this sounds like a relaxing holiday contemplating nice peaceful thoughts, I can promise you it wasn’t. During this “retreat” a great bond developed between the different nominees. From a business perspective, it was great to see how much in common an animation studio can have with companies in such diverse sectors as engineering, medical devices, telecoms and recycling.
The top award went to Terry Clune, the founder of Taxback.com, who deservedly won the Entrepreneur of the Year and will go on to represent Ireland at the International awards ceremony.
A big shout out to all the talented and hard working team at the Entrepreneur of the Year awards who organised the whole nomination programme and the final night so well. They made all the difference and the EoY programme was an exceptionally well-run event.
On the night itself, we arrived to a champagne reception at 5pm and I can confirm that drinking champagne and Guinness is not something to recommend. Looking at the photographs, it’s safe to say productivity in work was down the next day and predicting as much, I was “working from home” sending poorly spelt emails from my Blackberry!
Here are some photos from the night:
President Mary McAleese
Darren Hyland & Colm Tyrrell...or should that be Bond?
Jean Herlihy, Jackie Leonard & Bronagh O'Hanlon
David McCamley, Darren Hyland, Aaron Healy & Niamh Gallagher
Joanne Byrne, Astrid Mueller & Theresa Mayer
Brian Gilmore & Colm Tyrell
David and Niamh
Colm Tyrell
Cathal, Darragh, James & Brian
Darren & Joanne
It's all too much for David
