User:Andy6969133/sandbox

Andy Byrne is an Irish entrepreneur. He is a co-founder and COO of PlayTank, an innovation platform that enables teams of any size to share knowledge, scope projects and design value in and around their organisation.

Focusing collective knowledge for better results. He also founded WeDevelop, a small Dublin web design company before leaving in early 2016 to assume the roll of Chief Executive Officer at PlayTank Limited.+

Early life and education
Andrew "Andy" Byrne grew up in Castleknock in Dublin 15, Ireland. He was educated at St.Vincent's College Castleknock (Castleknock College) and Trinity College Dublin, where he first studied Computer Science, Linguistics and French before changing to Information Communication Technology. While at Trinity he held various positions in the Trinity College Student's Union including Engineering & Systems Sciences Faculty Convener and Finance and Services Officer. Andy was forced to withdraw from his exams in Trinity College due to medical grounds and later withdrew from the university completely. Andy also holds a certificate in professional training and management training from the Irish Management Institute.

Career
Andy worked from 2000 - 2011 in various roles in the technology space and telecommunications sector in the roles of sales consultant, data and customer support representative before becoming a Customer Operations Trainer for Vodafone Ireland. He worked in this role from early 2011 to late 2015 when he left to found his own training business Definition Training.

Although this training business initially started out as a sales and customer services business it quickly changed into a business that trained small business owners in creating their own website, improving their online presence and doing their own social media marketing and advertising. Definition also ran several open courses to allow people to come and learn the basics of web coding. This led Andy to become a Mentor in Ireland's CoderDojo and he taught HTML to students in Castleknock.

He is a member of the Wearable World Ireland team which aims to bring together Ireland’s leading authorities, and global representatives, on Wearable Technologies and hosts regular events in Dublin about the impact and importance of Wearable Technology as well as Virtual Reality. He hosted an interview with Wearable World founder Redg Snodgrass in The Science Gallery in 2014 for InspiredStartups.com.

From 2013 - 2015 Andy was the Co-host of UpStarts, a weekly special interest radio show for entrepreneurs on Dublin City FM which looked at the new and innovative in the city, and provide useful information, as well as expert hints and tips, to anyone starting a new business, social, community, charity or artistic venture of any kind, big or small. Andy hosted 100 shows over 2 years and ran their hugely successful Key To The City campaign as well as running their UpStarts event in the Digital Skills Academy hosted by Senator Feargal Quinn.

Performance & Acting
Andy began his performance training with the Royal Irish Academy of Music Speech and Drama course while in school. He completed to grade 8 receiving 2 distinctions. While at school he won a Castleknock College drama award for drama for his role in 'Shadow of a Gunman'. After College he trained at the Gaiety School of Acting where he completed the Performance Year in Acting and the Advanced Performance Year under David Scott before being asked to join his training theatre company - Company D. Andy played the leading role of Jean the son in 'The Celtic Spider' in his first production with Company D and went on to perform 3 further productions with the company and has helped off stage with administration and marketing. He went on to train under Tommy Ellis in Velvet Audio for voice over work and has since joined the Loop Group of voice over artists, performing additional dialogue, voice overs and commercials.

Personal Life
While at school Andy worked with the Vincent dePaul Society, and in particular helped as a teachers aid in Holy Angels Special School for children with learning difficulties. He has also worked for a number of years fundraising for Temple Street Children's Hospital as part of Bad Medicine Charity Events group as well as working as an organizer and walk coordinator for Dublin Zombie Walk in aid of Irish Cancer Society & Barnardos.