Mark (28) is from Ballinteer in Dublin, and has one brother and sister.

He completed a degree in information technology at Trinity, and went travelling for two and a half years. He has a girlfriend, Sara Banks, whose company, Wonder Weave, is a wholesale distributor of accessories and luggage.

Conor (27) is from Dunboyne, Co Meath, and has one brother and two sisters. He did the same college course as Mark, followed by a masters in music education through technology, after which he went travelling and worked as a software engineer.

Conor and Mark are running this weekend's AIB Street Performance World Championship, which continues today in Merrion Square from 12 noon to 7pm. Acts featured include worldclass mime artists, magicians, jugglers, daredevil artists, and face-painters, and admission is free. www. spwc. ie Mark on Conor Conor and I met in first year in college, and we became friends because we were always looking for floors to sleep on. We both lived too far from college to be able to go home when we were out drinking until 4am, and we were always the last up.

We spent a summer in Vancouver with two other friends after second year, and I think going away together like that is what turns good friends into best friends, because you just know you're going to be hanging around with these guys for the rest of your life. I knew Conor and I would always be good friends, but I definitely didn't see our lives being as entwined as they are now.

The idea for our festival came about when we were in Temple Bar two years ago, and saw these brilliant African acrobat guys who jump through hoops of fire, and stand on each other's shoulders. There was a crowd of about 400 people watching them and really enjoying it, and the seed was sown for us then. We wondered what else was out there, and how we could do something with it, and we began to meet in the evenings to talk about it. It kept growing until it developed into an idea to find the best street performers in the world, and bring them back to Ireland and make a festival out of it. We decided it would be great to have them compete against each other in a world championship.

We set up an office, and have had a ridiculously exciting two years for people who had quite mundane jobs up to that. It was very hard at first, particularly around funding, because we were two computer science graduates who had no experience with putting on events, or even with street performers. We lived off our savings and didn't draw a wage for over a year, and my girlfriend Sara's company, Wonder Weave, kept us alive and paid the rent for the first few months.

Conor is, without a doubt, the more organised of the two of us, and sometimes when I suddenly get into a panic about something, I find out that he has taken care of it weeks before. We have a great laugh together, and it's ridiculous that we still really enjoy each other's company. At the same time, I'm looking forward to us going our separate ways after the festival is over for a little while, because at present we're leaving work at 8pm and are back in at 9am. I know about everything Conor does, and at this stage, I spend more time with him than I do with Sara!

Conor on Mark

When Mark and I spent the summer in Vancouver, we had just enough debt left to get into on our credit cards to take a two-day bus trip from Vancouver to Las Vegas. We had a ball, and came home with no money, and had to do the 45-hour bus journey back with half a packet of crisps and a couple of cans of coke. I reckoned if we could put up with one another for that long, then it was inevitable that we'd be friends forever.

When Mark was off travelling, I went over to Peru to meet up with him, and it was brilliant to go to the far side of the world and see your buddy standing there. He was really skinny and had a big beard and long hair, and hadn't spoken to another English-speaking person in three weeks, which is a long time to keep your mouth shut, especially for Mark. I stayed with him for two months, travelling in Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.

Failte Ireland and Dublin City Council were the ones who believed in our festival last year, and gave us just enough to put it on. They're sponsoring us again, and when AIB, Metro and FM104 came on board this year, it was brilliant because it gave us enough to make it even better.

Mark and I won the David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award, which was absolutely brilliant, and made other people take notice of what we were doing. We ended up having 26,000 people in over the two days of the festival last year, and Failte said it was the most successful new festival in Ireland. We were thrilled, and everyone thought it was an amazing event. Admission is free, but a hat is passed around at each act, and Irish people are incredibly generous.

The thing about the festival is that we see everything from the public's point of view. When we're choosing acts, every single one has to have a 'wow' factor, and really make us laugh.

Many of the acts are world champions, and some have performed for the Oscars and even the OJ Simpson jury, when they were in recess.

Working with Mark is great; he does a lot of the PR and marketing, and is brilliant at it. We go out with the same group of friends, but we probably couldn't go travelling together now, because we'd end up killing each other.

We go to festivals all around the world together, and also go to a lot of them separately. We saw so much of one another last year, that at the afterfestival party, we'd find ourselves walking towards each other, and saying, "I'll talk to anyone else apart from you!"