Archive for the 'social media' Category

Lot of travel coming up!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 17/5/2007
in Microsoft, cix, social media and speaking
. 4 Comments

In the next few weeks I am flying to Bilbao where I have been selected to be on the prestigious jury forStartup 2.0 - an international competition judging startup companies.

Then I am off to Copenhagen for Reboot 2.0 where my suggestion for a talk about the energy efficiencies in the CIX data centre has been moved to the official program! I’m really stoked about that. It is an incredible honour because the quality of speakers and delegates at Reboot is stratospheric.

And finally I’m off to Remix 07 in Madrid (yes, Spain again - is it my imagination or are the Spanish becoming really active in the web space lately?) to give a couple of talks on social media.

I’m looking forward to the events but dreading the travel. I used to love travel the the mindless security theatre we are now put through makes flying a complete PITA.

Site re-brand

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/4/2007
in Blogging and social media
. 10 Comments

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is the new title of this blog.

The old title, Tom Raftery’s I.T. Views, was more appropriate when I started the blog as my consultancy business was more techie then. With my consultancy business focussed almost entirely on Social Media now, I knew I had to make a change. Plus there is a much more widespread awareness of the term Social Media now.

I wanted to call it Tom Raftery’s Social Media Stuff or something similar, but the text in the title was starting to cover the seagull on the right!

Then I figured, Tom Raftery’s Social Media is short, sweet and to the point.

And so, a new blog title is born!

Update: D’oh! I forgot to update the blog title in FeedBurner - thanks a million Jonathan for alerting me, updated now. If I have forgotten anything else, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
Update2: D’oh! again. Thanks to thebigman87 for pointing out that I messed up the link to Jonathan’s blog (fixed now).

BarCamp Dublin was great

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/4/2007
in Blogging, barcamp, cix, climate change and social media
. 6 Comments

I attended BarCamp Dublin at the weekend and it was a fantastic day - kudos to the organisers (Paul, Elly, Joe, Paul, and Eoghan).

I was waylaid in the corridors several times so I didn’t get to as many talks as I would have liked.

I did get to good friend and TCD law lecturer Eoin O’Dell’s talk on the law, and how it relates to blogging. It was very sobering (and I hadn’t even had a drink!) and very entertaining at the same time! Eoin told us the only way to ensure we weren’t likely to be sued for something we publish online is not to publish anything online!

I also got to Darren Barefoot’s presentation on Social Media which was excellent, as you’d expect from Darren, despite the wifi letting him down.

I spent the next couple of hours catching up with people and unfortunately I missed Eoghan’s talk on usability :-(

After lunch I listened eagerly to John Ward’s fascinating story of selling Web 2.0 technologies to financial institutions. Well done John, no mean feat.

Then we had a panel discussion on social media. I was on the panel with Sean, Darren and Karlin. We had a highly interactive and wide-ranging discussion which touched on everything from Cavalier King Charles Spaniel forums (no, really!) to blog comment spam.

After the panel discussion it was time for my presentation on CIX. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people stayed awake during a presentation on data centre energy efficiency strategies and a hair-brained carbon neutrality strategy!

After this, I was interviewed for a podcast by Ina (missing out on Krishna’s talk - sorry Krishna).

Then we retired to the Lord Edward pub.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long as I had to catch the train back to Cork but it was shaping up to be a good night when I left.

We have lost faith in advertising (if we ever had any)

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 9/3/2007
in advertising and social media
. 20 Comments

We have, by and large, stopped believing in advertising. Why is that?

It is because we are sick of being lied to by advertisers. Shampoos which ‘nourish’ our hair? Now with added ‘citrus technology’? Hair is composed of dead cells. You can’t nourish dead cells.

We are being bombarded by lie-vertising and we have learned to tune it out.

I was in Seville over the Christmas break and one day, while walking down the Carretera Carmona, I saw the following ad on the side of a building site advertising the apartments being built, for sale:
Apartments for sale!

Notice the “Calidades de Primera” screaming out in ALL CAPS! Loosely that translates as Premium Quality. Yeah, right. You see that on a sign and immediately you become suspicious.

What made it all the more obvious was that not 10m away was another sign on an adjacent building site. This time though, I would be prepared to believe that these apartments are of a reasonable quality. Why? Because they don’t feel the need to say so!

More Apartments for sale

One of the big advantages of Social Media is that they are extremely transparent. You simply cannot get away with lying in a blog or podcast. You will be found out and your reputation will suffer.

Advertisers are looking enviously at the trust afforded bloggers wondering “How can I get some of that credibility?”

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