Deloitte feel the power of Social Media
Thanks to our Google alerts I just happened upon this post by Simon Murphy of Deloitte where he shares insights about the development, release, collation and results of Deloitte’s 2009 CIO Survey. It is very interesting to read that he concludes that LinkedIn proved by far the biggest pull to the survey results followed by his colleague Harry Godddard’s guest post here on the IIA blog and inclusion in the November Digital Digest. The fact that we also push these sources out to various social networks was undoubtedly helpful in spreading the word.
The survey results are well worth a read and with my nerdy social research background I am very happy to read on Simon’s blog that Deloitte plan to run the survey again next year. Nothing like the promise of some longitudinal data to get the heart racing of a cold Tuesday morning!
I said it would be annual…
Last year I delivered a special virtual hamper to all of our members. I said it would be annual so the time has come again to gather up all your goodies and share them with your fellow members. Your gift can be a discount on a product or service, an hour consultation, a free trial, whatever you would like – just use your imagination.
Send your special offer to members at iia dot ie before Friday 4th December at 5pm and I’ll wrap it up, shake some elve dust on it and send it on it’s merry way.
Thanks!
Get social on IIA.ie
Link your company profile with Twitter, IGOPeople, Facebook and more!
We’ve been doing some work in IIA.ie over the summer including moving the site to a managed server and improving the voting system to allow members more say in an easier manner in the running of the association but I think our latest update is going to appeal much more than all that!
Every member company in the IIA has a company profile and a number of users. The primary user is the user responsible for keeping the company profile up to date. This user can now add all the social networking sites where your company has a presence. Some are predefined to get you going but you’ll see from the IIA profile that we have added for example our YouTube page and our Pix.ie profile too. Other possibilities are RateMyArea company profiles, WhoseView company profiles, company Ning networks, Speakerrate profiles, Flickr pages, Google Reader Shared Items – the list goes on!
Each individual user within a company can also choose whether to display their name and role on the company profile. There is also an option for users to include a LinkedIn profile. You can see mine and Fergal’s displayed towards the end of the IIA Company profile.
All users can also continue to add news, feeds, appointments, and vacancies. If your company is a member I would strongly recommend that you take the time to update the site. We are regularly contacted by businesses seeking contractors and partners in a range of areas and while we cannot recommend one company over another we always suggest they search the Members Directory. So it’s imperative that your profile is updated. Adding feeds and other social sites will allow a potential client or partner get a better idea of your latest news, views and crew.
So what are you waiting for? Get updating!
(Have you forgotten your login details? Has your primary user gone on to pastures new? Other login problems? Email me, Roseanne, and I’ll try to sort you out.)
IIA announce new board members
Five new board members have been voted to the IIA board by the members. The new board members will join the seven sitting members.
The new board members are:
- Peter Callan – Digitalworx
- Gary Conroy – Realex Payments
- Claire Dillon – Microsoft Ireland
- Donal McGuinness – Zapa Technology
- Jason Roe - Jason Roe
A special thanks to all the members who took the time to vote in the recent elections. The new Board will hold its first meeting directly after next week’s AGM.
I would like to take this opportunity to personally welcome them all and say that I am really looking forward to the opportunity to working with them. Mind you, it’s a pity all the candidates couldn’t be elected. Members really had a top class group to choose from – I’d say there were some tough choices made!
Peter Callan is managing director of DigitalworX limited, the digital division of The Irish Times Ltd which runs Ireland.com, MyHome.ie, irishracing.com and its interest in entertainment.ie and Electric Media.
Peter joined The Irish Times in 2004 and previously held the role of group financial controller.
He qualified as a chartered accountant with BDO before spending four years with the Techrete group as financial controller. He also held a number of senior roles over a five-year period at electro mechanical group APW, including vice-president of finance for Europe Asia and South America, and general manager and finance director of its Dublin operation.
Gary Conroy is the Chief Operating Officer of Realex Payments, having been with the company since 2005.
Gary has over ten years experience in International Financial Services. Prior to joining Realex Payments, Gary managed Commodity Operations with London-based investment banking giants Goldman Sachs International, and delivered Banking Software Implementation projects around the globe for MISYS / Kindle Banking Systems.
In his work with Realex Payments, Gary helps Irish Internet businesses to optimise their online revenue potential. To this effect, Gary has authored White Papers on the area of Online Payments Strategy.
As the Chief Operating Officer of a Software as a Service (SaaS) organisation, Gary is ideally placed to facilitate sharing and developing best practice for Cloud Computing and SaaS organisations.
Clare Dillon joined Microsoft in 2003 and currently heads up Microsoft Ireland’s Developer and Platform Group. The Developer and Platform Group works with Microsoft’s customers, partners, local software companies and particularly the broad developer community to help them get the most out of Microsoft’s latest technologies.
Before joining Microsoft, Clare was product manager with Havok, the market-leading games software provider and prior to that worked as a product manager for five years with IONA technologies. Clare holds an honours degree in Pure Mathematics and a Higher Diploma in Education, both from Trinity College Dublin.
Donal Mc Guinness is Business Development Director of Zapa Technology. A former winner of the Mobile Internet Net Visionary Award, Donal was a co-founder of Itsmobile back in 1999.
Itsmobile developed and and sold award winning mobile payment and eCommerce products and services on a global basis. Payzone acquired Itsmobile in 2004 and Donal’s attention turned to offering online payment processing and fraud management solutions in Ireland, Sweden, Belgium and Germany.
Donal currently sits on the board of a film distribution company, Dublin Film Distributors, and is responsible for their new content acquisition.
Donal is particularly interested in joining the Board of the IIA to help champion the area of Content 360; essentially enabling businesses to reap the benefits of using content across all media; internet, mobile and TV.
Jason Roe is an Internet Consultant who specialises in web development, search engine optimisation (SEO) and social media. He has been working in the Internet and Technology sector for the last six years and was previously involved in a number of high profile projects such as CRO.ie, Independent.ie, Herald.ie and more recently in social media innovations by Enterprise Ireland.
Jason is a strong advocate of blogging, coworking and the development of regional events, networking and training opportunities. He is active at the grassroots level and is involved in organising BTW meetups and Bizcamp.ie.
Summer school
Oh I wish I had paid more attention in the classes where they were doing the really hard core programming stuff back when I was in college. I often wish this but I wished it even more when SQT Training recently joined the IIA and I had a chat with the charming Lily Collison on the phone and she told me about App School.
I asked Lily to tell me more about App School.
There is a business opportunity for those who can develop iPhone applications. We here at SQT Training in conjunction with Patrick Collison and Mulley Communications will present a new 5 day training course in the development of applications for the iPhone. The course termed App School teaches people how to create iPhone applications for release on Apple’s App Store.
She also told me that they have already been featured in the Irish Times and the Sunday Business Post
There is interest from all manner of people and Patrick will be giving a talk at the Irish Computer Society on Tuesday 14th July.
If you think you have what it takes to make a killer iPhone App, can you please bottle it and give some to me? Details of the course can be found at www.appschool.ie. Sign up and when you’re rich maybe you can set up a funding programme for wannabe coders like me…?
Handknit iPhone from daddytypes.com. Click image to find out how to make your own!
Feedback Friday 9: Flex those feedback muscles
After a brief hiatus caused entirely by your total satisfaction with yourselves because nobody asked for feedback we are now back with this Friday feature! Something to while away the morning… 
After you’ve voted in the Net Visionaries of course and bought your ticket for Congress.
Joy Redmond from IIA Member company Flexitimers is looking for feedback on her recently launched new and improved Flexitimers redesign. Joy tells me,
“The changes are not just cosmetic as they are using the redesign to reposition themselves as the definitive source of contract/freelance people for start-ups, web companies and SMEs. The downturn has meant a considerable shift in the jobs sector with more and more companies electing to outsource or use flexible contractors.”
They also have 2 blogs – FlexiTimes for professionals and The Flexible Future for companies and they’d like feedback on those too.
Don’t forget we do have some rules. I’ll be on a train from 1pm and then at a meeting so bear with me if the comments slow down a little then. Hopefully we’ll get a good chat going between now and then!
Feedback Friday 8: Help Dotwebs join the dots
Dorothy Ryan from IIA Member company Dotwebs is looking for feedback on her blog or DotBlog as she calls it. She puts considerable time and effort into maintaining her blog but she wonders “why visitors don’t leave messages and what I could do to improve it.” Dorothy has been a very active participant in Feedback Friday and has offered lots of great feedback to others since we started the feature so please check out her blog and share your thoughts below and give as good as you got!
We have a few guidelines for Feedback Friday so if you’re new please review.
Would you like to get feedback on a site that you own or are working on? Maybe you have a new client who wants to redevelop an existing website? Get some FREE net-savvy, design-savvy, SEO-savvy, online marketing and sales-savvy input from a broad range of experts. Contact me, Roseanne, at members at iia dot ie and give it a go!
If it’s Monday I must be in Donegal
I’m going to be busy this week meeting business people at the Donegal Enterprise Board Enterprising Donegal Week on Tuesday and others at the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Enterprise Week on Wednesday. So this is just a quick (late night!) post to say if there are any members who would like to come and meet business people who are looking for advice on using all aspects of the internet in all kinds of business I would welcome your expertise at the IIA stand between 4pm and 6pm on Wednesday 25th March. All details via the link above. At a previous enterprise event I was asked questions about choosing web developers/ designers, email marketing, using social media for business, as well as more bizarre and thankfully expected questions about the IIA and the internet in general!
If you are a member of the IIA and you think you have half an hour to spare please email me at members at iia dot ie.
Feedback Friday 3: Sonru.com stand out
Thanks again to everyone who has participated in Feedback Friday over the last few weeks. Since last week the Subscribe to Comments has been added (about time says you!) so it should help keep the conversation going.
This week’s Feedback Fanatics are Sonru.com, a member of the IIA since who have only recently gone live with their site and beta service. Edward Hendrick, MD of Sonru has a very specific aspect of his site that he would like you to focus on. He explained in an email to me:
“We are having some difficulties getting our message across from our home page. We are being confused with Skype etc, we need to get across the fact that two people do NOT have to be online at the same time.
We currently don’t have benefits up there and are trying to think of a nice way of doing so.
So we’d love some feedback on our home page and the message we are getting across. We would really appreciate people’s suggestions on how to improve it.
I think Feedback Friday is a great idea because you are getting fresh eyes giving genuine opinions, we are so used to looking at it now, it has become hard for us to judge.”
Please bear in mind the few low key guidelines and let’s hear what you think!
BizCamp Dublin 7th March & Limerick March 21st
BizCamp is a user generated business conference with open, participatory workshop-events, where content is provided by the participants. It is a new feature on the Irish business events calendar and is based on principles of interaction, engagement and conversation. It’s a free event and therefore sponsors are very welcome
I had my first experience of a camp-style conference last September which focussed on one of my main interests: social media. At that camp, I learnt lots of interest in that arena. So I didn’t hesitate to sign up for Bizcamp either – I figured if I learnt half as much as I did at Podcamp Ireland and met half as many people who have been a boon to my work with the IIA it would be a day well spent. Bizcamp Dublin is being organised by, among others, Keith Bohanna, who is on the IIA Board, and Alan O’Rourke of Spoiltchild, an IIA member. In the video below Keith explains a bit more about what to expect at Bizcamp. Watch it and then go register!
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What’s the IIA (t)wittering on about today?
- IIA News
- IRISH INTERNET ASSOCIATION PARTNERS WITH ENTERPRISE IRELAND FOR CLOUD APOPTION EVENT SERIES - SUPPORTED BY MICROSOFT
- Closed gTLDs - Comment from Irish Internet Association
- www.buyersclub.ie Launch Scholarship Programme for the Irish Internet Association (IIA) Diploma in eCommerce Management
- IIA STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO TOURISM IRELAND AWARDING CONTRACT TO LONDON BASED COMPANY
- IRISH INTERNET ASSOCIATION LAUNCH ECOMMERCE SKILLS AND JOB OPPORTUNITIES
- IIA Upcoming Events
- Diploma in e-Commerce Management. - 26th September 2013
- Diploma in Digital Marketing - June 2013 Bootcamp
- Plan and Deliver a Successful Website Build - 27th June 2013
- "Adopting the Cloud" Regional roadshow conference and clinics - CORK
- "Adopting the Cloud" Regional roadshow conference and clinics - DUBLIN
- IIA Member News
- INDEPENDENT DIGITAL TEAMS UP WITH RYANAIR.COM IN EXCLUSIVE SALES PARTNERSHIP
- Hosting Ireland becomes EURid Registrar .
- Blacknight Announce Release of .CO Asian IDNs
- It's easier than you think to win Government Business
- TIME FOR IRISH BUSINESSES TO MAKE THEIR MARK IN EUROPE
- Doing Business in Britain Event - 16 May 2013
- Blacknight to Speak on The Dos and Donts of Domains at SHIFT Conference Leading Irish Registrar talks creativity and valuation in the namespace
- IT Solutions for the Food Industry event
- Contactless Payments roll out to the South West with AIB Merchant Services
- Hosting Ireland Launches Cloud VPS Virtual Machines
