Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the first questions asked is whether we have provided any plugins back to the WordPress user community.

So while we have lots of examples of WordPress plugins developed for our customers that use WordPress – many prospective customers baulk because we don’t have plugins shared with the WordPress community.

That’s why we’re thinking of dedicating some time to the development of a WordPress plugin for for town and local community websites; we’re thinking :

• easy way for local businesses, clubs and groups to upload information about what they do.
• classify what they fall under (restaurants, b&bs, pubs, clubs, etc)
• allow their submission to be moderated by the site owner
• allow the site owner to easily configure the plugin for site look and feel, form to be filled by the service provider, service categories, etc.
• display the results on the community site via a nice SEF – e.g www.mycommunity.com/services/restaurants
• have widget on the site that visitors can easily select service categories.

This is just an early sketch of what might be useful – what do you think?

Just after arriving back on the dock.

Good to meet up with some familiar faces and exchange some war stories with new acquaintances; This type of environment is perfect for those types of discussion; got to hear and share – perspectives and points of view on topics ranging from from web and online marketing, education, creativity, customers through to the importance of enjoying what you do.

Johhny Beirne is the man to thank for all of this – along with the generous sponsorship provided by Leitrim  County Enterprise Board, The Country Cooking Company,  Reverb Studios and Absolute Safety

When is the next one?

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.