Very interesting post from Richard Hearne about the Enterprise Ireland eBusiness mailing list and the enforced censorship on it after he gave his opinon on the Board Fáilte webcheck programme. SEO me hole.
My talk at it@Cork the other day was a jamming together of two topics that don’t really fit well, despite the Sunday Business Post having a section for it: Media and Marketing. Working with the media and getting in the media and Online Marketing aren’t exactly much of the same thing. Anyways a way I themed them together is about being connected.
Media relations is all about connecting to the right people to get your story out and the quality of the existing connection if you know the people already. Sometimes you don’t know them but they know you which can also help. An aspect of online marketing these days is also connecting. Connecting people in a company to people who live and breathe the online lifestyle and then connecting the company to their wallets, if you want to be coarse about it.
Right now because of the Internet, being the most intelligent or the most educated won’t make you the best in business, in marketing, in PR, in many many things. The ability of people now and for a good while to come is how connected they are. Pop culture says it all. Madonna is not the greatest female singing artist in quality or depth but she’s one of the most connected and someone who can reconnect again and again to people by monitoring zeitgeists. That’s why she sells so many records. There are far more talented people who go undiscovered day in day out but they’re not connected/not connected enough.
Were I an employer I’d make sure potential staff are on Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn and see how many connections they have. Those with loads of connections, I’d be more interested in. Each connection is the metaphorical foot in the door of a business and of an organisation. This is why some investment banks are getting it and getting allowing staff on Facebook: They’re connecting with old college friends and buddies, a foot in the door in other firms. A way of attracting people into their firm perhaps or just to share knowledge.
Yesterday I was asked to talk to 4th year multimedia students and some masters students and one of the questions I asked was how many had blogs. Of the 16ish or so people in the room, one eventually said he had a photoblog. One blogger, in a multimedia class. He was also on Twitter. Hey Adam! Only half the class were on Facebook. Fuck me.
My main theme for them too was to get connecting. Via blogs, via social networks, via Twitter. Get out there and build connections. Immerse themselves in the river of digital bits flowing past themselves on all these sites. They don’t have to be edgecases, seeing and being at the point where people congregate and try out every single new web thingymajig but they should get stuck in to the basics, like social networks and blogs. For anyone wanting to work in Web media then they should be on Twitter, connecting to a large enough percentage of the web scene. Go where the crowds are.
Now back to the it@cork event. My argument/plea was for people to get themselves on LinkedIn and get connecting with people on it. Nobody in the room was connected to everyone else in the room. I mentioned Metcalfe’s law. The value of a network goes up as more devices get added:
using the example of fax machines: a single fax machine is useless, but the value of every fax machine increases with the total number of fax machines in the network, because the total number of people with whom each user may send and receive documents increases.
The more people you connect to, the better for you, but the more that they too connect to others, the better for you and them too. The better for all. The old-skoolers in business in Ireland think keeping your cards and your contacts close is good for your business. Yeah, if you’re a monopolist and have a crap product. Open your rolodex. Connect everyone on it together.
So fire up LinkedIn. Imagine if everyone in that room at the it@cork event were connected? Imagine if you connected to everyone at every event you attended? People seem to think adding others is wasteful. It’s cheaper to add someone now, learn a bit about them and dump them off your network then missing out on all the opportunities their connection might offer between now and when you realise their value through other means plus you might be of value to them, it’s not all take. Easy to add, easy to cull.
I’m going to start a series of pieces on LinkedIn next week, from the basics, to making the links more valuable, to using groups and answers, to running ads. In the meantime, why not look at your LinkedIn profile again and dust it off if you don’t use it a lot. Or create one if you don’t have one. It’s a very good business tool and a handy way of keeping in touch with old contacts. My LinkedIn details are on the right sidebar of this site.
The new and young kids on the blogging block have new domains. Tommy, Alan and Enda are now all domained up.
Conor is nice about it, I won’t be. No fucking sales pitches at Barcamp. Whore your shit somewhere else. We want people to contribute to overall learning. Buy a paying slot at a conference if that doesn’t suit.
Rummble at FOWA. Our very own Ina is part of the Rummble crew now. So you know, ALL of them can play for Ireland now. Love the giant letters.
Bloglines has been fecked the past week and a bit so you probably only got my last week’s worth of content yesterday and today. Sorry for the avalanche, nothing I could do. I’m on Bloglines myself and saw a lot of feeds restored yesterday, some showing hundreds of unread blog posts. Since Bloglines is going down the toilet by the looks of it, I think I’ll move to a better reader but not Google Reader, it’s fat and clunky.
Another of the special surprises at the Web Awards were the amazing cupcakes by Dublin Cupcakes. It was Jason that got on to me about them, suggesting them for the event and knowing I like to have something on the night that was not announced in advance. After being to Interesting in London this year and Moo sponsoring some wonderful cupcakes I thought they’d work well at Irish events too. Who doesn’t like sugar rushes? I then forgot about pursuing the idea.
Here are some pics taken by the folks from Dublin Cupcakes on the night:
Just like the Made in Hollywood people, me blogging about this was not part of the deal, this is me big upping them because I’m so happy with what they brought to the Awards and the great service. I’ll happily use them again for other events. If you want to chat to them you can get them at: cupcakes [ AT ] dublincupcakes.com or on 087-9629293
Game on. Going back to the roots yeah? 🙂 I’m meant to be involved in this but I’ve been very very lax about it. Sorry everyone!
So what’s a Barcamp? It’s an informal and free conference where the topics and talks are chosen on the day by the people there. Have an idea about a talk? Ask for one to be run or run it yourself. Barcamps are meant to be unconferences where it isn’t one person at a podium talking but the whole audience participating. A bit like Questions and Answers without the panelists and John Bowman guiding the conversation. Different and we’re going to try this time to do that!
Insisting that slideware sessions to be kept to a minimum and limited to 20 mins
Running an Ignite session for pure slideware (5 minutes, 20 slides)
Focussing relentlessly on facilitiating discussions with active participants rather that talking at passive listeners. No more talk + Q&A. It should be all Q&A with “presenters” as moderators.
Asking questions, not making statements
Running a “build a webapp in a day” session for the entire day (details to follow)
Offering your problems/challenges to your audience to solve (”How do I…?”)
Setting up hands-on technical tutorial sessions (e.g. how to use Sketchup to model buildings and cities, under the hood of WordPress etc)
Insisting on absolutely no branding or commercial pitching during sessions
Highlighting technology as a tool to achieve useful ends, not as an end in itself
Looking at ways of using technology to enable creativity
Pulling in as many non-tech people as possible – media, art, education, finance, energy, entertainment, charity
I’m going to give a few talks, though, I think more I’ll kick off a few interactive sessions with people. There should deffo be one on funding for companies and where to get it with someone taking notes and putting them online.
Pretty obvious what it’ll be about from that! There are a whole load of really speakers lined up for this and the full schedule is here. George Lee is opening it. Last week I had great fun watching Catherine and Alison from it@cork getting their photos taken for the press for this. One giant postcard and a green postbox. I ended up being official handbag holder/guarder while they stood around the South Mall.
Have a look at the enviromentally friendly initiatives for the conference too. I’m on the organising committee for this conference and ont he steering committee for it@cork too.
Posted in business, irishblogs, technology | Comments Off on GREEN IT: Reduce CO2, Raise Profits Conference – Nov 26
Got this in my mail a while back from Visrez but had no time to blog it.
Well it’s a standalone booking engine system that can be used to sell accommodation online. You can also use the same system to sell events as well but at the moment, we want to test the booking engine side of things. We’re just coming into the beta testing phase and we’re looking for people who are interested in being beta testers and submitting feedback about the usability of the system.
The 3 types of accommodation we’re hoping to test are B&Bs/Guesthouses, Apartments who sell short term accommodation (1 month or less) and hotels who can allocate 10 – 60 rooms to the beta system.
It’s commission-free, no set up costs and no long term contracts. The incentive for beta testers is that they can have the use of the booking engine on their website for 3 months for free once we launch the product.
The only requirement is that they have to have a website already and they give Visrez feedback. If you need a booking engine urgently, this isn’t really for you as best testing might go on until 2009.
Posted in business, irishblogs | Comments Off on Want to Beta Test a booking engine?
on the case — due to the fact that many of their TDs and senators also employ family members in their offices.
John McGuinness’s son is on 43k per year after being appointed his personal secretary. He is also a councillor with Kilkenny Town Council so he gets a salary on top of the 43k too.
Also of note:
Earlier this year, it emerged that one in five TDs and senators is employing a relative at taxpayers’ expense. Some 31 TDs and 11 senators currently employ family relatives, including wives, husbands, sons and daughters, out of a total of 226 politicians in the Dail and Seanad.www
The posts are not publicly advertised and carry salaries of up to €45,000.
As I stated last week, they’re all the same when it comes to things like the above or when it comes to the yearly reporting of expenses they bled from taxpayers. None of the parties will complain or speak out.
