This is what I do.

It's THE EMERGENCY of the year - Brain Cowen is kidnapped!

2009-11-27T16:10:00.005Z

Funny the stuff that ends up in your inbox from some people, especially if it's a marketing ploy just to promote their very funny and topical new CD "Use Democracy Sensibly" available as a perfect christmas stocking filler now.

I'm giving some away that I, er, found, on Boards.ie here.

Use Democracy Sensibly is written and performed by The Emergency - Morgan C Jones, Eoin Byrne, Joe Taylor, Dermot Carmody, Karen Ardiff and Nick McGiveny.

I know someone who LOVES this clip from them:

Training Eircom's new online customer support team

2009-11-25T18:36:00.007Z

I spent some time with Eircom's new online customer support team yesterday and Monday. Yes, that's right, Eircom are heading out into the big bad world of online and "engaging" in "conversations" with their customers on a new site to be launched, on twitter, on Boards.ie and wherever else is appropriate. Eventually.

It's a brave move for the company because let's face it, they're going to open themselves up even more to criticism and venting than they ever have before. It's very "easy" not to answer the phone but this is different. The whole organisation needs to be aware of that and I'm not sure that they are.

Now, when I say I'm "training", I don't mean I'm giving them the top 10 tips to be a customer service ninja or giving handouts drawn on posts by Godin, et al. Nor do I mean I'm advocating high fives when a query is solved, or recruiting advocates to ensure that only good stuff is said about you online. Because that sort of stuff is ultimately bullshit and there's far too much of that going on already.

This is about customer service, pure and simple. In real world terms it's someone coming into your shop with a problem and you solving it with a minimum of fuss and bother. Exciting the customer. One of the best books on customer service I've read was by Feargal Quinn about Superquinn - Crowning the Customer - and even then he just talks about how a good shop is well laid out with staff who are helpful, who anticipate the customer need and ensure it happens. Sounds simple, but a bitch to implement. Every part of the organisation needs to be bought into it.

I'm not saying either though that it's difficult to find the problems. A quick search on twitter yesterday morning brought us to Leo's tweets - and a quick reply and some fortuitous circumstances completely independent of us had the problem for Leo solved - but a valuable lesson taught. This isn't rocket science - it's just saying "Hello, I'm here to help, can I?"

I've really enjoyed watching the evolution of the Boards.ie talk to... forums, especially since Vodafone got involved (0ver 1,500 posts since September 20). Because I get emailed with every post as well as them, I get to see what's coming through. Some of it is quite harsh. Some of it fixable, some not. It is, however, valuable customer advice.

I watch how the feedback we receive on Boards.ie is - or isn't - implemented and I guess I'm lucky to be on at what I consider to be still the start-up stage of this company. Unlike massive companies like Eircom or Vodafone, I don't have a press office, a marketing team or a legal department to get things signed off by - that's me and Tom and Dav doing that between us. If something's wrong, we'll try fix it, if we can and it's fixable. If it's wrong but can't be fixed now, and isn't urgent (which is not the same as isn't "important") it gets added to the (long) list of stuff to be actioned. That's a really good position to be in. Enviable.

Will it be the same in Eircom? I don't really know how it operates at a management level. Do they know what people are complaining about? Do they look at the call centre logs, the emailed queries and say "Okay, we have a problem in this area, this needs to be fixed" and then go and actually use their authority in the company to fix it? My hope is that it's so, my gut feeling is it's not. I think people get tied up in call volumes reached, in tickets closed, in cutting call centre resources, in just answering the call and letting that be. This won't work for Eircom.

The moment someone in there starts looking at this exercise in terms of number of posts answered rather than how long it took to resolve an issue and why; the moment they're talking about standardised, templated answers, quick wins and not telling the whole truth, the whole project might as well be scrapped.

Certainly, if I were part of the management team over this effort, I'd be looking closely at the processes. How is a query received? How is it answered? What steps does someone have to take to get there? Are there unnecessary steps that can be removed? Where are the problems talking longest to resolve? Does my team have the necessary authority and buy in from the organisation to make sure that what they do, they do well, first time and every time?

I'd nearly have the people answering the queries and dealing with them and then one person looking at the issues that caused the query in the first case and how that could be resolved and feeding that back into the system. Would that work? Yes, I believe so. Would a company pay someone to do it? No. Why? Because you'd only get results after a year. That's a pity.

There's no easy win for Eircom. It's going to take a lot of hard work, determination, apologising and trial and error. It's going to cause a lot of disruption internally - if it's done right.

Rather than end on this sort of downer on a blog post, I wanted to just share some thoughts for anyone in Eircom who ends up reading this far:

Once you start, there's no going back. No half measures, no shortcuts, no easy answers. DO it right from the beginning. If you can't do it alone, get help. Ask for advice. Get support. This is important and you have a great chance here to do something pretty damn good.
While you're not in "control" of the conversation, you have no influence over what people say and you don't know what someone could come at you with, act like you do. Be calm, be friendly, be honest but above all find out what their problem/issue is and fix that as quickly and as best as possible. Easier than it sounds.

It's the usual yaddah yaddah of how to talk online - don't jump in, listen first, be helpful with the advice, don't pimp your own stuff. Be the experts you are supposed to be - the experts you're paid to be.
Trust the guys you've hired, Eircom. From what I know of them, they seem like decent chaps. They'll need support but ultimately they're the guys you've put on your online frontline. You've hired them to do a job, let them do it.
Be honest. Be transparent. That will stand much better to you than just the brand guidelines. As lovely as your marketing and press people are, their message isn't what I want to hear - it's the truth about my problem and what you're going to do about it.
Realise you're going to learn a lot that you don't know about. Realise you're going to have to change things. Realise that this will be a measure of you as a company.
Don't take negative feedback personally. This is probably the biggest mistake people make online - assuming that what's written about them, their online work or the company they work for reflects on them personally. It doesn't. Not really. Not ultimately. Ignore the trouble-makers. If you can't ignore them, pity them. Their other problems are not yours. Solve what you can, when you can and be happy with the work you've done.
Remember - a little goes a long way. One tweet yesterday, though it didn't solve any problems, didn't fix anything or wasn't really that helpful did cause one person, previously having an awful experience with that company to react favourably to an offer of help. Don't discount that. Build on it.

It's a long road ahead. It's going to be really interesting to watch the journey.

Interview for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland

2009-11-24T15:32:00.003Z

I was delighted to be asked by Digital Darragh to contribute to a podcast for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland recently. We sat down in the Westbury and had a good chat. It's just gone live and can be heard below.

We discussed what exactly social networking is, what I get from the whole thing (that was a long segment), what people should be scared of, if anything, about blogging and about Boards.ie.

I quite like that you can hear the buzz of people, the chatter of the place, the clatter of the cups and so on around us. I wish I'd been a better speaker but it had been a long day.

The interview starts at around 30:52.

(You'll need to let it (down)load)

I'm particularly impressed to see organisations like VICs Ireland using tools like podcasts to communicate with their members. I hope those listening learned something small at least!

Good morning to you #2

2009-11-24T11:11:00.004Z

Hey Jude:

How to make a baby:

It could only be the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra:

This is a panda, born in Chiamg Mai zoo in Thailand last June, at eight days old.

4 June 2009: The cub, now eight days old, tries to stand on its feet, though it won't be able to crawl until it is about 75 days old. The panda's distinctive colouring is starting to form on the eyes, ears and paws

and then another eight days later.

I'm listening to Spamalot this morning. Love this track:

Sometimes not even English means anything

Stop motion sand sculptures:

From Japan - there's a right place for everyone:

2 fingers from a Shaolin monk - one of only two people in the world who can do this

It costs €20m to build 1 km of road in modern Ireland

2009-11-23T20:03:00.006Z

I interviewed Fergus Finlay, the CEO of Barnardos Ireland on Friday about their current YES/NO campaign and how cuts in the upcoming budget would affect their work and the people that they work with.

Some shocking (to me) statistics emerged in our chat, including how Thornton Hall, the new prison currently being built will cost €1,000 million in the first 10 years of operation and how it costs €20 million to build 1km of road in "modern" Ireland.

Via the Boards.ie blog:

You can read more about the campaign in this PDF download and sign the petition here.

You might also like to see what exactly Barnardos are recommending to the Government - that presentation is below:
Barnardos Key Recommendations for Budget 2010

I've arranged advertising for Barnardos on Boards.ie to help them reach their target of signatures. I hope it has an impact. Given that interview, if it doesn't, we're all in a lot of trouble. Preventing that is worth at least a signature.

The day I interviewed Dustin the Turkey

2009-11-19T20:19:00.005Z

From the Boards.ie blog:

Given the fact I talk to people a lot professionally, it's rare that I'm completely speechless in someone's presence. In fact, it's happened only twice recently - one when Terry Pratchett joined us for soup in Clare and the other was yesterday when Dustin started talking to me.

One of the cool things about my job with Boards.ie is what it allows me to do interviews like this. I find other people's questions are always much better than what I could come up with - especially if they have an emotional connection to the subject - it's how the soccer forum members came up with such great questions for John O' Shea and Damien Duff.

Setting up an interview with someone as busy as Dustin is a difficult one. Not content with everything he's done on TV, on the Eurovision, musically or politically, he's also just completed a trip to South Africa with UNICEF to entertain children affected by HIV/AIDS, unemployment and poverty and been in the recent RTÉ show "Dustin: Twenty Years A-Pluckin'" celebrating his own 20 years on Television. So, yes, it was a bit of an ordeal.

However I got to meet Dustin in Kite Entertainment's offices yesterday. I was nervous - I knew he'd go for me but it wasn't until he popped up from under the desk and started talking that I was completely awestruck.

There's me, as part of my job, getting to sit in an office, to look at Dustin, to see his beak, his eyes, to hear the click of his lower beak on his upper beak, the Louis Copeland suit, to just be in the presence of someone who has been on my screen on in my ears so much - magical.

The interview itself went as well as any of mine do - I'm trying hard not to laugh, I'm reading the next question to make sure I neither stammer nor stutter and I'm trying to act professional, rather than just laughing along. Poor Niamh had to hold the camera and put up with his amorous advances. It was a brilliant experience.

You know, there's times that I feel very very lucky. As does the lovely Niamho.

You can follow Dustin on Twitter here.

You can see what Boards.ie members are saying about the interview here.

You can hear Dustin's entire back catalogue of albums (and buy them) here.

A huge thanks to all the Boards.ie members, to Darren in Kite Entertainment and of course to Dustin. You legend :)

The Cork Flashmob from Saturday for the National Campaign for the Arts

2009-11-16T11:34:00.002Z

In support of what the National Campaign for the Arts is campaigning for. Have you signed the petition yet?

(Yep, so good I blogged it twice).

Shooting Beauty - take a few minutes and just watch this trailer.

2009-11-13T17:43:00.003Z

Awesome. Literally awesome. The website is here.

The Charter for Compassion - http://charterforcompassion.org

2009-11-12T18:44:00.003Z

This site - http://charterforcompassion.org - landed in my inbox today. It's a TED initiative from TED prize winner Karen Armstrong.

This is a document created by thousands of people around the world. It is capable of enabling a new dialog between the major religions and between religious and nonreligious people.

Please take out two minutes to read it. It's just one page. If it speaks to you, please add your name.

Here's the text of the charter.

Have a look at the acts of compassion here.

It's quite a worthwhile idea. I hope it succeeds.

"The next word is Mother Flippa" - rap and dance classes for the elderly

2009-11-12T15:21:00.002Z

Meet Marian, aka DJ Hip Op.

I LOVE this video for Age Action Ireland, created by Richard Doyle over at Creative Productions. One of the funniest I've seen in ages - fo' shizzle!

A podcast about Irish blogging, bloggers and events

2009-11-11T18:46:00.002Z

I've been thinking and talking about the idea of doing a podcast around blogging, blogs and the people involved in Ireland. It will be a lot more of the latter than the former but it's certainly something I'd be interested in trying at least.

There's a lot that could be done there - interviews, readings, highlights, regular slots from contributors, advice on starting up, comedy sketches and talking about upcoming events that those listening might want to know about.

My idea would be a fortnightly "show", with presenters, contributors and segments. There's such a wealth of talent from the various people interacting on blogs, on twitter and generally online that I'm sure that something interesting can be found there.

I wouldn't even say it's purely "business" or "entertainment" or anything as focussed - perhaps a mixture or perhaps themed shows. I've liked how the Boards.ie podcasts went (I need to get to doing those as well) and it would be hugely open to collaboration, input and suggestions - just structured and regular.

I've had a few people express interest to me via twitter already but if you have any suggestions, ideas, requests or indeed think it's an awful idea, please do let me know.

People have their say about the Get Up Stand Up National Day of Protest

2009-11-11T10:04:00.003Z

I was sent this by Paula Geraghty, the filmmaker who made this short film (5:18) about the ICTU National Day of Protest and the Get Up Stand Up campaign on November 6.

Lots of people on the streets being asked for their views on the matter. The next question apparently is "What do we do next?"

The new Beta Twitter Retweet feature

2009-11-10T19:53:00.006Z

This just popped up on my screen:

Click for bigger

So it's a symbol instead of an RT and a handy way of seeing how popular a link is - kind of like the Facebook "Like" feature...

There's also a new button beside the "Reply" one:

Vote for your favourite Irish social networking site

2009-11-02T12:21:00.010Z

That's what the Golden Spiders want you to do. They've just announced their shortlist for the Best Social Networking site and now it's up to the public to vote.

They are:

From the press release:

Members of the public are invited to cast their vote for one of the shortlisted websites by 6pm on Wednesday, 18th November 2009.

Votes can be made by sending details of your chosen website to info@goldenspiders.ie.

The winner of the “Best Social Networking Website” will be announced at the eircom Golden Spider Awards Ceremony in the Burlington on Thursday, 19th November 2009.

What should you think about before voting for your favourite social networking site?

INFORMATION/CONTENT – Does the site provide users with entertaining, informative and gripping content? In addition to the user-generated content does the site make the most of externally developed add-on applications which further encourage communication between members?

USABILITY – Does the site make efforts to accommodate non-standard visitors, for example: mobile visitors, visitors with text-only browsers, touchscreen visitors, users with screen readers and other alternative devices and a variety of screen resolutions.

DESIGN – Does the site make the best use of graphics, animations and interactive elements? Is the site designed to enable users to interact with the content and information in an easy and enjoyable manner?

RELEVANCE – Does the site clearly understand the needs and aspirations of the communities it supports? Does the site provide specific tools and services to meet those ends?

INNOVATION – Does the site provide new and interesting ways for users to collaborate and communicate?

I'm particularly delighted to see Thumped.com and Politics.ie in the list, as well as Pix.ie. Well done :)

Golden Spiders 2009 shortlist announced today...

2009-10-27T14:15:00.003Z

The shortlist for the 2000 Golden Spiders Awards was announced today.

All available on a Google Spreadsheet right here.

Congratulations to everyone nominated. The awards are on November 19.

Seats are €300 and table of 10 costs €2,900. Ex VAT.

For the win.

All Together Now stop frame animation - Budweiser tribute

2009-10-22T17:20:00.005+01:00

Because I was one of the people at the Budweiser Lyrics preview evening in Dublin earlier this year thanks to the lovely (and I mean lovely!) people at WHPR, and uploaded the ad to YouTube, I still get the odd notification of new videos being made as a tribute to the ad.

Like this new one by You Tube user ijbellehy1981, which I adore. The creativity is astounding.

The original ad:

And all for http://www.alltogethernow.ie. Lovely stuff.

Sometimes a press release says it all: the mysterydates.ie twitter singles night

2009-10-22T14:32:00.006+01:00

Subject line: "A complimentary Invitation to Ireland first Singles 'Twitter' party with mysterydates.ie"

Saturday October 31st will see the official launch of mysterydates.ie in a twitterparty. Ireland’s premier events dating company will launch Ireland’s first twitter party in Kobra Bar, Leeson Street at 8 pm.

Daters will be given twitter addresses if they do not have their own so their personal identities will not be revealed to other daters.

Daters can then flirt virtually on large television screens in the bar via their twitter accounts with other daters. If the flirting on screen goes well a pair of dates may want to take the flirting offline. And if both parties agree mysterydates.ie will release their names so that the daters can flirt face to face at the party.

Seriously now, what could I add to that?

Oh wait, this:

“Twitter offers a great new way for single people to have fun at our party and flirt virtually,” said Hugh Redmond from mysterydates.ie. “Daters want to have fun and remain a bit mysterious initially and Twitter is ideal for this.”

So yeah.

Log on to www.mysterydates.ie to pre-register for the unique dating event which costs just 20 euro or ring 087-939-5381.

Halloween seems like the perfect time for it too.

Good morning to you #1

2009-10-22T09:00:00.002+01:00

For Stephanie.

Take on me:

Stained glass window, Kilkenny

Starlings on Ot Moor

A comic by Seán

I took this photo around this time last year

I searched for "smile of the day" for you and found this:

Via Joice Maduka

Blogging the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival 2009

2009-10-19T14:17:00.006+01:00

This weekend I'm heading south with Steph to blog, tweet, twitpix and otherwise record and experience the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival 2009.

It's an event running over 30 years but this is the first time I'll have been down for it - in fact it's my first major jazz event!

Having been all souled up at this year's Dublin City Soul Festival I'm looking forward to hearing a different type of music and experiencing a different vibe. Huge thanks to Guinness for the invitation and opportunity!

This year's festival features over 1,000 musicians from 29 countries, so I'm sure there'll be some interesting choices for me. Having gone through the programme diligently and repeatedly, I'm hoping I get to experience the following (and here's where you'll find me to buy me a pint/slap me for all the bad jokes):

Friday:

First off it's to Jazz at the College lunchtime concert at UCC's Aula Maxima with Grace McMahon and the Paul O'Donnell Group.

Heading on then at 3pm to see a jazz group called The Club Men in the Festival club

The group above are called The Bad Plus - comprised of Ethan Iverson on piano/keyboard, Reid Anderson on electric bass and Dave King on drums - and I love the description -

The Bad Plus has undoubtedly exploded all notions of what a jazz piano trio should sound like – whether at rock festivals, jazz clubs or symphony halls. According to Rolling Stone, 'By any standard, jazz or otherwise, this is mighty, moving music … hot players with hard-rock hearts.'

They'll be doing a double bill with Sun Ra Arkestra in the Everyman Theatre on Friday evening from 20:30.

Finally then off to watch the superb Hypnotic Brass Ensemble in the Pavillion from 23:30.

SATURDAY

Saturday starts a trip to CIT and the Cork School of Music for a Family Jazz Big Band Concert with musical director John O' Connor conducting the band, made up of senior degree and post-graduate students of the School who will play "popular and exciting big band favourites."

Yurodny is one of my "don't want to miss" events.

Featuring guest musicians from around the world, this group apparently have a a repertoire that ranges from gypsy melodies to experimental electronica, crossing the tundra of jazz along the way. The line up looks like a great list of musicians including Cora Venus Lunny, Ben Davis, Kate Ellis, Oleg Ponomarov and Tom Arthurs .

They're in the Everyman Theatre at 2pm as part of a double bill with Al Di Meola.

This (well the dancing part) could well be us after our Swing Dance Lesson on Saturday afternoon, if we don't go to the Jazz Poetry session (daddio) instead.

We'll then be heading on to see the Garda Siochana Band performing with Togetherness Gadjo Jazz at the Festival club at 15:30 before a break for the Cork Tweetup where it'll be nice to put names to faces.

Then we go to a concert I'm greatly anticipating - Mr Kurt Elling, singing Coltraine and Hartman.

Described by the New York Times as ‘the standout male jazz vocalist of our times’, Kurt’s rich voice displays an astonishing technical facility and emotional depth. He celebrates in Cork the launch of his latest album ‘Dedicated to You’, his stunning interpretation of the classic Coltrane/Hartman album.

Special guest is Grammy winner Ernie Watts, one of the most versatile sax players on the world scene in the past 40 years.

Elling is in the Everyman Theatre at 8pm.

Also on that evening that I'd love to have seen is the already SOLD OUT Imelda May gig at 20:30 in The Savoy of Patrick St over in The Pavilion is Fionn Regan at 8pm.

SUNDAY

We'll be starting Sunday with mass. As it should be. A Jazz mass.

Join this truly celebratory and spiritual Harvest Jazz service at Cork’s most historic church - a morning of jazz joy featuring the Bla Mondag (Blue Monday) Jazz Band from Copenhagen and the African Irish Gospel Choir from Cork with guests Music commences at 10.45am.

From there it's back to the Everyman Theatre to see Jack de Johnette and the Ripple Effect

Jack DeJohnette is widely regarded as one of jazz music's greatest drummers. From Chicago, he has collaborated with most of the major figures in jazz history, most notably John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny.

DeJohnette is also skilled at nearly every musical style and is no stranger to leading innovative bands of his own. The Ripple Effect is DeJohnette's latest collaborative project. The Ripple Effect blends shades of world music, drum and bass and electronica to create a fresh taste of rhythmic jazz for the 21st century. Phenomenal.

After that, at 15:30, there's a Mystery Session at the Festival Club. Very exciting altogether. No idea who it could be!

Having a break in the afternoon will be welcome, because we're heading to a 1930s Harlem night in the Firkin Crane.

Come and experience the hot house atmosphere of Harlem’s most flamboyant period - the jazz age at its zenith with glamourous guys and gals, plus great music. And expect the unexpected it was a sellout last year.

Music from the 16 piece Tuxedo Junction Big Band playing the hits of Billy Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller and more.

After that, it's possibly the gig that I'm most looking forward to (and that I'm hoping to post about tomorrow - the beautiful and wonderfully talented Ms YolanDa Brown in the Firkin Crane.

And then it's dancing the night away at the Festival Club in anticipation of our trip home on Monday.

So, short version - lots of music, seeing friends, having a dance, a pray, a walk and a great time. Woot :)

You can check out the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, on October 23 to 26 on their website and download the snazzy brochure (which is where I got most of the info and images above from) right here.

eircom are recruiting a Community Manager

2009-10-16T14:45:00.004+01:00

I got dropped an email today with the job spec for the new Community Manager Role in eircom.

Role Purpose and Vision

eircom is seeking a Community Manager to help build strong online communities throughout the Social Network environment with an initial focus on online Service and Content operations.

Job Description

This new position will have responsibility for the development and delivery of eircom’s emerging Social Media strategy.

Responsibilities will range from, actively posting to customers through the forum, liaising with and development of the CSR team, managing complex stakeholder relationships, providing regular reports and updates to senior management, through to championing the concept of Social Media within the eircom organisation.

Ideal candidates will be highly organised, self-motivated, resourceful, innovative, thick skinned, and have excellent verbal and written communication skills. Candidates should have a strong Customer Experience background, and a demonstrable understanding of online Social Media.

I've uploaded the full job spec to Scribd here.

If you're interested, contact Emer MacShane, the Eircom HR Manager at emacshane@eircom.ie. I'd be grateful if you'd let her know where you heard it from - not that I'm being paid or anything!

Best of luck with it :)

No, I'm not teary eyed - the follow up to Darraghchute

2009-10-07T17:35:00.003+01:00

Just received this - completely unexpected - by email:

Dear Darragh,

Through your heroic efforts of jumping out of the plane, we did have a wonderful outing with 50 older people on the 30th of September. Please view the attached video of the participants showing their appreciation.

Regards,

Linda

Linda Desmond
CARELOCAL
The Carmichael Centre for Voluntary Groups
North Brunswick Street
Dublin 7

http://www.carelocal.com

I never fail to be surprised by the things people do. What a wonderfully generous and appropriate thing for a charity with limited resources and - they'd admit themselves - limed tech savviness to do for me. Humbling is what it is.

Google Wave is coming and it looks extremely interesting

2009-10-01T07:52:00.002+01:00

Don't know what Google Wave is? This might help:

However, what it means more is that instant messaging, email, chat, collaboration, publishing, sharing, blogging, tweeting, social networking and especially bringing someone in to a conversation is all going to take a massive leap forward into real time.

This isn't something that is going to happen one day. It's happening and it's coming soon. It will change the way we talk online.

The Morning News posts

2009-09-21T09:48:00.004+01:00

When you were in primary school, did you have to write your "Morning News" every morning?

I remember this being one of the standard things we did in the Boys School in Graiguenamanagh every morning - both in the old building and in the hall while the school was being done up. However, I'm off digressing. It was a page in your copybook about what happened the evening before and anything else you had to share, designed to keep us quiet for the first half an hour, to exercise our writing skills and possibly (though I'd never say it) for the teachers to have something to talk about at breaktime.

I don't know if my parents have kept any of my old copies (I almost hope not) but I have fond memories of scribbling down exciting news like "We have a new dog" or "My aunty Mary is coming from Galway" or "I saw the turtles on the telly yesterday" or "I went to the library and they have new Asterix books!"

Not a lot happened of note, thankfully, though a memory comes unbidden to my mind of a classmate being worried about the teacher's reaction that he hadn't got his homework or copybooks with him even though his house had burned down the night before. But there I go digressing again.

I've been thinking about The Morning News a lot recently, not only as a way of communicating what's been happening but also a reminder of what has happened. Someone asked recently if I ever stay in of an evening, take an evening off, don't do something online or off and while I might protest and say "Of course!" it's probably not that in reality. Looking at that list of companies I've worked with in the past while is quite revealing, showing, as it does, the kind of stuff I've been doing and also how much of it.

So, I'm going to try get back into the routine of blogging with a Morning News post at the least. Partly to engage the creative braincells, party for routine and partly as a record for myself. You never know. It may be entertaining too. Basically, as I said, getting back to telling you "what I do", like.

This is what I do now

2009-09-20T20:09:00.000+01:00

I did a favour for a company during the week. It wasn't a company I've ever had dealings with previously other than reading their weekly newsletter, but I completed a survey and at the end spotted an issue that I emailed them about. They replied almost immediately saying thanks and asking for my address to send me "something nice". I told them it was no bother, that I was glad to help and the long and short of it was the girl behind the email address sent me "a nice photo", as above.

So I thought I'd share that. It made me laugh but it also made me think that something I haven't done in quite a while is blog about things like that. I used to. I used to blog about what it is I do, and between doing all the things I do and and trying what I try, I just never have the time to sit down and update this blog.

So I'm going to try and do that at least once a day from now on. I'm also going to try keep it to the things I do or am involved in, rather than just what I like, funny stuff from the interwebs or letting people know about things. Because I'm doing that over on Culch.ie, over on Boards.ie, over on my Tumblr (which is really just a bookmarking facility for me) and keeping photos up to date on Pix.ie.

While the break from obsessive posting (here at least) has been good, it hasn't really kept people up to date with what I've been at or who with, so I wanted to let you know a bit of that too.

Work

I'm working full time (still) as a Community Manager with Boards.ie - one of the two. The last six month with the site have been challenging, and I'm glad to have taken the opportunity, not only to work in such a solid team as I do, but to help drive the site in some small way.

There are some big developments happening with Boards.ie to bring it kicking and screaming to the starting line of online discussion in Ireland. There's quite a ways to go yet, but some of the contacts I've made are proving most useful and receptive.

Play

Well, counting "play" as the stuff I'm not paid a salary to do, I guess I've been doing a lot of playing recently.

Some of the groups I've been involved with over the last while include Temple Bar Cultural Trust and Culture Night 2009, RTÉ Performing Groups, The National Concert Hall, The Darklight Festival, St Patricks' Festival, The ABSOLUT FRINGE Festival, the LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit, The Guinness 250 Celebrations, WHPR, Kate Bowe PR, COnway Communications, The Abbey Theatre, The International Puppet Festival, Good Seed PR, Edelman, The Carlsberg Comedy Carnival, Entertainment Architects, The Science Gallery, The Street Performance World Championships and Emergent Events; The Cinemagic Festival; The Dublin Playhouse project and more.

I've been busy and it's been fun.

Health:

My health's not bad at all. Still a lot of pain and some fatigue but I'm getting through it.

The other stuff:

Well, sure if I start talking about that now, I'd have nothing else to say in the weeks and months ahead, would I?

Talk to you tomorrow :)

Taking some time out. Suspended from Twitter. Laughing hard

2009-07-15T19:13:00.007+01:00

This was too good not to blog, despite my self imposed break from it while I contribute to Culch.ie, the new Boards blog and the drain and source of energy and creativity that is the wonderful twitter.

But about 20 minutes ago...

I've been suspended from Twitter. Yep, my crimes of bad jokes, being anti-spam, anti BS and general mischivousness has finally caught up with me.

Click for bigger version

I swear, I haven't laughed so hard for ages, simply because I had been marking spammers as spam, ranting about retweeting and telling the usual very bad jokes.

How do all my followers react? Same way I did. Laughing hard!

Click for bigger version

So it's over to the Contesting account suspension page on twitter.com with me to fill in the details.

From the email I received:

If you are suspended, it's most likely for one or more of these reasons::
User Abuse
a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
aggressive following
imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
misuse of the reply feature
updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
updates consist of updates poached from others' timelines, passed off as one's own
Technical Abuse
updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster
When this happens, we suspend the account for investigation and hide the contents from the public view in order to remove the cause of complaint.

Anyways, I *will* be back to blogging here soon. Promise. Got some stories for you. Stuff that's in my head, my notebooks and my soul.

EDIT: I'm back... http://www.twitter.com/darraghdoyle - that was quick!