I started my morning having breakfast with a couple of hundred other people in suits and Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland. It was a trade mission organized by the fine folks at Enterprise Ireland. I'd never broken bread with a head of state before, though did once meet Kurt Waldheim when he was President of Austria and generally ducking allegations of his past Nazi-hood. There was no scandal at this breakfast and McAleese was thoroughly charming and witty as hell.
It's been <gulp> seventeen years since I've been to Ireland and my biggest impression of that beautiful place--apart of course from the people--was that the country was a bit run down and seemed to be, well, slipping away.
My how things have changed.
Not only is Ireland now a hotbed of hightech and biotech, which could be what happens when you decide in 1969 to give free education to anyone who wants it. You know, like in the United States of . . . wait, nevermind. In response to a question about maintaining the vibrancy of Irish culture in a globalized economy, she noted that this gives Irish culture "a bigger catwalk," and credited Michael Flatley (aka Mr. Riverdance) with "creating a career category that had never existed before: professional Irish dancer."
The Irish embrace of globalization was epitomized for me by the folks from the Irish company I ate with at my table. The company specializes in providing companies with outsourced solutions to customer spiffs. For example, if your cable company's offering a free goody to sign up they;ll turn to this Irish company to find the goods you'll be offered, negotiate a good price with the vendor and ship the widget when you sign your soul away to someone like comcast. Makes sense. They have offices in Europe and the US and it sounds like a good sized business. So I ask:
"How many people work for the company?"
"Five"
"So how do you deal with all of the details it must take to service these customers you've been talking about?"
"Oh, we outsource that."
Got it. They let you outsource the outsourcing. Somewhere in China, somebody is actually making something.
Something I didn't know was that the population of Ireland is growing for the first time in 150 years. That's a very big deal.
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