2007

Barcamp Belfast – easier to get to than Barcamp Cork or Galway

Posted on by paulbrowne

Fresh from Barcamp Dublin , we’re glad to hear that Barcamp Belfast has been announced. I can only hope that the organisers are a better looking crew than this (apologies to With the exception of Elly). But will they have better T-Shirts?

Barcamp Belfast Logo

For most people in Dublin , the Belfast Barcamp is nearer than the forthcoming Galway and Tipp events. It’s 2 hours by train from Dublin (with the venue pretty close to both the Central and Botanic rail stations) and about the same by Car , with Motorway for all but 15 miles of the journey.

If you haven’t been to Belfast before, this could be the reason you need to visit. And the excuse ‘I’ll wait until Gerry and Ian sit in the same room together’ no longer holds water.

Pings for everybody that we met at the Irish Blog Awards

Posted on by paulbrowne

People we met at the pre-blog meetup

  • Eddie from McGarr Solictors; Keep up the good work – yes at least one non-legal reader can follow your blog, and I suspect that there are many more.
  • EllyBabes. I’ve volunteered to help organize Barcamp Dublin. I don’t even have the excuse of being drunk. And now I’ve gone and put it in writing , so I’ll really have to help.
  • Tom and Damien, and ended up stuffing things into paper bags (I’m sure that wasn’t on the original invitation).
  • Antoin from Eire.com , busy handing out fon.com cards (and he has me almost sold on the concept).
  • GrannyMar. She’s a lovely lady, and was very graceful about my confusing her with Grandad’s wife.
  • Eoin O’Dell – cearta.ie, who wasn’t able to stay for the rest of the evening

Irish Blog Awards Logo

At the Awards themselves (mainly beside the bar, take from that what you will)

and pings for the people that we didn’t meet …

  • Brian Honan couldn’t make it (he was nominated for best business blog), but lost out in the end to the Ice Cream guys.
  • Ken McGuire, who I still owe a pint (unless he can come up with a ‘double or quits’ scheme).
  • Kieran from Ice Cream Ireland. He must have been surrounded by frozen food groupies 🙂
  • Lar from IQ Content – almost got talking a couple of times, but generally one or other of us got sidetracked.

Who will we be handing the 'Best Contribution' award to?

Posted on by paulbrowne

It seems like we’re handing out prizes every day of the week.

We’re (as in FirstPartners.net) sponsoring the Best Contribution to the Irish Blogosphere at the Irish Blog Awards. If this was Rock’n’roll, this award would be given for ‘lifetime achievement’ and Keith Richards, Bono or Burt Bacharach would be accepting it.
Irish Blog Awards Logo

So who will we be handing the award to on Saturday night? Who is the blogging equivalent of Keith, Bono or Burt? Will it be ….

  • Bernie Goldbach , from Irish Eyes. I want Bernie to win as he was generous with his time 2 years ago at Techcamp to a wet-behind the ears blogger.
  • Donncha from Holy Schmoly. I want Donncha to win for his contribution to WordPress – one of the best pieces of web software there is (and we use a lot of them , so we should know).
  • Tom from Tom Raftery IT. I want Tom to win as like Bernie , he’s been very generous with his advice over the years. His new tagline is ‘Highest ranked blog in ireland’ so you can’t argue with that.
  • Simon from Irish Election. Simon’s is the only blog that I wasn’t previously aware of. I still want him to win because anything that injects a bit more democracy to the current Irish political system is a good thing.
  • Rick from the Breakfast blog. I want Rick to win as he’s one of the better 2FM DJ’s (damning with faint praise), but as one of the first mainstream bloggers, he’s done a lot to raise the profile of blogging in Ireland.

So good luck all , and I’ll be speaking to you on the night.

Vote for us at the Irish Blog Awards and get loads of money

Posted on by paulbrowne

Only one bit of that headline is true. And it’s not the loads of money bit. There is a good reason why we do business technology and not politics. However , if you’ve enjoyed this blog we would appreciate your vote.

We’re up for 2 Irish Blog Awards – Best Business Blogger and Best Technology Blogger. I could say something about the competition (below) being very very good (true) , but we’d also like your vote. We’re on the ballot as FirstPartners / Technology in Plain English.

Irish Blog Awards

Best Business Blog – Sponsored by logic+intuition

Best Technology Blog/Blogger – Sponsored by Bitbuzz


Alternative nominations – 2007 Irish Blog Awards

Posted on by paulbrowne

For the consideration of the Academy , here are our Irish Blog Award nominations. We may or may not vote for them (!), but I’d like the Irish Blogging public to consider some of the alternatives to the usual big A-List bloggers (who are fairly safe to get nominated anyway :-). Also pretty sure to be nominated are last years award winners. Now , if only I can figure out how to work the award nomination form ….

Blog Awards Logo

  • Best Blog Post – David McWilliams on something even more important than blogging (!) the impending property market crash.
  • Most Humorous Post – Bifsnif. For having the best cartoons available on the web , of which this is only one sample.
  • Best Photo Blog – Ireland from a Polish perspective. Not a dedicated photo blog, but the images are as good as any that I’ve seen on the web.
  • Best Blog – Red Cardinal. He’s angling for the ‘Best Newcomer’ spot, but I think he’s worthy of ‘Best Blog’ consideration (a) Because he’s got good content and style and (b) He blogs about something relevant to all bloggers – how to get noticed by Google.
  • Best Political Blog – Dominic Hannigan. You may or may not agree with his politics (Labour), but he’s one of earliest politicians to blog, and deserves kudos for his suggestion to mail dog s**t to the Meath county manager.
  • Best Group Blog – IQ content who have just been accepted into the 9Rules network (a sure sign of blog quality if ever there was one)
  • Best Personal Blog – The Swearing Lady. But only because I’m afraid of her.
  • Best Use of the Irish Language in a Blog – 2 Years in a row for Conn? , even if an lionra has just ended. Damien has just told me that you can’t both sponsor and be up to win the award. I suppose it would be a bit awkward for the photo’s.
  • Best Contribution to the Irish Bloggersphere – Damien Mulley. He stuck his neck out and organised the 2006 Irish blog awards when nobody was sure it was going to take off. Despite the huge increase in workload, He’s organising the 2007 awards.
  • Best Technology Blog/Blogger (you mean, apart from ourselves 🙂 Justin Mason. A one man anti-Spam fighting machine. Kudos for his work on Spam Assasin ,but he’s also quite a good technical writer.
  • Best Designed Blog – Ken McGuire(Creative Imaginations). A very visually appealing blog, andmanages to get a lot of information and content across without appearing cluttered. AFAIK Ken doesn’t do freelance word press work , but if he did , you’d want him to design your blog for you.
  • Best Specialist Blog – Brian Honan, Security Watch. You mightn’t know it from his blog, but Brian does have a personality :-). A single minded dedication to security makes his blog a ‘must read’ for anybody who uses a PC.
  • Best Newcomer – A lot of the people that are newcomers , don’t look like newcomers (i.e. the quality of the blog is so good you thing they’ve been blogging forever). Perhaps this list might give you a few suggestions. My vote goes to Pat at Roam4Free.
  • Best Business Blog – McGarr Solicitors. Maybe not the best business blog, but worthy of your consideration as one of the first traditional (i.e. non tech business) bloggers out there.

We’re not nominating Best Music / Best Podcast / Best Podcaster / Best Videocast / Best Arts and Culture blogs. Maybe we should get out more.

More Posts on the Irish Blog Awards.

Update: With Conn out of the way perhaps Blunt Cogs could be the surprise Entrant. No, somebody else is going to have to nominate them.

Irish Blog Awards – Blogs of the Sponsors

Posted on by paulbrowne

I was curious about who the other sponsors are of the Irish Blog Awards. There’s no list of the ‘sponsors blogs’ , so I did a bit of investigation. The links below are either the Sponsoring companies blogs, or people that (I think) work for them. If I got something wrong, leave a comment.
Blog Awards Logo

Update 1: Edelman link corrected.