Are other candidates in other constituencies showing their shy side?

Ireland North West Ballot Paper for European Elections 2009

Since the day he took office - he knew that this day would eventually come. Given the current financial situation however, I think the announcement was actually the easy part.

The difficult part will be the job of the inter-departmental task force and their efforts to disengage from the storage contracts and offloading the machines themselves - while at the same time trying  to “recoup as much as possible of their cost” - the last bit are not my words.

Who on earth would buy these things? Are they worth anything? Have they too much of a history?

As a collector of retro home computers circa the early 1980’s - I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one of them; I have some form here - last year I tried to make contact with the guy who has a shed load of the infamous Florida voting machines; I’m glad to report he didn’t respond - things must be good in the Everglades for Del Boy types flogging suitcase sized e-voting machines complete with “hanging chads”.

But I wonder - is the ONLY market for these machines to be flogged on e-bay? Or the electronic equivalent of a bike sale down in Kevin Street Garda Station? Or would some organisation like Camara benefit from a donation of the machines (PC’s) that were used to do the count - presumably there’s at least one, and probably a lot more in each of the count centres?

Your thoughts please.

Update : Apologies to Camara, they’re actually of no use to you - Is it true that these things only have a 386 processor?

Yes, the ways and means to do this is already out there; Apple TV, Mac Mini, the browser on Wii - but still requires that early adopter mentality which frankly is not of interest to most people.

For this particular early adopter - the path to these types of fool proof technologies has been a long one.

The interest that I have had in listening to internet radio goes back to the late ’90s and indeed was the basis of the funding I received from Enterprise Ireland in mid-2001. From downloaded audio (pre podcast and RSS feeds) onto an HP iPAQ, to an FM transmitter connected to the PC ( I wrote about it here) - through to my current use of a Nokia N95.

This is all still very geeky, and I know that this level of geekiness will only be mitigated by the purchase of a REAL internet radio - one that looks like a radio, has knobs and dials on, a 1950’s wood finish - or whatever radio attributes are currently in vogue.

Yesterday was just one of those days, and at the end of it I had one of those customer conversations that you are probably warned about in any customer service 101’s.

I got quiet ratty on the phone.

Bottom line - you just cannot do that without a very, very good reason.

I’ve always understood the importance of happy customers; conversely, I also understand when you need to walk away from one.

Whatever about the external unmanageable elements of a recession - you always remain in control of the attitude and consideration that you have for the people that are paying you for your services.

By the time I listened to Emily Tully on TodayFM recount her horror story of an interaction with Mobile phone company 3 (story on igopeople) - I had come full circle.

A quick email was dispensed with an apologetic “it’s been a long week” - but I know that it’s been a tough and busy last month for the person in question as well…

Individual firsts have also been recorded - first twitterers to be report from an air crash, escape from a burning house - and of course DM fails are always just a few keystrokes away.

I hope that I never have to rely on micro blogging for any of the catasatrophic type events like those.

Travelling in the car yesterday evening, I was listening to one of Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators; the topic was the December 2008 ice storm in New Hamphshire where two thirds of homes and businesses in the state were directly effected by power outages - over 300,000 customers.

Martin Murray, who works in the corporate communucations department of the public services there - decided to setup up a twitter account (@psnh) to deal with customer queries and to publicise state response to the emeregency; it appears they were pretty successful.

The reality of those days for a lot of people was they were without electricity and without the communication of TV and radio. So instead - many turned to the text messages updates of the comms. dept who relayed the udpates of the repair crews. They also backed that up with a series of youtube videos with management and staff.

I reckon this is clever and useful stuff, easily understood by the wider community of “what the hell is twitter useful for?” and cheap into the bargain….

What motivated me to catch a 5.45am train from Sligo and attend the arts council conference? Of course the main one was to see how the creative community in Ireland is dealing with the online world, and the other was just to have an interesting day with non-geeks; everyone needs to get perspective.

But first off was Leadbetter vs. Keen. It was fun, with arguments which resonated from both sides; As Roy would say though “at the end of the day”, Keen does sound like a scratched record. If the discussion had gone on any longer, I fear it it could have got embarassing.

In particular, he is still being incredibly narrow in his view of direct monetisation of online content – and the view that everyone that publishes wants to monetise; clearly this is not the case. I think that one of the closing remarks would however have caused shivers for the audience – the idea that online content can be reduced to marketing only – similar to the way in which bands give away the music for free, and monetise for example on concerts and box sets.

I purposely attempted to steer away from the workshops that Damien and Conn ran  on the day - not because I didn’t feel I could learn something, but see If I could learn something about where the artistic community is coming from.

Some of the common themes that resurfaced during the day were ownership (and copyright), following the patrons/customers and being found, and the leadership/champion gap. I don’t think the first two surprised me; the idea of being generous and sharing online – enacting creative commons – must be a difficult step to take;  however knowing where the customers are, and the best way to follow them – is something that can be learned.

The leadership bit – this is probably the most surprising one. Other sectors have grasped this, and typically offer courses, reduced rate training, seminars and so on; It sounded as if a lot of those attending could also do with something like this.

The most enjoyable part of the day was the Your Space breakout. I joined a small group led by a NCAD Master student (cannot remember name) as well as Conor McGarrigle and Con Kennedy. We chatted for forty minutes or so, and personally I would have continued on for a lot longer. Our topic was knowledge and lost knowledge and we made the context of this nostalgia, family history, lost skills and storytelling. Fantastic stuff.

I was unable to attend the blogging conference in Dublin on saturday, organised by the European Commission. With a lot of foresight, Philippe and Cian ensured that people like myself could view proceedings by streaming most of the event with Ustream.TV;

Well done guys - the presentations I saw were good; I thought the workshop with Harry, Damien, Richard and Joe was excellent - it’s a shame that it was so short.

The picture included here shows Damian O’Broin from AskDirect.ie giving his overview of social media campaigns for fund raising and online advocacy; I think this was a particularly good session and highlighted the innovation that is happening in this sector; I would have liked to hear more offline, his views on the models that are currently being used in this sector - he alluded to it, but did not really have the opportunity to develop on.

I suppose it proves exactly the reason you need to attend get together like this - otherwise, you really do miss the networking opportunities.

I’m such a snark really.

Right up until the end of september, the advert continued to play unchanged - and still rattling on about the fact that the M50 was going barrier free “from the 30th August“. Fair enough you’d probably say - getting bang for the buck by just doing one version, reinforcing the change over date, how much better it was goinf to be and all of that good stuff….

So it came in the light relief slot of the Last Word on Today FM yesterday evening, that actually there are some huge problems with the system, and specifically the positioning of the tag in a travelling car.

In fairness to the NRA - they have all of the requirements for the tags well documented - in information sent to those who bought the tags. The NRA website however, is a different matter - I wasn’t really able to find any information about tolling and possible teething problems - apart from that contained in press releases.

Getting to my main point then - are the NRA guilty of not being customer focussed? From the little I heard today, having a quick look at the report in the Irish Times, and checking their website - I think they are. What could they have done?

• Be more proactive with these issues on the airwaves. They mention it deep in a press release on the website from the 20th August that “teething problems” are expected. They should have known that any hack worth their salt, and their old friends in the AA would be crucifying them by now; the financial meltdown over the past few weeks has probably saved them to this point.
• Press Releases are not for ordinary people; they are for media outlets; don’t communicate with your customers through press releases. If you are - you are failing the customer.
• Make these teething problem difficulties more obvious on the website. Have a huge feckin’ button on the home page that leads the customer to a dedicated sub-section (not a press release !) about the issues; at the very least, replicate the materials that were sent to customers - that should be a no-brainer.
• Don’t let Minister Dempsey infer that motorists are lazy or stupid on national radio.
• Drop the “Don’t stop me know” ad campaign, and instead inform the lazy and/or stupid motorists how to use the tag - (now should that be in front of or behind the rear view mirror?)

Customers should always have a good time, they should always have a ball.

Update 1 : Have I been too harsh, given that main site is not nra.ie but rather www.eflow.ie ?

Update 2 : I received my statement for september (video registration) and it was correct.

Mobile Marketing : Online solution for a retail customer to enable them to easily communicate with their customers via an opt-in text messages for products and services. Features included message personalisation, campaign maintenance and delivery statistics. We’re really pleased with this work.

Web Consultancy : Helped a major Irish Travel Industry organisation in developing theit online marketing strategy including more than a hat tip to a stragetic use for all things social media and web 2.0.

Project Management and System Specification : Project Management for a major overhaul of an online booking engine and website, along with the specification of widget based affiliate system.

Viral Marketing Tools : We are just finishing up a project with a financial institution that involves widget development (both javascript and flash) and embed capability on websites, blogs and social network sites such as facebook.

Joomla Development : We have also recently completed a major Joomla implementation, which included the development of new modules and components for easier client maintenance, data extraction and customer support.

Wordpress Development : In tandem with all of these, we have been kicking along with some of our core web development skills in developing Wordpress based sites, and designing bespoke plugin features where necessary.

We’re looking forward to a bit of a break over the next few weeks…