Keith Shirley

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.

As part of my work with the IIA’s Social Media Working Group I’ll be going to the launch on Wednesday of the Business Blogging Whitepaper – of which I was a co-author. The event is a simple breakfast seminar with some guests and the chair of the working group (Brendan Hughes) giving presentations on the business impacts that their blogs have had. I will link from here to the whitepaper when it is available online. You can use the subscribe option at the end of the post to be automatically updated.

Full Details are available on the IIA Website but in summary:

Event Date : 22 Apr 2009
Time : 7.45am – 9.30am
Location : Burlington Hotel, Upper Leeson Street, Dublin 4

The IIA Social Media Working Group present a breakfast briefing dedicated to the business applications of blogging.

Thinking about starting a company blog? Should your communications team engage with bloggers? Is it time to get on Twitter? These are some of the questions that the IIA’s Social Media Working Group will address at this event.

This breakfast briefing for business owners & communication managers will present the findings from the working group’s recent analysis and research into the business benefits and potential risks associated with blogging in Ireland.

An overview of blogs and micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter) will be given. Case studies will be presented of how Irish businesses are using these tools to achieve real business benefits and cost savings. The critical issue of measuring return on investment will also be addressed and time will be allowed for addressing questions and concerns from the attendees.

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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

The Irish Business Women’s Forum is having a special Promote Yourself Week on their website. I’ve been a member of the forum for a while now and it’s always a pleasure to check in for updates and see if I can add anything useful. Like most forums – blatant advertising is normally not allowed. This week is the exception where one special area has been setup to allow the members to promote themselves without breaking the rules. For me it was a very strange experience doing a sales pitch for online backups where I normally work so hard at being independent.

The IBW forum is a great example of a supportive and informative online community. It’s certainly one of the discussion forums that I will have in mind when I’m doing work for the IIA Social Media Working Group. I can’t speak highly enough of the forum – and of course the members. There are so many other forums that fade away after a short time because there is not enough interaction or the general attitude turns negative. I get quite annoyed when someone new to the area of online forums or mailing lists makes a mistake and gets pounced on by the other members and berated for “advertising”. Yes – people should read the forum guidelines and get a feel for the style of the site – but I’d rather have a few mistakes with helpful reminders rather than a strict policing by the members. The IBW site seems to work very well in this sense – any transgressions are dealt with in a friendly and instructive way. The result is that they receive articles from people who would never dream of posting elsewhere – and many of them are quite touching stories.

So go and have a look at the IBW site – I hope you find it as useful as I have. There are few other sites where I feel morally obliged to try and post something useful having read so many helpful articles.

The Promote Yourself week seems to be quite successful – and I have no doubt it will reduce the spam for the remainder of the year. It even got me mentioned on Frank Fullard’s Blog.

Let me know if there are other online communities that you think I should be looking at – specifically Irish ones.

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