Portlaoise buzzing with worldwide remote working conference
Remote workers are doing the opposite of what they are used to and getting together at a huge networking conference in Portlaoise this week.
Some 350 people descended on Portlaoise, in the up and coming public space in the old fort, for the Grow Remote Summit 2023 on Thursday and Friday, June 8 and 9.
Businesses taking stands there ranged from multinationals like Ebay to local startups like Íon Oil from Portarlington.
Local remote workers told the Leinster Express / Laois Live what they thought of the summit.
Katelyn Roche from Portlaoise came with her boyfriend, Galway man Darren Higgins to suss out her options for remote working. Katelyn is completing a remote course in Dublin Business School in Project Management while she works part time in the capital. Darren already works remotely full time in the technology field, from their Portlaoise home.
"We came to see Paddy Jobsman, it was a very inspirational talk. It's nice to connect with like minded people," she said.
"We learned an awful lot in the 40 minutes. He is very funny and sold his ideas very effectively," Darren said.
Katelyn chatted to the Ebay staff about remote working, while Darren said he learned from speaker Eoin Byrne that 100,000 people are already working fully remotely in Ireland.
"I have been so lucky. I was working in Dublin city centre but I felt I was wasting my time commuting. By staying at home I can adjust my hours to the people I work with in the US. I love it, I don't have to meet people. The company I work for, Blue Fin, is very focused on more life than work balance, on wellbeing.
"I've been in Mountrath 15 years and its really up now since BloomHQ. It is a place where events can happen. You can see local shops and coffee shops benefiting, there was a time when a lot of shops had been closing," he said.
"I actually enjoyed the commute because I had me time in the car, I would listen to technical podcasts. But here our mortage got us a three bedroom house. In Dublin it was not enough to get a one bedroom apartment, we needed €100k more for that," he said.
"I have followed Grow Remote for some years. Working from home opens your options dramatically. Before this I didn't drive and the jobs availability was just not there," he said.
His team who came from all over Ireland for the summit, were enjoying the social buzz around Portlaoise pubs and restaurants, promoted as part of the summit's community reachout.
Padraig Boland is a Further Education and Training Manager with Laois Offaly ETB, who invited the annual GrowRemote Summit to come to Portlaoise this year.
The LOETB were ahead of the curve in fostering remote working in the two counties, as he explained.
"We were looking at training programmes to develop sustainable rural communities and we got in touch with Tracy Keogh, a co-founder of Grow Remote. We developed a remote working traineeship but it sat on the shelf, there was no take-up on it. Then Covid arrived and suddenly SOLAS who fund the further education training, and the IDA said to run with it," he said.
They run two online courses, one for workers to transition to working from home, the second for managers to get used to their staff not sitting in front of them. The first has been run 50 times already, the second 38 times.
"We draw people from all over the country. We asked Grow Remote to consider Portlaoise because it is possibly the county with the most outward daily migration, we thought if we could get some of those people to live and work rurally, it would boost rural communities and even schools," he said.
The Portlaoise summit is a success said Joanne Mangan.
"We are really happy with the turnout, there's people from all over the EU here especially the speakers. The idea was to being everyone with stakes in making remote working available, who have the conviction to make it work. We picked Portlaoise because it is very easily accessible, we got a great welcome from the local community, and with 11,000 a day leaving for work, we wanted to highlight the impact that can be made if we can keep some of those workers here.
"Remote working is definitely here to stay. As we adjust and learn to do it well, it will continue to grow. There is a big demand from employeesa and companies see an increase in retention rates and better access to talent. Transport is a big contributor to carbon emissions too, and 53% of it is private cars. This is completely doable," Joanne said.