I just want to point out that both Havok and PopCap got involved recently at the recent Summer Games Jam (which is more than tangentially related to gamedevelopers.ie being as gd.ie sponsored it and Aphra was there on the day to help out). There are also a lot of companies who interact with Phil at GamesFleadh.ie not to forget the Peter Molyneux talk at DIT. I think we have more games related events happening than ever really. I think meeting in the flesh is the more important aspect of any games/indie community and definitely something we do better than most. I think gd.ie has been hurt a bit by the advance in other social networking technologies, linkedin, thechaosengine, twitter etc; but it can still be a good place to discuss the latest irish related news or indeed a place for people from Ireland starting out.
Specifically focusing on the indie scene I’d say the best thing is for people to try Jam together more, it’s a great way to push yourself, learn fast and meet people. A simple idea that keeps with the online-only nature of things is to hold online weekend jams once in a while. Conceptually a theme is thrown out there on a Friday afternoon on the forums (without too much thought) and anyone who’s participating gets until Sunday 6pm to finish. Everyone keeps a separate thread per game – people can collab or whatever and results / pics are thrown up at the end. Anyone on for that?