Keith Shirley

Like most people I’m good at bitching about things but don’t come up with too many solutions. If I do come up with solutions I sure as hell don’t want to get involved in politics to try and implement them. By its very nature it’s a thankless job. You can’t keep everyone happy – and I love to be loved. Awww.

I’m not well versed in who’s who in local (or even national) politics. It’s just one of those things that I should know more about but never made the time for.

With the aim of broadening my horizons recently I gate crashed one of the local political meetings. I’m sorry to say it was a big disappointment. Far from the fired up speeches about how they were going to kick ass in the next election I found it to be a very low key event. Possibly this was because it was a local party meeting rather than a public rally. There was only one candidate that I thought had the required polish. Even with that I’m probably biased as he was a boyhood friend of mine.

So it was with interest that I heard from T2 that they had developed an election info site in cooperation with KCLR. The site – www.localelections.ie - will provide all sorts of details on the elections and the candidates. Hopefully they can really get the candidates involved. I’m a bit fed up of all the junk mail that comes through the letter box but still gives me no idea of who the people really are.

Ken McGuire also wrote about it on his site -as I’m sure will a number of other local bloggers as T2 is hunting them down.

The site has a seperate Blog for Carlow and Kilkenny in addition to a blog by Sue Nunn from KCLR. The site is a bit text heavy at the moment but I’m glad it’s available. Maybe this election I’ll manage to educate myself properly.

Now I need to find out how and when I can get into the council meetings to see what goes on there.

As a followup to my article on Hotdesking in Carlow I was invited by Terry Clune to review the hotdesking facilities in the Taxback.com premises in Kilkenny.

The IDA park is on the Kilkenny ring road  – easy to access and within minutes of most parts of Kilkenny City. I was not 100% sure where in the IDA business park that the building was located but as the picture of the building shows – it’s pretty obvious once you get there. There will be no problem giving directions to your customers.

The building is shared by a bank on the ground floor and Taxback.com on the first floor. The top floor is currently set aside for the hot-desking facilities (soon to be opened).

The first signs were good when I saw the milk delivered to the front door.

The area with the hot desk facilities was not
yet complete when I was there but the taxback open plan area gives an idea of what the final facilities will be like. An interesting touch is that the office is equipped with a white noise generator. The idea is that when you are on the phone the microphone is not picking up the voices of others around you. When sitting in the reception area it’s a bit annoying (I thought it was a noisy air con unit at first) but for the office area I can see how it would be very useful.

Some details of the actual facilities

• Each desk will have its own lockable storage space and a partition between the desks. The partition itself is too low for my taste (based on the current floor plan) but if that’s the only thing I can find to complain about then it’s a good sign.
• Visitors will be greeted at the main Taxback reception area and then you get a call. As a visitor it’s pretty clear where you need to go.
• There are current a few meeting rooms available that can be booked – or just grabbed on an ad-hoc basis.
• The hotdesking area has its own kitchen (with a slim balcony – not sure if smokers will be allowed to use it) but I was told that the taxback kitchen area will also be available. This is a really nice room with comfortable seating – great for getting to know your fellow hotdesker’s.
• Access is via electronic key fobs but it’s not clear how out of hours access is going to work as the front door gets physically locked.
• Broadband and phone connection are included  – you will be billed separately for your actual calls.
• There is a nice big parking area which is properly finished. Unlike many other Irish business sites – this one is clean and well maintained.
• Copying and faxing services will be available as well as access to a printer (although there may be a small charge based on usage).
• The lease period is a minimum of 1 month (so not true hotdesking) and the price is currently expected to be 400 Euro per month.

Please contact Kelley O’Neill on 056 778 3400 or koneill@tacback.com for more details and to ensure the details here are still accurate.

Some more photos:

The Taxback.com dining area

The Hotdesking Kitchen Area

One of the small meeting rooms.

Note: If you wish to send someone the link for this page – just give them www.keithshirley.ie/showcase

The Background

Following on from the success of Bizcamp in Dublin I’ve decided to use this blog to help promote local businesses. After all – we do business with people we know.

I’ll publish a number of interview style posts here  – starting off with Carlow and Kilkenny based businesses. It’s a great opportunity to raise your profile and hopefully get some more customers.

There are hundreds of boring business directories on the Internet. The profiles I’m trying to publish here will be much more personal, informal and interesting. I love to get to know details of peoples businesses and I want people reading this blog to be interested in knowing about your business.

How will it work?

You can write your own profile or I can help you. Just remember the style should be conversational and should not sound like boring sales brochure material. The questions below can form the starting point and then we can expand on any areas I feel are not clear.

Questions:

• What are your basic business contact details?
  - Who are you? Where are you based?
• What kind of services and products do you offer?
  - In plain English – pretend I don’t know your business.
• Who are your typical customers?
  - I’d like people reading the blog to be able to refer you.
• What makes your business special?
  - Is there anything you are especially proud of? Now is not the time to be modest.
• Are there any other things that you work on that are not necessarily part of your core business?
  - You’d be amazed at how often a business deal twists into something completely different.
• Is there anything about you or your background that stands out or that you’d like to highlight?
  - You might be an Interior Designer with 20 years project management experience at Microsoft. At least I’ll know that my house redesign is more likely to be completed on time.

How can I get the updates?

Hopefully you are interested in seeing the new profiles as they are published. There are a few ways you can do this.

On the right hand side of this blog there are 2 options that you can choose:

“Enter your email address:” – If you provide your mail address you will receive an email every time the blog is updated. Follow the instructions that are given after you click the “Send me Updates” button.

If you feel more comfortable with the technology then you can use the RSS feed by clicking on “Subscribe in a Reader”. This is the fastest way to get updates.

I’d like to have my business included

Great. Please send me an email (K.Shirley@Shercom.com) with the starting questions listed above completed (only as much as you feel comfortable). Please include your phone number. You can also call me – 087 9112027 – but I can be hard to get  – I won’t answer the phone if I’m with clients.

Once I have your details we can get in contact so I can fill out the details.

I know a lot of people are not used to having to promote themselves. I will help you. Note:

• You don’t have to have a website
• You don’t even have to have email
• You don’t need to be in business a long time

Do I have to pay?

No – I’m doing this because I want to help. I plan to leave the posts available for a long time but there is no guarantee. I’ll do changes for you if details such as phone numbers change. My blog is set to allow Google to follow links – that means you can have a link to your website (if you have one) and it’ll get a little it more exposure.

I reserve the right to edit comments or posts if something is unclear or inaccurate. I also reserve the right to delete a post. You have the right to get me to delete a post. I’ll be allowing people to post comments – that means you might get some good testimonials or some pissed off customers. I suggest you respond to both in a polite and helpful way.I don’t plan to remove negative comments unless they are abusive as I feel a business can shine by dealing with a negative situation in a positive way.

Enough about me – Let’s hear about you!

Pass this on to any friends that you think can benefit. Feel free to copy any text from here that you need. If you wish to send someone the link for this page – just give them www.keithshirley.ie/showcase

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The word Podcamp for me brings up strange visions of Mork and Mindy and his spaceship. It has nothing to do with that of course but I can’t shake it.

I went to the Podcamp Ireland event yesterday (Sat 27 Sept 2008) to have a look at what people are doing in the area of social media and podcasts. The event is a very informal but very well organised conference type day that has numerous presentations and conversations running at the same time. As Krishna De said in her opening talk – you vote with your legs. If you are not as interested in something as you had hoped then you can get up and go to another session. The problem for me was that there were so many interesting things going on that I ended up in the hall moving between sessions trying to get a bit of all of them.

There are a couple of things that really caught my attention – most of them heavily influenced by my desire to apply what I’ve learned to an educational environment. I’m also playing with the idea of how social media can be put to good use helping rural businesses – so these kinds of events are fantastic inspiration for me.

Simon McGarr was the second session I attended and it really did strike a chord with me. I was worried that I might misquote what he said but I’m glad to see that he’s put his notes on his blog. What I got from it was the need to help people learn to question what it is that they are reading in the newspapers etc. Where did the information come from? Who’s doing the writing? What is influencing the way things are written? I liked that the emphasis was on making your own informed decisions and not just being cynical and thinking that the papers are full of lies etc. There was a facinating reference to research done by Conor McHugh of St. Thomas’ Senior National school in Jobstown in Tallaght where getting the students really involved in these issues had a positive influence on other classes. I’ve written before on how sceptical I am about statistics and this discussion was really an extension of that for me. I’ve even discussed how “facts” can be twisted with my own classes and use the example of how dangerous bread can be.

Darragh Doyle had a session giving advice to new bloggers and it was really great. Instead of him standing at the front preaching, he sat in a chair and facilitated a session where members of the audience talked about their own concrete experiences and passed on titbits of wisdom. It was facinating to hear the stories of people whose blogs I have been reading. I was able to add to the discussion myself – hopefully someone found it useful.

Martha Rotter did a presentation titled “Podcasting Inside the Evil Empire” about her experiences inside Microsoft. With a title like that I could not resist going and I’m very glad I did. The teaser video on her blog gives an idea of how entertaining it was. It was also very informative and I’d love to be able to rent the functionality for some companies here. It’s been about a decade since I first read about how well Siemens used their Intranet and other tools to disseminate information internally. Since then I’ve been facinated by the whole area of internal communications – especially as I really wonder how much waste there is when the same mistakes are made again and again because there is a lack of information inside a business.

There were a huge range of other sessions on the day and I wish they had all been videoed as I’d love to catch up on some of the ones I missed. My notebook is filled with ideas and websites that I need to followup on. It was also great for me to be able to help others and pass on some of my experiences or point them in the direction of people who should be able to help them.

Apologies to anyone I didn’t mention – there would be too many. Rest assured – there was not a single session that I did not gain something from.

Rollon next year and the next PodCamp.

Here’s another photo of me – proof that I was there. All the photos are on pix.ie: