Damien Mulley

Brilliant.

Digiweb are offering free blog hosting for anyone that registers and comes along to the Blogging the Election event on Saturday in Dublin. We’re still looking for sponsors for this event so give me a shout if you want to be a sponsor.

More here.

We’re looking for some Santa’s little helpers for the Blogging the Election conference. Interested? Follow the link

It seems that It MySpace will now be encouraging people to register to vote and Walmart are going to be doing something like this too by running an initiative to register all their staff to vote. They have 1.3Million employees. Simon McGarr wrote a guide on how to register to vote which deserves attention.

In one of the afternoon sessions at the Blogging the Election conference, perhaps if there’s interest we’ll discuss how a non-partisan campaign that involves everyone can encourage people to register to vote. Please consider going to this conference. Register here for it. There’s a €15 entrance fee on the door but lunch is free!

If you want to sponsor the event then give me a shout. We need about another 2k in sponsorship by the looks of it!

More of this and less of that.

Dialup Dempsey scores an own goal with his latest broadband “target�.

Planning for the “Blogging the Election” conference is going well. We have two confirmed sponsors so far. They being Technofutures.ie and Digiweb. Digiweb are the catering sponsor. We still need a fair few sponsors to cover all the costs. If you know of any that might be interested then let them know.

We now need people to register that they are going to go. You can register here. We have room for about 150 people and I have a feeling that spaces are going to fill fast.

The Sunday Business Post had a piece on the conference today too.

Iain Dale’s Guide to UK Political Blogging has been released.

It includes articles by Adam Boulton, Francis Maude, Ben Brogan, Kevin Maguire, Guido Fawkes, Lynne Featherstone and Tim Montgomerie and is chock full of great information. (Jesus, I wrote “chock full”) It has tips and Top 100 lists and gives a very good overview of the UK Political blogs. Some of his tips are:

Iain Dale’s Top Ten Tips for a Successful Blog

1. Write something every day
2. Don’t write an essay. Be short and snappy
3. Interact with your readers who make comments
4. Don’t try to copy another blog. Make yours unique to you
5. Choose a blog name that is easy to remember and not too long
6. Don’t pander to what you think people want to hear
7. Be controversial, but not for the sake of it
8. Don’t be afraid to offend or be offended
9. Link to your favourite blogs and ask them to link to you
10. Sign up to a Stat Counter which can track how many hits you get

Download the guide here. Iain will also have the guide distributed at the party conferences. Good move. Well worth reading even for those solely interested in Irish politics. Guido Fawkes was ranked no. 1 political blogger. As Mick mentions he’ll be one of the speakers at the Irish Blogging Conference.

Cian has just announced that we’ll be having the election conference in the digital hub. Lunch will be provided on the day too. We just need a reasonably priced caterer. 🙂