Keith Shirley

Carlow Enterprise Board are promoting a new workshop for those looking for a new direction to their careers. It’s to be held at Enterprise House on 9 June 2009 and is free (but you must register in advance).

The aim is to receive practical advice on finding and applying successfully for work and looking at other alternatives such as starting your own business.

I met one of the speakers, Yanky Fackler, at Bizcamp earlier in the year and enjoyed his talk. He has recently published a book which I have yet to buy (I’m refusing to buy more until I read what I have).

The opportunity to speak with Brian McQuaid from IT Carlow’s Lifelong Learning dept should also not be missed - there are also some accelerated programs at the IT which might be interesting (although not directly in his department I believe).

Click on the pictures of the flyers for the full size version:

Carlow Chamber and the Carlow Enterprise Board have a conference coming up this Friday at the Mount Wolseley Hotel. I went to last years event and it was a resounding success. Not only were the presentations informative – but the event gave me an opportunity to network with exactly the kind of business owners I needed for my business and my career.

I’ve been asked to blog about it – which means there are some spaces left. Unfortunately it conflicts with another event I have on – The IIA Conference for the Social Media Working Group.

You can download a pdf brochure and booking form for the conference – glass-half-full-economic-conference

Let me know what I missed.

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.

We’ve got to try our best to fight the recession but sometimes we can’t help but cut back and let people go. As employers we have a social responsibility to try and help our employees. If we can’t keep their jobs open then we can help soften the landing.

County Carlow Chamber and Skillnet are providing workshops that will help with the transition from employed to hopefully re-employed. I’ve received the following mail from them and asked if I could reproduce it here:

As Businesses in County Carlow go through periods of major change including downsizing and restructuring, inevitably some employees will be put on short time or indeed sadly laid off .

Making the transition for these staff as smooth as possible is the trademark of an employer of choice, particularly when some of these staff have been taking care of your business for many years.

By way of support to companies facing such challenging times County Carlow Chamber through the Skillnet training fund has developed the Outplacement Workshop programme. These placement workshops begin with a comprehensive one-on-one interview with your employees to define unique skills and experience and to identify employment options which may include a similar job, a totally different position and/or self employment.

Often a career option may include re-training or a period of full time study. The emphasis is upon ’self-help’ and personal motivation, with direction and guidance provided by experienced professional people.
The significant benefits of providing this intervention to your staff during these very difficult times are:

• By looking after your staff at this sensitive time, you ensure your staff leaves your business on good terms and with dignity.

• Employees retained will have more respect for your organisation and the management team

• Future employees looking to join your organisation will have a positive view if they are aware that you have previously supported staff who were released

• Having a well managed Outplacement Programme helps reduce the impact of any significant loss of knowledge and productivity during the changes to the business

Our approach puts your employees at ease from the start by showing empathy and building trust to make for a successful working relationship, resulting in a smooth transition for your staff and your company.
Depending on the situation, if you are releasing one person or a small team of people, we can take the pressure out of the arrangements for you by liaising with your people direct to customise a outplacement services programme to include:

• Successful CV’s and Self Marketing Letters
• Job Search Strategies and Job Applications
• Winning @ Interviews
• Self Marketing, Networking & Selling Yourself
• Career Planning & Options
• Career Values & Needs Assessment
• Self Employment & Portfolio Careers
• Business Start Up
• Image & Personal Branding

We can run workshops and or 1:1 sessions either on site or off site at venues to suit you and your staff plus also provide the option for telephone/email support The objective of this intervention is to focus on encouraging people to think positively about change, seeing redundancy or short time as an opportunity rather than the end of their career. Where you have groups of employees who may be looking at career change or even self employment options, our successful Move Your Career ‘One Step Beyond’ Career Transition Workshops are especially designed for this purpose
To start this process, please contact, Ashling Ward on info@cktraining.ie or 087 6140386 in the strictest confidence.

Yours Sincerely

Niall McDonnell                                               Ashling Ward
_________________                                             ___________________
Niall McDonnell                                                   Ashling Ward
CEO County Carlow Chamber                            Training Manager
12/03/2009

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I recently changed the name of this blog to practical technology. My main focus will be on software and technology that is of interest to small business users. Occasionally I’ll get sidetracked and talk about some gadgets or enterprise level solutions – either because they impress me or because they provide good examples of where the technology we are using daily can lead to. I’ll also cover some tax or funding issues as I come across them. If I’m putting in the effort to learn them for myself then I want to be able to pass that on.

Blog posts have been a little sparse here lately and that’s mainly because I’ve been really busy (although I admit I did take a weeks holiday in between). Some of the things I’m currently working on are:

• A complete redesign of the Shercom website to concentrate on managed backups
• The IIA Social Media Working Group has some deadlines coming up soon and I really want to make the most of the opportunity to contribute
• I am still preparing the groundwork for a proposal for a research masters degree
• I will be teaching IT a few hours a week at the Carlow Institute of Further Education
• I have some course material to prepare for a course in Google Adwords I’ll be giving
• I have some course material to prepare for courses in IT for small businesses that I’ll be giving
• I am helping two customer’s completly overhaul their network and IT infrastructure
• Our house build has finally started
• Occassionally I sleep

No need to fret however – I have a backlog of reviews and reports that I hope to work on soon and publish here.

Stay tuned

Keith

Image via Wikipedia

Working on your own can be a challenge at times. Before returning to Ireland I had spent about 13 years working in a busy office environment. SOLINET is a relatively small company in terms of the number of people that work there but the atmosphere is very much corporate in terms of the amount of stuff going on.

When I returned to Ireland I started working from a home office. It was initially fantastic – I noticed a big increase in productivity without the constant phone calls or exigencies that needed to be dealt with. After a while though I noticed that there were a number of creative activities that were suffering without the benefit of social interaction. Even problem solving was a little more difficult. The process of describing problems was often enough to help me find my own solution. And lets be honest – I miss the craic.

Back in May I spoke to Michael Kelly, Carlow CEB CEO, about the potential of them providing hot desks for very short term use rather than longer term offices. Carlow CEB have an incubation centre at Enterprise House on O’Brien Road in Carlow. They provide office facilities on a medium term (generally up-to 3 years I believe) to startup businesses. They will soon be building a new premises and I thought that reserving some space for ad-hoc space would be useful – and importantly for them would not conflict with commercial offerings in the town. Carlow Chamber of Commerce have some furnished offices which are a start but I think don’t go quite far enough. Actually my brother has a place there offering Building Energy Ratings. For a start – there are no hot desk facilities. By hot-desk I mean somewhere where you can hire a desk for a short amount of time to do some work from. I can’t say if they would be commercially viable but I do think they would be very useful.

If Carlow CEB are to do something like this they need to know you are interested. I thought it would be interesting for the following situations

• Seasonal work – At certain times of the year businesses need to be able to take on extra people for a short period to deal with order etc
• Short term work packets – Sometimes I need to work with someone closely for a few days. Currently I have to travel to their offices – it would be nice to be able to offer something here
• Home Emergencies – Sometimes you just can’t work from home.
• Business Idea Testing – I imagine there are people who are interested in testing the market for some business idea but are concerned with signing up for long term leases. Even just having an office for a few months would be useful.

This morning I received a tweet from Evert Bopp. He is going to start up his own Co-working/techhub/start-up centre – presumably near his home in Nenagh. I met Evert for the first time last July when he organised the Open Coffee BBQ. The event was great and really highlighted for me how important the exchange of ideas and peer review can be. Evert is looking for comments from people for things they would need from a co-working environment. If you have any ideas then please click on the co-working link above and add a comment.

As some of you may be aware – Shercom was lucky enough to be awarded an Innovation Voucher from Enterprise Ireland. I’ve enjoyed working with the people from IT Carlow and think it’s a great idea – although I’m probably biased as I was awarded one. I can be a sore loser.

For those that are lazy readers – It’s a relatively easy way for a company to get a 5000 Euro voucher towards some research activities in association with their local Institute of Technology. By easy I mean you don’t need to invest much time in filling out the forms. Of course – you want to make the most of it so investing some thinking time is suggested. In terms of research funds – 5000 Euro will not go very far. For a small company it can be a very good starting point.

Last time I mentioned this I was only able to squeeze in the announcement at the last moment. Thank you to Mary O Higgins from the Carlow County Enterprise Board for the timely reminder. This time I’m able to give you some advance notice. Hopefully Mary won’t mind me reproducing her mail here:

Good afternoon

Some of our clients have got Innovation Vouchers in order to grow their businesses.  So here is some information ……

If you own or manage a small limited company with a company registration number and you have a business opportunity or problem that you want to explore, you can apply for an Innovation Voucher worth €5,000.  The Innovation Voucher allows you to concentrate on running your business while knowledge providers (among the 38 third level institutions around all Ireland) come up with a solution that could take your business to the next level

The next call will open on 1st September 2008

For more details and an application form, please refer to http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/innovationvouchers / www.innovationvouchers.ie

Innovation Vouchers can be used for any kind of innovation such as:

• new product / process development;
• new business model development;
• new service delivery and customer interface;
• new service development;
• tailored training in innovation management;
• innovation / technology audit

There is certain stuff that is ineligible, mostly training course costs and marketing/sales activities so please check out the website.

In the middle of May I received a mail from the Carlow Chamber of Commerce.

The South East continues to lag behind other regions in terms of economic growth. There is a lack of hard data that measures business confidence and performance in the region making it difficult to make a case for South East businesses.

In response, Market Dynamics has devised its South East Business Confidence Study.  Updated every six months with business leaders, it will address issues such as business environment, changes in employment levels and the key challenges facing organisations in the region.

Being a good business citizen I decided to complete the survey (of course – the fact that there was a potential prize of a navigation system has nothing to do with it). I’m pleased to say the survey was short and to the point – I hate long surveys.

I was especially happy to see 2 issues covered that are important to me – the issue of a regional university and broadband.

I spoke to Fiona Macrae of Market Dynamics for permission to quote some of the results. The executive summary is not yet available on their website so please call them if you want more info.

I personally like the idea of having a university in the South East and find it hard to believe that we still don’t have one. At the 2008 Annual Business Forum I had the opportunity to ask Brendan Maher, the MD of Unum Ireland, what his opinion was on the subject. The question was very innocent as I have sometimes wondered if it’s just posturing by those involved and possibly not important to big business. I didn’t realise that I was close to putting my foot in it – Brendan was kind enough to make clear that he is on the board of IT Waterford and therefore also a little biased (my words not his). He confirmed that it is a big issue  – and personally causes difficulty explaining it to his head office.

The report from Market Dynamics confirms that the issue is also important to businesses in the region:

• Four out of five organisations believes that a regional university would be either important or very important to the economy of the South East region.  Organisations in counties Waterford, Wexford and South Tipperary were most positive with those in Carlow and Kilkenny less so.
• When asked to what extent they felt a regional university would benefit the county they are based in, a total of 68%, or two-thirds, considered that it would be of great benefit while about one in four (26%) felt that it would be of moderate benefit.

Strangely “Carlow based businesses are the least positive about a South East University”. I hope it’s because they are happy with the work IT Carlow is doing. What really got me thinking was “Kilkenny businesses are most negative about the possibility of a South East University than any other county in the region with one in four businesses saying it would not make an important contribution to the South East regional economy.” That must be a bitter blow to the people in Kilkenny that have spent decades fighting for their own university. At the risk of really annoying people – I think all the IT’s should be given the opportunity of applying for University status.

The report also discussed broadband and tried to access the level of satisfaction among business owners. I’m generally unhappy as I’m trying to encourage people to install online backups. Bad Internet connections are a real problem for that business. In general I think the lack of good Internet connections across the country is holding back the development of dispersed small businesses and work at home ventures. More on that another day.

I realise that I’m in a small category – dealing with 100’s of Gigabytes per month means that I need faster links than most people. I was interested to see how much my biased opinion was in sync with other business owners. Pulling some quotes out of the report:

Almost 90% of respondents believe that broadband access is important to the South East economy.  However, 29% of those who have broadband say it is inadequate to meet their requirements.

One third of Carlow respondents consider that their broadband is insufficient to meet their requirements.

(In Wexford) – One in three businesses claim that their broadband access is insufficient to meet their requirement

I’ll take that as a general 30% vote for my opinion.   I guess I need to work harder to show businesses all the extra benefits they can have by getting more from their broadband connections.

Feel free to let me know your opinions on either the University issue or the broadband. I’m especially interested in hearing other points of view as to why we may not need a university in the South East.