A tribute to Hugh O'Regan

 

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Steve Jobs? (1955– 2011)

I met Hugh O'Regan for the first time in April 2005. I had been working in Media Lab Europe and it had just closed. Although the prevailing public opinion at the time was that Media Lab Europe had been a failure, those of us in the Lab knew that it had been a great idea and that it was a wonderful place for bringing different disciplines together. It needed a successor. At the time I thought the best way of doing that was to get the three big Universities in the Dublin area to jointly bid for it and to create a national centre accessible to everyone, but I had no income and no support. I put the idea to Hugh. He loved it and said he would support me in that endeavour. For 6 months he paid me a salary to cover my bills, until I convinced the Universities to jointly bid to be the MLE successor and to employ me as the bid manager. We won the bid and the National Digital Research Centre came into being. That’s the way it was with Hugh. If he liked the idea you had his support.

So began a connection to Hugh that endured for the next couple of years. He was a complex individual, and he was difficult to work with at times. He had a short temper, he was a perfectionist and he liked to stay involved in even the tiniest details of a project - especially anything aesthetic. All that said, he was a visionary, a man with a wonderfully giving and gentle side and somebody who, when he was on form, was brilliant company to be in.

I remember one very long conversation that we had whilst walking around Ballsbridge. In that conversation he revealed to me the struggles he dealt with daily and in particular how the death of his brother Jack really affected him. He wanted to get out of the pub industry and use his good fortune to do something different and more meaningful. I remember coming away from the conversation thinking that here was a really good soul who, to the outside world had been successful but on the inside was fragile and struggled with life. He needed support and good people around him to help him realise his dream.

Over the years Hugh introduced me to some of his thinking. It was wild and imaginative and really energising. He bought No.8 Stephens Green and wanted it to be a philanthropic centre that connected Celtic Tiger wealth to the need of those left behind in its wake. He opened up No. 14 and No. 15 on Stephens green to social entrepreneurs like myself, SUAS and Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. He gave over office space to companies like Traidlinks trying to develop new business models in the developing world. In the basement of these buildings he incubated a vegetarian restaurant that cold pressed juices (to protect the integrity of nutritionally beneficial enzymes) and sold the most wonderful vegetarian food I have ever eaten. He arranged yoga classes in the building for those working there. And he did all of this without a big self-promotion fuss. He believed in what he was doing and that was enough.

On numerous occasions he provided free rooms in his Morrison hotel for many international guests travelling to Ireland, to work with the social entrepreneurial organisations in Stephen’s Green. He often personally hosted the guests with dinners and functions and so on.

After Media Lab Europe wound up, a couple of my former researchers set up a games company. As time went by, they drifted back towards biometrics, continuing the work we did at the Lab. What emerged was a very novel piece of technology, a device which helps people to manage stress. I took the idea to Hugh, and we showed him a demonstration - he loved it. He gave his support and incubated the company for a couple of years in No.14 and No.15. That piece of technology has now been re-incubated following the financial collapse and is now an installation in the Science Gallery. A product will be launched next year. None of this would have happened, had it not been for Hugh.

At one stage in his past he considered studying electronic engineering. He was fascinated by technology and the positive role it could play in society. He funded a feasibility study in his ICE charity to look at setting up a foundation that supported inventors trying to solve deep human problems in society using technology. Much of what he learned here fed into his bigger vision for the Kilternan project – see below.

I was involved in Camara in its early stages and he allowed us hold our very first fund raising art exhibition in the Stephens Green offices – an event which literally got us off the ground. He gave us a room at the back of his Pravda pub where we refurbished our first computers.

As Cormac Lynch, the driving force behind Camara and now the CEO of Camara Learning recalls:

“In June 2005, Eamon Dunphy asked his listeners to contact his radio show if they were throwing out any old computers, as Camara, a new Irish charity needed them for some schools in Ethiopia. On the back of that plug, an Internet Cafe in Andrews Lane contacted me and said that they had 40 computers (Pentium 3s) that they were getting rid of but they needed to be collected the next day.

I had no idea how to collect them or where to put them. I frantically called around a few people who I thought might help. Hugh called back within the hour and said he had a room at the back of Pravda Pub and we could use his van driver to help pick them up. The first Camara computers were collected the next day and were shipped to Ethiopia....

Hugh helped us kit-out that room in Pravda, do the electrics and repairs and that was Camara's home for our first two years.”

Camara has now sent out over 35,000 computers to schools in 7 countries in Africa and recently started sending computers to schools in Jamaica. 500,000 African children are now able to use computers because Hugh helped Camara get started.

Even though No.8 St Stephens Green was not quite ready, he allowed us host a John Moriarty tribute event to launch 'One Evening in Eden', a unique set of recordings of John following his death in 2007. He did this because even though he was not an expert in the complex ideas of John Moriarty, he had a deep intuition that John's vision matched his. To open up a house that you love for a free public event is quite a remarkable thing to do. It takes courage and trust and huge generosity.

Kilternan, though, was to be his Magnum Opus. He bought the Kilternan Sports Hotel in the early 2000's. Over the years his vision for the place began to grow. It is a 300acre+ site and as development there began to move forward, so did his vision and hope for the place. He wanted it to be a place of learning. He wanted it to be a place of healing. He wanted it to be the start of something global. And so was born the Global Academy of Ireland – or GAIRE (the Irish word for Laughter). He called the site New Springfield – a nod to the Simpsons, and a great example of his mercurial wit. He wanted Google, Microsoft, Intel, HP etc together on this new campus of ideas.

My brother Phil remembers the first time he saw the plans.

“There were blueprints all over the boardroom table, and Hugh was giddy with excitement describing his vision. He talked about the land he was buying up at the fringes of the Scalp, showing us the inexorable developer creep as apartment buildings and industrial estates gobbled up the countryside. He wanted to ring-fence Kilternan and 4000 acres around it and create a cocoon for this campus. The tragic thing for me now, as I drive by Kilternan, is that people just see this huge, monolithic hotel. A mausoleum to the failure of Big Development. This is just wrong. People need to know what his plans were, what his dreams for that place involved. The hotel was a tiny part of it, a ‘necessary evil’ in Hugh’s own words. The size of his vision was staggering, to be honest. When we asked him what drove this undertaking, he smiled and said “We’ll invent the Hydrogen car on this campus. Why not?” Crazy and out there as that sounds, you knew by looking at him that he believed it. Hugh would abhor the label of publican and developer. Difficult though he could be at times, there was a genuine idealism behind what he was trying to do.”

The complex was kitted out with state of the art facilities. There was a TV/Film studio and top of the range conference facilities. A health and wellness centre was built. An onsite organic farm was to provide food for the independently run restaurants and canteens on the campus. A wood chip burner powerhouse for energy was developed, and between that and the food production, a vision of true sustainability was in place. State of the art technical facilities were built in. Leisure trails crisscrossed the site, stopping now and again at Native American yurts, set up for contemplation and interaction. An accommodation complex was built for visiting academics, lecturers, and people working on the campus. All of this and more would have created a dream environment for learning and healing – a model way ahead of its time.

He wanted to create a place where new types of thinking could take place so that new directions for human society could be paved. He really believed in that.

He had a deep concern that climate change was going to devastate coastal areas across the world. That’s why he chose the Kilternan site high up in the Dublin mountains! In some ways that captures the essence of Hugh. He was a visionary who was extremely sensitive and therein lay his fragility.

I did not agree with everything he said but I had the utmost respect for his courage and his higher view of things. There are very few people around that had the vision he had.

I really wish I could sit down with him now and continue our conversations. I would love to go on that long walk again and revisit everything. I would do anything for that now rather than just writing this tribute to him.

He is going to be missed because Ireland needs more people like Hugh O'Regan. He embodied the kind of bold and daring thinking that we could really do with in our current crisis. Sadly he will not be around. I hope this short note goes some way to making sure he is remembered in the right way. He was a good man, with a generous heart. And long may those memories of him remain.

Goodbye Hugh, you crazy rebel....we miss you.                                                     

GMcD 28/11/12