Since the move from Event Ireland to Event Media earlier in the year, the office has been busy with a lot more media and music-related work, for print and online use. One such act availing of the services are Saving J, the band having released their latest single Everybody this past weekend.

The perk of having a few extra seats in the office is being able to get the bands in to contribute to the look and feel of the artwork they want to represent their music. The Everybody single artwork, seen above, is based on that of This City Street, the debut album released by the band this past September. We’ve had the pleasure of working with the band on their artwork for Valentine, Kick Off, Indication Street (all singles), the album (with a nice 12-page booklet in a super-jewel case) and now Everybody.

Once the artwork is settled, per single, the band receive print-ready PDFs and all original artwork to bring to their preferred duplication house.

In the new year Event Media will officially launch a new range of digital services for artists under a new in-house brand. In the meantime, we’ll be adding some more of our recent handiwork to the portfolio over the course of the week. It’s been a good month for music!

The Event Media offices are closed (as per our advance notice) from today, Friday October 9th, to Friday October 23rd, reopening at 10am on Tuesday October 27th following the October Bank Holiday.

Support and general queries can still be emailed to the usual address though a response during this period cannot be guaranteed.

We’ll see you in a few weeks!

Photo of Dublin Airport by Ken McGuire / Event Media (All Rights Reserved)

We believe in The Pinkertons. Or, at least we know that they’re real, as is highlighted by the lastest and final installments of the Vultures web com series, produced here in Kilkenny by friends of Event Media, Mycrofilms. Ourselves and Mycrofilms will be linking up in November this year to deliver a full day workshop on audio and video podcasting with Artlinks, but more on that later.

We’re highlighting the Vultures series here on one hand as it’s an excellent product from a production company we’ve got close ties with, and on the other hand, those familiar with our offices might recognise some of the settings. Throughout the series (in which there are seven episodes), the Vultures gang have used our board room as a police holding cell and our older, larger office space as the Pinkertons lair.

It was great to have the group around and, from my own part, take an active involvement in certain episodes. The series closed out on September 19th with a cast and crew screening in Kilkenny. Episode six, Attack Of The Pinkertons, can be viewed above or via Blip.tv and episode seven (already show to cast and crew) will be published online on Sunday October 4th.

Hopefully there’s more of the same to come from Mycrofilms and Vultures.

The closure is to facilitate annual holiday and as such, Event Media will not be available for new work during this period.

• Monday to Thursday: 10am to 5pm
• Friday: 10am to 4pm

Any changes to opening hours, notices of closure and holidays will be published here on the blog and through Twitter. The office in Kilkenny will be closed from Friday October 9th to Tuesday October 27th to accommodate annual holidays.

On another note, this month looks to be an interesting one for us on the music front with two albums hitting the shelves on September 11th from Clive Barnes and Saving J respectively. Both acts had their album artwork and promotional imagery produced here at Event Media. Once the albums hit the shops we’ll give you the lowdown on the artwork here on the blog.

Earlier in the month I had a chat with Brian Collins of Enterprise Ireland for an article in their most recent newsletter, the August 18th edition of eBusiness Live.

For the article I was asked for my thoughts on what a company should have on their homepage. While the homepage content will vary from project to project here at Event Media, there are some key and common elements that business owners should consider for their own company’s homepage.

To find out what I’ve said, along with Eoin Redmond and Richard Hearne, click here to read the newsletter.

The use of social media tools for complementing this year’s festival coverage has been greatly received thus far and we’re hoping it will continue through next year’s festival and also act as a source of inspiration for other festival organisers around the country. We’ll have a post after the weekend showing you how and what was needed in order to provide coverage for this year’s events.

You can download the MP3 directly here. (16mb, 128kbps) or listen below.

Around two months ago off the back of one of the blogging courses delivered for Artlinks, I was approached by the Kilkenny Arts Festival to consider getting involved in the social media promotion of the festival. Two years on, we’ve worked out a good plan for the festival, we’re currently four days in and there’s all sorts of activity taking place across the festival blog, Twitter, YouTube and beyond.

As part of the coverage of the festival we’re packaging short videos for their YouTube channel, shot handheld in HD on a Sony HR10, covering a wide variety of gigs and events. Currently available online are clips from Julie Feeney, Le Concert Spirituel, Jim & Dr. Nick and Aka Moon, with footage from Amiina, Xi and Si, Katie Kim and RSAG transferring in the office this morning.

The festival started on Friday night and runs through to Sunday August 16th. Many of the childrens, literature and theatre events are already sold out but if you’re looking for tickets and more information on the festival, check out KilkennyArts.ie or visit the festival blog here where you’ll find me contributing over the course of the week.

The next outing of Kilkenny Open Coffee takes place tomorrow morning (Wednesday) at 11:30am in the Kilkenny Cafe at Market Cross Shopping Centre.

Barring one outing, the cafe has played hosted to the OCC meetups since the beginning of the year. Parking is available in the adjacent Market Cross car park while free wifi is available in the rear of the cafe.

I (Ken) have been attending since we started off with Kilkenny Open Coffee and thoroughly enjoy the conversation each month. The morning gives a chance for those in business, those working for themselves, those involved in startups or those looking to do some light networking the chance to get out of the office, meet new people, enjoy a tea or coffee, introduce what it is you’re doing and sit around a table with likeminded individuals.

If you’re in the Kilkenny area, or interested in traveling, please do come along. You can find a map here. If you can’t make this week’s one, we meet on the first Wednesday of every month, at 11:30am in the same venue (rear of Kilkenny Cafe).

You may continue to contact us up to Friday afternoon, following that, content may be intermittent until Monday 27th. Emails and voice mails will be collected in the office and will be returned as soon as is possible though an instant response may not be available.

We’ve all got to take a break, right?

Since the changeover earlier this year, we’ve been tackling more audio work and more video work. This is the latest piece to come out of the office, produced for The Devious Theatre Company. The group are currently promoting a new theatre production that opens in just over two weeks and are looking for a series of video blogs to help spread the word about the production.

The video and audio were captured on a Sony HDR-SR10 with 5.1 audio, all shots captured last Thursday night (July 2nd) and woven together in Final Cut Express on the Mac. Title screens and name overlays added as PNGs to the process. Music underscoring the piece is a recorded instrumental version of Superstition by Stevie Wonder.

You can find out more about Devious Theatre by visiting DeviousTheatre.com. We’ve got a few more of these diaries to release over the next two weeks and when we’ve got more, you’ll have more.

Meet The River Valley Band. They’re just off the stage at Whelan’s in Dublin supporting Nell Bryden on her current Irish tour. They’re also a fantastic live act, hailing from Ireland with a train of musical though planted firmly in the USA.

We’ve just launched the first phase of The River Valley Band’s new website. You can all find them on MySpace.

Did I mention that we love working with bands? If you’re in a band and interested in taking your presence online with your own dedicated site, helping you to further build the brand of your band, then drop us a line today.

They’ve come from Scotland. They’ve cycled through Ireland. Now, they’re heading for Palestine and direct to Gaza.

Over the past few months we’ve been working with the Pathways To Palestine group, helping them get up and running with a blog, online donations, team email and more. The group are cycling from Ireland to Gaza and have already completed the Irish leg, with the continental leg set to start on Monday coming.

We’re sponsoring the web activities of the group and online they’ve already been able to over £1,200 with more coming through fundraisers, local donations, offline sponsorships and more. You can find out all about the project by visiting PathwaysToPalestine.com where you’ll be able to track their progress right across Europe with updates from through iPadio. If you would like to make a donation yourself, you can buy a mile (or 1.6km) for £20 or €25. When your leg of the trip has been completed, thanks to the wonders of modern GPS technology, you’ll get an email from the group letting you know your mile has been completed by their cyclists.

By cycling to Gaza they are hoping to raise significant funds for MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians) and raise further awareness of the situation at present in and around Gaza.

The group are also encouraging cycle groups in France, Germany, Slovakia and beyond to get involved and join them for a leg of the trip.

We wish Eoghan, Ger and all the others involved the very best of luck on the continental leg of their journey and hope they’ll arrive safely in Gaza in a month or so.

Version 1 of the main site and v1.5 of the blog have now been archived over on Flickr which means that v2 is not far off. We’ve been testing it here in the office since Monday and are quite happy with the progress. So much so that we’re feeling it will be released on or before Monday June 15th.

With that, there’s going to be a slight change. Your RSS feed for the blog will remain the same but we’re now going to incorporate EventMediaHQ.com into EventMedia.ie and house the lot under the one roof, the blog domain ultimately redirecting to EventMedia.ie.

If you’re interested in attending, you can RSVP via the Open Coffee Ning group here, or by visiting IGOpeople.com.

Already providing design services for the group, their main site running on a Wordpress platform, we’re launching a tailored Wordpress Mu installation for the group which will host six new sites and blogs based on performances and shows staged previously by the company, including their flagship production for 2009, Stags And Hens, by Willy Russell.

We’ll keep you posted here as and when the sites roll out across the month. We’ll also be teaming up with DTC to give away some tickets for their productions this year, keep your eyes peeled for a giveaway.

The blog was started in advance of the first Artlinks course, Blogging For Beginners, staged last year. Over the next month or so, those posts will be revisited, updated and brought onboard Event Media HQ as the HQ blog starts to grow and evolve in line with the work presently being undertaken in the main office.

EventMedia.ie itself is about to undergo phase two of the site’s development, allowing for a much more integrated way of working between the main business site and the business blog, a process – if you’ve ever been interested in attempted to merge blogs yourself – which will be documented here.

Here’s the slides shown during the Intermediate Blogging for The Arts session in Kilkenny last Thursday, the talk held as one of the ArtLinks training courses for creative practitioners. What you’ll find missing from the slides are demos and run throughs (on-screen) of using Flickr, YouTube for video blogging, the use of FeedBurner for email subscriptions and of course all the great content and questions that crept up over the course of the three hours.

For more on future courses, visit ArtLinks.ie.

I’ve prepared a few slides for this morning which will be used as notes / handouts and will be available online from this afternoon on Slideshare. I will have met some people on the course before, but for those of you I’ll be meeting this morning, welcome along, and don’t be afraid to ask any questions.

You can access the slides from the beginners course here – Blogging For Beginners (presentation).

This one has been doing the rounds today. Quite well put together I might add. While I rely on Twitter for an awful lot of things and I’m an advocate for what the service can do, I hope I’m nothing like the guy in this clip…