As people know I’m a massive fan of Hell Pizza, even Sunday Times employees have accused me that I’m on their payroll but I’m not. However I am on the payroll of WhoseView.ie who had me help them organise a blogger/Twitterer/rantAndRaver event where we came, saw and pizzaed.
We were there to not be very sciencey but to sample pizzas from 6 different pizzerias and see which ones we liked and disliked the most. It was a blind taste test, nobody knew until after which pizza was from where and to my surprise and slight shock, Hell didn’t finish too well in the list.
It was my first time sampling Bianconi’s and I liked them a lot. They also apparently came out the cheapest. I heard from a few people that they do really good pizza and they’ve won some world pizza awards too but taste is subjective. Some of those on the night loved some pizza that others hated and vice-versa. So, have to head to Bianconi’s. Also the Steps of Rome? was mentioned. Where else is good in Dublin. Was our small focus group of foodies way off, near to reality, bang on? Sorry Hell
Last week a few food and drink bloggers were invited out to the offices of Edward Dillon and company, who look after Hennessy in Ireland. This was organised via Brennan Sabatini (warning music plays). The meet and greet also extended to sampling some of the variations of Hennessy as seen below. We tried Hennessy V.S., Hennessy V.S.O.P., Hennessy X.O. and Hennessy Paradis. We got the history behind Hennessy and how the various cognacs are made. Hennessy then asked us for feedback on how they market and as people in the blogging and online media space, is there anything they should do. Feedback was given.
Very interesting to hear that Hennessy in America is consumed mostly by African Americans and Hennessy is references a hell of a lot in hihop songs. Oh and by volume, not per capita, Ireladn is 4th biggest in world for consuming Hennessy.
So what did Hennessy get out of this, 5 people who may now consider ordering Hennessy based cocktails? Or them telling their readers? Perhaps. Still negligible audiences compared to print or radio though. Getting to know people who spend all their hours in this new medium might be a good thing though. I heard it has a future this internet thing. For the bloggers, they got to sample a small amount of booze but they also got new content for their blogs. They also know a little bit more about their subject area which is probably the biggest benefit. Cognac making and blending is to me at least, highly interesting. I do wonder what the next step after the various meets and greets are though. Will consumers eventually design products they want and so become part of the customer care and product design teams?
So we got some cupcakes made to celebrate the launch of App School. Once again the hyper-talented people in the Dublin Cupcakes made them at short enough notice and did an excellent job. Some of the cupcakes have 3d icons and some are printed on edible paper.
Another of the special surprises at the Web Awards were the amazing cupcakes by Dublin Cupcakes. It was Jason that got on to me about them, suggesting them for the event and knowing I like to have something on the night that was not announced in advance. After being to Interesting in London this year and Moo sponsoring some wonderful cupcakes I thought they’d work well at Irish events too. Who doesn’t like sugar rushes? I then forgot about pursuing the idea.
Here are some pics taken by the folks from Dublin Cupcakes on the night:
Just like the Made in Hollywood people, me blogging about this was not part of the deal, this is me big upping them because I’m so happy with what they brought to the Awards and the great service. I’ll happily use them again for other events. If you want to chat to them you can get them at: cupcakes [ AT ] dublincupcakes.com or on 087-9629293
RTE Cork are currently in pre-production for a new food and business programme called Recipe for Success where they invite amateur cooks to submit their original recipe ideas. The best ideas will then be selected and participants will be invited to present their recipes to a well-respected Irish food businessman who will over several weeks select a winner. The winner will then have their product sold in the Supervalu.
The closing date for applications is 26th September 2008
For further information please email the show at recipeforsuccess@rte.ie
Or write to them at:
Recipe For Success?,
RTÉ,
Father Mathew Street,
Cork.
As you may or may not know, I run Irish Food and Drink aggregator Gastronom.ie. There are about 45 Irish Foodie blogs that it aggregates and it gets about 110 visitors a day and has a few dozen people subscribed to the feed. If you want to get emails updates of the posts then there’s a subscription box towards the bottom right of the front page.
Aggregator, what’s one of them? Yeah, it’s a single place online where you can get the latest content from a load of other sites. Gastro is structured so that it only takes summaries of the blog posts and so the original owner gets all the Google rankings for their content.
The site is going to be rejigged in the next few weeks and we’ll ramp up the homemade content. We’ve already started though and the wonderful Sinéad from Inkheart has come on board to write summaries of what Foodie content was covered in the Sunday papers. We decided to call it Post the Roast. Go and have a read. She’s a great writer isn’t she? You’ll see a new Post Roast on a Monday morning. With enough sponsors we’ll have new content daily.
Speaking of which, if you want to sponsor sections of the site, let me know. There’ll be regular sections a sponsor can have their name on. Our main sponsorship route right now is the sponsored blog post. See, we dislike pure ads. We think they’re bad for the advertiser and bad for the reader. A sponsored blog post means the advertiser/sponsor has to do a bit of work and create something useful such as a competition or a blog post with recipes or a sample chapter from a book or something interesting for the readers of the website. Our readers get value and our sponsors engage more with the readers as a result. Well, that’s the idea anyway… Email me at the usual (see contact page) if you want to be a sponsor. It might work well for companies that work in the Food business.
Via Kerry is a story how via Twitter, a blood drive was organised in Austin, Texas. At the same time Will McInnes has a great blog post on how we the diggerati split our time between talking, thinking and doing and maybe we should do more of the doing.
As well as generating a huge amount of buzz on Twitter and the blogosphere far more importantly it led to 100 donations that day, may from first time donors.
A great idea. The Irish Blood Transfusion Service are always looking for people to donate blood and there are loads that probably would donate if their peers around them are also doing so. Shouldn’t social media (still dislike the term) also be about empowering people and getting them to be social and helping society?
I don’t like many charities. I have a particular dislike for African charities and those gimps on the street that harass you on their behalf. I don’t think giving money to an org is the best thing to do most of the time so actually giving blood without harassment, that’s good.
So what’s a geeky way of organising a blood drive and who’ll help organise it? Online sign-up form? Limited number? The Austin drive billed it as “exclusive” as only 100 people could sign up. The buzz generated on Twitter and Facebook got the momentum going and people turned up in droves. It seems afte ryou give blood the IBTS do clever things like text updates etc. to let you know when they’re next about or phone you up when they’re at crunch time so that bit is sorted. Should there be an aim to get 40 new people to donate blood and be brought there by experienced people?
Should local businesses sponsor the refreshments afterwards? Pillows to faint on have been sponsored by Swan beds? Booze by diageo.
Oh and who’ll organise such a thing? Not gonna be me. Your turn.
