Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors at the Abbey Theatre

You'll already have seen the chance to win tickets to see Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at Dublin's Abbey Theatre over on Culch.ie. Here's the new promo video for it.

...two sets of identical twins are separated in childhood. Years later, they all show up in the same place at the same time. The Comedy of Errors tells the story of a father, mother, brothers, sisters, masters and servants, all of whom find themselves confused, baffled and bewildered by the events of a single day.

I'm off to see it tomorrow night. From what I'm hearing, it should be great.

Kill Bill 1 and 2 and Forrest Gump in one minute, one take, with titles

I really loved these - for everyone who likes watching films in one minute and one take:

Kill Bill 1 and 2:



Forrest Gump:




From director Will who you can find on YouTube.

No more My Little Piebald newsletter?

Ah boo. Just as it was getting interesting (i.e. less personal), another satirical look at Ireland is put to rest.



Email below (formatting mine):

Dear readers,

Due to one of our editors dying, and another being called up to play for the Lions in South Africa, MLP will be appearing in a different format from now on.

Starting on May 1, My Little Piebald will publish a monthly edition on our website.

The format will be slightly different but we will maintain the low standards and unfinished feel that has been perfected in the weekly mailout.

In the meantime, we are leaving you with a selection of the worst articles which have appeared in My Little Piebald since it started last May.

We will let you know by email when there is new content available on the site.

Kind regards,

MLP

I found it funny that the link to their worst articles didn't work when I got this due to a mistake in the URL. That's just my sense of humour though.

Who will rise to take their place?

The Dublin Event Guide for Free Events has a website!

Well done Joerg!

The weekly email I source a lot of what I'll be doing for the week in Dublin, written by Joerg Steemuller and with more stuff in it than you could shake a stick at has found a new home online with a great URL to boot:

http://www.dublineventguide.com/

It's up to email 93 with 3622 subscribers, with 3,230 in the Facebook Group. Go have a look. It's a great way for any arts and cultural groups or events to get the word out there too.
To subscribe to the email, send an email to dublineventguide@gmail.com with the Subject "Subscribe".

Summoning the Fail Whale - the twouble with twitters

One of the better takes on Twitter I've seen in a while from the folk over on Current TV.

Loving lamps, lints and Loki tonight in a love triangle

It's not as bad as it sounds.



Lampsy - the genius behind the I love lamp stickers around Dublin - was in touch to let me know about the new exhibition featuring themself, LadYLoKibeE and Lints in the All City Gallery - downstairs at All City Records on Crow Street in Temple Bar, Dublin - opening tonight.

The exhibition runs from March 21 to 28 from 12 to 6pm each day and you'll find them at the directions below:

Go to Dublin's Temple Bar Area. Over the Square, past Urban Outfitters, round the corner is Crow St. Walk up to Foggy Dew / Dame St end. Alternatively turn off Dame St and walk down - we're on the right hand side.

Get your house into the history books of Trinity College

At least.. that's what I think this means...



So if you'd like to help the Ents hold the largest house party that Trinity has ever seen, maybe get in touch with Nick? I'm sure they'd only be drinking tea and the like and would do the washing up afterwards... wouldn't they?

It's viral advertising but still pretty damn cool for the F1 fans

I got sent this via email today from Vincenzo who works for "viral videos production company from London" asking if I'd embed it, it being a Vodafone viral.

My initial reaction was no thanks, but after watching what they've done with a Blackberry Storm and a McLaren Formula One car, I have to admit to being impressed - looks pretty cool...



I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by them getting Lewis Hamilton to do it or that office racing track. That looks pretty funky, eh?

Harry's lost his lost kitten poster

Harry seems to be getting around the city... This was on George's Street on Wednesday:



If you can't make it out, it reads: Have lost my *lost kitten* poster. It was stuck to this pole about a week ago. Have you seen it? It it exactly the same size as A4 paper, is made of white paper and has a picture of a kitten and the words *lost kitten* on it. If you have my poster, meet me here on Sunday at 5.30pm. No photocopies. I can offer you a lift on my bike wherever you want to go after you've given me the poster. - Harry

The red lemonade girls have been poster spotting too. Jack and Marian, eh?

Someone must have done a good job then

I spotted this on the quays this morning:



Always nice to get good feedback, eh?

Daffodil Day volunteers out on Dublin streets today

It's Daffodil Day! Like himself says - buy a daffodil today. You can also plant a daff online!

From their website's Did You Know:

• One in three people in Ireland will be affected by cancer at some point in their life
  
  
• Just one box of daffodils covers the cost of one night of nursing
  
  
• The Irish Cancer Society provided over 5,700 nights of care to 1,600 families in 2008. This is a 10% increase on the number of nights and people cared for in 2007.
  
  
• Over 25,000 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year, and there will be approximately 8,400 cancer deaths
  
  
• By 2020, the number of people in Ireland being diagnosed with cancer is expected to rise by almost two-thirds.

I went wandering again from O' Connell Street to work today to talk to some of the volunteers and buy some flowers. It was quite inspiring to see faces I remembered from last year as well as meet some new people.



James Gilleran and Anna Dunne are back at the end of O' Connell Street. I stood watching for a while as people came over to get photos with him in the suit or greeted them saying "Great to see you back!" I walked over specifically to have a word. Lovely people, great ambassadors.



Ann Murphy and Anna Dunne on Westmoreland Street have been selling daffodils for 18 years now. 18 years - 13 now in the same spot! Incredible commitment.



Claire was outside the Bank of Ireland on College Green. It's her first year doing it.



Here's Valerie Robinson, Ann Roberts and Jackie Byrne - Jackie who's been doing this for nine years now tells me that all her friends are roped in - Valerie and Ann being so for five years now.



Lillian, Barbara and Daphne were outside of Trinity. Lillian is in her second year of volunteering while Barbara has been helping out on Daffodil Day for 12 years and Daphne for 10.



Here's Gillian who is volunteering for the first time with Alison and Donna from the Irish Cancer Society. Alison told me it's been a hugely busy day this year with 480 volunteers out selling, with 244 of those being new volunteers - not counting the Transition Year students.



Speaking of Transition year students, here's Eugene Kyne and Zack Lennon from Coláiste Mhuir out on Dame Street doing their bit.



Finally I met Anna and Patricia on George's Street. This is Anna's second year and Patricia's first. They seemed in fine form this morning.

In terms of what the support you give to the Society by helping them today:

The funds raised during the event are used in these vital areas:

• Patient care: Thanks to your support, around 1,600 families in Ireland will receive free care from a night nurse this year and 19 oncology liaison nurses in hospitals around the country will be on hand to give practical and emotional assistance to people with cancer.
  
  
• Information: We produce some of the latest advice and support on cancer, and free information that can really help someone who's in the dark and feeling frightened.

WELL DONE to every volunteer who went to raise money and awareness for the Irish Cancer Society this year, and to everyone who bought a daffodil or any of their products!

The Irish Cancer Society's Cancer Information Service is available Monday to Thursday 9am to 7pm (5pm on a Friday) on Freefone 1800 200 700, while their email service is helpline@irishcancer.ie.

Using simple social media tools to capture an event

(This post is an update to an earlier post I did...)

How could a cultural event, a charity or an organisation get extra free coverage for their event? Very simply it turns out.

I worked/volunteered on this year's St Patrick's Festival parade. I carried a camera and a Nokia N95 and just used twitter and photos to try capture what I was looking at.

Some of the Twitter reactions were

These are great photos - makes me feel like I'm there with you all!!

Thanks for those cool photos - looks excellent and no rain, who knew it could be like this? ;-))

http://twitpic.com/26f7o - Love the accent!! Thanks for posting these pics...I always get a little homesick on this day :( ...

Thanks for those pics Darragh, I'm there in spirit. Enjoy the remainder of the big day.

Doesn't that sound like something you'd like to hear people saying about your event?

The challenge is somehow, using text and images, to convey to someone what's going on from a different angle. While there's great TV coverage and press photographers will capture the spectacular shots, for me it's also about the experience of the people in crowds, the performers and the tourists, so I made an effort to talk to as many as I could yesterday.



Imagine that recent twitter attempts like @MIMA2009 - the Meteor Irish Music Awards and RTE's @IrlTalentShow - All Ireland Talent Show had planned it out so they could do similar, properly? This sort of stuff isn't huge budget expense, it's using simple (free) tools to connect with and engage people in a rather cool way. Those two accounts could have been very very cool but weren't.

Today FM's Ray Foley was twitpiccing like a mad yoke at last night's event which was great, except that because of his seat he looks like he was far back. Imagine someone was given press clearance to do it officially? It's something that event and marketing people need to wake up to - "Oh that looks like fun, I'll go to that when it's on again".

No one is expecting perfection - which is not the same as professionalism anyway - but it is opening the event up to a larger audience and putting a human face/name behind it. That's why I'm really looking forward to the photos from Darren Greene and Hazel Coonagh who were wandering around the route with full access yesterday.

It was brilliant too to see Denise - @stpatricksfest - tweeting and keeping people updated as well. We worked well together, me posting, she retweeting and it helped give people who weren't just following my twitter channel some flavour of the day.



In short, what St Patrick's Festival did this year was, as far as I can see, unique, and their partnership with Pix.ie was something no amount of marketing and advertising through "conventional" channels could equal. There's a record there of how people enjoyed the day, what they saw and how it was received that they can go to their sponsors with and say "Here, this is what your money did." That's different. That's special.



So how can you do that? Whatever your event or charity or organisation or campaign, how do you get people talking about what you do before, during and after the event?

Here's a few suggestions:

• Register a Twitter account. Start tweeting. Follow me - http://twitter.com/darraghdoyle and I'll tell people who you are. Not sure what Twitter is? Check out this video from Niall Harbison.
  
  
• Talk to Pix.ie about creating a group. Here people can upload photos of your event, share what they've seen and you can direct people and sponsors towards it to see what's happening.
  
  
• Get yourself a YouTube channel. For example, mine is here. You can see a wide spectrum of some of my interests and what I like to do. Look at the Performance Corporation's one - they keep a record of what they do that they can share with everyone.
  
  
• Get onto Facebook and create an event page for a date specific event and a group page for an organisation. Here's what the Peacock did for Ages of the Moon. Ben & Jerry's Ireland have 789 people they can message about their Free Cone Day in April. Here's the Independent Youth Theatre group and an event page for their Cooped Up production.
  
  
• Get a blog. Don't DARE tell me that a blog takes too much time and that you couldn't update it. Do you write press releases? Do you email people about what you do? Do you have to give your web designer copy for the website? All these can go on your blog.
  
  It doesn't have to be just written by a marketing person. Get anyone who knows what a blog is to get involved. That's what No Nonsense Insurance did.
  
  The 4DayMovie blog was done in 4 days. Seriously folks, it's easy to do with a little bit of creativity and time. A photo here, a video there, an interview, what's been said about you in the papers, what's happening - it's all there for the taking.
  
  
• Do you need a Bebo and a MySpace just because everyone else has them? Perhaps. If you're going to use them though make sure you have the right resources in place to be able to deal with them - to respond to the questions, to interact with those who follow you and to keep them updated on what's going on. There's no point in having a channel if you're not going to use it and it doesn't give anything to those watching it.
  
  
• Finally, talk to people! The names that spring to mind straight away for me are Niamh, who pretty much manages everything I do, Emily Tully on the PR side, Aisling Ryan on the event management side, Denise Rushe on Arts Management and the superlative Kathy Kinsella for volunteer coordination. Ronan Flynn and Cian McKenna are great designers to work with.
  
  You can connect with people on Twitter, on IGOpeople, LinkedIn and good old fashioned email.
  

Ask for help and advice. People are there and happy to do what they can to help. If you don't take advantage, they'll be happy to oblige.

Think about it - what do you want people saying about your event? What results do you want? Ask St Patrick's Festival who now can go with photos like these to their sponsors and say "This is what you were part of. You can be part of it again." That's worth something, isn't it?


Photo by smugairle

Irish charities - get your story featured on 4FM

This is Michael Comyn and he presents the weekend show on 4FM - the radio station two floors above where I'm sitting now - which broadcasts to counties Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Clare.



One of the interesting things he does is feature the work of an Irish charity every Sunday morning between 7.30am and 8.00am. He's very open to being contacted so if you'd like some coverage for your charity, drop Michael a line at michael@4fm.ie

Great way to get some coverage for you!

Photos from the Dublin St Patrick's Day Parade 2009

(EDIT: I've changed this post from the original to lose some stuff)

I have finally uploaded many of my photos from yesterday to Pix.ie and have included some below. I spent much of the day tweeting and twitpiccing the parade while on the route interacting with people, answering queries and helping if and where I could. I had the camera with me and swapped between N95 and camera as necessary.



I really need to thank three people in particular who were working on the Festival team and really helped me so much.

• Catherine Egan with the Press Office was fantastic and obliging and really gets why online is so important in the promotion of an event.
  
  
• Denise Rushe was an eternal font of knowledge, good humour and support and made my involvement this year that much easier
  
  
• Kathy Kinsella is *the* volunteer coordinator in Ireland and it's been a pleasure to work with her again. Super organised and efficient, she understood what I was trying to do and let me get on with it. Super stuff indeed.

The other people to thank are Marcus, Niamh, Will, Grannymar, Elly and Phil who all made the day that bit better and more fun. Also all the performers who posed for photos and put on such a great show!

Anyway - I tried hard to cut this down to only a few photos - you'll see the rest here - so hope you enjoy:
























With parade Grand Marshalls Cathriona Foley, Cork Camogie Captain, Henry Shefflin of Kilkenny and Angela Walsh, Cork Football Captain

I'll have more to come. In the meantime check out FionnTime's AMAZING bird's eye pics over O' Connell Bridge - they're quite something!

Flash mob dancing outside Dublin's Central Bank

Can you spot Ellybabes, Niamho, Ian or me dancing outside of Central Bank on Monday afternoon last?



It was brilliant fun and fair play to the Performance Corporation for organising it. Thanks also to Liana who was a wonderful dancing partner and instructor!

Extreme Sheep LED art by the BaaaStuds

Just look at this. Seriously. It's absolutely amazing. I want to know if it's real.

We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display.

Yep, another ad, but wasn't it worth it?

Lá Fhéile Pádraig shona daoibh - Happy St Patrick's Day

Today I am mostly doing


(Recognise the scarf, CA?)

and have watched the Grand Marshalls, Brian Dooher Tyrone Football Captain, Henry Shefflin, Kilkenny Hurling representative, Angela Walsh, Cork Football Captain and Cathriona Foley, Cork Camogie Captain being interviewed



and am looking at performers like





while waiting for the 2009 St Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin to start.

So as you can imagine, blogging will be light. In the meantime, keep an eye on Twitter - You can see all tweets using the #SPF09 tag here - to give you an idea of what twitterers are talking about.

I'll be uploading photos on the go there too - http://twitter.com/darraghdoyle

I added this to Culch.ie a couple of days ago but in case you haven't seen it:



Don't forget to upload any photos you have to the Pix.ie St Patrick's Festival Group. Yes, Marcus does pay me every time I mention them :-P

Enjoy the day whatever you get up to, wherever you are!

The new look Facebook homepage

Well, my Facebook homepage changed this afternoon and I assume everyone else's did too. What do you think of it?

Sneak preview photos of the Spheres event this weekend

Stu left me this link in a comment - tis handy like that, don't ya know! Some shots of the Strange Fruit people at the Spheres event.


Photos from irishstu's Flickr stream

This one IS a conspiracy theory

This one came in via email. I know who yis are!



I didn't want to go anyway, so there!! :-P

Be part of something special in Dublin next Monday

Do you remember I blogged about flash mob kissing in the Ilac Centre last year?



Well, the people behind that - Ireland's Performance Corporation - are looking for participants for what they're calling Theatrical Expression as part of the St Patrick's Festival.

Their Facebook Group Page is here.

If you're available to be in Dublin's City Centre from 4 - 7pm on Monday March 16, all you need to do to get involved is to
text YES, plus your name to 087 050 7840 or send an email to info@theperformancecorporation.com.

You could be part of something as beautiful as this was.



You never know, you may even get a snog out of it. (Snog not guaranteed!)

This is not a conspiracy theory... apparently

I got sent this randomly and unsolicited via Twitter today from someone called Joe. I haven't a clue what it's about either.



There's more on his YouTube channel and the website. If anyone has any idea, can you let me know?

Ah, my good friend Steve has pointed out it's part of the RTÉ Storyland project which starts next Monday. I see, I see...

St Patrick's Festival in Dublin and more - the top events

A tad late coming to this - or maybe exactly on time - here's my suggestions for things you can do in Dublin this festival weekend. Whatever you do, if you take photos, think of adding them to the Pix.ie official photo group.


The PDF for the official programme can be downloaded here

FRIDAY 13 - what will you do today?


Photos with permission from St Patrick's Festival

Tonight (and tomorrow) at 6,30pm and 8pm it's the free Spheres at Docklands event.

The internationally renowned Strange Fruit from Melbourne, present seven performers perched on giant, illuminated orbs.

You should note this is on the southside - see the map here - just off Pearse Street, as opposed to CHQ where events were held last year.



The Funfair at Merrion Square starts at 6pm today (finishes at 11pm), Saturday to Monday 11am - 11pm and Tuesday 17 11am-9pm. This year among other things there's a 150-foot high Jubilee Wheel.


SATURDAY 14 - tis fierce busy altogether!



Year on year, people who have done the Denny Treasure Hunt have come back to City Hall and said "Wow, I never knew that was there!" - it's basically a set of clues to find around Dublin City Centre and in various cultural centres in order to complete the puzzle. Always great fun and ideal for a group.



If running around is not your thing, how about some French Wine tasting on a tall ship in Dublin?

The sailing ship Etoile de France arrives in Dublin on Friday, March 13 to Sir John Rogerson Quay. It has been more than 60 years since a merchant ship (tall ship) has unloaded its cargo in Dublin outside Dublin Port. That's taking place today (Friday)

Sail lovers are welcome to come on board and visit the boat and/or taste the wine - admission fee €5 - on Friday 13 from 12pm until 4pm and Saturday 14th all day. It's free for under 15s and over 78s.

Disney's Darby O' Gill and the Little People is showing in the Irish Film Institute at 5pm. Hard to believe this film is now 50 years old - that banshee scared the bejaysus out of me. The film is introduced by director Jim Sheridan.



It's (obviously) not Dublin but Skyfest is in Waterford this year from 6.30pm.

FUNKY SEOMRA DANCING

The Funky Seomra is a dancing and chill-out event held monthly in the RDS Concert Hall. The St Patrick's event takes place from 8pm on Saturday and should continue until the wee hours. Tickets are €15. From the website:

Participants of all ages fill the spacious dance floor or lounge on giant Budda Bags in the chill-out area of the stunning RDS concert hall. Funky, very danceable music from many corners of the globe make it irresistible to get your groove on.

Funky Seomra cafe with The Happy Pear, salads, organic snacks and chocolate treats, smoothies and juices, specialist teas and a Chai Bar are some of the enticing aspects of the event.

The Facebook event page is here. There's also more about it on Dublin.ie.


SUNDAY 15 - have a day out



The Big Day Out is happening down at Merrion Square. A free event from 12 noon to 6pm, there's a whole lot going on.

Visual pavement art, puppets, street theatre, a movie zone, break-dancing - loads for everyone and great photo fodder. The full PDF of events is available here.



The incredibly-voiced Lenneke Ruiten is sporano at a free concert in City Hall at noon on Sunday. She performs with Sarah Groser on bass violin and Malcolm Proud on harpsichord.

They'll be performing Purcell, Handel and Couperin. No booking is required and you can read more on the Hugh Lane Gallery website.

Finally the amazing Gardiner Street Gospel Choir are performing at the Gospel Mass in St. Francis Xavier Church at the top of Gardiner Street near the junction with Dorset Street at 19:30.


TUESDAY MARCH 17 - a day for pixies



So the parade starts up on Parnell Square at 12 noon and should be over by 14:30. Pix.ie will be busy that evening, that's for sure! If you haven't seen it, check out their competition - not that it needs to be linked to again of course :-P

Then there's a big party up in the Guinness Storehouse for the Diageo St Patrick's Festival Party. Should be great fun for those going.

RTÉ's Cór na Nóg is giving a free recital in the Shaw Room of the National Gallery at 4pm. A lovely chance to hear this young choir perform time-honoured melodies such as Dublin Saunter and I'll Tell Me Ma, Irish traditional airs including Trasna na dTonnta and lots more.


I think that's enough to be getting on with. If you don't already, you should consider signing up to the DUBLIN EVENT GUIDE email - a free events email sent weekly by Joerg Steemuller that is always a great source of information about the free events happening in Dublin. Seriously, I don't know where he gets the time.

To subscribe all you have to do is email dublineventguide[at]gmail[dot]com with the subject "Subscribe" and Joerg will take it from there.

Have a great weekend, whatever you get up to!