Archive for March, 2009

Fluffy Links – Wednesday March 4th 2009

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Best blog post title this week. Things I have unintentionally ingested today.

Lauren has a very comprehensive list of Social Media Measurement tools. Free ones!

The Next Big Thing is being live-streamed today between 5pm-7:30pm. The event features a keynote presentation from the former Chief Architect of Twitter, Blaine Cook.

Yay, the Mardyke has a new skate park.

Via Declan. Free signed books!

Real politics online. Once again Ciarán Cuffe shows how to do it. He blogs, Twitters and replies to comments on his blog.

New blog, CorkLangerdan.

Win tickets to Ponytail. They’re a band, Forrest.

Grazt to AMIT for their new website.

So a report about Digital Britain was released. Then some clever person put a Wiki together for a publicly created better version.

They called the plane Gaza and it flies over Texas a lot. Hah.

Nenenenenaaa Batfight!

Via Kottke, great vid of what it looks like to be a piece of sushi on a platter on a sushi conveyor.

Sorry, it got into my head, now yours:

Fluffy Links – Tuesday March 3rd 2009

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Suzy’s video of David Davin Power surrounded by Fianna Fáil Yokels is scary.

Want to exhibit your art outdoors in the good months in Dublin? Clicky.

EU Business Grant anyone?

New blog: The Bloggy Dew.

New blog: Ross V Ross.

U2 and their new album are just another nail in the coffin of the old record industry.

Nice post from 1169 about Fine Gael making charity cases out of basic rights.

I totally agree with Battelle, Twitter results are showing up all over Google of late, they’re going to have to buy for that alone, just like they bought YouTube.

New car graveyards, if you will.

Oh my, what was she thinking with that dress?

Jim already did his review of the Hockey and Passion Pit concert, I think Hockey were much better live, I’d buy their album alone from that gig, not so much Passion Pit.

Passion Pit – Sleepy Head (Live in Whelan’s)

HD Version

A giant game of Twister, a bride walking down the aisle, Xbox360 Rockband, speech bubbles

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Where else but the Irish Blog Awards? I’ve stuck up an overdue thank you post on the Awards blog to say thanks. I’m totally biased here but seriously, what a fun event. Got some great emails from people saying it was in a different league or a different world to most awards shows. I guess the Blog Awards are a fun event with an awards show in the middle more than a pure awards show.

Giant Inflatable Twister:
Game of Twister at the Blog Awards

We got it from Bob over at Irish Inflatables. Maybe someone should chat to Bob about tarting up the site?

The original idea was to build a giant ball pit but the balls proved too expensive.

From my own experience attending events and awards shows, I think they actually beat down peoples’ personalities instead of bringing them out. The suits and tuxes and standard MC and denying people the right to say thank you to the people that got them to the winning podium, it takes the humanity away. A few hundred quid for the experience shuts out more people that deserve a show too. So the Blog Awards and hopefully the Web Awards make people relaxed and enable them to have fun and when you have fun and are relaxed you can network. Everyone should be able to network. Friendships begin or get stronger at the Blog Awards. I hope the same will happen at the Web Awards. Where personal relationships are built, business relationships can follow, not the other stuffy way.

I suggested before the Awards that Ciara bring her work uniform (a wedding dress). A midway-through-the-event decision and we decided that Ciara would walk down the aisle at the end to the sound of Billy Idol singing “White Wedding” and present Rick with the Grand Prix Winner Gold Envelope. And she did. Another thing about Awards, make them flexible so you can change things around.

Ciara Crossan walks down the aisle

And a quick sweep around before the event started:

This is my fav video too for the intro of Best Technology Blog:

Of course with this type of expectation management, people are already demanding a bigger, better and crazier 2010 Blog Awards. Ok…

Fluffy Links – Monday March 2nd 2009

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

Made in Hollywood’s caption competition closes soon. Blog your pic from the Blog Awards with the speech bubble, link to this post and include you caption. Best caption wins a voucher to a restaurant of your choice.

New blog: Blog from the Bog. Life and Lifelists on the West Coast of Ireland.

Pix.ie are having a photo competition for St. Patrick’s Day and a party!

Drucamp Galway is on soon enough. Going?

Get all Your Ducks in a Row. New e-book.

Make your content and information stealable.

Mulleycat. Hmmm.

Ah the tube.

Portishead asking the public to come up with a new business model for them?

Using crowdsourcing as a form of border patrol.

This is mad. Naples mafia threatens life of the guy that did a film about their corruption. But they’ll happily pirate the movie.

Blowing up a lake:

Actually political parties will need the onliners more and more

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

After Fianna Fáil’s total screwup last week over Joe Rospar which had them state this

He was also keen to stress that the party took the iniative in inviting bloggers to a talk by Obama’s New Media guy, when they could have just confined it to pol corrs.

you’d think they’d learn. To me and others that line is read as “we didn’t have to invite you”. With their symbiotic relationship with the media, Fianna Fáil and all the other equally useless and backwards political parties might have survived on this alone when it came to communications but it’s not going to be so in the future. Bloggers and Twitterers reacted in seconds to the Rospars event, something which as it built, Fianna Fáil couldn’t slow or direct or what they’d prefer: control.

2009 ILLUMINATE YALETOWN
Photo owned by Duy© (cc)

And their beloved political corrs are getting their news from Suzy Byrne at the Ard Fhéis. In the age of a slow news cycle you could afford not to be open. In an age of only a few people being able to access the eyes and ears of thousands, you could afford not to be open. You could manage the news. The media could manage the news. In the world where everyone has a net connection and is sharing information with each other, you’re going to be open or you’re going to be dead. It’s going to be very interesting in the next few years for even the best truth jugglers to keep the act up. Deception is an expensive and fatiguing business and leaves trails. Watch as people will falter and crash. Publicly.

A good thing done by Fianna Fáil this weekend was inviting people who blog to the Ard Fheis, a bad thing was dumping them in the press area and thinking that was it. Media organisations brief their newbies about Ard Fheis’s yet Fianna Fáil missed a huge chance to develop a relationship with these bloggers if they had down them about and told them how things work in FFland. It’s a different world if you’re not a hack who puts Jackie-Healy Rae before Jesus or someone paid to smile politely as a councillor acts like a dick.

Sunlight is the great cleanser yeah? If Fianna Fáil really opened up and gave access to the public and worked with them they’d not have much leeway to pull as many stunts and crimes as they’ve done. They built an environment that allowed wholesale crookery and thievery and while most of the Irish public didn’t care as they too took advtantage, the teacher is still partially to blame for the unruly class. Other parties need to fully open up too.

Graffiti wall
Photo owned by Damian Kettlewell for Vancouver-False Creek (cc)

Fantastic coverage by Mark Coughlan, Gavin Sheridan, Eoin Bannon and Suzy Byrne.

Another thing not to do is run an event about blogging and snub bloggers who are there. These politicians will have to work and converse with the bloggers who could have met them on their turf.

Without being too harsh, if political parties don’t end their love affair with their beloved traditional media and cop on to where people are going and forming opinions online then some new political entity will swoop in and take over. At best political parties, even the “open minded” ones are Hilary Clinton in mindset and at worst John McCain. There is a huge space right now for someone with enough initial cash to get a lead and then build up enough of a war chest to obliterate the traditionalists. That sounds like someone I’ve heard of.

People seem to think that it was a Democratic Party win in America when it wasn’t, Obama stayed the hell away from the headless main party and Washington itself. Instead Obama and his army of supporters are populated with a lot less hacks. People used to not playing politics. It must surely scare the hell out of the parties here (if they look out at the real world) that within months they and their supporters could be obsolete and with so many pissed off Irish people, 2009 and 2010 is when it has the greatest chance of happening.

Based on the lessons learned from the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, here are some tips for the other parties:

  • Invite bloggers. Don’t care if they hate you or not.
  • Brief them and be open with them. They’re nervous too.
  • Have them meet and greet the decision makers and influencers in your party.
  • Don’t lecture them, converse with them. Take their instant feedback on board. Ask for it.
  • If the traditional media get pissy cos bloggers are getting access to your people, remind them that these bloggers aren’t salaried to be there.
  • Don’t start a bloody blog or Twitter account or Facebook Page just for the local elections. All these are about building longterm relationships, not shortterm ones.

Nice guide from Suzy on suggested Dos and Don’ts.