I thought it would be fun to get some Twitter and bloggy-type people together to go to the Street Performance World Championships in Fitzgerald’s Park. It’s free and looks like a nice day out if the weather holds. Since the park is only an eight-minute walk from our house and there’s plenty of parking here on weekends, I’m nominating our front doorstep as the meeting place.

Come by yourself, come with the kids, come with the dogs, come with a hangover, come with an umbrella!

This plan is simplicity itself. Turn up at 18 Gilabbey Street, Cork, at 12 noon on Saturday, 13 June. Have a pee if you need one (not on the doorstep.) Walk to the park in a conga line, enjoy the entertainment, take photos, tweet if you want to, and piss off to the pub afterwards if you’re so inclined.

A few caveats. One: I know nothing about this event other than that it is on and sounds fun. Talk to @spwc. Two: All the pubs in that neighbourhood are dire; we’ll be walking 8 minutes back down the road to Thirsty’s or the one next door with a garden if it’s nice. Three: If it’s raining, this will be re-scheduled for Sunday in the hope of better weather. Four: There probably won’t actually be a conga line.

If you’re planning to come along, it would be helpful if you popped your intentions into the comment box here so that we know to wait for you if we need to. Also if the forecast calls for Saturday downpours, I’ll be able to email folks to let them know. Thanks :)

I’m delighted to announce a new, two-part training day for small and medium businesses on 12 June in Cork called Putting the Internet to Work. It may sound hokey but this full-day, hands-on seminar is specifically designed to help businesses build online strategies, market effectively, and move forward in what we’ll politely call a new economic climate.

You can download complete details here, but in a nutshell, Martina Skelly and I will be conducting a crash course in digital marketing, covering blogging, social media, and the full Google toolbox from SEO to PPC Adwords campaigns:

Building Business Through Social Media

The Social Media seminar runs from 10 AM to 1 PM and covers:

• The Whys and How-Tos of blogging for small and medium businesses;
• Understanding and leveraging social networks including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook;
• Tools and metrics for quantifying results from blog and social network campaigns.

Putting Google to Work for Your Business

The Google Tools seminar runs from 2 PM to 5 PM and covers:

• Safe and effective SEO strategies to improve natural search engine results and rankings in Google;
• Using Google AdWords to run cost-effective PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns;
• Utilizing Google Analytics to pull it all together, monitor results, and calculate ROI.

We’ve tried to keep costs low while also keeping seminar sizes small: registration is limited to just eight people in each session. You can register for the full day for €150 or choose either half-day session for €80.

We’d like to make this day available to everyone who’d like to attend, so if you need a bursary, just let me know and we’ll do our very best to get you there.

WHO: People marketing small and medium businesses
WHAT: SEO, PPC, blogging and social media [full details]
WHERE: Lancaster Lodge, Western Road, Cork
WHEN: Friday, 12 June 2009, 10 AM – 5 PM
HOW: Registration is now open!

Saturday night found us at the previously mentioned and now infamous 2009 Blog Awards, where for those of us attending the Ladies Tea Party, copious amounts of food were wonderfully catered by Fuel at the Cork Airport Hotel.

Score one for not having to cook.

Next morning, it was breakfast ala hotel with about 100 other hungover bloggers, and God bless whoever was back there in the kitchen, because it meant I didn’t have to cook it. Hurrah.

That afternoon, in an act of unprecedented forward planning and sheer genius, I had booked Bite Size to cater a family luncheon to celebrate John’s birthday. Not, you understand, because I fail at domesticity; I am perfectly capable of turning out Sunday lunch for 12 people. I am not, however, remotely capable of turning out as much as toast on four hours of sleep and a massive booze and debauchery fuelled hangover.

In fact, I couldn’t even manage coffee (which is just as well as we didn’t have any). In answer to my prayers and a public plea on Twitter, the absolutely god-like Sam Kidd from Sam and Dan’s actually brought me a huge steaming carryout of java. To my door. With a smile. I nearly wept into the cup.

The catering from Bite Size turned up an hour later, when I was just about ready to face the world again, and it was tremendous. Their canapés are like little works of art, the dinner was massive, and we ate gloriously well on Sunday. The guests all ooh’d and ahh’d and dug in, and I have to say that for a dozen well-fed eaters, it was excellent value for money.

Not to mention that we also feasted on leftovers all day Monday, thus escaping yet another day of cooking, which was just as well because I seriously needed the entire day for additional recovery time. (I think I drank my own body weight in tea, water and 7 UP in a futile attempt to re-hydrate.)

Alas, today all systems returned to normal. The last leftovers went to the dog, the last cupcakes went into various happy eaters, and the last of the manky bits went down the insinkerator, thus ending my three day kitchen holiday.

But if I win the lottery, let me tell you: personal chef. All the way.

Back from the Irish Blog Awards, and as the song says, “Oh what a night.”

Major props to the Cork Airport Hotel, which in addition to being stellar hosts for the IBAs, did a stupendous job for the Ladies Tea Party. The apartment was stunning, the catering was abundant and beautifully presented, and the Tea Party was a great vibe with tons of women, much mingling, and abundant consumption of gorgeous cupcakes and copoius amounts of organic wine.

(The official count was that we started with five cases and ended up with four bottles left over. That turned out to be slightly inaccurate but we did do a hell of a good job.)

As for the Awards themselves, I did not win in my category – Michele Neylon scooped Best Business Blog. Despite knowing I was a most unlikely contender, I was extremely grumpy about this and could briefly be heard threatening to burn one of the polystyrene Blacknight horse heads in effigy or possibly put it in his bed. This shameful, booze fuelled mini-strop stopped the moment Suzy was named for Best Current Affairs Blog and then again for the Grand Prix – I was so delighted for her, I cried. An entirely noble and well-deserved victory, that one.

I knew more people this year than I did last year, so there were fewer revelations, but in the tradition of last year’s Awards, I hereby submit the following 2009 Unofficial Blog Awards:

• Best Badges: Will Knott, for “Ledgebag.” Absolutely legend.
• Hottest Husband: Gingerpixel. Woah, mama. You go girl.
• Hottest Missus: Walter Higgins. (Seriously, have you seen Mrs Walter?)
• Most Aptly Named: The Sexy Pedestrian who is indeed smokin’. (And frankly, you wouldn’t chuck Mr. Sexy Pedestrian out either.)
• Most Adorable: Elfinamsterdam, who to my great surprise, actually is the size of an elf. I thought she just gave out random gifts or something.
• Best Swag: CuriousWines, who did swapable badges that were so popular, people were stealing them out of other people’s booty bags.
• Best Tune: John Handelaar, who spun How Sweet it Is with Marvin Gaye covering his own song in German. (If you ask @handelaar, he’ll probably share it.)
• Sorest Loser: Joe Scanlon, who was not happy to be defeated in Inflatable Twister.
• Best Dressed: Ciara Crossan. Because the bride is always the best dressed woman in the room. Hilarious.
• Biggest Sucker Dote: Niall Harbison, who bought the afterpartiers in Room 201 a bottle of Absolute from the hotel bar. For €80.

Many of these people, and many more, ended up in Apartment 201 for the impromptu afterparty, which carried on until I finally chucked everyone out at 5:30 in the morning.

I smell like a pub floor before the smoking ban, my headache is undefeated, there are not enough cups of tea on all the world right now, and hilariously I have 12 people coming for a full-on Sunday lunch in 2 hours, but I would not have changed a thing. This night was EPIC. Thanks as always, Damien and crew.

PS: Remember, people – what happens at the after party, stays at the after party. And no, I do not have your clothes / phone / shoe / camera / shit – call hotel reception, ye langers.

I am delighted to announce that plans have been formalised and the 2nd Annual Ladies Tea Party and Knitting Circle will be held at the Cork Airport Hotel. We will be swanning about one of their spiffy private apartments prior to the Blog Awards, which will hopefully be a nice setting and mean more mixing than last year.

The ticket price of €17 per person covers everything – venue, food, alcohol, and soft drinks – thanks to help from these lovely people:

Sponsor: Curious Wines
Booze for this event is lovingly sponsored by online wine retailer Curious Wines, who apparently heartily approves of ladies tippling (or toppling) into their teacups.

Sponsor: Campaign Monitor
The fine email marketing software folks at Campaign monitor have very kindly sponsored food for this event, and made managing the registrations pure bliss.

Donor: iFoods.tv
Brownies for this event are being hand made by Niall Harbison of IFoods.tv, so you'll get to say a handsome famous chef has personally baked for you.

Donor: Piosa Cake
Jo from Pisoa Cake is - oh joy! - bringing beautiful, yummy, fluffy cupcakes. Please confine your drool to your own cupcakes only.

Obviously, the title of this event is complete and utter farce. Having said that, Marian has suggested that anyone interested in knitting or crochet bring some work and we can have a bit of a stitch ‘n bitch whilst we’re there.

Registration is limited to 30 people. You need to complete a registration form for each person attending, and it’s first come, first served.

Who: You. A pre-event mixer for Ireland’s women bloggers.
When: Saturday, 21 February from 4 – 7 PM
Where: Cork Airport Hotel, Apartment 201 (NOT room 201)
What: Food, drink, occasional knitting, general merriment
How much: €17 per person.
Registration: NOW OPEN. CLOSED. Full.

You are cordially invited to join us for New Year’s Eve Festivities as we welcome in 2009, hopefully with something between a whimper and a bang.

• There will be wine, beer and bubbly. If you want anything harder than that, bring it, although we may bust out the scotch at some point.
• There will be food. It will probably be yummy. (Oh hello, winter carbs!)
• There will be peace on Earth and goodwill towards men.

There will very likely also be music, count downs, noise makers and all that good stuff. We would love to have you, so please RSVP in the comments. You are very welcome to bring people along; just let me know how many, so I can plan accordingly.

Where: 18 Gilabbey Street, Cork, Ireland
When: 9 PM until sometime after midnight
Who: You, and whomever else you would care to bring
RSVP: In the comments, as soon as possible :)

We’re beginning to vaguely think about the new year here on Gilabbey Street, and we are pondering perhaps having a party of some flavour. Since, you know, everything is closed and there’s sod all else to do.

Since you, dear Internets, would be invited, please let me know which of these two events you might prefer to attend:

We’ll do neither if there isn’t enough interest, but assuming there is, I’ll add a new post with details accordingly. Comments welcome if you have any suggestions!

PS: By “brunch” I mean a complete civilized hour, like say noon or 1 PM.

Above are the presentation slides for yesterday’s Blogging Master Class. Though they only formed a small part of the course, I fully intended to get them up last night. This was fine in theory, except we retired to the nearest available pub at the conclusion of the day’s proceedings, and after one pint I could no longer feel my face.

In previous incarnations, this would have queued a wild night of drunken antics complete with table top dancing, a shoe left in a gutter, and possibly my knickers left on a lamp post, but I am older, wiser and vastly more tired these days so the only thing is queued was me going to my bed at an hour suitable for very small children.

Lightweight drinking escapades aside, it was a wonderful afternoon and I greatly appreciate the ten nine people who turned up (some after long drives) to be the guinea pigs for the maiden appearance of this course and have their blog posts picked apart by a roomful of weirdos off the internet. Joe Scanlon, Mike and Matt Kane, Julian Alubaidy, Aedan Ryan, Gordon Murray, Ger Hartnett, Keith Shirley, and Linda FitzPatrick all deserve kudos for braving the Master Class format, which is a bit of a scary prospect all on its own. It’s not for the feint of heart – as Joe Scanlon noted in his Twitter stream, “Well that’s my test post fucked out the window.” (That wasn’t quite true, for the record, and he did get points for a hysterical post title.)

But the anonymous feedback forms at the end of the course were spectacular, and the people who left comments all noted that they loved the Master Class format, which I’m completely delighted about.

My one regret was that I fully intended to also have a brainstorming session for topics each business could be covering to appeal to their audiences, and that just slipped my mind when I re-shuffled the running order at the last minute. I’m very sorry about that, so if you attended the course, you can drop me a phone call and I’ll gladly throw some ideas at you if you like.

PS: Cheers for the room rental whip round, guys! For anyone else interested in meeting space in Cork, the Lancaster Lodge is an excellent venue, highly recommended.

I forgot to mention: we’ll be kicking off around 8PM, so feel free to come by at any point from then. We’ll keep the Obama Family Chili warm for whenever you turn up!

Again, we’re at 18 Gilabbey Street, which is at the bottom of College Road, and if you get lost we’re on 021 234 9938.

Above is a slideshow that acted as an introduction and conversation prompter for a panel discussion at Barcamp Cork, entitled It Beats the Dole: Career Paths in New Media. The panel was designed for Bernie Goldbach’s students from the Tipperary Institute, who will at some point in the next few years be venturing out into the big wide world seeking jobs doing… something.

So I thought it would be useful to pull together a panel of people working in diverse jobs in “new media” and look at what we do and how we got there. I was very lucky to get Mairan Murray, John Henry Donovan, Fiona Dixon and Donogh MacCarthy-Morrogh to panel with me and while I could have been a lot more organised about moderating (not my best thing), I think it was a good panel.

Some data points I found interesting, although I imagine the students found them less so:

• When I was putting this panel together, not a single one of the five of us really had a definition for New Media or ever use that terms ourselves. It’s 2008. It’s just… media.
• Two out of five of us had no professional or educational training whatsoever.
• Four out of five of us said that more than 75% of the skills and tools we use in our day-to-day work are self-taught.
• All of us said the most important part of getting a job is having a portfolio, even if it’s just class projects or a fake site or fake video for Acme Widgets. The portfolio outweighs the degree or the qualification by miles.
• For learning independently, all of the web people said Lynda.com.

Earlier in the day, I did another session for students as well, looking at a website they’re developing as part of their course. We looked at developing personas, planning content for a specific audience, and building traffic. The most interesting part was at the end, though, where I passed out PostIt notes to everyone and asked them to write down how much they would charge an actual client for the site they’d produced.

The first year students had the low-ball bids; the third year students had higher bids; the student who graduated last year and is out working in the world and paying bills had the second highest bid; and the teacher with the wife, the kid and the mortgage had a bid that far outstripped any others.

I think that reflects a learning curve about pricing. It really isn’t about how much you think the end product is worth to the client, but how much your time is worth to you.

Overall, it was a great Barcamp, absolutely heaving with fabulous people. The fabulous people part would explain why I spent six hours standing in the hallways gabbing instead of getting my arse into the session rooms to attend, you know, Barcamp sessions.

Oh well, there’s always next year!