It's been a minute, as the cool kids say, but we are back with a podcast to tell the community about the latest Arrivals exhibition featuring 18 Swedish-Irish artists at Galleri Assessor, Assessorsgatan 14 in Stockholm on Oct 24-27. Created and curated by Sarah Galligan and Sophie Lundkvist McCormack with support from Tara O'Neill, the artists, the…

Hanson Ho (@bidetofevil) is an Android Architect at Embrace, the mobile-first observability solution built on OpenTelemetry. Embrace began as a proprietary platform but went open-source at the end of 2023. Hanson shares about how the project is still at the beginning of its open-source journey and why his team is committed to collaborative developm…

Stephan Ewen (@StephanEwen) is the co-founder of Restate, the open-source workflow-as-code engine. Restate is lightweight, simple, and provides durable execution. Before Restate, Stephan co-created Apache Flink, the open-source stream processing framework. Lessons learned from Flink have heavily influenced the development of Restate, although Steph…

With Ireland's Girls In Green set to face Sweden in two crucial Euro qualifiers in the space of a week, I sat down with Sweden coach Peter Gerhardsson to talk about football, the Fontaines DC, Drogheda hospitality and a whole lot more!

Eyal Solomon (@EyalSolomo44643) is the CEO and co-founder of Lunar, an open-source platform which bills itself as the “first reverse API gateway.” Lunar allows engineering teams to monitor, manage, and optimize API consumption. According to Eyal, it’s very easy to integrate with APIs, but difficult to keep them maintained, and there was a clear nee…

This week's guest is Patrick Hamilton Walsh, who as a teenager in Tyrone realised he wasn't actually much good at anything - but he had some dreams, and a plan, and nothing was going to get in his way. Since then he has visited more than 150 countries and is now based in Sweden with his family in the midst of a life that touches on sport, business …

The Irish In Sweden podcast is calling it - winter is OVER and the Gaelic football season is underway, so this week's episode comes to you from the Danish capital of Copenhagen, where Stockholm Gaels, Malmö GAA and Sandviken Gaels were all flying the flag for Swedish Gaelic football! There's a range of voices old and new from all over Ireland, brou…

Shirshanka Das (@shirshanka) is the CTO of Acryl Data and founder of DataHub, which bills itself as the #1 open-source metadata platform. It enables data discovery, data observability and federated governance to help tame complex data ecosystems. Shirshanka first developed DataHub while at LinkedIn, but has grown it into an independent project with…

On this week's episode, Stephen Smith joins me to talk about how his time with Leinster Rugby led to the foundation of his company Kitman Labs, which brings together vast amounts of data about athletes and teams to provide greater insight and improve performance, a fascinating tale of a journey from the rugby boot-room to Silicon Valley and beyond.…

Last Thursday saw an incredible array of Irish talent in Sweden exhibiting their art at the Ambassador's residence as part of the "Arrivals" exhibition organised by Carrie Cooke and Sarah Galligan. Though I didn't get to speak to all the artists, I got to talk to many of them, as well as the organisers themselves about what was a hugely successful …

Spring is in the air and with it a hot of events and happenings in Sweden! This week I paid a visit to our good friend Aaron Kennedy at his new FSA gym at Odenplan, and I caught up with Carrie Cooke and Sarah Galligan to talk about the upcoming Arrivals art exhibition at the Ambassador's residence in Stockholm this week. Support the podcast: patreo…

When Irishman Tomás Mac an tSaoir goes out for a spin on his bike, he's often away a little longer than the average lycra warrior - the Kerryman is currently in the middle of a marathon journey form New Zealand to Ireland by bike, across some of the most beautiful and rugged terrain in the world - and this is after traversing America and Africa on …

After his first child was born, Matt Wonlaw (@tantaman) imagined giving his son life advice. What kind of life did he want his kid to lead? At the time, he was working for Facebook, and he decided that his own life needed a change in direction. So Matt started vlcn, aka Vulcan Labs, a research company that develops open-source projects like CR-SQLi…

Shrugging off another bout of man flu to bring you Ireland's hottest TV star in Sweden right now. Fireman Mark Bannon from Waterford is blazing a trail on "Robinson", Sweden's answer to "Survivor", and he joins me to talk about moving here and finding home in a small town of 1500 people near Örebro - and, of course, life on the Robinson island!…

Amplication is an open-source development platform for scalable and secure Node.js applications. It allows engineers to skip writing boilerplate code and offers the flexibility to customize and add components. Amplification was created by Yuval Hazaz (@Yuvalhazaz1), a veteran developer who determined that low-code platforms save time but restrict f…

Last week I was in Gothenburg on the west coast for a soccer game so I took the opportunity to sit down with Ian "Mocha" Moloney, musician, photographer, occasional curmudgeon and nowadays one of the driving forces in bringing the Irish community there together. He told me all about the St. Patrick's Day celebrations there, the plans for the future…

Even though she got her first camera at the age of six, Holly McGlynn wasn't sure that she wanted to be a photographer, but having studied fine art and PR, she felt the pull of making pictures and threw herself in at the deep end in Berlin. From there she has gone on to be one of Ireland's foremost fashion photographers, working with huge global br…

The long tradition of a St. Patrick's Day parade in the Swedish capital continued on Saturday March 16, with community organisations and companies represented at Kungsträdgården. We took the chance to talk to some of those in attendance about what they were up to! Support the podcast - patreon.com/ourmaninstockholm…

OpenBB is an open-source investment research platform created by Didier Lopes (@didier_lopes). OpenBB grew out of a project called Gamestonk Terminal that Didier began working on shortly before the Gamestop short squeeze in January 2021. Today, OpenBB has evolved into an infrastructure platform that allows users to build extensions and access finan…

Northern Ireland's Gray Hawthorne is well-known in music circles, as much for his ten-gallon hat and his love of country music as for his skill as a guitarist, singer and songwriter. Last week I met up with him as he visited Stockholm to talk about his love of country and how a change in his family situation has led to him writing new songs, and we…

We're celebrating International Women's Day on the Global Gael by handing over the reins to Molly Breen, our wonderful business development manager in the Stockholm office and one of the many talented young women that we have the privilege of working with! Among many great suggestions for female guests for March 8, Molly has chosen to interview fel…

On a visit to Dublin last week, I met up with Motala's own Madeleine Johansson, who moved to Dublin 19 years ago and got involved in local politics, leading to a seat on South Dublin County Council for left-wing party People Before Profit. Motala's loss has very much been Ireland's gain, and we talked about what it's like to be at the coalface of l…

Tipped as a possible leader of the next Irish government, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald jumped at the chance to join the Global Gael to talk about what our diaspora means to her and her party - and what them being in government might mean for us. In a wide-ranging - and very different - conversation we talked about emigration, housing, voti…

OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework for collecting and managing telemetry data. OpenTelemetry has been more successful than expected, becoming the second fastest growing project in the CNCF. It allows for flexibility and avoids vendor lock-in, making it attractive to startups and large enterprises alike. On today’s show, Eric (@…

Another jam-packed episode this week as Carrie Cook and Sarah Galligan join me to talk about their new "Arrivals" exhibition which will take place in the spring and feature YOUR art, and Amy Falck in Malmö tells me about her plan to swap homes with someone in Ireland early next year so that her, her husband and her soon-to-be-firstborn can steep th…

When Israel attacked Gaza in the wake of the violent and bloody incursion by Hamas on October 7 that saw more than 1300 people killed and around 250 hostages taken, one Palestinian-Irish family was caught in the eye of the storm. Zak Hania, who had moved to Ireland where his four sons were born and had returned to the Strip to take care of his agei…

Irish filmmaker Dennis Harvey explores themes of migration and identity in his work, and many of his films feature people that he has gotten to know during his seven years spent on and off here in Sweden. His film "The Building And Burning Of A Refugee Camp" documents how a group of far-right protestors set fire to a migrant camp in Dublin last yea…

OPAL is an open-source administration layer for Policy Engines such as Open Policy Agent (OPA). OPAL provides the necessary infrastructure to load policy and data into multiple policy engines, ensuring they have the information they need to make decisions. Today, we’re talking to Or Weis (@OrWeis), co-creator of OPAL and co-founder of Permit, the e…

Irish comic Stevo Timothy's character of Farmer Michael has become a global internet phenomenon, reaching audiences around the world with his clumsy (and often offensive) takes on everything from feminism to football, and he's brining his live show to America for St. Patrick's Day. But comedy and tragedy are never too far apart, and Stevo's backsto…

On this week's episode, Doreen Burke form the Irish embassy in Stockholm talks to me about how to go about getting an Irish passport abroad, whether you're renewing your own, getting one for a child born outside of Ireland, or you find yourself in an emergency situation. You can apply for your Irish passport here: https://www.ireland.ie/en/dfa/pass…

Irish comedian Cormac Moore is coming to visit Stockholm in mid-February, and he joined me this week to talk about life as the man behind the mic, what it takes to get up there and make people laugh, and how being convenient is almost as important for your stand-up career as being funny ... Get your tickets for Cormac's show here: www.thelaughhouse…

FerretDB enables users to run MongoDB applications on existing Postgres infrastructure. Peter Farkas (@FarkasP), co-founder and CEO of FerretDB, explains the need for an open source interface for document databases. Peter also discusses the licensing change of MongoDB and the uncertainty it created for users. He emphasizes the importance of open st…

A busy one this week packed with drama and music! I paid a visit to the initial readings for English-language theatre group Spuds & Sill's upcoming production of "Canaries" which will take place in the spring, and later in the week I caught up with Ged Graham, the writer and performer behind the "Seven Drunken Nights" stage show which tells the sto…

Corkman Dr. Mark O'Sullivan is causing serious ripples in the sporting world from his position as associate professor of football at Norway's School Of Sports Science in Oslo, ripping up the coaching manuals as he tries to answer the question - how do we coach the next generation of athletes so they can get the most out of sport? Support the podcas…

Dubliner Alan Dalton has been a guest on the show before to talk all things birding and nature, and he joins us again to talk about his new podcast "Wild Bird Acoustics". An accomplished artist, photographer and bird-watcher, Alan puts an incredible amount of time into recording birds as they migrate around Sweden, and his new podcast uses those so…

A love of rugby has brought Dubliner Gar Moss from Raheny to coaching Albania in their first official international against Kosovo last weekend - via Beijing and Dubai and a few more places in between! The nation's first head coach for their international team joined me to talk about the growth of the game and how, despite his boys being on the wro…

Ben Johnson (@benbjohnson) is the creator of Litestream and LiteFS, two open-source disaster recovery solution for SQLite. Litestream is designed to provide continuous backups for SQLite databases by streaming incremental changes, allowing for easy data recovery in the event of a server crash. LiteFS, on the other hand, is built on LiteStream but u…

We've all heard about the great things happening outside of the big cities, but what's it actually like to live in the colder, more northerly parts of Sweden? Journalist Paul Connolly and his partner abandoned the high-flying media life in London and moved to Skellefteå, and they haven't looked back since - hear their story on this week's podcast!…

Tadhg HIckey's searing memoir "A Portrait Of The Piss-Artist As A Young Man" won the Global Gael Bok Of The Year award for 2023 and if you've read it, you'll know why - it's a warts-and-all account of how he tried to balance tremendous success as a writer and actor with family struggles and the bottomless despair of alcohol addiction. In a scenario…

For the first podcast of 2024 I'm joined by Kalle Ryan to talk about celebrating a Swedish-Irish Christmas in Dublin, creativity and how he came to quit the booze a few years back, instantly making Dry January a walk in the park every year! You can find Kalle at www.kalleryan.com, where he says: All my services are on there, and I have several blog…

Tonic is a native gRPC implementation in Rust that allows users to easily build gRPC servers and clients without extensive async experience. Tonic is part of the Tokio stack, which is a library that provides an asynchronous runtime for Rust and more tools to write async applications. Today, Lucio Franco (@lucio_d_franco) of Turso joins the podcast …

This year the podcast and the team behind it grew considerably, and we got the chance to talk to some truly amazing people about their lives as Irish people abroad. Those factors led us to the decision to create a set of awards to recognise the achievements of some of the most talented and generous people among us - some are still living outside th…

rqlite is a lightweight, distributed relational database built on Raft and SQLite. Founder Philip O’Toole (@general_order24) decided to combine these technologies while working at a startup years ago. The startup no longer exists, but rqlite is going strong. Today, Philip is an engineering manager at Google, while he continues to be the driving for…

In what MIGHT be the final podcast of the year, we talk to Rory English at Lotts & Co. in Dublin where the Swedes in Ireland go to get their Christmas goodies, and there is the very welcome return of Billy "The Kid" Chaney to Stockholm from Barcelona after a turbulent six months in which our favourite artist and barber showcased his legendary creat…

This week we talk to the wonderful and talented Áine O'Neill about her brilliant career in TV and media, throwing off the shackles and her desire to help other women be their true selves. There's also details of the Global Gael Awards for 2023 and how the whole process works and a beautiful new Christmas song by the tremendously gifted Danni Morgan…

On this week's episode we visit Carrie Cook at the Made By gallery at Fridhemsplan to talk textiles, design and sustainability - her beautiful collection is on show there until Dec. 20 and she shares some fascinating thoughts about how to be more aware of what we wear and use in our homes and workplaces, as well as what happens to it when we're fin…

George Murphy was given the honour of being one of the musicians called upon to sing at the funeral of Shane MacGowan on Friday, and he came on the podcast to take us behind the scenes of an iconic occasion where Shane's life and work were celebrated in joyous occasion filled with love, music and loss.…

The Mother & Baby Homes, where young women were sent to give birth before having their children taken away from them, are a stain on Irish history, with many of the children born there having suffered neglect, abuse and trauma. Those children went on to become adults, and many of them left our island to find a better future abroad. The wrong done t…

An absolutely amazing day and night in Stockholm this weekend as the Irish Chamber Of Commerce In Sweden staged its networking event and a stunning gala dinner, with craft brewer Ivan Keane walking away with the prestigious Beacon award at the end of the night! I spent the day talking to representatives from companies great and small to get the vie…

On Nov 20, 2023 Shane MacGowan, leader of the Pogues, singer, poet, writer, carouser and cultural icon, passed away at the age of 65. Shane was the man who did more than most to make the Irish in England both visible and proud of themselves, and that was no mean feat in the Britain of the 1980s. An incredible songwriter who burned the candle at bot…