People to Know — Paul Killoran and Exordo Column Editor: Matthew Ismail (Editor in Chief, Charleston Briefings; Founder, Dost Publishing) <matthew.ismail@icloud.com> “To date, Ex Ordo has powered research conferences in nearly 60 countries. We count 13 of the top 20 universities and some leading global associations among our customers.” — Paul Killoran, CEO of Ex Ordo
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hen I chatted recently with Paul Killoran, CEO of the Galway-based company, Ex Ordo, for ATG the Podcast, I was struck by some unexpected aspects of our conversation, such as the effect of Ex Ordo being an Irish company, the influence of having an entrepreneurial father, and the strands of the famous Irish geniality, inventiveness, and storytelling (think: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. H. Auden, George Bernard Shaw…). It is almost always the case, with entrepreneurs in the scholarly communication space, that they drop into that space quite by accident, no matter how large of an impact they may subsequently have — and Paul is no different. Ex Ordo, as Paul describes it, “is a technology company that works with scholarly conferences. We partner with scholarly societies, because running events at scale is an enormous challenge. And with our platform, through integrations and through our partnering services, we make that so much easier for them.” So, what background and circumstances might one imagine inspired Paul to found Ex Ordo? A career organizing society journals and scholarly conferences? A career in Silicon Valley? Decades of faculty work? Well, there’s some of that in his background, of course. As Paul said: “The way that I found myself in this scholarly industry is quite by accident. So, if we roll the clock back to 2006 or so — I probably shouldn’t admit this here — I was submitting to an IEEE conference and I’d missed the deadline and I hacked the system to get my paper in. And it was accepted and published. And, so, then in 2008, when I was invited to work on my first scholarly conference, I remembered the quality of the software that was available. And I told myself, there really has to be a better way than what is available today. “And that was my motivation. And it remains my motivation because we work with some of the smartest minds on the planet. And when they come together, that is at a conference, that’s the embodiment of a community. And so I don’t want to replace that. I don’t want to digitize that. I famously said, there are certain things we should never digitize. Falling in love is one of them. And that beautiful moment when two peers or researchers come together and discuss their work over a beer or coffee — I never want to get in the way of that. But I want more of that to happen. And the best way we can do that is to make the logistics and the challenges facing societies, make that work easier, make the data flow better. And then we can allow more conferences to happen because the greatest barrier we have is the limited time that the people that work in societies have, and it’s my job to maximize that time.”
Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024
P a u l ’s b a c k g r o u n d i n electrical engineering and the conference experience is obviously relevant to founding a software-based company. But it is also interesting to learn that Paul is not the first entrepreneur in his family. “College Road Florists is a family run business that has been proudly serving the people of Galway since 1982. We believe in the importance of high quality floral arrangements, and our care, attention to detail, and personal touch ensures this quality in every last flower. Whether it’s a bouquet of red roses, lilies, get-well flowers, birthday or funeral arrangements, your satisfaction is our number one priority. We opened our doors in 1982 and the shop is owned by Mark Killoran.” www.collegeroadflorists.com Paul’s father, Mark, is the very successful owner of a florist shop in Galway, Ireland, where Paul is also based. And since entrepreneurship is more than domain knowledge — there’s business sense and knowhow, a willingness to work hard and independently of a salary and the protection of a company, the ability to move into a market ripe for one’s attentions, the focus on customers — it’s hardly surprising that Paul grew up in an entrepreneurial atmosphere he describes so beautifully: “So, I would have grown up looking at my dad, who ran a flower shop here in Galway in the West Coast of Ireland. You know, working long days, evenings, weekends, and it’s all I’ve really ever known … I had the opportunity to take over the shop that my father had created in 1983 and become a florist — and in some ways that would have paid my father a huge level of respect. But the other thing that I could do is truly follow in his footsteps and create something else out of nothing in 2011 … So that’s where my background and entrepreneurial life began.” Ex Ordo, then, is the product of both domain experience and life’s longer lessons. Paul is no longer motivated to be a conference participant, but rather to solve the interesting problems of how to make conferences work better. He’s no longer a researcher, “But we [Ex Ordo] do know technology very well. And we do know how to bring people together. Generally, we know what works for conferences, and we know how to get people in and out of systems. We know how to design great user experiences … And we know how to play nicely. Like there’s an ecosystem of tools and services. And there’s so many silos out there. We don’t need to be another island. The onus is on us to connect with our peers so that when a society comes to us, we’re plug and play with the rest of that ecosystem, and they get to use what they know…” When I ask Paul whether being an Irish company has an effect on how Ex Ordo operates, he has no doubt that this is the case. He remarks that the Irish market is very small, so that he is immediately required to fly out to Europe or the U.S. in
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