GTC December Newsletter

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Firstly, all of us in GTC would like to wish a very happy Christmas to our community of companies, suppliers and the wider Galway business community. For us, the year has passed very quickly with lots of highlights such as Galway winning the successful bid to host the European Capital of Culture 2020 and Connaught winning the Pro12 and a few surprises from the wider economy such as Brexit and the US Election result. We are, like most of you, planning for 2017 and hoping to continue to improve on the service, facilities and supports offered in GTC to all who interact with us and we would welcome your input on ideas that you might have.

Christmas Coffee Morning
Please come along to our Christmas coffee morning on Wednesday 21st December at 10.15am on The Mezzanine where we will have coffee, mince pie and a few surprises to wish you all a happy Christmas.

We are also collecting food for The Simon Food appeal, there are boxes located in the mezzanine area. Boxes will be collected on Friday the 16th of December, please support this very worthy charity, no contribution is too small.

NEWS & EVENTS:

2nd Annual Start-up Pitching Event

On November 30th we held our 2nd Start-up Pitching competition. Six early stage businesses pitched their business ideas. Congratulations to all who participated and to those who came away with prizes, Richard Haxby was the winner of 6 months free desk space in The Cube and will move in before Christmas. Thank you to all who came along to support the event.

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Pictured are Richard Haxby, Donncha Hughes & Jack Dineen

2017 Chamber Business of the Year Awards;

The awards took place in The Radisson hotel on November 30th. GTC co-sponsored the ‘New & Emerging’ category with WestBIC. Congratulations to all finalists and to AltoCloud who were overall winners on the night.

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Business France Event:

On November 3rd we were delighted to host an event for the French Business community, the objective of the event was to promote and strengthen ties between businesses in the west of Ireland and France. GTC company, Black Pug Studio were one of the companies behind the event and food on the evening was supplied by Rouge Restaurant who launched their event catering business on the evening.  

Business France Event

Food display by Rouge

New Tenants:

Welcome to our new tenants in unit 4 – IQ Pharmatek and good luck to Mathworks who have recently moved out into their new office in the city centre. We hope to welcome a new company into their space in the new year.

Highlights from 2016:

7 companies graduated from GTC those included are ExOrdo, Eqoniq, Wayfair, IPSwitch

Those who left made space for some new arrivals including Hillwalk Tours, MathWorks, Siren Solutions, IQ Pharamatek, & Keltie

Several of our existing companies have expanded in the centre and have added new employees to include Connacht Accountancy, Nua Design, SL Controls, Chipright, SourceDogg, FCS Corporate Services, Axis Healthcare & Siren Solutions

GTC won the Gradam Sheosaimh Ui Ógartaigh award for promoting the Irish language through our business www.gleg.ie

We continued to strengthen our links and network promoting job creation in Galway by welcoming The British Ambassador, Robin Barnett, Mary Mitchell O’Connor, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation, French Ambassador, Mr. Jean-Pierre Thébault, a business delegation from St. Louis and a delegation from the department of Finance to discuss SME finance in December

Centre Updates:

Broadband & Wi-Fi:

Last month we invested in upgrading the centres WIFI and have also increased our bandwidth to 300Mbs, we plan to increase this again in early 2017.

Mezzanine:

Work will commence on an upgrade to The Mezzanine and main stairs before the end of the year.

2017:

In 2017 we are hoping refurbish the toilet blocks, upgrade our lighting and continue with the air conditioning and heating upgrade among some other smaller projects

 

December Business Events:

08th Dec               LEO IBYE Final, The Portershed

09th Dec               Irish Chinese Business Networking Event

13th Dec               Storm Technology  – Digital Transformation Event

13th Dec               OMIG Seminar & OMIG Christmas Party

14th Dec               BOI Workbench Mentoring Sessions

21st Dec               GTC – Christmas Coffee Morning – open to all

*** Wishing you all a very peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year, Niamh, Anne-Marie, Cathy and the GTC Board ***

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