Inside View from Ireland

Qik Sunday News

MARCUS MAC INNES (at left) was the subject of the largest image I pulled from a Qik review of the Sunday Business Post (SBP) and Sunday Times (ST). Marcus and his photos spread across two pages in the Sunday Times Culture magazine. I found several good ideas, a recurring flow of information about the Irish recession and Adrian Weckler's compelling take on technology worth reading. I make these Qik video clips because we're trying to teach the practise as part of a creative multimedia degree programme in Tipperary Institute. So I've folded several interesting items into a 10-minute Qik video clip and also part of the audio extract linked below.

Qik Sunday News

Inside Sunday Independent

TODAY'S SUNDAY INDEPENDENT includes continuing coverage of Melanie Schregardus, the Air Traffic Controller who received salacious coverage by a tabloid paper last week. [1] In fact, I bought the Sindo because I heard the story would feature inside. I've purchased fewer than 12 copies of the Sunday Independent since moving to Ireland in 1994 because I could never trust its headlines. I may buy a few more because I thought the paper's coverage of main topics made worthwhile reading. Impacts of the current recession dominate a lot of talk in Ireland today. The Independent's journalists explored ghost estates [2] [3], the need for water charges [4], cash-starved universities [5], and a full page review of a much-reviled Finance Minister [6] more than 20 years from his time in office. I cover all these topics in a 10-minute Qik clip, along with a book recommendation [7] and my explanation of why it costs so much to launch a government website. [8]

Sunday Independent

Marking Cashel Heritage

IF I DRIVE near Tipperary Institute and ask Google Maps to find "Rock" the result on my car's dashboard offers a pinpoint that dead centre in the middle of the image at left. Within a few weeks, the search engine results will also point to a very clever interpretation of the town's heritage trail because several creative multimedia students in Tipperary Institute plan to make a short video clip that will play on phones, the internet and on television sets. The idea germinated during a tasking in a social media module in which Laura Hobson made a storyboard that showed what someone could do when alighting from a bus in County Tipperary. In Cashel's case, it might mean ascending the Rock and walking the grounds where the photograph was taken. Or it could mean following prominent signage around the town to see the oldest remnants of the town wall and other artefacts from 700 years ago. If this creative multimedia project pans out as promising as it appears, I hope it suggests a day's worth of walking about Cashel. Several families visiting my adopted home this summer would like that suggestion.

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x_ref125sm #hyperlocal

Social Conversation Matters

NEVILLE HOBSON conducted a social networking Master Class for a dozen people while he visited Boston College Dublin (at left) today. He called the session "10 Trends That Matter" and effecitvely distilled ideas in 90 minutes that some take a half day to explain. One's online profile now extends far beyond a blog or a photostream and Neville illustrated that new reach by citing several first-person examples from Ford, pharmas, and tabloid journalism. "The nature of trust has changed," he said, pointing to slides released this week in the Edelman Trust Barometer. We now live in a stakeholder world where 60% of people need to hear the message from three to five sources before they believe it is true. This 21st century perspective of trust is the framework today's Transition Year students will take into the workplace and into their media consumption patterns. Research shows that we give highest credibility to specialist sources while we trust expeet voices the most. When viewed from a media analysis perspective, this research suggests people give less respect to talking heads while awarding greater value to five of their tweeting friends who say the same thing.

First Look at the iPad

Click to Play

On first look, I think I'll wait for the second edition of the iPad.

Historic: Clean Email Box

FOR THE FIRST TIME in more than 10 years of using mobile email services, my phone has no mail sitting unread or unanswered. The screenshot is proof. I needed some help getting to this historic juncture, starting with my late conversion to IMAP services. I had resisted moving from POP to IMAP because I knew I would lose some mail and that happened four days ago. That's because some of my unread email stretched back for three months. As things turned out, that unread mail concerned things I handled by text or tweet so the unopened email should have been deleted anyway.

HennessyBen and Project Mgt

BEN HENNESSY gets a place marker on Inside View because he took the shortest route from tasking to completion of an academic assessment. Asked to gather information relevant to building a personal profile, Ben went to the top of the PR mountain and asked Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their feedback on an FIR podcast. My first reaction was it was rather cheeky because FIR is one of the top-ranked business podcasts in the world and getting in the earbuds of nearly 2000 practitioners with an academic tasking seemed rather precocious. But Neville and Shel acknowledged the question and put it into the FIR Friendfeed room (a private room but open to most requests for entry) where it's getting traction. If you're interested in adding to the discussion, feel free to join the thread. I imagine some will want to know more about the source of the question. That's why I've bumped HennessyBen onto the front page of my blog for 15 minutes of fame. Expect to see more of Ben in the "project management" category as he embraces a very creative work placement programme during the summer months.

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x_ref125pr #profile

Another Privacy Warning

IF YOU PUT SOMETHING in front of a tabloid journalist, you run the risk of that information being taken out of context and repurposed for the sake of attracting a tabloid readership. If you put something onto the internet that's discoverable, you risk it being mashed up and reused under another's byline. You relinquish your expectation of privacy once a tabloid journalist starts digging around. This is not the way the world is supposed to work but it's the way things unfold at least once a month among the 2200 people I follow via Google Reader. In the case of Melanie Schregardus, her conversational blog became part of a full-page story in the Irish Mail on Sunday. By all accounts, Melanie was quoted without verification. The full-page colour coverage could damage Melanie's job prospects because her photo accompanied the article (also used without permission) and the normal assumption is that she had approved its use, along with the direct and indirect comments attributed to her in the article.

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile." - Aleister Crowley

An intranet that works. Really.

DONNA PAPACOSTA points to "an intranet that works. An intranet that boosts employee productivity and encourages the sharing of knowledge and experiences. An intranet that employees enjoy using every day." Her finding is part of William Amurgis' conversation about the intranet at American Electric Power. Donna interviewed William on Trafcom News, a podcast I'd recommend to anyone interested in communicating effectively.

Trafcom News

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Donna Papacosta -- "An intranet that works. Really."

11 MB MP3 file

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x_ref125sm #blogs

Respect for @Gavinsblog

GAVIN SHERIDAN got an unexpected phone call just before noon last Friday. It was from the administrative staff of the Moriarity Tribunal, with information about the transcripts of 370 days of public hearings. Sheridan applied to get the transcripts by using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The Irish government refused to release the transcripts because they could "be purchased from Doyle Court Reporters." Doyles quoted a fee of €16,600 with a discount of 25% for bulk buying.

"I did suggest that since the public had already paid nearly €1m for the transcripts, it seemed a little odd that I, as a citizen, have to fork out another €16,600 to get copies," wrote Sheridan on TheStory.ie.