Keith Shirley

The IIA has published the Social Media Working Groups (SMWG) guide to Blogging for Business. I’ve mentioned it a few times before – the working group is focusing on how various types of Social Media Tools (Blogs, Podcasts etc) can be used in a business environment. My work with them has focused on blogs – resulting in this whitepaper. Other guides will be published in the near future.

The guide is free for all until May 6th at which point it will be available to IIA Members only. You can doanload it from http://www.iia.ie/smwg along with the results of the survey we ran. There will also be weekly case studies available. You can see all the the blog postings for the SMWG on the IIA website.

The guide includes sections

• explaining the fundamentals of blogging;
• investigating why businesses are adding blogging to their communications and marketing strategies;
• analysing the results from a survey of Irish business bloggers about their motivations and objectives and how they measure those objectives;
• with key advice on managing blogging resources, comments and content;
• and numerous links to further information and recommended reading for those who wish to take it further.

Over the few weeks I will be trying out a service called Searchles Discovery. The idea for me is that is will automatically cross reference some of the previous posts that I have written and display links at the bottom of new blog posts.

Why?

It’s become clear to me that a lot of blog posts that are extremely well written and useful get lost over time as new community members seldom go back more than a few posts. I’m talking about all blogs – not just this one. If someone reads one of my posts and there is something related – I’d like them to know about it.

Initially the related content will be empty or not very good but over time I hope it can become a useful resource.

My current concern is that it might just make everything too busy.

Todays post was going to be about a non tech invention that I thought was a maximum of 10 years old. From the company website I find out it’s been around since the sixties and has sold over 200,000,000,000 units. Then why oh why don’t we know how to use it properly?

What am I talking about?

The simple Tetra Rex package is something we are all familiar with from milk and juice cartons. It’s much easier to use than the old cartons where you had to squeeze the “wings” just right to get it open. With this package you just unscrew the top and pour.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well – The milk goes glug when the air goes back into the package and regularly causes some to splash over the edge of the glass. The reason is we’re doing it wrong. Special thanks to PomeGreat for printing the correct way on their cartons. We need to turn it around so the pouring spout is on top / away from the glass. This allows the liquid to flow and the air to get into the carton. No glug. No mess. Happy people.

Why was I not taught this in school? Didn’t my teachers realise how much hardship and wasted paper towels this lack of knowledge has caused me?

My scientific study (I asked 3 people) shows me that I’m not the only person that did not know. So – for the sake of humanity as we know it – I wrote this post.

Below is a very rough sketch of what I mean about turning the carton around.

Sometimes I just want to be able to connect my laptop to the mobile Internet without having dongles hanging out or resorting to cables. JoikuSpot allows me to do that and even share the connection.

What it Does

In a nutshell – JoikuSpot installs on your mobile phone (in my case a Nokia N95) and rebroadcasts your 3G connection as a WLAN hotspot.

In other words:
Laptop -> WLAN connection to Phone -> 3G Connection to Provider -> Internet

Why would you want to do this?

There are a couple of reasons:

- As mentioned – it reduces the amount of stuff hanging off your PC. I use a tablet PC and this allows me to leave the phone in my pocket. I can’t do this with bluetooth for all my devices.

- The WLAN connection can be shared. You can have multiple PC’s connected to the Internet via my phone. This is great in an emergency when your boardband link goes down.

Does it work?

It works great most of the time. It can be a little slow to start and every now and then it stops working but I’ve used it repeatedly for hours at a time. Used in connection with Psiloc Connect which I’ve mentioned previously it’s great on journeys. Psiloc connect picks up the best signal available and provides Joikuspot with a stable access point.

Is it secure?

Any WLAN link is not going to be completely secure. The JoikuSpot software is designed to be able to setup a VPN link. If you are working with any kind of sensitive data then you should consider that.

You should also setup a password for the WLAN hotspot. It will keep out the opportunists BUT only WEP security is available on the wireless link. If someone is determined to connect to the hotspot then they will. You still need firewall sofware on your PC.

Is it expensive?

There is a free version available but for me it was of limited use – you can’t check POP email with it (webmail is OK). The full version is currently 15 Euro on their shop.

Note: When I first bought the software it was over  a very slow GSM link in Achill Island. I was having problems getting the shop to work with the free version – but fair play to the providers – they listened to my comments and should have fixed it by now.

I can write an advance review because I know it’s going to be great. I so thoroughly enjoyed Podcamp and Barcamp last year (especially Pat Phelan’s lunchtime chat) that when talk of organising a Bizcamp came up I knew I had to help out.

(insert name here)Camps are very informal but productive conference type events. They’re referred to as unconferences because you’re not going to be lectured at or given sales pitches in the regular sense. A camp has a general theme to bind it together and everyone is free to give short (15 minute) seminars/chats/presentations about topics they feel are helpful.

Helpful is the magic word – the whole point is to get to know people, get some insight into a topic and be helpful. You can pickup a huge amount of info in small chunks and followup later. I promise – you’ll come home with stacks of notes.

Bizcamp is obviously themed around business. The potential topics could range from funding to how to handle the stress. Unlike a normal conference – the agenda is not fixed. Anyone can decide on the spur of the moment to do a session – you just grab a timeslot on the day. Is there something you wish you knew when you started? Now’s your chance to pass on some pearls of wisdom. You don’t need to do a session at all – just come along for the ride.

I’ll be helping to organise the Dublin Event which is on Sat 7 March 2009. There will be a second bizcamp in Limerick on 21 March 2009.

I’ll be writing about this again but if you need more info then call me ( 087 9112027 ) or Email me K.Shirley@Shercom.com.

Yes – That really is my phone number and mail address.

You can already sign-up to Bizcamp or you can see who is going to Bizcamp.  I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

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• BizCamp coming to Limerick (stephenkinsella.net)
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