Not so sadly as it turns out; I wasn’t in Dublin on any client sites today. The trouble is , did I miss major traffic chaos (BBC) or a slight hiccup in operation freeflow (RTE)?
BBC :
An overturned truck, which took the emergency services six hours to remove, brought large areas of Dublin to a standstill on Monday….One of the worst traffic jams the city has ever seen….the chaos led to a huge build-up of traffic, with a jam on the M1 Belfast-Dublin motorway extending as far back as Skerries, 20 miles north of the city.
RTE:
Traffic eases after truck accident…. Although there was only a marginal impact on early rush hour traffic, there were major delays in late morning.
Can I still donate my 150 quid licence fee to my blogger of choice?
What do you , Paris Hilton , Jade Goody and the contestants on Celebrity Big Brother have in common? No, it’s not some sort of bizarre male fantasy, but the value of your personal brand. These are all people , who may or may not be talented, but have transformed themselves into household names.
Wait a minute you say – I’m a (delete as appropriate) :
What’s a personal brand got to do with me? I’m (thankfully) not about to release a fitness video or a perfume. That’s only for A, B or C list celebrities. Down here in the Z-List of Technology Blogging , you get draft Web 2.0 books , and you will enjoy them!
Maybe instead of brand , I said ‘reputation’ or ‘recommendations’ you would understand better – the notion that people know of your work , and are happy to employ you on that basis. Previously , this was by word of mouth. Now , with blogging , everybody can be a minor celebrity in their own niche. We’ve written about this before (‘are blogs the new CV‘), but with tools like LinkedIn, the trend is really taking off.
Two Irish people who understand the value of a ‘personal brand’ very well are David McWilliams and Sheila o’Flanagan. Both have taken what could be mundane jobs (Economist, Writing) and turned themselves into Stars. OK , Enterprise Technology is never going to have same mass market appeal, but just as David and Sheila are well known in our own little Irish pond, perhaps someday I could be the Jade Goody of the technology world.
Update:To show the power of blogging , when I did a search for David McWilliams site, despite his massive RTE exposure , it was Joe Drumgooles blog that came up first.
Update 2: In response to a question, the use of Paris Hilton in this blog post has nothing to do with Damiens infamous ‘how to use google to get a girl and get laid‘ blogpost. Nothing at all. It has nothing to do with Britney Spears either.
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If that’s the way it’s going to be, can I give my TV Licence fee to An tImeall? In the last 18 months Conn Ó MuÃneacháin has done more for the Irish language via Podcasting than the entire team at RTE, so I’d like him to get my 150 Euro. If you haven’t yet figured out how to recieve podcasts yet, Flirt FM are rerunning them on a weekly basis.
