Flew into Dublin on Friday morning and the phone was hopping from 8am til midnight. RTE filmed me in the Alexander at 1130am and it went well. Philip that interviewed me was fantastic to chat to. Someone who knows his subject matter and gets blogs. We had a good discussion after the interview where we talked about media and technology and he educated me a little on what he does. Chatted to a few journalists by phone all day and then rushed to Trinity for 1830 so I could give a talk about IrelandOffline and lobby groups. Thanks to the 6-7 people that turned up on a Friday night. 🙂 Glad I could answer everyone’s questions.
After Trinity I headed over to the Village to see “I’m from Barcelona” play. They eventually took to the stage at 2130 and I was so physically wrecked that I lasted for 4.5 songs. Still, widly entertaining pop music with the main singer deciding to go crowd surfing 30 seconds into the first song, it seemed. The tiny stage at the crappy Village venue was filled with about 20 of the band members singing and dancing and throwing balloons into the crowd. Worth seeing again. After that met up with an old friend for a chat for a while and then decided to get some lunch in Burger King around 2330. Eventually got back to the hotel for midnight.
On Saturday lunchtime I had to scoot off to Newstalk where I went head to head with a ComReg guy. This was the first time ComReg actually agreed to take part in an interview and interact with IrelandOffline. Previous to that they refused to come on-air or came on-air but refused to acknowledge and interact with us. The ComReg guy that was sent is a genuinely nice guy and I don’t envy his job. From the feedback I got from numerous people it seems I rang rings around him. As I said, I don’t envy people in ComReg because there are some genuinely cool people in there but it’s like they’re working for the Bush regime because as an entity they are doing tremendous damage. On a side-note I see we have once again NOT been invited to a ComReg event. I am rather busy these days but lads, I can still create a fuss over this. On the Newstalk interview it was mentined that ComReg have a Broadband Manager job advertised and I was asked would I apply and ComReg were asked would they think I was good for the job. The physical reaction from the ComReg staff member was entertaining.
After that it was back to the hotel to get the room ready. Went downstairs and met Elana, saw the room and shouted “oh fuck”. The room was massive. That’s what 400 seats looks like so.
The night itself was good but I wanted it to be a little better. I wanted a few surprise things for it such as the free bar for the nominees and judges, the goody bags, the champagne bottles and a web link to Dave from Blather.net who was on a Greenpeace boat near the Anarctic. The goody bags were practically empty and might have been fuller if I had blogged about it but that would have ruined the surprise. Still, it was something additional. The linkup with Dave was a disaster due to issues on our side but since it wasn’t announced the only people to be disappointed were me and Dave. The mafiosi people Bock the Robber sent were brilliant. When I have the energy I’ll go more in-depth about the night itself but thanks to everyone who came along and apologies to the majority of people I didn’t get to chat to. I was a lil busy as you all saw. 🙂
Finally got home a little later than usual on Sunday night after yet another Ryanair flight where the pilot aborted the landing. After 20mins circling, we finally landed. Yes, I Twittered from the air. It is not an air-danger as air industry people say, it is more to do with keeping the mobile companies happy as a mobile signal on a plane uses up more processing time on the masts as they try to track your fast moving signal. Ok I’m rambling. Still feel hungover from Sat night even though I wasn’t drinking. Glad to see the positive coverage in the papers today too. It’s not over for us yet with more interviews this evening.
*breathe out*
A proper post over on Awards.ie will follow.
