Mark Rodgers, chair of the IIA International Strategy Working Group and Director of Cipherion was a guest on yesterday’s Sunday Business Show presented by Conall Ó Móráin. You can listen to all of yesterday’s show on the Sunday Business Show site or you can subscribe in iTunes. It’s a show filled with many gems so I would recommend it.

Here is the excerpt with Mark speaking with Conall Ó Móráin about internationalising your business online.

This week I am going to hijack Feedback Friday for my own purposes. *Rubs hands* However rest assured that this is still all about you, the IIA members and all businesses using the internet in Ireland. The IIA currently has six working groups made up of between 10 and 15 expert volunteers each from all sectors and types of business in Ireland. They work hard to produce whitepapers and events. However we are not 100% sure that the medium is currently suiting the masses (whatever about the message: that’s a discussion for another day!) Therefore we would like you to take the poll below in order to let the working groups know what medium most suits you for their outputs. For example would you prefer a series of 5 minute videos to a 10 page whitepaper on a given topic? More options listed below and please feel free to add your own via the “Other” option.

20/02/2009 15:05 Edit: FYI I set this poll to one response only because we are interested in your preferred output medium. I too like to choose how I digest my material depending on a number of factors, one of the most important being whether I am using my laptop or phone for example. However if I had set it to multiple choice, as PollDaddy call it, it would have muddied the results. However I welcome the qualitative feedback via the comments – thanks!

The IIA welcomes its latest new members TV3, Ireland’s first free to air television channel that does not depend on state funding from taxpayers. TV3 are currently planning to launch a new rich media website in Autumn which will no doubt form part of their Tenth Birthday celebrations, having launched in September of 1998. (Can you believe it’s ten years!) One upcoming series on TV3 that I know many of our members will be avidly following is The Apprentice Ireland. Looking forward to hearing who the “lucky” fourteen are!

Welcome to the newest members of the IIA vStream Digital Media. vStream create innovative campaigns to connect the brand to the customer, using cutting edge technology and evolving digital platforms. They first came to my attention when Niall O’Driscoll, their creative director, stopped me on Thomas St. to say hello. We had been in primary school together. I had been working in the IIA less than a week and was delighted to meet this childhood friend working in the very same building as I. Not long after that he asked me to help out with their Irish Language voiceovers for the Referendum Commission‘s recent Lisbon Treaty campaign. I was, of course, happy to oblige (how could I refuse a former fellow Gaelscolaire?) and we have a new member as a result.

And before you ask my voiceover rates are available on request.

Maeve Kneafsey, IIA Chair, presents a website review slot on TV3′s Irelandam. Below is a list of her most recent website selection.
Also available on her company’s site Elucidate.ie.
 
www.ecocho.eu
A search engine that gives something back to the environment. For every 1000 searches you make using Ecocho, two trees will be planted funded through the proceeds from advertising. Trees are grown via official Government-accredited projects.
KPMG will run quarterly and final year-end audits on the amount of carbon credits purchased and “retired” by ecocho. It’s a win, win option for searching the net.

www.google.com/health
Let’s start by saying if you have a health concern you need to consult a qualified doctor and not rely on the Internet to self-diagnose. Can you imagine if you got it wrong! On the other hand, it is always good to feel confident enough to ask more questions rather than feel powerless over your own health. If you want to find a good source of health information check out www.google.com/health Hopefully, Google’s highly effective page ranking system will weed out the less reliable sources in favour of the truth.

www.minclip.com
It’s summer and we are looking forward to all the kids playing outside in the sunshine with their friends. Inventing games and obstacle courses and then falling into a warm bath and bed exhausted at the end of the day. But this is Ireland and the chances are it is going to rain at least some of the time! So if you are ready to lock yourself in the shed at the end of the garden to escape your little darlings, then introduce them to a few really good websites with great games for kids. www.miniclip.com has a huge variety of really good games for kids and also shows at the top of the homepage the most popular games. It’s very easy to use and the games are excellent but you will need a fairly fast connection to enjoy the games properly.

 
www.stardoll.com
Another website full of interactive fun, but much more focused on girls and, to be honest the girl in us adults, is www.stardoll.com. Here you design your dolls outfit with the latest in fashion, as well as being able to pick your own celebrity and dress them to your taste. It’s a bit like the high tech version of those felt material dolls we used to make before the arrival of the Internet. But be careful, it is addictive!
 
http://www.jazz-clubs-worldwide.com
This is a great website for finding jazz venues across Europe and the rest of the world. You can also enjoy some video’s of artists live in those venues. Very easy to use, perhaps a bit hard to see as the type size is tiny on the homepage, but a real peep-hole into the global jazz scene.  Nice source of information if you fancy some good jazz when you take off during the summer or plan a city break.

In today’s Irish Independent’s Digital Ireland supplement Marie Boran and John Kennedy take a different angle on social networking in an article entitled Bubble 2.0. (not yet available online – go on, go mad and spend €1.80 on a copy of the Indo!)

Edited 15:56: “Bubble 2.0: Are we about to witness another technology crash?” now online.

Those interviewed make some really good points. Conor O’Neill of LouderVoice points out that “historically bubbles are when all the great ideas and grand plans are hatched and tried”. I’m always reminded about my art history classes in school when I read comments about that: (early, classical and) high period wouldn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as bubble, would it? However technological innovations in painting, sculpture and architecture are plain to see as they are the cultural artefacts that are preserved in galleries, museums and cityscapes around the world. Which Web 2.0 app will be the Sistine Chapel of the future?

Our own Fergal O’Byrne comments that many Irish businesses that were established before March 2000 are still thriving. It is this very global success that attracts all sorts of visitors to Ireland to learn about how we do this so successfully.

Pat Phelan and Tom Raftery also talk sense. Pat refers to Facebook’s finances and wonders what your local bank manager, looking at a “negative cash flow of US$150m”, would think if you said “I have an estimated value of US$15bn just like Facebook!” Tom (who currently has posted a presentation about Web 2.0 toolset for business  for those of you who just can’t get enough – looking forward to video of same) insightfully suggests that Microsoft’s purchase of Facebook was strategic: “The only logic to paying US$240m [for a 1.6% share] was to get Facebook valued beyond anyone else’s reach”. Mmm liking the taste of the wine from that poisoned chalice, Facebook?

Also interviewed in the article are three others who spoke at our recent Congress: Philip Macartney and Mark Charkin from Bebo with the last word going to Barry Meehan from Worldwide Cycles, living proof that blogging can make you money.

One thing that surprised me in all of this talk (and a delegate at the Congress also mentioned this to me) is the focus on advertising and marketing while there is scant talk about the collaborative power of web 2.0. The IIA recently set up a Social Media Working Group who specifically mentioned that, in order to undertake their work as a group they will be using Basecamp from 37Signals.com. I’d love to hear more about how companies are using online collaboration and wikis for their work. I would be particularly interested in hearing the experience of those who aren’t neccessarily tech companies like GPs or retail managers or those in tourism or to paraphrase the young people, “Whoever!”

John Kennedy writes in SiliconRepublic about last week’s Congress, “Bartley O’Connor, associate director of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Ireland, said there is a digital divide emerging between businesses that have broadband and those that don’t.” He quotes Bartley as saying ““This is affecting business start-ups, not just end users. There could be hundreds more businesses in the country if not for the lack of broadband. People are losing out.”

We’re acutely aware of this in the IIA. A search of our online member database using the keyword Donegal, for example, shows exactly how few companies in Donegal are members. (Yeeessss ROADTRIP!!) Joking aside the IIA is seeking to address this and other issues by bringing together industry experts, interested parties and stakeholders in Working Groups. In relation to this issue the Infrastructure Working Group are already busy and we expect to see a position paper from them in the near future.

Regardless of the broadband situation, the IIA is a countrywide organisation and the 4th of June will see us not quite in Donegal but in Derry running a course entitled “Making your Web Strategy pay”. This event is sold out but you can catch it again in Belfast on the 5th June.

John Kennedy also writes about how his meeting with Bebo’s Head of Sales Mark Charkin and their new Head of Sales in Ireland Philip Macartney at the IIA Congress. John describes how this pair told him about how they are ”forging alliances with major media firms including the BBC, MTV and CBS to drive its monetisation strategy.”

If you’re up and at ‘em early on Sunday morning catch the IIA CEO Fergal O’Byrne on the Sunday Business Show on Today FM at 10.30 am. (10.30 am is a veritable lie-in in our go-getter household!)