Damien Mulley

The Net Visionary Nominations are out and I have been nominated in two categories, Social Contribution and also Technology Journalist. I’ll get to the journo one later.

There were a few nominations for me for social contribution and I was told by one of the people that nominated me that it was my work with IrelandOffline over the past three years that got me their nomination and this is the reason I accepted the nomination. (Last year I declined as I was still working in IrelandOffline). I have been told by those behind closed doors (which in itself is a shame) that IrelandOffline was more than a thorn in the side of telcos and the Government and the pressure via public and private was enough to drastically speed up broadband rollout in Ireland as well as reducing line failure rates. It also taught certain regulatory groups to think twice before trying to pull their usual statistic scams.

With the Irish telco market being such a small space it is annoying that all those that helped IrelandOffline can’t be publicly thanked for their work but that might make their lives in eircom, Comreg, the DCMNR, the Taoiseach’s office, the EU and numerous telcos a lot more difficult. I accepted the nomination on behalf of all these people, not me and also on behalf of the committee members and chairpeople of IrelandOffline over the past few years, each one of which deserve their own award for the work they did, most of it probably went unrecognized. All those who also helped out via the Boards.ie forum and via direct contact also made a difference. Combined everyone helped the drip drip dripping which eventually wore away the calcified opponents to broadband roll-out. One person I will highlight though is John Timmons who did a huge amount of work in the background while bigmouth here got all the attention. I’m not sure would IrelandOffline have lasted as long as it did without John.

I’d like your vote so all the above people can be thanked and would like if you could spread the word too to your friends and readers if you have a blog. The broadband issue is far from over and the regulatory environment is still woefully bad and vindictive but the work done so far should be rewarded. You can go here to vote and choose who you want to vote for. Social Contribution is the one I’m down for. Check out the blogger and podcaster category too, you might know some people. Any of the public can vote too.

Yeah, a nomination for Best Technology Journalist. I’m only doing this for 9 months but it is nice to be considered. Vote for me if you like but I really would like your vote for Social Contribution. Thanks.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under business, irishblogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.