See below article courtesy of the Evening Echo.

My number one vote went to Gary Mullan: Prosperity. Garry is a great guy and has contributed lot to the IIA in recent years. His company is well recognised in the digital recruitment space and he has been successfully reaching out to the grass roots community for a number of years. Id be delighted to see Garry on the board.

My second Vote went to Bob Curran : Buy4Now. I don’t know Bob personally but I believe that his experience with e-commerce in Ireland would be invaluable to the IIA. There are a number of successfully e-commerce player in Ireland and Buy4Now are one of the industry leaders in this space.

My third vote went to David Walsh: Eircom Business. Again, I don’t know David personally but I have met him at least one of the IIA board meetings. I have wanted to see at least one of the Irish telecoms companies on the board for some time now. I believe with David on the board that we will have a much more direct line of communication (excuse the pun) into the life and sole of the connectivity that powers our industry.

How to vote

Voting is open to all members of the IIA. Each member company’s voting user can cast 4 votes in the Election. When you log in to vote, you will be presented with each of the candidates’ photographs and 100-word bios. These will be arranged in alphabetical order by surname.

The voting system allows your nominated voting users to vote from 9am on 7th Oct – 21st Oct.  If you do not know who your Voting User is please log in to view your company profile. If you need any changes made to your voting user you should email members@iia.ie. If you have forgotten your IIA password you can reset it.

Use your Vote to select the IIA Board ( http://iia.ie/vote/ )

They would appreciate your vote. Please spread the word about the IIA nomination.

Bruce Mansour of Make it Happen, Cormac O'Dwyer from Dungarvan Brewing Company and Stephen Clinch of Trouble Brewing

Its the morning after the night before. I just woke up with only a slightly groggy head after sampling some of Ireland’s finest craft beers at the inaugural Irish Craft Beer Festival. The event is being held this weekend, 23 rd – 25th September 2011. There were some well known brands such as The Porter House, O’Haras and Messrs Maguire’s and a few new brands (to me) such as Dunvgarvan Brewing Company, White Gypsy and BrewEyed Blonde. Check out the brewers list.

If you are new to Craft Beers, I would advise you to pop over to The Porter House lads. Tell them what you normally drink and they will point out a few options that you might like. They do it all the time in their pubs, so they probably have the most experience in pointing people in the right direction.

My favourite beers of the night:

• Mustang, White Gypsy
• Vanilla flavored  IPA, BrewEyed Blonde
• Copper Coast Red Ale, Dungarvan
  This is a smooth, fruity ale with a definite caramal character created by the use of crystal malt in the brewing process but with an added hop balance that is not always present in red ales, and which balances the sweetness of the caramel flavours.
• Smoked Ale,  O’Haras
  This ale has fruity notes on the nose, a biscuity malt base peaks in a zing of bitterness, rounded off with a subtle smoked finish – perfect for the beginner in the series and a taste of what is to come.
• IPA,  O’Haras
  Contemporary style I.P.A. dry hopped for extra aroma. In appearance it is a Rich golden colour with a white head. This pale ale has a light malt base with just the right mouth feel to allow the hop character to predominate. Grapefruit like bitterness is full and lasting and is balanced by a zesty citrus burst of aroma from the late addition of cascade hops.The Citrus flavours give way at the end to the floral, spicy bitterness of Amarillo hops.

After your chat, have a read though the booklet that you received with your free complementary glass on the way in. This booklet is like your encyclopedia Britannica to the craft beer scene in Ireland. If you drink larger, stick with the  pale ales and wheat beers. If your into something a bit fuller try some of the Red Ales, Stouts. Louise was on Tempted Ciders for most of the night, she is not much of a beer person.

The only other advice I can give is:

• Avoid the Wojitos (Whiskey Mojitos)
• Wash your glass out between drinks
• Buy your burger from GBK, buy your chips from the place on the right
• If ordering a cheese plate, ask can you swap out the blue cheese for something else (unless you like blue cheese)
• Don’t expect much in terms of entertainment (except for the Magician, I heard he was awesome)
• Bring your own camping chairs
• Grab your beer tokens when you go in the door. I got 20 quids worth and it lasted the night.

So in summary, great night had by all. I’ve never had that volume of drink before and been able to wake up in the morning and write a blog post. It must be something in the water!

Big thanks to Dave from Politics.ie for informing me that the event was on and to Ann from Yelp for scoring us 8 free tickets. If you have some time today, pop down to the RDS and check out the first Craft Beer Festival.  Its 10 quid in and you get a free glass and a half pint of beer.

The plan is to meet up 7pm on Thursday 22nd September in Rúta, King St North, Dublin.  There will be food, drinks (free pints of the black stuff) and well .. whatever!

The meetup is quite informal, there is no agenda and no presentations. People just meet up, chat, (some people) network and everyone has a good time! It would be great if you could invite some friends to register. more the merrier!  I’d really appreciate if everyone could give BTW meetup a big push!

The event is free to attend.

The plan is to meet up 7pm on Thursday 21st April in O’Byrne’s Beverage House, King St N.  There will be food, drinks and well .. whatever!

The meetup is quite informal, there is no agenda and no presentations. People just meet up, chat, some people network and everyone has a good time!

It would be great if you could invite some friends to register. more the merrier!  I’d really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!

The event is free to attend.

When I opened the first bag, it seemed to be really dark roasted. I thought it was a bit strange as one of the ones I ordered was described as medium roast. When I opened the second bag all I could smell was burnt coffee. In my opinion it may have been over roasted.

Last Friday (before 12am), I popped them an email. It was fairly light stuff, I was asking them could there have been an issue with the roast and that it was much darker than I had expected. I heard nothing back from them.

So today I decided to try them both. To be fair, the first one was a bit darker than anything I had tasted in the IFSC. The second one was just discussing. So I decided id tweet about my option. I was still waiting on a reply.

OK, I admit, It was a bit blunt .. but then I get a reply from @BadgerAndDodo on twitter.

I found this really bad form. It seemed like really amazing example of poor customer engagement. They had every opportunity to resolve the issue. After my last experience with poor customer engagement I was cracking up!

I was an advocate of theirs up until 19:04 today. I could forgive them for a bad batch of coffee but I cant forgive them for treating me badly. You can see the fallout on twitter here.. You can also read more feedback from socialmediaexpert.ie ..

After a while, they delete the tweet and then I received this:

Hi Jason,

We take complaints very seriously, investigate every case thoroughly and
do not take your comments lightly. However, we will not merely refund or
replace orders until we can ascertain where the problem is and what went
wrong. I received your email on the Friday afternoon, and although we try
to take some time out on weekends, I had already looked into your issue
... that is, before logging online today and reading your tweet about our
coffee now "being overroasted to shit" and "smelt like crap" - forgive me
if I took this personally !

I found this early public conviction on twitter nasty, unfair and uncalled
for. Yes, I got defensive and got my back up as I am passionate about
quality in coffee and goto great lengths to satisfy customers. I felt
hardly done by as I hadn't been given a fair amount of time to reply to
your complaint. My only mistake was that I didn't email you to let you
know I was on the case.

Our assessment of your email complaint is as follows.

- a roasted coffee bean that will crush under pressure of thumb is not an
indication of it being "over roasted to shit";
- The batch records for both Red Rock and Yirgacheffe indicate that
nothing was wrong;
- That same batch of red Rock went out to various cafe customers, who
report nothing out of the ordinary with the quality of coffee;
- There were no complaints from others who were part of that same batch.

Conclusion: I have done all that I can from our end as per our refund and
returns policy, we ask that you return the coffee for further analysis.
Obviously we will reimburse your card for any out of pocket expenses
should the beans be found to be faulty, and replace your order. From our
own quality control perspective, we need to look into this issue as there
may quite well be an issue with say An post, packaging or who know what -
but we need to determine what went wrong and where.

Regards,

Brock

Its this kind of impersonal crap that gets me so worked up. Jesus, talk about making a bad situation worse. I was about to write a reply and then I decided is just write up a blog post. Was I wrong to share my opinion publicly? Should a company talk to its customs online in this way?

Id love to hear your opinion.

—

Updated: 2nd Feb, I’ve had a bit of time to chill out. In reflection, I may have been out order with the public hanging. The guys in Baddger and DoDo were trying their best to respond given the circumstances. I didn’t like that particular blend.. but each to their own!  Pop over to their website and try for yourself and tell me if I was wrong.

The plan is to meet up 7pm on Thursday 3rd Feb in O’Byrne’s Beverage House, King St N. We will chow down and celebrate Chinese new year in style! There will be food, drinks and well .. whatever!

What i like about the venue:

They are doing things different from your average pub. Yes they have the same beer as every other boring pub in the country but they also have a selection of craft beer (micro brew) from some Irish micro breweries as well as Lithuanian beer.

The event is free to attend.

It would be great if you could invite some friends to register. more the merrier! There will be finger food. Id really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!

That was almost 2 years ago now, what a Weigh2Live .. So why am I showing you this photo then you might ask? Well, you may or may not notice.. but I’m quite chubby in that photo. To tell the truth, that photo was taken when I was at my heaviest weight. I was topping 23 stone at at Height of 5′ 10. You can do the maths on that one. I hear the BIM calculators ringing in at a morbidly obese level. My god, did it feel morbid!

Just after that photo, I decided to do something about my “extra” weight. When you put it into context, I was almost 2x my recommended weight (11-13 st). Its not like I haven’t tried to control my weight. I’ve been quite broad since I was child. I think at one point or another growing up I tried just about every diet under the sun. It turns out some worked for me and some didn’t. I tried to exercise too and without trying to make excuses, I found that quite difficult.

When I was 17 my weight was at about 19.5 st. At that point in my life it was the highest it had ever been. For the first time I had found something that seemed to work. It was a high protein / low carbohydrate combination with buckets of fats on top. It seemed like a dream diet as you could eat whatever you wanted, you would never feel hungry and the weight just fell off. It was the first time I realised that I had an addiction to carbohydrates and refined sugars.  The diet had some down sides!  Your breath had a horrible smell, eating so much protein without any fiber had side effects and by the end of it I was having palpitations in my heart. So when I got to 17.5 st I stopped, the diet was not sustainable. Life went on and I was content for a while.

Year by year, the pounds crept back on. There is a huge catch 22 when you go over a certain tipping point in terms of weight. You have very little energy, exercise becomes very uncomfortable and dieting is an uphill battle as you are feeding an unquenchable appetite. The normal lines I heard bantered around at the time from friends and family were “Eat well, Stay active, Plan and track your progress”. That’s all well and good, but given I was experiencing the above I found those kind of statements quite unhelpful. My issues is less to do with eating crap food and more to do with the balance of proteins, carbohydrates and sugars.

When I see this Weigh2Live shit from Europe or the government it breaks my heart. I wish they would spend less time insulting people like me and more time informing people about the root causes of our weight epidemic. Why bother spending money creating or reinforcing stereotypes! Its not a bloody safe food campaign… oh wait it is! When are they going to put an advert on the TV that sings the virtues of a wholemeal wrap over a slice of white doorstep bread, informs people about substituting high starch veg with low GI alternatives or explains how to prevent the effects of hypoglycemia. People need support not criticism.

Two years ago I tried the diet again without much success as I couldn’t get the same results. So I went for some help. I heard about a magic pill that fixed everything. It was on prescription and cost a small fortune. I tried it and it did seem to work at the start. I took it on and off for about 6 months. I had six month prescription and I only ended up only taking 1 months supply. It was horrible, the side effects were worse than you could ever imagine and I told nobody! These tables would make any sane person suicidal in 3 easy steps! I turned my life upside down in that year as I quit a well paid job, ended a long term relationship and moved homes. The tablets were later withdrawn from the market as they caused “High blood pressure”.

I had lost 2 stone in the process but it was a high price to pay. I accept that It was a kick start that got me going again but it was the low carb stuff that kept me on track. So I was back to 19.5 st, the same weight as when I was  17. Not bad I thought and Life went on again. You guessed it, the weight started climbing again and stopped at 20.5 when I realised what was going on. I joined a Gym and started to build up my fitness a bit thinking it would level out again. It turns out it didn’t and I quit.

Then earlier last year I ran into some health issues. It was the first time that I had ever felt my weight causing health problems. It turns out I had 2 prolapsed disks in my spine. They were pressing on nerves and and resulted in me being unable to walk without agonizing pain. It started off as a pain in one of my feet. It was like i had twisted my ankle but I hadn’t . Its the kind of thing that would swap from one foot to the other at random. Very scary stuff as I was unable to walk and was rushed into the matter hospital. They thought i might need surgery to fuse some disks in my spine. Shocking stuff. In the end they decided not to. But suggested that I take some pressure off my back. I needed to loose to weight and fix some posture stuff.

So I’m sure we are both stating to see a pattern here. We have identified how to remedy my weight loss issues but we never really addressed the root cause of why the weight creeps back on. My health issues in the fore front of my mind, I wanted to lick this once and for all.

I decided to do a weight management programme. I’m sure you have heard about them on the radio. I’m not going to mention names as that’s not what this post is about. They work on your motivation and look at the underline issues. The “why” and “how” is addressed. So I’m glad to say its working. Its not as fast as my own previous efforts but it feels less detrimental towards my health. You cant help the bad breath but I’ll live with that. I’m back down to 19.5st and have set a goal of 15st. Its been an epic struggle over Christmas but its Okay to drop the ball as long as you pick it up again. I have a long way to go, but at least I’m started down the road. My back pain has reduced and its looking positive on the health front.

I hope someone finds this useful..Maybe you will find a better Weigh2Live from my experiences.

This is me now..

Please excuse the random inserts of Weigh2Live.. I’m sure you can guess why its there.

It’s that time of year .. The Christmas break is over and everyone is getting back to what they do best. By the sound of it, the vast majority of people in Ireland had a miserable Christmas. Between the bad weather, the lack of water and the countries transport grinding to a halt Christmas was bound to be a bit colorful for you in some way or another!

That said, everyone I’ve talked to seems to think 2011 will be a good year.. or at least better than last year.  With all the doom and gloom over the last while, its nice to hear people being so up beat. I have a great feeling about this year!

Before Christmas, I had the pleasure of joining a new coworking space in Dublin called Amworks. The Amworks space has been up and running for about a year now, so its been around a while. If you haven’t heard of the coworking concept before you should pop over to coworking.ie. Its a bit like an office share but on steroids (not in a sweaty body builder way). 

I previously had the pleasure of being involved in the Mount Street coworking space run by the guys at MIP. I left Mount Street after a couple of the guys I had become friends with emigrated. I hung in there for a while but It didn’t have the same vibe for me when they left. Most of the people that are in Mount Street love the place. To top it all off I had a change of direction last year when I decided to take a full time role with a company. It turns out that it didn’t really work out as we weren’t the right fit for each other. I’m glad that I took the role as it put me back on the right course in terms of what I want to do in life. I think this was the jolt in the arm that I needed to look at life in a new light!

So I found my self back doing my own thing again. Its like nothing had really changed, except now I was busier than ever. When I moved apartment last year, we went for a two bedroom apartment in a central location. My plan was to use the extra bedroom as my office and justify the extra cost of a nicer place that way.

It turns out that I found myself back in a situation that I have found myself in time and time again. Anyone who works for themselves will tell you, when you are starting out, one of the toughest things about working for yourself is the sense of isolation. Unless your out on the road all day, chatting with people or something like that you tend to feel the walls are closing in. If your in more of a desk bound situation, its much more difficult to get your social kicks from work.

So I decided to go back to coworking again and Alan from Amworks was keen to have me in the space. So far it’s been a breath of fresh air. The space is fantastic, the people are both passionate and inspiring and the undercurrent is buzzing. If you want to check it out, pop into one of the casual working events called Jelly  that they run every few weeks. There is one this Friday 10am-6:30.. its totally free to attend check it out.

Tuesday 26th, back to the grind.. Bank holidays are weird when you’re self employed, you don’t really get to take extra days off, so when I came back on Monday evening I had started Tuesdays work! The IIA Annual General Meeting was announced for the 17th Nov.  just my luck, I’m out of the country! I found Guidelines, Tools and Resources For Web Wire framing quite useful. They detail a ton of tools for designing a wire frame template.

Wednesdays 27th, busy day going though brand guidelines and sports results. In the last few months I’ve been doing a lot of work with a client in the sports/gaming industry. I’ve learnt a lot about US sports! Little did I know it but a one week project was running over and I ended up working until 3am trying to get it completed. It was really bugging me, so like any good hacker I burnt the midnight oil to get it closed out.

I was contacted by Alec Taylor about a Citizens ‘THINK-IN’, its an event that happens every Thursdays @ 5.30-7.30pm, FRANK McKENNA’s Pub, George’s Place, Dun Laoghaire. Then I got the heads up that Compu b are running a creative event on on Thursday 4th November 2010 in the Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin 2.

Thursday/Friday 28th/29th , was a bit of a wash out after my late night! I had some fun building an interactive dashboard for a client. It involved sunsets, clouds and lots of javascript .. I was talking to a friend today and he was pointing out Seminar Cloud to me.. It’s a great way to Sell Your Seminars Online.

I missed the Dublin web summit .. to be honest, I couldn’t justify the cost of the ticket.  I’m more inspired by watching people like Keith from Woodale designs, Peter from Donegan landscaping or Fran from Made in Hollywood. Founders are great.. but at the end of the day we have a lot of gems in Ireland.

I’m sorry i missed Matt from WordPress / Automattic .. I’m a huge fan of the work that they and their team do. Here is a video from the summit..

Check out http://beard.ie/ to join our Movember team. I also launched t9.ie a short url site.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have time (I was making time). What happened was, I started getting a lot negative feedback about the posts.  People didn’t seem to like to hear snippets from my day. I had a ton of people unsubscribe from my email and RSS updates, so I decided to cut my losses and stop.

I started on a bad note by saying I didn’t care about the quality of my posts. That was a big mistake as readers want quality not quantity. I knew this before I started, so I should have listened to that inner voice that said.. “Oi! cop on Jason!”. For some reason the voice sounded a bit like Peter.

Maybe its because myself and Louise had a podcast session in the car on the way back from Cork (*cough* the Kingdom?! or rebel county or something.. ). The session consisted of a mixture of Stuff you should know, Stuff mom never told you and the Sodcast. I have the words “reduce, reuse, recycle” going through my head as I write this ..

So on that note, I’m going to start again.. This time, I’m only going to post once or twice a week. The plan is to cover 365 days but spread it out over a few posts. Hopefully it wont be overkill and I’ll keep the quality up. I’m going to remove all the #BTD stuff too and just put it in the 365 category.

Id love to hear your feedback.

Its that time of year again!

11 days until Movember! Who wants to join the beard.ie team?

All team members will get access to post updates on beard.ie. Its a great way to support men’s health and raise funds for some amazing charity’s !

The team consists of 4 people so far:

• Ian Quigley
• Fergal Byrne
• Leslie Gilmour
• Myself

Pop over and register to join our team! Then pop back here and drop me an email jason @ jasonroe.me

You can also make a donation over here.

The plan is to meet in the The Church Bar (Dublin) at 7pm on Thursday 21st Oct. The church bar is located on Mary street. Mary street is the street that connects Henry Street with Capel street. We will get food, drinks and well .. whatever!

The event is free to attend.

It would be great if you could invite some friends to register. more the merrier!  There will be finger food. Id really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!

The community at Yelp are going to be coming down to hang out with us There may be a few new faces! Check out the The Dublin Weekly Yelp to see what they get up to.

The Freelance Feed, showcasing a high number of quality freelance reading resources.

Colab.ie, Enabling collaboration by helping people with ideas meet people with skills.

SPF Record Setup for Multiple Mail Servers

Social SEO the Evolution – Fact and Fiction, it’s business as usual crappy links and ok content!

Are Hyperlocals Replacing Traditional Newspapers? sites that don’t have the budget for flashy graphics or searchable databases. Their content comes from observant neighbors.

The future is another country, Social networks and statehood. Facebook is not quite a sovereign state—but it is beginning to look and act like one

RoadRecords is closing down! Sad day, but everything there is 50% off so pop down and help yourselves to some bargains

Gagababy.ie up for the game . “The journey was the best market feasibility study I have ever done. People said: ‘Where did you get that? I would love one’,” she recalls.

iPad hits Irish shops today

‘Army’ of mentors needed for start-ups

Ghost in the Machine, Portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape

It’s Official – Twitter Knows When We Are Happy or Sad!

Photo walk July 24th organised by John Williams.

The Secret of Successful Entrepreneurs

After the Click: What Products Do Your Users Actually Buy? .. Have you ever stopped to think about what products people are actually buying after they click on your ad?

Effective Presentation Skills

Ten Photowalking Tips, some quick tips to help you out, especially if it’s your first photowalk.

SEO Trainee Wanted, looking for a new job and a change in direction? Check out this role.

Fash Mob is on facebook.

CloudCanvas Launches HTML5 Image Creation And Editing Suite

Facebook’s 500 Million Members .. wow!

How to Optimise YouTube Videos – YouTube SEO Presentation

Refresh Dublin Tickets still available

I can see this becoming a big seller!

Invest Ireland 2010 – connecting Angel investors with Ireland’s most promising Entrepreneurial ventures DCU Ryan Academy 28-30 September 2010

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs. It aims at helping new entrepreneurs to acquire relevant skills for managing a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) by spending time in a business in another EU country.

Typekit is the easiest way to use real fonts on the web.

Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music.

Erm Dublin Skank.. say after me “skank to the right, skank to the left!” .. OMG!

Why Co-Working Makes Sense for Small Businesses

091 Labs a Hackerspace in Galway Has A New Home

Conjuring up the people factor, Richard Branson. All of my top five tips for entrepreneurial success rely on getting the most out of your people

E-Books sales top that of  Hardcovers at Amazon.

Check the tone of your emails.. Studies show e-mail messages are interpreted incorrectly 50% of the time.

Five Ways Pixar Makes Better Decisions

Thoughts on Google’s App Inventor

A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Social Media

Looking for a new start? Try a job in PR (Junior PR Executive/s ).

How to Maximize Your Click-Through Rate and Add More Control to Your Landing Pages Using Ad Sitelinks

Crazy Germans .. Germans take cultural party on to motorway. As many as three million people turned up for a giant banquet at picnic tables along 60km (40 miles) of motorway between Duisburg and Dortmund

Obama Bumper Sticker Removal Kit – Available at BSRemoval.com – feat. Brad Stine:

Google Discontinues the Nexus One Android Phone.

Wordalizer lets you Create Word Clouds in InDesign

37+ Great Ajax, CSS Tab-Based Interfaces

How fast is your Facebook page growing? The Irish Social Media Monitor has been developed as a resource to track the growth of commercial Facebook pages in ireland.

Anyone fancy doing Anglo’s new website? Payment up front, maybe?

Compulsory Driving Lessons : What The Changes Would Mean for Learners.

Street Artist Proposes Through Street Art – Think of how much better watching this is than watching those Diamonds Are Forever/screaming “I LOVE THIS WOMAN” as pigeons fly around commercials. And it’s not even a commercial, it’s real life! Plus, at least it’s not another flash mob.

Graffiti Proposal from PR!MO on Vimeo.

Why it’s not a great idea to copy and paste web content into print. Click Here to see why

Old School Chat Room,  chatting version 1.0. Before the Internet

KW as anchor text a key ranking factor? NOT ANYMORE suggests this SEO case study on top 10 outdoor clothing brands.

This blog post is part of my blogging for 365 days series.

Easy version control for Linux RabbitVCS.

I met the Broderick’s Brothers last week while I was going a bit of freelance work.  I got a chance to sample some of the bars and left the rest in with the lads in the coworking space on Lower Mount Street. As usual, we ended up talking about web stuff and @barrybroderick directed me to their website. When I was poking about, I found this video and it made me laugh

The social media idiot revisited .. “There are still a lot of companies out there that completely miss the point of social media. Worse yet, they are spending paid media dollars and building out “socialized” web and mobile assets while forsaking their core properties.”

This one comes courtesy of Louise .. cute puppy whistle.

This blog post is part of my blogging for 365 days series.

Icon Reference Chart – A comprehensive chart of icon information for various platforms and devices.

Sugru’s magical properties mean it can hack almost anything better .. Hack things and buy some ..

7 Tips for Making the Most of Your Coworking Space.

My web development work finds a new home at Spartix.com. Needs a re-design and a new blog .. I’ve added it my my ever expanding list of things to do.

How they Got To 40,310 Facebook Fans In 4 Days. They started with 3,244 fans. 4 days later, we had 40,310 fans. Wow!

Webinar: The 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design with Tim Ash.

This blog post is part of my blogging for 365 days series.

I’ve neglected my blog oh so much over the years and Ive been trying to think how I might redeem myself. So this idea came into my head today ..

I’ve seen people doing a 365 “photo a day” .. it was all the range last year on Flickr. So I thought id try the same with blog posts. So here we go .. Minimum of one blog post per day for 365 days. It doesn’t have to be quality, it just has to be there!

Lets see how this goes!

The dotconf is on next week, but its all booked up. Get your name down on the waiting list.

So at random today I was on Google and did a search for auld wans after this tweet .. look what came up #1

On Tuesday I popped into Xcake in the Science Gallery. Nice mix of people, but I arrived a bit late. I missed most of the action. It got me thinking about developing iphone apps. Well it actually got me thinking about other platforms.

I’m heading out to Milano for dinner with their 15c offer. Its ace.

As part of the latest round of ad-hoc meet-ups in Dublin (Ireland) .. we decided to run another Blogger-Twitter-Whatever (BTW) meetup.

The plan is to meet in the The Church Bar (Dublin) at 7pm on Thursday 29th July. The church bar is located on Mary street. Mary street is the street that connects Henry Street with Capel street.

The event is free to attend.

We have space for up to 130 people this time round, so it would be great if you could invite some friends to register. more the merrier!  There will be finger food and a special on drinks. Id really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!!

Waiting List

If you have registered and can not attend, please let us know as we will be operating a cancellation list.

Register for BTW

List of attendees

My first video cast thing.. check it out and give me feedback in the comments or via email hello@jasonroe.me

BTW on the 29th of July

Dublin milkman

Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest SEO of them all?

Bizcamp Galway

Boards Deals

Dave Davis from Redfly @ Google

Lemonade Film

Oxegen iPhone app

My Oxegen schedule for Sunday

Resilient as ever, I decided to jump back on the self employment horse and get stuck in. The last week has been quite intense. I’ve been spreading the word that I’m back and Ive been blown away with the support. It’s like I never left! It blows my mind, how supportive the community is in Ireland. Everyone just seems to look out for one another and pick each other up when we fall. Its a really refreshing!

So whats coming next?

Well I’m back doing freelance web development, SEO and social media engagement.  I’m actively looking for new and exciting projects. Let me know if you have something in mind. Email hello@jasonroe.me or give me a call on +353 (0)1 485 36 49

I’m also planning a BTW meetup for the end of the month. Peter suggested that it could be the one year anniversary. I haven’t been keeping track as I just do them for fun. An anniversary BTW sounds way better anyway Keep an eye out over the next week as ill be posting up the details. I’m trying to sort out the venue at the moment. The date is provisionally Thursday the 29th July.

A few of us are exploring the idea of running an event for freelancers. The idea is to create an event where people can meet up and chat to other freelancers and self employed people. Its always great to make new connections and find new people to collaborate with. Dena has suggested that we show the lemonade movie. “Lemonade is an inspirational film about 16 advertising professionals who lost their jobs and found their calling, encouraging people to listen to that little voice inside their head that asks, “What if?”” Check it out.

We have a lot of work to get done with the IIA. I hope to get a lot more hands on within the organisation over the next few months.

I’m also exploring the feasibility of a new business. Its strange how you start to get inspired by simple ideas like Dublin Milkman. Before you ask, no I’m not getting into milk. Louise (my better half) is being really supportive and is making sure the plan is rock solid. At the moment, shes the the one and only stake holder. That kind of support is worth more than any cash lump sum!

So that’s all for now. Normal service Resumes.

Comments about the video from Anthony McG:

The Apprentice
The first sketch I wrote was based off the Irish version of The Apprentice. I had aspirations to have it filmed on the actual set and have the real Bill involved but we couldn’t get it sorted in time (although we tried). The majority of filming on both The Apprentice and The Death of Blogging was done in one day around Dublin. We actually only committed to filming The Apprentice after talking to comedian Eric Lalor that afternoon.

The shoot involved Jason Roe joining us to play the role of Brian Purcell, Steph tanning it up to play Jackie Lavin and Niamh playing Bill’s secretary. If your wondering why Eric’s suit jacket is so big then you won’t be suprised to hear that it was actually Jason’s. Jen took us through a number of takes filming the opening couch scene and then the boardroom itself to get the footage she needed. It really came together in the edit with Jen using the voiceover, titles and end really well. Quite happy with how it worked out.

You can view the 6 videos here in full on Youtube.

pressgazette.co.uk reports that Johnston Press halts pay wall experiment:

Johnston Press is to drop the paywalls it implemented on a number of its local newspapers from next week, Press Gazette understands

The regional publisher erected barriers on two of its Scottish and four of its English weekly newspaper websites in November as part of a trial to “get an understanding of what the customer dynamic is around paid-for content”.

Also check out Frank Prendergast’s, Paywalls are not the Enemy blog post. Its an interesting read.

NAMA (LIMITED EDITION)

Well, it’s started, NAMA has begun the process of bailing out the banks, the first batch of loans bought at a discount of 47% which leaves us with even less. In honour of this we have a special limited edition NAMA tee of our own at a special discount price, yep you guessed it, a whopping 47% off.

PS: I want one!

This week a number of Irish regional news websites have started charging for content. Chances are that you haven’t already spotted this. I say that this because if you are anything like me, you probably consume media a lot differently than the masses.

Before I start, I want you to know that I was previously in gainful employment with the Irish Independent and worked in the team and on the platform behind these regional web sites. Although its been over a year since I worked there, I have some understand of why they might have decided to charge for content. Before I start to explain the rationale, I want you to know that I think that this move will prove in time to be a huge mistake. Anyone who is in advertising might tell you that this move will more than likely obliterate most of the traffic and advertising revenue on these on-line publications.

Regional newspapers are hugely different to main stream media, in that the content and its target market is quite niche. This causes a whole array of issues when your business model is based on advertising. The fact that regional publishers have such a niche audience means that your advertising volumes / reach falls to a point where its almost counter intuitive for a main stream brand to advertise there.

The problem that regional publishers have is that, trying to get local regional advertisers to advertises on the web is almost impossible. Many regional publishers and the their advertisers don’t understand the whole on-line advertising thing. If they do understand online, they probably realise that the vast majority of people who read regional papers online aren’t in fact in their target market.

If you did some research on this you might find that a large percentage of people who read regional titles online are in fact from outside of the target market / region. Some might speculate that a large percentage of the readers of such a publication are ex pats overseas or people who have migrated to another part of the country. This is mainly because regional papers have quite limited distribution pattern. If you are outside of Fingal for example, chances are you have never seen a physical copy of the Fingal Independent.

With this in mind, the publishing group might have decided to start charging for content. After all, large websites costs money to run! The reason news papers provide free content online is to get eyeballs that can be converted to advertising revenue. If you can’t sell the adverting then its a bit of a no brainier. You have to make money somewhere right?

This is where the argument gets a bit fuzzy.. Traditional media at this point goes back to what it knows best. If you cant make money from advertising, you have to start charging for the content. If you cant charge for content and cant sell advertising you end up something like the herald AM, now known as the Metro Herald .

My view on this is that the above is all fundamentally flawed. Some might say that the reason they are charging for the content and making it as expensive if not more expensive than the offline equivalent is to drive you back to the traditional publication and boost readership. When you factor in that there is a very low distribution cost online, I cant fathom why else they would be charging in this way.

In my mind, charging more for content on-line only makes sense if you are adding some extra value or providing access to something that you cant obtain in the traditional paper. Where they went wrong was they started trying to charge for something that had previously been provided free of charge. That would be OK, if when you paid they stripped out all of the advertising or provided you with something a bit more substantial. Why not bundle a number if offerings together. IE: When you pay monthly, you should get access to all regional publications including access to all digital supplements, the digital edition and a free download of an improved version of their iPhone app. That seems like a better offer / value proposition to me.

I just wish that Irish traditional media would make up there mind. If it doesn’t work. you do have to fix it .. but I feel there was some old school media bods influencing this decision.

My main question to you is.. Would you pay for regional news content and what would inspire you to part with your hard earned cash? Please leave your comments below.

Also check out Independent introduces paywall for regional titles

Quick post to tell you how the gardening course went. Its been almost 5 years since I’ve done anything horticultural. Being honest, gardening has never been high up on my list of interests. I have completed some basic horticultural /science studies but most of what I covered in that time is now a distant memory.

On the morning, we arrived to a freshly baked breakfast of scones, nibbley bits and freshly ground and brewed coffee. Everyone was introduced and we went over what we were going to cover for the day. Then headed straight out to the garden and got stuck in. Peter had a variety of pots, plants and seeds for us to work with. We covered the basics of growing from seeds, watering seedlings, potting and re-potting plants.

As Louise said to me, Peters gardening course could be summed up as “philosophy for gardening & life.”. Darren had a great comment “Peter knows how plants think.”.

Photo of Peter Donegan

The course was a mixture of hands on gardening, great advice and interludes of peter telling us about his gardening career. I was blown away by what peter achieved in his career at a young age.

A summary of what I picked up:

The brand of compost you use doesn’t really matter all that much. I had this idea in my head that there was some kind of difference in quality. At the end of the day its just the growing medium.

Drainage holes for window boxes or pots can be substituted with a variety of other scraps ranging from broken bits of cups, dead plants, polystyrene or whatever you have to hand. The main thing is to make some drainage space under the soil. Be warned that carrots don’t like this too much as they need this space.

When your prune a plant on top you often force root growth, this is useful when you have re-potted a plant.

You don’t need to buy fancy plastic pots, trays to get stuck in. A great example Peter had was an old wheel barrow that had been re-purposed as a semi-portable raised bed for green house. It really gets you thinking about what you can use from around the home or garden.

Photo of Watering Seed Tray

Allotments are a lot of work in terms of maintenance. Water can often be a pain point as you may have to bring your own supply. Peter suggested that people should be made aware of this before they take on an allotment. Some kind of allotment driving license or a mentoring scheme needs to be put in place.

In Summary:

I felt that got a lot out of the course, not alone did I get a ton of useful information but our balcony is full of pots and window boxes. The hands on experience really cant be beaten. I feel like I got more hand on experience in the 5 hours than I did during my two years of class room based horticultural / science studies.

If your interested in getting started in gardening, Id strongly advise you to drop Peter a line and ask him when his next course is.

I had a great St. Patrick’s week/day this year. It was a bit of an odd one as it’s my first year living in the city centre whilst the Paddy’s day festival was on.

I’ve recently moved into an apartment, located on Capel Street with Louise. Before you ask, yes the noise from the street can be a pain sometimes. For anyone who doesn’t know, Capel Street is a small one way street that is located directly at the end of one of our main pedestrianised shopping streets Henry Street. We are just far enough away to avoid most of the hustle and bustle. To be honest, the benefits of being so central really outweigh any of the negative stuff.

Last year I was invited to the grand stand by the guys at Pix.ie. I got some amazing photos but it was a bit of a pain not being able to leave the grand stand without having to walk through the parade. This years Paddy’s day was a bit of an interesting one. I was invited by Eamon Leonard to watch the parade from his office roof top. We had such an amazing view! His office is located in the middle of Dame Street, just a stones throw from Dublin’s City Hall.

To be honest it was a bit bizarre.. We some how managed to get sandwiched between a pack of Greenpeace folk and a few anarchists who liked the idea of waving massive Palestinian flags! They were the types who seemed to think it was wise to stand on a railing in front of a directional mobile phone  antenna. They also seemed to take pleasure in risking life and limb jumping over a set of roof top spikes to get on to the roof of the five story building next door.  The things that people do sometimes boggle the mind!

What was hilarious was when one of the anarchist guys started selling some sort of raffle vouchers in support of Shell to Sea campaign. At this point, Louise started cracking up. For anyone who doesn’t know, Louise is a mechanical engineer who is building a pipeline for a power station in the UK. I’m sure you can see why she wasn’t too impressed. Be warned, don’t bring up the subject of pipelines or pigging a pipe around Louise.

We were also invited by Darragh Doyle (Official Guinness Storehouse Ambassador) to Guinness store house for their festival party. They had the usual diddly dancing, DJs and live music including Rattle & Hum, Jimmy Smyth, The Gravel Walk and Sliotar. There is nothing like a few pints of Guinness, but I couldn’t help noticing that many of the people there looked like they were bored out of their tree! At least that was until Rattle & Hum (Spotify Link), U2 cover band kicked off.

All in all it was a fun day. Check out our photos from this year.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Peter Donegan is blogger who is obsessed with everything green. I have a lot of time for Peter and his greener events.

I did horticulture in school but always felt like I only had a summary view of the world of horticulture. After a lengthy phone conversation and a number of tweets Peter decided to try his hand at a DIY gardening course. I thought it was a wonderful Idea and signed myself and my other half Louise up straight away.

Peter has one space left available for March 20th. So make sure to drop him a line if your interested.

“Basically: this is for the [wo]man, parent, adult, child who wants to do a bit of green living but not farming. Enough to have summer salads, fresh herbs, maybe even some fruit – at the same time logic enough that you’ll watch footie/ daytime tv and go out rather than hug trees. You’d like a bit of green, you need a place to start but without getting bamboozled – and let it grow from here….”

Peter’s gardening course:

• A one day crash course from 9.30am – 3.30pm
• The first day/ date is Saturday March 20th
• Cost of materials only to be covered set at €60 per person
• You take home what you make on the day
• Lunch will be included
• To take place in Ballyboughal [it's near Swords/ North Dublin ]
• Numbers will be limited to a maximum 8 people only

I have room for three people in my car, if anyone needs a lift from Dublin city center.

Peter Donegan’s  garden group is also planning a boat trip to Ireland’s eye. They are meeting outside The Bloody Stream pub, Howth, Co. Dublin on April 18th, Sunday at 11.30 am. Cost For Boat Trip from Island Ferries is €15 return.  For more details on the boating trip check out Peter’s blog post.

The lives of others was an experimental blog that was started back on March 18th 2008. What made this blog compelling was an anonymous format that provided the ultimate freedom to share or to speak, to mention the unmentionable and to explore feelings and emotion. Almost two years on and the site has now closed its doors to new secrets.

The reaction in comments on the lives of others blog and on twitter has been quite strong. Many were wondering why a blog which was nominated for an Irish blog award is closing its doors. Many have speculated that the such an anonymous medium could actually cause a lot of headaches in terms of moderation. Who knows .. but RIP the lives of others.

However there is some good news. Anothers Life, a website that provides a similar format has come to the rescue. I set up the site with the aim of keeping the this medium alive. The new site has no connection with lives of others, other than the anonymous format that is used.

The site has been available for 24 hours and has already received a number of posts. Pop over to Anothers Life and start sharing your unmentionables! You can also follow Anothers Life on twitter @anotherslife.

As part of the latest round of ad-hoc meet-ups in Dublin (Ireland) .. we decided to run another Blogger-Twitter-Whatever (BTW) meetup.

The plan is to meet in the KOH, Cocktail Lounge (Dublin) at 7pm on Thursday 29th April. KOH is located on the fashionable Millennium Walkway, which is a pedestrianised street running from the river Liffey to the Jervis street Luas stop.

The event is free to attend. We will be asking for donation on the night for St. Francis Hospice who provide specialist palliative care to patients with advanced Cancer and Motor Neurone Disease. Please

We have space for up to 150 people this time round, so it would be great if you could bring some people along with you. more the merrier!  There will be finger food and 2 a special on cocktails. Id really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!!

Short URL: http://short.ie/btwapr29

Register for BTW

List of attendees

Total Attendees: 55

#	Name
Bio
1.	Jason Roe
2.	David Cochrane
3.	Lorraine Larkin
4.	Peter Donegan
5.	Gary Mullan
6.	Louise
7.	Darren Byrne
8.	bngr
9.	Anthony Mc Guinness
10.	Leslie Gilmour
11.	Dave Davis
12.	Leo Fogarty
13.	Zuzana Szaboova
14.	David Quaid
15.	Eduardo Giansante
16.	Marc McEntegart
17.	vishal vatsa
18.	Amy Pilgrim
19.	Abi Reynolds
20.	Emma Henderson
21.	Enda Madden
22.	Sinéad Keogh
23.	Joerg Steegmueller
24.	Aido
25.	Susana Serradas
26.	Cyril Moloney
27.	Rosemary Mac Cabe
28.	Sarah O farrell
29.	Roger Galligan
30.	Donal Fennell
31.	Elly Parker
32.	Neil Curran
33.	David Kerr
34.	Billy Waters
35.	conor magahy
36.	Dena
37.	Vourneen Taylor
38.	Conor McNally
39.	Simon Palmer
40.	margaret Gallery
41.	Piaras Kelly
42.	Angela Carr
43.	Bernie O\
44.	Carol Sweeney
45.	Ralph Smith
46.	Rachel McKinstry
47.	Eolaí
48.	George Foxe
49.	Johnny Beirne
50.	Claire Boyles
51.	Ter
52.	Jennifer Foxe
53.	Damien Smyth
54.	Rogerkennyphoto
55.	Claire turvey

Weedle

Weedle the new job search thing is due to launch later today. I was at the Weedle preview last night and it looked kind of cool

Basically  Weedle are another social network but are a mixture of a golden pages and a social network.  Think of it as a slicker linkedin where you can quite easily see what individual to use for a task/skill based on your Weedle network.

For example, if everyone I know on Weedle uses the same physiotherapist and I go looking for a physiotherapist, Weedle factor this into the search. Its kind of a smart way to find useful people for useful stuff.

I had a ton of questions about reviews, ratings, weightings of results that the team were more than happy to talk about. The Weedle team seemed to have an answer for nearly everything we through at them!

So pop over to Weedle.com later today and check them out.

The plan is to meet in the Le Cirk, 32 Dame Street from 5pm on Tuesday 16th Feb. We will get food, drinks and well .. whatever! I’d really appreciate if everyone could give this one a big push!!

Short URL: http://short.ie/btwfeb16th

In Sabrina’s words:  “If you can come, wonderful; if you cannot, we’ll raise a glass to Debbie in your name. Our Internet world can be a little fractured so please take a minute and if there’s someone you think might like the information on how and where to pay their respects to Debbie, do let them know the time and place.”

BTW Meetup:
Tuesday, Tuesday 16th February 5 PM onwards
Le Cirk, 32 Dame Street [web]
Buses from Glasnevin: 140 [map]

Please RSVP below.

Funeral Arrangements:
Viewings: Sunday and Monday until 8 PM
Kirwans, 21-23 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3 [map]
Service: Tuesday, 23 March, 2010 at 2 PM
Glasnevin Crematorium Chapel [map]
Burial immediately following.

Donations in lieu of flowers to Aoibhneas Women’s Refuge, Coolock, Dublin 17.  See RIP.ie notice.

We might also do a whip around on the night for Aoibhneas Women’s Refuge (in lieu of flowers).

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I received this email today from my house mate Stephen. We live in Christchurch, quite close to a lot of churches. With all the bell ringing, Stephen gets a bit frustrated ! See his mail below:

From: Stephen Kirk
Date: 2009/11/27
Subject: Bell Ringer vacancies
To: Ringingmaster@cccdub.ie

Good Evening,

After listening to a litany of bell ringing from about 19:15 to 21:00 thus far I decided to do a search on Christchurch and noticed your advertising for bell ringers, now I have some objections to this. I appreciate the fine art of bell ringing as much as the next man and under different circumstances I might even be a fan.

However I live on cook street which happens to have a very high density of churches and monastic buildings surrounding it, in fact if it wasn’t for the methadone clinic and the roving bands of junkies and scumbags I’d definitely rate the general cook street/Christchurch area as at least the third holiest place I’ve ever been.

Now to the crux of the problem, I don’t have much of an objection to the the training and appointment of new bell ringers but to the fact that there going to be doing all that bell ringing in such a close vicinity to my ear drums.

Now you may say “Hey wait just a minute now, how can you object to such fine melodies as ‘dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun’”, and I agree it’s quite catchy, but it’s not the quality of the “music” it’s the duration and time at which it’s played, now the hour or so of bell ringing (practice I’m guessing) on a Friday is quite irritating after a week of work, but it’s the barrage of bells at 9:30 on a Sunday morning that are the reason for my thus far understated rage, because I really really like to sleep, it’s right up there with my love of food and I’m guessing your love of bells.

Now I guess I should try come up with some solutions and not just moan through this whole email,

1. Cover your bells in fabric to dull the noise, you get all the fun of pulling on your bells without anyone hearing.

2. Supply me with some sort of super quadruple glazing windows around my apartment, although the neighbours may get jealous and want some too, I’ll keep it just between us if you decide to fit them though.

3. I could use earplugs but they hurt if you keep them in too long, thought I’d just add that to show I’ve give the matter some thought.

4. Perhaps start competing in tug of war with each other while listening to some prerecorded bells noises, it has all the exertion of bell ringing with the noise of bells and the added fun of healthy competition.

5. Practice during the week, if you love bells enough you’ll make the time to get your hands on them.

6. Perhaps purchase some smaller bells they look like they’d be great fun maybe even a tambourine or a triangle, expand your horizons.

7. Now this is slightly related to point 6, take up a real musical instrument!

I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, you are no doubt a bell enthusiast and the idea of round the clock bell ringing in the convenience of your own home is no doubt right now making you salivate, I’m not saying your sexually perverted or anything, it’s not like your a priest (unless you are, although I think Christchurch is a godless protestant church so you may be a vicar), you just really love bells, pulling them, watching them sway back and forth over and over and maybe evening giving your bells a good rub and shine now and again, but you have to see it from my point of view the downsides of bells far outweigh the benefits in this day and age, you see I’ve got this handy thing called a watch so one of the main original purposes of the bell is quite useless to me as at any time of the day i can look at my watch, phone, computer, TV, cooker etc etera etcetera and see the exact time to the second and in some cases the millisecond if I really need that accuracy; your past time is becoming quite outdated, maybe you should take up some extra praying instead I hear it’s great fun.

Oh and in case you didn’t get the subtle humour throughout this email I’m suggesting that your playing with bells so much because you subconsciously love balls.

PS. If it isn’t the Christchurch bells making all the noises, please disregard this email, and point me towards the person I need to introduce to my Hurley.

Best Regards and a Merry Christmas,
Stephen.

*Photo by diathesis

I’ve managed to get involved with helping to organise another barcamp. We have done barcamps, bizcamps and all that jazz, now its time for Artcamp. The main idea being to help bridge the divide between the artist and technology community. Both artists and technology community have a lot in common and even more learn from each other. Now seems like a great time to start creating,innovating and collaborating in new and exciting ways.

ArtCamp is a user generated unconference for creatives. Calling all creatives from visual arts, film, theatre, design, dance, literature, photography, media, IT, music and technology to a free conference/gathering in Dublin Spring 2010. ArtCamp is an opportunity for all creatives, artists, entrepreneurs and innovators to come together, share experiences, and possibly create new value from  the day. It’ll be a chance to meet up with people who’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt – members of the creative community, business community and representatives from the relevant agencies.  Come along to ArtCamp, who knows what new opportunities might present themselves?

People tend to associate *Camps with the Web and the technology start-ups, but our aim is to try and embrace as much of the Irish creative community as possible. We want to see people from all streams – artists, musicians, writers, dancers, actors, administrators, curators, arts workers and technology and media professionals, coders, designers, project managers, finance, operations, HR, legal, delivery specialists, R&D, marketing – and yes, even tech! Ireland Inc. has a wealth of creativity, knowledge and acumen, more than enough to help us out of these troubled times. By attending (and, more importantly, contributing!) you can help make ArtCamp the first “good news story” of 2010.

More details on Artcamp.