Tom Raftery - an Irish technologist moving to Spain

We arrived in Sevilla on the morning of June 23rd.

Our furniture arrived from Ireland the same day so we were quickly set up in our rented apartment with all our familiar stuff. This helped the boys settle in very quickly (I have two boys aged 2 and 5).

After that we needed to set up a bank account so we could get the utilities changed to our names. We tried BBVA but they didn't want to know anything about us as I wasn't Spanish (or didn't have Spanish residency). Right next door to the BBVA in our neighbourhood is a La Caixa bank. We went in there and they couldn't have been more welcoming and flexible. We opened our account with La Caixa and haven't regretted it.

Telefonica, despite all stories to the contrary, were fantastic. We ordered a phone line and broadband from them on Wed Jun 25th and they were installed and working Thur 26th! Spectacular.

I went with Movistar for my mobile phone because they were going to be bringing out the iPhone in a number of weeks and I figured I'd be one step ahead if I already had a Movistar account. Mistake. But more about that in another post.

Looking at cars I did a lot of research online and finally decided to buy either a Ford Focus C-Max or a Toyota Prius. Those two were the cars with the lowest emissions in their class, that was my filter.

I was sure we'd get the C-Max because the Prius at €24,850 was just too expensive. However we went to the Toyota dealership anyway and I'm thrilled we did. The Junta de Andalucia give you back €3k if you buy a Prius (basically the IVA) because it is a low emissions car! Decision made, we put a deposit on the Prius there and then.

Actually buying the Rpius turned out to be more difficult than putting down the deposit thanks to the inflexibility of Bank of Ireland but again, more of that anon.

Ok, that's enough for now. Back to work and I will post more about our move to Spain soon.

As part of my preparations for moving to Sevilla next year, I am attending Eventoblog España 07 (EBE07).

If you are at EBE07, and would like to talk to me about my move, please come up and introduce yourself.

My name is Tom Raftery. I am a Social media consultant based in Cork, Ireland. I advise companies on how best to use Web 2.0 technologies for their communications, for brand management and for knowledge management.

I author the highest subscribed blog in Ireland - Tom Raftery's Social Media, I podcast, I am the director of a data centre and I advise to an energy startup called SynergyModule.

Through my involvement with it@cork I organise many tech events and conferences and this year I am chairman of the it@cork conference committee.

I speak at international conferences regularly - this year I spoke at:
Reboot 9.0 in Copenhagen
gave a keynote at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin and
I will be speaking at the Le Web 3 conference in Paris.

So why am I writing here?

Next year (2008) my family and I are moving to Sevilla to live. One of the biggest challenges for me will be to find work, especially given my lack of Spanish!

I am going to start documenting on this blog details about the planned move and anything else I think may be relevant.

Thanks for stopping by and reading!