Online Marketing New Ideas (OMNI)

Home Turf - speaking at a New Ross Chamber Event

I am delighted to be speaking at an event in my local town, New Ross. The New Ross Chamber of Commerce asked me to give a presentation entitled Growing Your Business Online. It is all part of the Spirirt of Enterprise week, which hosts a huge number of events and should be a great undertaking.

My event includes speakers such as Blaise Brosnan, Tony Kerins, Ronan Brazil and Paula Ronan, so there should be something for everyone. Please come along (though you need to register in advance with the chamber) and get involved. Hopefully, I will see you there.

Net Visionary Voting Open

Voting for the 2007 Net Visionary Awards is now open. You can vote in 14 different categories and it is completely free!

Calling all visionaries

The Net Visionary Awards nominations are now closed and my good friends over at the Irish Internet Association tell me that the volume of nominations was nearly double last year's. The Net Vis Awards are unique in Ireland in that they are free to enter, are voted on by the peers and colleagues in the industry and run by a non-for-profit organisation. Be sure to cast your vote this year.

IIA Congress 2007

The IIA National Congress 2007 is being held on May 17 this year. Google, eBay, Bebo, Microsoft, Realex Payments and many more are featuring at this major networking event. The full line-up is available here - last year it was well worth the visit so maybe I will see some of you there.

Invest Northern Ireland Seminar

I am attending Invest Northern Ireland's seminar in Ballymena and the level of speaker and orgainsiation is excellent - some good lessons to be learned for runnning further events. Putting the seminar agenda on the back of your name badge is an innovative idea that I have not encountered before.

I have attended sessions delivered by eBay, Realex and I will be delivering one on behalf of the IIA later on. I also met denise cox of Newsweaver who I have not seen for a while. She has even started to blog, which should be worth checking out. If there are any other bloggers at the event perhaps you would care to comment about your experience of this seminar.

Widgets, Blidgets and so much more

So, just when you thought you had got to grips with the nomenclature; blogs, podcasts and rss feeds. Now you have to deal with widgets and blidgets! I am not even going to try to explain to you what they are. If you are reading this blog post just look to the right of the screen and you will see a widget in a small scroll bar - this is the Irish Internet Association's blog and you can get it here instead of having to visit it there. Once I get my head around all this I will post more but at first glance it looks like a blogger's viral marketing wet dream ...

Coffee, Danish and 8MBytes Please

Apologies for the hiatus. I was travelling across Europe to my second home in Denmark. The wife is a Dane, don't you know. While talking over Xmas dinner my father in law dropped a casual remark that they were getting in fibre the following week and with 8MBytes as the lowest default for about 30 euro. I had to bite my tongue when he asked me what broadband is like in Ireland. I hmm'd and haww'd for a few moments, drank some coffee and asked him to show me his Xmas presents again.

Isn't it great as a travelling embassador of the Celtic Tiger that we we have to bow our heads in shame whenever broadband is mentioned. We are kings of the world on so many fronts, depending on what elements of David McWilliams creed you adhere to, but we are lowly laggards when internet connection speeds are mentioned.

I am publishing this blog at home via my satellite broadband link. I live in rural Wexford and this is the best I can get. Expensive and just tipping into the lowest technically allowable definition of the word broadband. I drink my coffee and hang my head in shame again.

Mergo of Minds

I am in beautiful Cahir giving a seminar to a group of people on the mergo project. I am demonstrating the effectiveness of using blogging as a communication tool and how it is fundamentally different from publishing to a website.

This is an interesting initiative that gives people in the hospitality and tourism sector a chance to network and learn about all facets of their business. Funded by Failte Ireland it is run under the aegis of Waterford Institute of Technology, and managed by Anne-Marie Frampton. For more information check out the mergo website.

Hiatus Belatus

It has been a while since my last post. Things have been very busy. In my role as CEO of the Irish Internet Association - we have been running a roadshow of events all over the country. Coupled with that was our Annual Congress. We managed to get Google, Yahoo, MSN, eBay and Bebo all on the one platform - over 500 billion dollar market cap around the same table! If you want to get a feel for what the speakers and delegates thought of the event check this out.

We have also launched our own IIA blog, which has proved quite popular. Check it out and see if it is of interest. Really trying to use it as a forum for debate relating to zietgeist internet issues. Broadband anyone? Speaking of which, I met the new Chairman designate of eircom, Pierre Danon, and I think may just be the man to sort Ireland's broadband out. Smooth operator - now let's see if he can do for Ireland like he did for the BT in the UK.

Can you talk?

The Irish Internet Association are running a series of debates and we want you to talk. If you fancy your chances please give me a call. The first debate motion is The internet is crap and will not survive! Teams have already been chosen for the first one but there are more planned. These debates are starting to capture peoples' imaginations so get involved.