This year, 2010 and ME

Last year I wrote about how I'd been living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Myalgia Encepthalomyelitis, which I think is a lovely sounding name to describe a right bastid of an illness. While it had affected me badly in 2008, I thought it worthwhile to think about what I'd done in 2009 and how I am now.

Since I arrived home last Thursday I've slept approximately 17 hours a day. I had always said coming up to Christmas that I'd be taking time off and that the holidays were going to be about eating, reading and sleeping. These I have done, sleep being the priority. I'm revelling in its reparative powers, allowing thoughts to process and ideas for the new year to form.

The ME has been quite bad in the last year. The brain fog continues to affect simple memory and linguistic functions - at worse I lose the thread of a sentence mid flow and have little idea of what I was talking about (perhaps a good thing) while at other times simple words or phrases will just not appear in my mind to be said (ironically, I'm not sure of the proper way to say that).

The pain - fibromyalgia - has continued unabated, a constant presence with some days much worse than others, nightime being less about sleep and more about finding a position where my joints don't hurt. The fatigue hasn't been too bad - Sundays tend to be a literal day of rest - and hasn't prevented me from doing too much but my moods have been quite often manky and I'm surprised that certain people have been able to put up with me.

Despite all that, 2009 has been an exciting and productive one, and one I'm proud of and not ashamed to celebrate - many many festivals and events attended and volunteered on, a new job, new friends, lots of opportunities, lots of memories and experiences.

It's presented many challenges - no better or worse than those faced by others - friends lost, opportunities missed, promises not kept, lessons learned the hard way - but overall I feel I took it head on - simply because that's the only thing I could do. Whatever the downsides, the brilliant people I met in 2009 were by far the bes thing about it.

It was a year I became a real media whore - contributing to 4FM, i105107, Newstalk, Morning Ireland with Radio One and being caught on TV cameras on a couple of occasions. I've been in a lot of newspapers and some magazines. I've spoken at conferences and masterclasses.

The position with Boards.ie has widened many of the doors I had opened and moving from Community Manager to Communications Manager was a sensible and mutually beneficial move for all concerned. It teaches me a lot but I bring as much to the table. 2010 will be, in may ways, the make or break year for Boards.ie and it will be interesting to see how the input of management, of employees, of volunteers and of members will shape it and bring it closer to failure or success.

2009 also saw me work and volunteer with the Irish Blog Awards, with the Abbey Theatre, with Barnardos, with the National Campaign for the Arts, with the National Gallery, with Cinemagic, with Darklight, with the St Patrick's Festival, with the Street Performance World Championships, with the Carlsberg Cat Laughs and Comedy Carnival festivals, with Eircom, with Bórd Gáis, with the Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, with the Dublin Writers Festival, the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival, with the Science Gallery, with Culch.ie, with the Labour Party, with the National College of Ireland and Metro, with Arthur's Day and the Guinness 250 Celebrations, with ABSOLUT Fringe for the first time, with the Cork Jazz Festival, With Sony Ireland, with Toys 4 Big Boys, with ReachOut.com and more.

I got to interview and chat with many different people who do really interesting things. This in itself has inspired me in at least one project for the new year that I'll definitely be asking for help with.

I've had lots of cups of coffee with lots of people talking and advising on social media. I've had lots of invitations to events and previews. I've worked hard and benefitted from it. Laziness was never an option. Enough of that done in the past.

2010 then will be an interesting one - a busy one. I'll be launching at least two websites and podcasts and involved in the launch and implementation of more - including at least one very high profile site. I'll be event blogging and tweeting.

Most of all though I'll be working. There are a number of tourism and charity initiatives I want to assist on, as well as continuing to support the arts. As smarmy as it sounds (and belive me, I know how smarmy it sounds) I continue to appreciate the opportunities and rise to the challenges. I continue to look forward to getting to know people.

No new year resolutions for 2010. I don't need them - the to do list is long enough without them.

Happy New Year to you and yours. Hope you enjoy it. Coffee soon? :)

Interview with Donal Skehan, author, musician and blogger

It's not that I forget. Honestly, it's not. It's that I promise myself I'll do things tomorrow and then, of course, there's something else to do. I need to be more organised!

Anyhow, I'm slowly but surely catching up with things here and so I finally get around to publishing this interview with Donal Skehan, the Good Mood Food blog blogger and recently published author.

It's actually quite scary to think I filmed this on Wednesday, October 21, the day of his book launch in Dubray Books on Grafton St but am only publishing it now.

It was great though to sit down with Donal, whose blog I read and who I follow on twitter and find out more about the new book - Good Mood Food - where the inspiration came from and how he manages to fit in Industry, due to release their new single "My Mistake" on Ruth Scott's 2FM show tonight.



I've been reading Donal's book since I bought it and have promised myself to set aside time in the new year to learn how to cook properly!

In case you're interested in the launch, Donal's speech and brilliant introduction by Eoin Purcell and by Niamh Hatton of Mercier Press, are below:



Thanks Donal for your time - hope it's all going well and good luck with the new single!!

Carrying a fan for AIDA at the O2 and Odyssey this weekend

I'm fulfilling yet another "would love to do that" this weekend - stepping out on stage at the O2 in Dublin and Odyssey Arena in Belfast as part of the ensemble of Verdi's AIDA.

This production will be one of the most spectacular versions of Aida ever to be staged and will appeal to both opera connoisseurs and novices curious to experience the delights of the opera for the first time.

When I say "part of the ensemble", I mean part of the triumphal march in Act II, when the Pharaoh takes to the stage to meet his princess. I'll be one of the two fan bearers following him out and standing behind the throne. Oh, the glamour. Steph and Niamho are also taking part, thanks in part to taking the audition. Okay, okay, we just showed up.

Still though, great way to spend a Friday and Saturday night - on stage at two of the country's biggest venues, listening to live performances from the stage in a spectacular production - "very much a first for Ireland as this production of Aida is larger than any ever done before."

The production brings new meaning to ‘grand opera’ as The O2 will be transformed with spectacular sets and scenery and a cast of over 200, including 20 ballet dancers, will take to the stage in lavish costumes to perform one of the greatest operas ever written accompanied by a full orchestra and a choir of 75 singers.



The O2 will be unrecognisable when the stunning sets are built for the show. A 12 metre high pyramid will dominate the stage, along with the throne of Pharaoh, and statues of Egyptian figures as well as eight palm trees.

With principals including Rosella Redoglia as AIDA (previously Abigaille in Nabucco), Stefania Scolastici as Amneris, Ernesto Grisales, the Colombian tenor as Radames, Camilla Corsi as the Priestess and the Coro Lirico Italiano and the Sinfonica Nova Amadeus Orchestra conducted by Stefano Seghedoni, this is sure to be one of those experiences none of us will forget.

I just need to work out how to stick the phone in the costume for a sneaky twitpic.

I doubt it will be as grand as this, but here's a version of what we'll be doing:

Aida is set in ancient Egypt and tells the tale of Aida, an Ethiopian princess who is captured and taken into slavery in Egypt.

While there she meets with Radames, the Captain of the Egyptian Guards, who falls in love with her.

Radames becomes torn between his love for Aida and his loyalty to his leader the Pharaoh whose own daughter, Amneris, is in love with him.

The story reaches a climax when Radames is asked to lead the Egyptian army into battle against the Ethiopian army headed by his beloved Aida’s own father, the King of Ethiopia.

It's THE EMERGENCY of the year - Brain Cowen is kidnapped!

Funny the stuff that ends up in your inbox from some people, especially if it's a marketing ploy just to promote their very funny and topical new CD "Use Democracy Sensibly" available as a perfect christmas stocking filler now.

I'm giving some away that I, er, found, on Boards.ie here.


Use Democracy Sensibly is written and performed by The Emergency - Morgan C Jones, Eoin Byrne, Joe Taylor, Dermot Carmody, Karen Ardiff and Nick McGiveny.

I know someone who LOVES this clip from them:

Training Eircom's new online customer support team

I spent some time with Eircom's new online customer support team yesterday and Monday. Yes, that's right, Eircom are heading out into the big bad world of online and "engaging" in "conversations" with their customers on a new site to be launched, on twitter, on Boards.ie and wherever else is appropriate. Eventually.

It's a brave move for the company because let's face it, they're going to open themselves up even more to criticism and venting than they ever have before. It's very "easy" not to answer the phone but this is different. The whole organisation needs to be aware of that and I'm not sure that they are.

Now, when I say I'm "training", I don't mean I'm giving them the top 10 tips to be a customer service ninja or giving handouts drawn on posts by Godin, et al. Nor do I mean I'm advocating high fives when a query is solved, or recruiting advocates to ensure that only good stuff is said about you online. Because that sort of stuff is ultimately bullshit and there's far too much of that going on already.

This is about customer service, pure and simple. In real world terms it's someone coming into your shop with a problem and you solving it with a minimum of fuss and bother. Exciting the customer. One of the best books on customer service I've read was by Feargal Quinn about Superquinn - Crowning the Customer - and even then he just talks about how a good shop is well laid out with staff who are helpful, who anticipate the customer need and ensure it happens. Sounds simple, but a bitch to implement. Every part of the organisation needs to be bought into it.

I'm not saying either though that it's difficult to find the problems. A quick search on twitter yesterday morning brought us to Leo's tweets - and a quick reply and some fortuitous circumstances completely independent of us had the problem for Leo solved - but a valuable lesson taught. This isn't rocket science - it's just saying "Hello, I'm here to help, can I?"

I've really enjoyed watching the evolution of the Boards.ie talk to... forums, especially since Vodafone got involved (0ver 1,500 posts since September 20). Because I get emailed with every post as well as them, I get to see what's coming through. Some of it is quite harsh. Some of it fixable, some not. It is, however, valuable customer advice.

I watch how the feedback we receive on Boards.ie is - or isn't - implemented and I guess I'm lucky to be on at what I consider to be still the start-up stage of this company. Unlike massive companies like Eircom or Vodafone, I don't have a press office, a marketing team or a legal department to get things signed off by - that's me and Tom and Dav doing that between us. If something's wrong, we'll try fix it, if we can and it's fixable. If it's wrong but can't be fixed now, and isn't urgent (which is not the same as isn't "important") it gets added to the (long) list of stuff to be actioned. That's a really good position to be in. Enviable.

Will it be the same in Eircom? I don't really know how it operates at a management level. Do they know what people are complaining about? Do they look at the call centre logs, the emailed queries and say "Okay, we have a problem in this area, this needs to be fixed" and then go and actually use their authority in the company to fix it? My hope is that it's so, my gut feeling is it's not. I think people get tied up in call volumes reached, in tickets closed, in cutting call centre resources, in just answering the call and letting that be. This won't work for Eircom.

The moment someone in there starts looking at this exercise in terms of number of posts answered rather than how long it took to resolve an issue and why; the moment they're talking about standardised, templated answers, quick wins and not telling the whole truth, the whole project might as well be scrapped.

Certainly, if I were part of the management team over this effort, I'd be looking closely at the processes. How is a query received? How is it answered? What steps does someone have to take to get there? Are there unnecessary steps that can be removed? Where are the problems talking longest to resolve? Does my team have the necessary authority and buy in from the organisation to make sure that what they do, they do well, first time and every time?

I'd nearly have the people answering the queries and dealing with them and then one person looking at the issues that caused the query in the first case and how that could be resolved and feeding that back into the system. Would that work? Yes, I believe so. Would a company pay someone to do it? No. Why? Because you'd only get results after a year. That's a pity.

There's no easy win for Eircom. It's going to take a lot of hard work, determination, apologising and trial and error. It's going to cause a lot of disruption internally - if it's done right.

Rather than end on this sort of downer on a blog post, I wanted to just share some thoughts for anyone in Eircom who ends up reading this far:

1. Once you start, there's no going back. No half measures, no shortcuts, no easy answers. DO it right from the beginning. If you can't do it alone, get help. Ask for advice. Get support. This is important and you have a great chance here to do something pretty damn good.
   
   
2. While you're not in "control" of the conversation, you have no influence over what people say and you don't know what someone could come at you with, act like you do. Be calm, be friendly, be honest but above all find out what their problem/issue is and fix that as quickly and as best as possible. Easier than it sounds.
   
   It's the usual yaddah yaddah of how to talk online - don't jump in, listen first, be helpful with the advice, don't pimp your own stuff. Be the experts you are supposed to be - the experts you're paid to be.
   
   
3. Trust the guys you've hired, Eircom. From what I know of them, they seem like decent chaps. They'll need support but ultimately they're the guys you've put on your online frontline. You've hired them to do a job, let them do it.
   
   
4. Be honest. Be transparent. That will stand much better to you than just the brand guidelines. As lovely as your marketing and press people are, their message isn't what I want to hear - it's the truth about my problem and what you're going to do about it.
   
   
5. Realise you're going to learn a lot that you don't know about. Realise you're going to have to change things. Realise that this will be a measure of you as a company.
   
   
6. Don't take negative feedback personally. This is probably the biggest mistake people make online - assuming that what's written about them, their online work or the company they work for reflects on them personally. It doesn't. Not really. Not ultimately. Ignore the trouble-makers. If you can't ignore them, pity them. Their other problems are not yours. Solve what you can, when you can and be happy with the work you've done.
   
   
7. Remember - a little goes a long way. One tweet yesterday, though it didn't solve any problems, didn't fix anything or wasn't really that helpful did cause one person, previously having an awful experience with that company to react favourably to an offer of help. Don't discount that. Build on it.

It's a long road ahead. It's going to be really interesting to watch the journey.

Interview for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland

I was delighted to be asked by Digital Darragh to contribute to a podcast for the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland recently. We sat down in the Westbury and had a good chat. It's just gone live and can be heard below.

We discussed what exactly social networking is, what I get from the whole thing (that was a long segment), what people should be scared of, if anything, about blogging and about Boards.ie.

I quite like that you can hear the buzz of people, the chatter of the place, the clatter of the cups and so on around us. I wish I'd been a better speaker but it had been a long day.

The interview starts at around 30:52.


(You'll need to let it (down)load)

I'm particularly impressed to see organisations like VICs Ireland using tools like podcasts to communicate with their members. I hope those listening learned something small at least!

Good morning to you #2

Hey Jude:



How to make a baby:



It could only be the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra:



This is a panda, born in Chiamg Mai zoo in Thailand last June, at eight days old.

4 June 2009: The cub, now eight days old, tries to stand on its feet, though it won't be able to crawl until it is about 75 days old. The panda's distinctive colouring is starting to form on the eyes, ears and paws

and then another eight days later.



I'm listening to Spamalot this morning. Love this track:



Sometimes not even English means anything



Stop motion sand sculptures:



From Japan - there's a right place for everyone:



2 fingers from a Shaolin monk - one of only two people in the world who can do this

It costs €20m to build 1 km of road in modern Ireland

I interviewed Fergus Finlay, the CEO of Barnardos Ireland on Friday about their current YES/NO campaign and how cuts in the upcoming budget would affect their work and the people that they work with.

Some shocking (to me) statistics emerged in our chat, including how Thornton Hall, the new prison currently being built will cost €1,000 million in the first 10 years of operation and how it costs €20 million to build 1km of road in "modern" Ireland.

Via the Boards.ie blog:



You can read more about the campaign in this PDF download and sign the petition here.

You might also like to see what exactly Barnardos are recommending to the Government - that presentation is below:
Barnardos Key Recommendations for Budget 2010

I've arranged advertising for Barnardos on Boards.ie to help them reach their target of signatures. I hope it has an impact. Given that interview, if it doesn't, we're all in a lot of trouble. Preventing that is worth at least a signature.