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!

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!

Only a few more days to go to the announcement of the IIA & Enterprise Ireland Net Visionary Awards Shortlist. It will be announced on Tuesday 14th April and voting will open at the same time. To help you prepare for your moment of glory (and because I’m taking a few days off ) I have prepared the following badges to help you let all of your clients and customers know about your success thus far in the Awards. If it reminds people to vote for you that’s an added bonus!

FYI for your convenience the badges are all 120  x 240 standard sidebar size.

Click to access the full version of each badge and GOOD LUCK!

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

While there is no rush per se, nominations being open until 27th March, why not do it now before you forget? The next thing you know it will be Paddy’s Day and suddenly the 27th will be upon us and you will  be cursing as you try and fill in 15 whole categories in one go. Do them at your leisure. Do one a day. Just do it!