Please excuse the blog’s appearance at the moment. I am tidying up a few bits and bobs.
None of your holiness at CongRegation
I’m still involved with the IIA in a very roundabout way: I remained a member of the Social Media Working Group. Like any voluntary group it is active in fits and starts. I was very happy recently to get a notification about an upcoming meeting. As usual I learned tonnes and hope I shared some information myself. There was a few things that are well worth looking at if you are interested in social media so click on to read more.
- Eoin Kennedy, the group chair gave a presentation about Managing a Social Media Crisis, which is well worth a look at if you fear the worst. (But I was at pains to point out that your company is more likely not to get this amount of attention. As a complete aside I would love to do some research about how badly affected companies really are by Social Media Crises similar to those Eoin covered. I know Schoolbooks.ie didn’t seem to be… but I wonder how honest the companies themselves would be in responding to research questions.)
- Lisa Jackson of Leman Solicitors. gave a presentation about the legal aspects of creating Social Media Guidelines for the workplace. This includes very helpful tips and advice and is well worth a look. Also lovely use of Prezi 🙂
- Lastly the aforementioned Eoin Kennedy has taken it upon himself to organise a social media gathering in Cong, Co. Mayo which he is dubbing CongRegation. Here’s the deal from the CongRegation.ie website:
“CongRegation is a one day ‘un-conference’ social media gathering taking place in Cong, Co Mayo on Saturday November 30th.
This free ‘earned entry’ event focuses on peer to peer sharing of quality information and social media insights through a ‘huddle’ style collaborative structure.
Congregation also creates a fertile base for true social engagement and connection.
The un-conference takes place in the village of Cong in County Mayo with 100 speakers spread over 7 venues with 4 sessions.
With CongRegation:
- Tickets cannot be purchased.
- You pay with your insight.
- You blog your way in.
- Everyone is a speaker.
- Open sharing of insights.
- True social setting.
- Inclusion in post event eBook.
- All attendees are equal.”
I think this is going to be a very interesting, insightful event and would highly recommend that you get your thinking cap on and “blog your way in“. I hope to be there once I get my rant on…
Short post on Shortbread
I’ve never had much luck with shortbread so when I overheard one of the bloggers on Saturday talking about making shortbread for her father on Father’s Day, my ears pricked up.
Joanna of Smorgasblog shared her shortbread recipe with me on Twitter yesterday and I rustled up a batch while making the dinner and putting the nippers to bed. Yes it IS that easy.
@enormous no problem. I found it by searching for butter recipes! smorgasblog.ie/2010/07/19/sho…
— JoannaSchaff (@JoannaSchaff) June 19, 2012
The result: AMAZEBALLS. Go and make some right now. Recipe here.
All the fun of the feirm
By the end of the month the majority of the family will have spent some time on a farm. If we were in an episode of the late lamented House the team would have great fun trying to work out which one of us had been exposed to badger.
The elder Nippers are both going to farms on their turasanna scoile. Nipper 2.0 has spent the day today on Glenroe Farm and his verdict is “Awesome!” His favourite part was “touching the guinea pig and the rabbit”. What more could a boy ask for?
Nipper 1.0 will be heading to Greenan Maze. We actually visited this farm last August and I only hope Nipper 1.0 has better luck with the weather this time.
And I spent an extremely pleasant morning last Saturday on Ballindrum Farm in Athy, Co. Kildare thanks to the good folks (Amanda and Gina) in Avonmore. Why you might ask? I wondered that myself. Could it be I am now considered a tweeter of some influence? It certainly not due to my blogging efforts. I suspect it might be because I’m a mum that converses with other mums online much to The Meyler’s chagrin.
Why question these things? Never look a gift cow in the mouth I say and off I took myself with a lovely gang of pop culture and food bloggers (Okay I probably fall right in the middle of those two groups. Lovely to meet and make the reacquaintance of @backpedalling @thisispopbaby @ModernFarmette
@likemamuse2bake @Smorgasblog @cakeinthcountry
@ismiseadam @Culch_ie @PopCultMonster
It was a fascinating and filling morning. We were fed like kings and queens by Mary Gorman, entertained by the golden voiced Joseph Gorman (Mark my words- that kid will be a star!) and then Vincent Gorman showed us around the farm. Despite the inclement weather it was beautiful. How lucky we are in Ireland to have such luscious gorgeousness never more than an hour away. That very lusciousness (read rain), we were told, is a major contributing factor in the production of Ireland’s delicious milk. But even Vincent said you can have too much of a good thing (read rain). I have been on dairy farms before but it was really fascinating to see how technological and traceable the farming is. The farming practiced by the Gorman’s is good for the cows, good for the land and ultimately good for the consumer of their dairy products. The farm was spotless and everything was in its place.
Well nearly everything… Vincent did admit that for all their watchful care of their cows that a few months previously there had been some shenanigans among the youngsters of the herd and well, nature took its course. This meant we got to see some super cute calves though so no complaints from us!
We rounded off the day with some Make and Do – always a big hit with me and I think our friends in Avonmore were surprised by how seriously we all took this part of the day! I took it embarrassingly seriously. Basically Avonmore are running an online competition to celebrate the fact that one million glasses of milk are drunk in Ireland a day. (Yes! One MILLION! A DAY!) In order to encourage me to write about this they sent me (along with my invitation to the farm) a litre of milk, a glass and a kit to make my very own Bó.
Now I have to say I was a little dubious about this but after seeing the way those bloggers got stuck in I’m thinking those Avonmore ladies have their heads screwed on! It’s perfect timing with the summer holidays rolling in and the appalling weather with it. You can get your own kit and find out how to enter the competition over on the PeakFresh website. You will even see my little entry over there (I did mention I took it a little seriously) If it keeps your kids half as quiet as those bloggers then you are onto a winner.
So yes this post may be proudly sponsored by Avonmore and based on what I heard and saw on Saturday I have no qualms recommending Avonmore products to you. Will I be purchasing Avonmore products myself from now on? Well with a 50c difference in price between this and the Irish produced own brand in our local supermarket, four 2 litres of milk, adjusting for holidays, means a €100.00 saving per year. Economics trumps warm fuzzy feelings every time. Sorry Avonmore.
Not all bloggers are idiots or lunatics
Why not come and meet some and find out?
Last February Irish blogger Jason Roe had his 15 minutes of fame after an online tussle with some of Ryanair’s staff. I don’t know if it was a wish to prove that all bloggers, twitterers, whatever, are not actually idiots or lunatics that prompted Jason to start organising the BTW (Blogger, Twitter, Whatever) Meetups but they have been going from strength to strength since. I made it to the last one and it was a great opportunity to put a few faces to names. Embarrassingly it was rather difficult for me to keep those names attached to those faces in one instance but it had been a long day!
The next BTW meetup is on Thursday 3rd September in the Kudos Bar in the Clarion Hotel in the IFSC. There’ll be eating and drinking and it kicks off at 7pm. It doesn’t matter if you are new to blogging or tweeting or if you’re an old hand, you should come along. It will be fun, you’ll meet new people and maybe learn a few tricks about gaining international notoriety from the man himself!