Pure Play

PR and Media training for Irish Tech companies / startups

When I needed advice last week on how to approach getting PR for dbTwang in the run up to the distribution of our business proposition to investors I called Damien Mulley and he happily assisted me.

However I do not want to do that too often - pick his brains for free that is - because he needs to earn a living and that is incompatible with giving out free advice!

Voila - the solution. Attend a paid workshop that Damien intends to give on this very topic. His post:

Forget the idea about some journalist wearing down shoe leather, wearing a hat with a press card on it and beating down doors trying to find your companyjust because it’s amazing. Journalists these days have much more to do than ever before and have press releases clogging up their inboxes twenty four hours a day. Look at the amount of downsizing in newsrooms and the increasing reliance on syndication.

If you are a startup and you are run by geniuses, you still need to market yourself and you still need to get the attention of the press to aid in the marketing of your company. Why should a journalist give you coverage if you sit in your office and expect them to find you via some magic journalistic yellow pages?

With that in mind and via repeated suggestions from a few parties :), I’m going to run a half-day paid workshop on dealing with the media/doing PR from a Tech company perspective. If there’s interest of course. Maximum of 11 per session. Minimum of 9.

We’ll go through how Irish media works (from my perspective), how to approach journalists and build a working relationship with them, what makes good press copy, how to run a combined media campaign and some basic interview skills training for print and radio.

Go to his post here to leave a comment and express your interest. And see you there :-)

keith

The SFA are the ones who have "lost the plot"

From the Small Firms Association today:

"SFA calls for €1 cut in national minimum wage rate to €7.65 per hour. Ireland has “lost the plot” in terms of having a competitive labour market"

This makes me embarrassed to be an entrepreneur. €8.65 an hour must be nearly impossible to live on - and throw in a family and a mortgage and you are finished. Is this the best that the SFA can come up with - what an unimaginative bunch. Is this part of the usual c**p that comes out of the IBEC/SFA block as part of the National Pay Talks posturing?

Michele agrees - although maybe from a different perspective.

keith

Want to have your teleco app shown on BBC?

Pat Phelan (a dynamic and global in reach telecoms entrepreneur based in Cork) is being filmed as part of an upcoming BBC mobile innovation show.

He wants you to contact him if you have a service that maybe of interest - "I will be demonstrating a number of products including Spinvox, Zyb, QIK, MAXroam" - so you know what the competition is.

And he might even blog about you :-)

keith

Very Special Offer - For One Week Only.

Over in Irishbusinesswomen.com there are all kinds of special offers going.

• Shercom are offering a 3 months free online backups
• The hamperlady is giving away chocolate
• and 3 Hunky Men are offering 15% off.

[none of those are made up:-)]

It is self promotion week (from 7th to 13th July) so you can pimp yourself and your company to the entire community.

While I was there I noticed Next Action - a newly emerged (to me anyway) Irish Web2 service for people who like to keep their todo's online.

Looks good and will be interesting to watch its evolution. They have an enterprise edition with additional functionality so that is where their revenue steam will lie. And it is iPhone friendly. Yummy.

keith

dbTwang Mission Statement

For the last couple of weeks the core dbTwang team has been working on our mission statement. This is the current version (in the full expectation that it will continue to develop and be improved upon!) and it will be used in the upcoming business proposition.

dbTwang provides a trusted place on the web where guitar players and collectors can keep important information about their instruments securely and in complete confidence.

dbTwang also provides a unique and dynamic platform that enables its members to share information selectively in a trusted and safe environment with fellow members and to complete secure trades by mutual consent.

By enriching the lives of its members, dbTwang is building the web’s favourite community for those who share a passion for guitars.

keith

[cross post from the dbTwang blog]

Next Open Coffee Waterford

If the Recession is focusing your mind on how to make sales then it might be worth considering this free event in Waterford on Friday 4th July, 8.30am - 9.30am 

Location: 
The Woodlands Hotel on the Dunmore Road, Waterford City.

Co-presenters:
Padraig Griffin from Kompass Ireland and 
Tom Doherty from SeminarBank.com 

Topic:
"Selling in a recession" 

Feel free to invite a friend to the live meeting or invite a friend to the online network www.occwaterford.ning.com 

keith

My Left Foot

is in plaster.

I broke my ankle on Saturday evening (my own fault but stone cold sober!) and so am adjusting to life on crutches for 6 to 8 weeks. Immediately obvious:

• You cannot carry anything around the house because you have 2 hands on 2 crutches
• There is no easy or safe way of going down stairs except on your bum. Especially when your bust left foot is not load bearing.

This is going to be a really  learning curve in terms of mobility and going out and about and will post about it whenever relevant points come up. Always wondered what it was like traveling with crutches.

keith

The Credit Crunch and what to do about it

A recurring theme in the media and amongst business people is the credit crunch - either the withdrawal of existing loan and credit facilities by banks or the unavailability of new facilities.

Sean Donnelly has an accountancy practice in Kilkenny and he distributes an email newsletter which focuses on practical advice to businesses who are being hit by this.

This is the current one and it contains obvious but relevant tips: Download improving_business_performance_avoiding_failure1.pdf

His website is here: www.seandonnelly.ie and his pdf is posted with his kind permission ;-)

keith

Darklight - The Future of Reputation

Darklight (a four-day event celebrating cutting-edge film, animation, art and technology) is held in Dublin each June and it starts tomorrow.

Friday morning sees a gathering of tormented souls including Damien Mulley, Jim Carroll and Niall Larkin in the mix who will discuss "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet".

10am, Filmbase, Templebar. I won't be there (what with earning a living and all of that) - but you might. Should be an interesting event.

keith

Zero'ed inbox

One of the goals that is key in Getting Things Done (GTD) is emptying your inbox. Theory being that you should have systems in place to record the stuff that needs doing, or referring to in your emails without using your inbox as a to-do list.

And despite many attempts recently I have never got to completely empty. Until now. This is a screen shot of my empty inbox.

Lovely :-). All my to-do's now in Vitalist.

keith