Catching up from Dublin

topgoldscreengrab Not the most flattering photo of me that I’ve seen but quite a good one to illustrate animation in conversation.

Either that or the ‘trapped in the headlights’ perspective. :)

This is a screengrab by Bernie Goldbach, taken in Dublin, Ireland, on Wednesday during a meeting of the Irish Internet Association at the Digital Hub, at which I kicked off a discussion about social media and business.

I think the scene Bernie captured was a moment during a lively exchange of views between Damien Mulley and I about the Brand/Ross/BBC fiasco and what the driver of public complaints was: the media and Daily Mail in particular (Damien’s view), or the tech that enabled people to share their opinions with anyone with a net connection (my view). We didn’t agree; the right answer is probably both.

In any event, it was a great meeting, one that Bernie video-streamed live to people who were participating remotely. Thanks again to Brendan Hughes, chair of the IIA’s Social Media Working Group, and the IIA’S Roseanne Smith,  for enabling me to take part in such an interesting session.

Before the IIA meeting, Bernie and I had lunch with a group of entrepreneurs and talked about Qwitter, among other wide-ranging topics. That was an especially interesting conversation as one of the group was Eoghan McCabe of Qwitter (or, more precisely, Contrast, the company behind Qwitter).

Others in our conversation group were Campbell Scott, CEO of IGOPeople, Per Jacobsson, MD of nimble.ie, and Simon Fitzgerald from Text100.

I recorded much of our conversation which will be up as an FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast as soon as I get a moment to edit and produce it, likely this weekend.

That evening, I delivered a guest lecture to many of the students of the post-graduate Master’s degree course in public relations at the School of Media at the Dublin Institute of Technology, thanks to the kind invitation to do so from the DIT’s John Gallagher.

My contribution to yesterday’s FIR was some thoughts about the events of Wednesday which I recorded really late that night while they were fresh in my mind.

On Thursday, I led a one-day workshop on social media and PR for the Public Relations Institute of Ireland, which was the prime reason for my visit to Dublin. I hope to post some specific thoughts about that workshop (and the DIT lecture) a bit later. Thanks again to PRII Chief Executive Gerry Adams and Marketing Manager Cyrilla Costello for their terrific hospitality and welcome.

It’s been a busy week! And I want to especially thank Bernie Goldbach – Topgold indeed – for his selfless connectivity and enthusiasm. Krishna De, too, who added major value to the PRII workshop with her participation in the afternoon.

People like all those I’ve mentioned are reasons why I really like visiting Ireland.

Neville Hobson

Social Strategist, Communicator, Writer, and Podcaster with a curiosity for tech and how people use it. Believer in an Internet for everyone. Early adopter (and leaver) and experimenter with social media. Occasional test pilot of shiny new objects. Avid tea drinker.

  1. Brendan Hughes

    Hi Neville. It was really great to meet you during the week. Thanks for taking the time to participate in what turned out to be a really worthwhile conversation. I’ll be putting together some thoughts on what we agreed/disagreed on and I’ll send these on to you.

  4. neville

    Thanks Brendan, very good to meet you. Look forward to your thoughts. I was just reading Roseanne’s post; she’s done a great job with an excellent summary of the whole session.

    Damien, good to meet you too. I love a healthy discussion! Hope we get an opportunity to talk again some more.

  5. KrishnaDe

    Neville – great to catch up again and the participants of the workshop certainly valued your expert opinion on PR and the new rules of engagement through social media.

    I look forward to hearing the debate in your podcast.

  8. Brendan Hughes

    Neville, that took me longer than expected but the first part of my review/analysis of our discussion is now live. It is about the context for our conversation – a revolution in communications. There will be two more updates – the first on the challenges businesses are facing and the second on the opportunities that exist. It’s going to be a long week :)

  9. neville

    You too, Krishna. You as well, Eoghan. Hoping to get that podcast published within the next day or so.

    That’s a great commentary, Brendan. Keeping an eye out for the next two.

  10. Roseanne

    Thanks for the link to my post about the event. However I don’t feel that I did justice to the strength of passion evoked by your photo above :) But not just your passion, but the belief that all of those in the room have about the power of social media to invigorate businesses of any size. I really believe that if a company open the doors and invite people into the virtual parlour for a chat that while you’ll get, what we call in Dublin, one or two young gurriers shouting useless insults at you from the gate, you will get plenty more who’ll come in and share views and ideas with you about your products and services (to continue my parlour analogy, they’ll admire your china and rave about your lemon sponge :)) of which you were, heretofore, completely unaware. The gurriers will soon grow up and find something more useful to do…
    I know that since I started blogging and microblogging for the IIA many doors have opened for us that may have previously remained closed.

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