Hmm.... WordCamp Ireland is less than 2 weeks away and almost full – grab a ticket here for a fun-packed WordPressy weekend in Kilkenny. IE6 Funeral takes place on March 4th. Sadly there won’t be any such event here just yet thanks to Ireland’s dial-up districts. A snapshot of browser stats from X Comms’ busiest sites show 14% still using IE6 compared to 23% on IE7 and 28% on IE8. Congrats to Kev on his nabbing 2nd place at Interaction ‘10 in Savannah with his future mobile interfaces project. Oxegen headliners announced via @oxegenofficial earlier – Jay Z, Eminem, Black Eyed Peas, Kasabian The Prodigy, Florence and The Machine Paolo Nutini, Faithless, Stereophonic, David Guetta, Vampire Weekend, Hot Chip, Calvin Harris, The Temper Trap…... Similar posts

Ever since Obama legitimised social networking with his campaign last year in the eyes of traditional media, a lot of other politicians around the world have been trying their hand at engaging with the population online. Many candidates have taken to Twitter to connect to their potential audiences including Paschal Donohue, Mannix Flynn and Newbridge candidate Willie Crowley, who incidentally gained visibility thanks to his poster which featured the cheeky tagline ‘Put Willie In’. Twitter is hardly a good platform for debate and the discussion for complex issues yet it is useful for broadcasting where the candidate will be present or relevant party news. Blogging has been recognised as a more engaging method. The Green Party’s Ciaran Cuffe has been blogging since 2004... Similar posts

I’m in a list - it’s the Top 1oo Irish Twitterers in terms of Irish followers. I’ve just discovered that the art-tastic artivist Will St Leger is blogging. Gordon Murray has compiled a list of Irish content management systems. Kevin Dunne got an mini-interview with Obama’s New Media Director, Joe Rospars. Tea and coffee just 1c in Dunnes Stores cafes. Create your own version of Daft Punk’s Harder Better Faster...... Similar posts

Image courtesy of louis79Kevin Dunne managed to get swing a mini-interview with Joe Rospars, the guy managing Obama's digital marketing. Worth a visit over to his... Similar posts

Greetings from an overcast and dark San Francisco (it’s around 6am here) I finally mention new orts and culchore website Culch.ie with loads of faces we already know. Fantastic design, even better content. Alan and Spoiltchild are doing email marketing workshops both free and paid. Check them out. Kevin did a quick interview with Joe Rospars from the Obama digital campaign. Speaking of which, change can be big. AJ takes HeadSearch.ie to task. Alexia mentions you can be a DJ for the day on Phantom. Could we just nominate Pearl to take over the station for a day? Mine. Nobody else allowed. No. Love love lovvvvvve the packaging. And on that, is packaging design more important than advertising now? And now off for Brekky, so here’s Suzanne:... Similar posts

Champions’ League tonight, and the return fixture of the Real Madrid-Liverpool match that punctuated the Rospars debacle two weeks ago (thus reminding me of my need to start blogging on a far more regular basis). As UCD dissolves for its fortnight mid-term, the on-campus eateries face a difficult few weeks trying to overcome two hurdles: retaining a reasonable cashflow from the depleted student body in their midst, and trying to create a sense of much-vaunted community on campus. UCD has long needed a late-hours eatery; in 2006 when Cafe Kylemore won the tender for the restaurant in Science, we plebbians thought we finally had a place to congregate after hours, someone that might provide a focal point for student activity after 6pm, and valuably, somewhere with all-day hot food and... Similar posts

In the Camden Court Hotel,  on the 25th February Joe Rospars, founding partner of Blue State Digital and the New Media Director of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign, held a seminar on how he worked to get Barack Obama into the Oval Office. The seminar was extremely popular and was attended by approximately 150 people for further information on the seminar here are some useful links: Eoin Kennedy - Obama Online - Was it really that easy? BitSniff - Joe Rospars Fianna Fáil website launch Green Ink - Joe Rospars Talk: Fianna FAIL Web 2.0... Similar posts

It's true. Joe Rospars (pic left by Washington Post) was credited with having built the web-machine that helped get Barack Obama elected in November. Based partly on this success, his company, Blue State Digital, is now securing major contracts with political organisations all over the world.Its promise: "we'll help you to... rally support for your cause, build a constituency, raise money onine, drive the debate, manage your chapters or get your candidate elected".The contract couldn't be clearer: give us a huge premium fee (starting at €35,000, but going much higher) and we'll give you a slice of what made Obama's site so good.How, then, does Rospars explain this? For those seeing this outside Ireland, this is the "new" website of Ireland's largest political party, Fianna Fail,... Similar posts

After Fianna Fáil’s total screwup last week over Joe Rospar which had them state this He was also keen to stress that the party took the iniative in inviting bloggers to a talk by Obama’s New Media guy, when they could have just confined it to pol corrs. you’d think they’d learn. To me and others that line is read as “we didn’t have to invite you”. With their symbiotic relationship with the media, Fianna Fáil and all the other equally useless and backwards political parties might have survived on this alone when it came to communications but it’s not going to be so in the future. Bloggers and Twitterers reacted in seconds to the Rospars event, something which as it built, Fianna Fáil couldn’t slow or direct or what they’d prefer:... Similar posts

Joe Rospars from Blue State Digital presented a quick overview in the Camden Court Hotel on Wednesday 25th on how online media helped win the US presidential election.  The alert for the bloggers orientated session was hastily sent out and got good traction on Twitter and the blogosphere which meant approximately 200 people attended, something that would have been difficult to do in the past with such short notice.  It was clear from the Drivetime interview before the session, that he was in town to promote his work for the revamped Fianna Fail online assualt, something that upset some bloggers (it was not clear before then). Overall the session was a little light (it was free after all) and you left with a feeling that it could not have been that easy.  However there were some good... Similar posts

I’ve just put the new podcast up, a recording of a talk and Q&A session with Joe Rospars, the man behind Barack Obama’s phenomenally successful use of Web 2.0 technologies in his presidential  campaign and in particular, on his campaign website, barackobama.com. Rospars was in Dublin on Wednesday for the launch of Fianna Fail’s new... Similar posts

Thosaigh láithreán nua Fhianna Fáil an tseachtain seo. An scéal mór faoin láithreán ná go bhfuil Joe Rospars ag cabhrú leo. Chabhraigh Joe Rospars le Obama ar an mbealach chuig an dTeach Bán. Féachaimís ar an láithreán nua seo. Tá siad fós ag oibriú air. Ach tá an láithreán nua mar a bheadh polasaithe teanga an pháirtí: briste. Ar dtusach báire, seo a leanas an láithreán as Béarla: Maith go leor. D’éirigh leo é a scríobh as Béarla, don chuid is mó, agus fiú d’éirigh leo Béarlachas a chuir ar an Ghaeilge “The 72ú Ard Fheis”… Anois, seo a leanas an suíomh as Gaeilge. Tá beagnach níos mó Polannaise anseo ná Gaeilge Go bunúsach, tá an leathannach Gaeilge as Béarla. Agus maith thú, a Bhrian. Bhí tú in ann píosa... Similar posts

Joe Rospars, one of the main guys behind Obama’s online presidential campaign, was in Dublin last night. I was blown away to hear that someone as high profile in the tech scene, someone who has genuinely used technology to change the face of the political world was doing a talk/Q&A for bloggers. Better yet, it was free. Quite a bit of blogging/twittering etc. amounts to little more than saber rattling, and isn’t all that relevant in the real world. But that’s what’s so amazing about what Obama/ Joe Rospars/ Blue State Digital achieved. I’d go as far as to say, I don’t think Obama would be in office today if he hadn’t harnessed the power of the Internet the way he did. Suffice to say, I arrived at the Camden Court hotel in Dublin, really interested in... Similar posts

On Tuesday I signed up for a talk to be given by Joe Rospars from Blue State Digital, New Media Director of the Obama Presidential campaign. I found out about it via Damien Mulley on Twitter & through Maman Poulet's blog & for me, that was a pretty good endorsement.Off I went last night & was surprised on arrival to see so many suits & handshakes - alarm bell #1. Lights were dimmed & then the Fianna Fail homepage was beamed on the screen - alarm now going ninety. Joe was introduced by Damien Blake of Strawberry Media, at whose site I had signed up for the event. Text on strawberrymedia.ie:"Joe will be discussing the lessons of the Obama campaign, how it can be applied in other fields, and will take a Q&A on his talk. Attendance at the seminar is free."If I had dug... Similar posts

As launches go the one last night was panned universally. Far from being bloggers descending on an FF event with a scent of blood it was engaged in with enthusiasm. As Gav highlights on his blog this was a different event depending on who you were. That is the issue at heart. If you are spending cash on a web strategy you better be sure to get your money’s worth in training on pitching and tone. As a seminar it wasn’t great. As a site launch it wasn’t much better, at least I thought so last night. However this morning that failure has lit a path of links through a much higher amount of bloggers than it otherwise would have. Yes it was a fail and no, many who attended aren’t happy at what what the event turned out to be, so they wrote about it. Far from emotion... Similar posts

Bloggers beware - this is only the beginning. Mulley has written about bloggers’ ire over being ‘duped‘ into a Fianna Fáil event last night, under the guise of a talk by Obama web guru, Joe Rospars, and between his post and the Slugger round-up, there’s no need to go linking to every angry blogger again here. The jist is that Fianna Fail sent out two invites - one to party stalwarts which described the launch very much as a Fianna Fail affair, and one to bloggers which failed to mention FF at all, and merely dangled the social media carrot of Joe Rospars. Hook them, and they will come. And come they did, in their droves. And lo, they were angry when they realised they were going to sit through a party political broadcast. But still, they blogged about Fianna Fail... Similar posts

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I had registered to attend last night’s seminar by the Obama presidential campaign’s New Media director Joe Rospars but, in the end, my gig broadcasting to the masses in UCD prevented me from attending. And I missed quite a storm, it seems. Basically, the event turned out to be a massive plug for Fianna Fáil’s shiny new website and the party’s arrival on New Media websites YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. This resulted in a room full of pissed off bloggers, as the open invitation they had seen billed the event as an open seminar with Rospars “discussing the lessons of the Obama campaign, how it can be applied in other fields” followed by a Q&A. No mention of Fianna Fáil. However, in the event, up popped Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan... Similar posts

Here's an issue that comes up occasionally in the world of political consulting. If you've allied yourself with "liberal" political causes in the USA, what obligation, if any, is there on you to choose for whom you'll consult in other countries? Leave aside the issue of whether you've got the necessary local political knowledge to be a good consultant outside the home country, an issue that comes up with all those Democratic consultants who head over to the UK to consult for Labour. The issue instead is knowing your client. Which is why the apparently natural gravitation of American consulting firms towards Ireland's semi-permanent ruling party, Fianna Fail, is unfortunate. Bob Shrum was on that trail for a long-time when a rudimentary Internet search would have turned up lots of... Similar posts