Many of the delegates at IIA Congress 2009 shared their impressions, notes and photos of the Congress and now I’d like to share them with you! Please leave a comment if I have missed your review, photos or other media about the event and I would be delighted to add it.

Fred Herrera shared his notes which give an impression of the presentations in broad brush strokes and include some of his own reactions.

Krishna De shares some really evocative photos of both the Congress and the Net Visionary Awards - have a gander you may see yourself there! Speaking of which you might like to check out the “official” IIA shots on Pix.ie

Keith Shirley gives a very measured review of the two days and his feedback is appreciated. He was involved in our breakout sessions as a members of the Social Media Working Group and he also stepped up as a Social Media mentor on Day 2 so big thanks to him!

Conor Lynch includes a Qik interview with a participant of the Social Media Breakout Session in his review

Eoin Kennedy’s review includes some of the content from the Social Media Breakout Session which should help you with your Twitter strategy for starters.

Gita of Agile Technologies includes reviews of the 3 breakout sessions she attended and are well worth a look.

Fred from Channelship managed to interview two of the plenary speakers from the Congress and I’m including the vids below for you. You can hear the complete speeches from Colm Lyon, Realex Payments, Trey Harvin, dotMobi, Ronan Harris, Google and Colm Long, Facebook  as MP3s on the IIA site.

A great night was had by all last Thursday in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dublin Northwood at the Net Visionary Awards. You can check out the cut of all the winners in our gallery on the Net Visionary microsite. You can also check out more photos from the event and the preceding Congress on Pix.ie.

If you are one of the winners please click on the appropriate badge below and display it with pride!

Big thanks to Ann, Dorothy and Ivan who all entered our recent blogging competition. I thought their entries were all great: Ann’s had a lovely personal touch, Dorothy’s was creative and fun and Ivan’s was totally on message for his blog as well as sharing some great reasons with his readers about why they should come along to Congress.

In light of this and the fact there was only three entries AND because it’s Friday and I am feeling magnanimous I would like to give each of the entrants one ticket rather than award a pair to any one winner. It’s my compo and I’ll make up the rules as I go if I want to

Congratulations and see the three of you next Thursday!

I know many of you have attended far more IIA Congresses than I have. In fact you could probably describe it better than I ever could.

So I thought, “Hey why not share those descriptions with a wider audience?” Tell us in a blog post about your experiences at a previous Congress and link back to this post (so I know about your post and can read it!) We will award a pair of tickets for the two day event to the best blog post on this topic.

Your post can be about benefits you or your company got from attending a previous Congress, interesting/ inspiring people you met at Congress, something funny that happened on the way to, from or at Congress, photographs (with HIlar-i-ous captions of course ), video, audio, or video mash-up indeed. Whatever you fancy!

The competition is open until May 13th and the winner will be announced on May 15th.

I also have another competition coming up tomorrow that might be more to your taste so please stay tuned (or better still subscribe to the blog feed.)

I’m a little bit tardy in letting you know – it’s been a busy week – but we’ve extended the early bird tickets for the IIA Congress and Net Visionary Awards until NEXT FRIDAY 01 May 2009. There will be no further extensions so please book now or regret it later.

Listen you’d be giving out later if I didn’t remind you !

And while I have you, you only have until next Friday also to vote in the Net Visionary Awards so get over there and cast your votes and get your warm fuzzy feeling on a cold damp Friday.

Have a great weekend!

I hope you have seen yesterday’s news that the speakers for the plenary sessions at IIA Congress 2009 on May 21st – 22nd in the Crowne Plaza in Santry, Dublin have been announced.

In the morning we have speakers from Facebook, Realex Payments, DotMobi and Google sharing their expert perspective on Better Business Online in a Tough Economy: Money, Marketing, Monitoring & Mobile sponsored by Realex Payments. The afternoon will lead on with breakout sessions organised by the IIA Working Groups and focusing the theme within their particular areas of expertise. Delegates will also be able to book one-to-one web strategy clinics to help them work out some of their gnarlier online business issues. These were really popular last year so we are expanding them this year.

That evening will see the announcement of the 2009 Net Visionary Award winners and if that’s not enough I will be organising our inaugural Meetball* – a demonstration and networking breakfast on May 22nd.

I hope this announcement has piqued your interest and I want to make sure you get there at the best price possible.

Currently we are offering Early Bird tickets for Congress to members and non-members until 17th April (2 more weeks). These tickets are as low as EUR195.00 for members to attend Congress only. This can be combined with a ticket for the Net Visionary awards for as low as EUR325.00 for members purchasing an Early Bird ticket. All the information is available on our Congress subsite.

But I can go one better. Please use this code blong09 to get 20% off the price of your ticket for Congress 2009 in whichever combination suits you. Book here and book now (or at least before 17th April to get the best price going.)

(This is getting cheesy but) Not cheap enough for you? If you would like a free ticket then take a bite of our referral scheme. Contact me, Roseanne, at members@iia.ie for your unique referral code that will give your contacts 20% off. Pimp it out anywhere you like: on your blog, in your email signature, on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, IGOPeople, wherever. If  five tickets of any kind are sold using your discount code we’ll give you a free ticket of your choosing.

*Meetball: why is it called Meetball? Ball is the Irish for member

This month’s Digital Digest is now available. It includes:

• A reminder that nominations close TOMORROW for the 2009 Net Visionary Awards. Nominate your Net Visionary now or regret it later!
• Details about Congress 09 and a reminder to book your ticket at special Early Bird prices.
• A call for expressions of interest in developing an Integrated online accounting and membership management system for the IIA
• Details about upcoming IIA events
• Member vacancies
• New member listing
• Loads of member news and events
• And much more besides