MoMA's take on Social Media - An Interview with Burnette & Samra

December 23, 2009

Allegra Burnette (Creative Director, Digital Media) and Victor Samra (Digital Media Marketing Manager) from MoMA talk about their web and social media strategies....


Allegra, when we talked about a year and a half ago, you were doing some cutting edge stuff with iTunes U, as well as a YouTube channel, Blog posts, and an interesting project with teens and podcasts.

Can you or Victor give us an update on some of these activities? (For example, as I recall you had over 20,000 people a month downloading your iTunesU podcasts.)

Allegra: Our iTunes U and YouTube presence continue to be very strong, but since we last spoke, we also launched a complete redesign of our website, MoMA.org, which features (among other things) an enhanced, centralized multimedia section with media widgets that can be placed throughout our site or embedded in other sites.

[Wow! I'll say you did. The redesign is amazing! Everyone should look and learn!]

This, and the subsequent increase in Web traffic we have been experiencing, means that more people are accessing MoMA’s media content through our own site as well as other channels like iTunes U and YouTube. In addition, we are also participating partners in ArtBabble, the art video site created by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Our goal throughout is to create and showcase compelling resources on MoMA.org and distribute them to various other channels as appropriate. We also have an exciting series of exhibitions on view currently, a couple of which have accompanying in-depth subsites (moma.org/timburton, moma.org/bauhaus, and moma.org/gabrielorozco).

And when we last spoke, we were talking about the architects’ blog on the Home Delivery exhibition site. Since that time, we’ve also launched Inside/Out, a MoMA/P.S.1 blog that has contributors across the museum. We’ve all been very pleased with the reaction it’s been getting, both externally and internally within MoMA.

Those are just a couple of highlights, but there’s certainly much more!

I'm really interested to hear about what you've learned along the way, and how you have refined or changed your activities as a result.

Allegra: Well, the things we have learned along the way are probably too numerous to cover here—I think we learn something new each day—but I would say that the value of a great team and cross-department collaboration constantly gets reinforced. No matter the size of the institution or the resources available, there are never enough resources to do all the things that you dream of doing, but good people thinking creatively and working effectively can do great things together.

Okay, we are all completely blown away with your facebook stats. 190,000 fans! Can you put that into context for us? How did you get there? (in 140 characters or less :>) [It's over 200,000 now]

Victor: The main reason, I think, is peoples’ interest in and regard for MoMA’s collection, its history, and in a sense, its “brand.” I think people want to engage with the content in MoMA’s collection and be associated with it in some way. MoMA’s collection covers disciplines that people are very passionate about: painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, design, photography, film, architecture, media and performance art. People may look to MoMA as an authority in these areas and want to take part in its communities.

It also helped that we merged our page with another Facebook page that a high-school student had started a month before we started ours. I got in touch with the student a little more than a year ago to offer him the content that I was posting on our page. He was then a freshman in college and more than happy for me to be admin on his page (and he subsequently came and did an internship with me this summer!). I was able to have Facebook merge the two pages last spring.

As well, we did run a modest cost-per-click ad campaign on Facebook for about a week a few months after we created our page, which did help get the word out about our page. Facebook ads allow you to target people by their interests, so it is an efficient way to target those who might be interested in your institution.

[Here's a super interview with Victor over at Artsjournal about Twitter and FB)


What is your approach to facebook? Do you have some specific goals and metrics you are trying to achieve?

Victor: Our main goal has really just been to create a space where we can interact with our audience and foster two-way conversations, and to hopefully get our content in front of people who may not be aware of MoMA’s exhibitions or collection but would be interested in them. It’s allowed us to reach out directly to where a lot of people are already, and to open a direct line of communication between them and the museum.

As well, Facebook and Twitter are great tools for listening to what people are saying about MoMA, whether positive or negative. These are conversations that are going to take place if we’re there or not. It’s helped us garner feedback and learn more about our audience, both online and in the museum.


Can you follow the conversations of 190,000 people, or does the '90,9,1'rule apply where only 1 percent actually participate in any meaningful way? I guess what I'm wondering about is the 'depth' of engagement of fans, whether that be on facebook, or youtube, or twitter, or the next big thing. (ps what is the next big thing?)

Victor: Since most of my day is spent on other projects, I do what time allows. For Twitter, an application like TweetDeck has been essential in helping to organize the information overload that is Twitter. I have columns in the app’s interface that list tweets mentioning “Museum of Modern Art”, “MoMA”, and, of course, “@MuseumModernArt.” It really helps in finding out what people are saying about MoMA.

I absolutely agree, though, that what is important here is not quantity, but the quality of engagement. That is where the ‘value’ is for an institution and its audience. That is what will create closer relationships between the two and help to create a passionate community.

Are there correlations between fans and visits to the museum, or is that even the right question? I've been saying that people should find ways to integrate online and offline activities. Would you agree?

Victor: I can’t say we really have any hard numbers to show, but we have received a fair amount of anecdotal evidence about people visiting the museum or attending events and educational programs from hearing about them through these channels.

At the same time, about 42% of our Facebook community is outside the United States (and that’s about the same percentage of international visitors to our website). The top cities after New York in terms of fans are Milan and Rome! At one time, Milan was ahead of New York. It has been very interesting to learn about where are community is from. Italy is very well-represented in terms of visitors to the museum as well.

I would definitely agree that it is valuable to integrate online and offline activities. It is something we are working to do more and more.


One of the big questions that is coming up for a lot of people is the issue of scale and reach. 'MoMA is a world renown organization, well of course people will fan them just because.....' How can a little organization with a very small staff adapt what you are doing, or should they? Do you have the sense that a different strategy is required for smaller orgs?

Allegra: I think part of it has to be about keeping it active and engaging with your audience. And thinking about how to promote the presence to that audience also helps. As Victor mentioned, we had spikes in our fan numbers when we did Facebook ads and other initiatives, so part of it is just thinking about how to get the word out there. And as for resources, Victor does this as part of all of the other things he does in a day, so it is possible with a small staff. They just have to make it a priority. But I’ll let Victor speak for himself here...

Victor: I think there are a few things that are important for any size institution to keep in mind. This is not about blanketing people with marketing messages. People can sniff out blatant marketing in social media and it might as well be spam. This is about sharing content that your community is interested in and allowing them to share it with others. This can include giving access to the works in your museum, or sharing news about art outside your museum. I try to post things that have nothing to do with MoMA, and I think people appreciate it. It’s also about engaging people in conversation. So, it’s important to find your “voice,” one that shows personality and gives a human-face to the institution.

I’d say it’s important also to get a certain amount of buy-in from key people in your organization and to educate internally about social media. It really helps to have ‘ears on the ground’ to find content within your organization that you may work with directly, but your community would appreciate.


Any other burning insights you can share?

Allegra: Try and avoid creating a silo for your content—think across as many avenues and channels as possible without swamping yourself and your team with repetitive manual labor. We still have work to do ourselves in this area, but we’re making progress!

http://arts.typepad.com/audienceworks/2009/12/momas-take-on-social-media-an-interview-with-burnette-samra.html

Social bookmarking for business

By Mary Ellen Slayter on November 23, 2009

Today’s guest post is by Brian Link, CEO of Toobla, a social bookmarking startup based in Columbus, Ohio.

Many people are using Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit to share funny videos, obscure technology or their favorite geeky sites.

But social bookmarking also has a more practical side — you can use them every day for productive business value. Here are some of my favorite ways to use social bookmarking for business.

Discovery

Whether you’re researching a scientific topic, collaborating on a project or evaluating the competition, you’re undoubtedly trolling search engines when you could be leveraging your social network and cutting through the clutter.

Digg has an astronomically large number of users submitting the best content on the Web, which creates a great human-driven filter. If you follow people that Digg content you like, you will discover great content you’d never have seen otherwise. Monitoring your friends’ activity is a great place to start.

My username on Digg is blink21. Substitute your name into this URL: http://digg.com/users/blink21/friends/diggs to see your friends’ activity. For more interesting results, be diligent about Digging things you’re into, then visit the recommendation engine frequently. It will give you great results from inferring all kinds of things about your Digging behavior and matching you up with content bookmarked by similar users.

You can also use Delicious for business by tagging and discovering new content. If you’re interested in social media statistics, searching and filtering by tags will help you find exactly what you’re looking for.

Collaboration

My company, Toobla, is a new player in the bookmarking space. Its service is less about discovery and more about organization, collaboration and sharing.

We purport that people aren’t using bookmarking to its fullest extent because they are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of content they run across. They have bookmarked information in different browsers and trapped it inside various Web 2.0 sites. Toobla collects all your favorites and bookmarks automatically into one central library and make it visually easy to browse and share.

What’s so powerful about sharing collections of content in a business setting? Here are examples we expect will become commonplace in business bookmarking in the near future, based on what our users are doing:

• Interactive portfolios. Users are now creating live streams of their work products and building interactive portfolios as press kits. Think of it as a living, demonstrable resume. For example, a popular blogger can provide browsable copies of his or her eBooks, public speaking videos, links to books on Amazon, links to the blogs’ best content and professional headshots all in one folder.He or she can then share the folder with prospective clients with one link. Programmers, technologists and designers create folders on Toobla to highlight their accomplishments: Web sites, widgets or iPhone applications they’ve built, T-shirts they’ve designed, videos they’ve produced, articles they’ve written, etc.

• Living documents repository. Toobla users are creating folders of key content that they’d like to become required reading for new employees; a training video, an industry trade journal article, or a popular slideshare presentation. That collection of documents may change over time, but the link they share with new employees remains the same. Collecting key documents or pages from a company’s intranet may also help for reasons beyond new employee orientation.

• Product promotion. Small-business owners are creating visual collections of content for the ease of promoting their products. Small jewelry artisans such as Manda Panda Creations (aka my wife) who compete on hand-crafted goods e-Commerce sites are looking for ways to stand out and make it easier for people to discover their products. By creating a Toobla folder with links to their products they have one portable container they can embed on their blog as an interactive widget that allows a customer to visually browse their “catalog” without writing any code or using too much space on their site. It’s also easier to create a container of links to current “specials” and tweet out messages with a link to today’s deal to their fan base on Twitter.

• Crowdsourcing. For a team trying to build a complete collection of something, whether it is a list of competitors’ Web sites or sources for content on a particular topic, a Toobla folder can be shared across any network or social site encouraging other users to contribute and add items to the folder. Sites like Drop.io already make this possible over private networks. Toobla enables this publicly and creates the ability to harness the collective intelligence of peers across an industry for a common purpose.

• Interactive mash-ups. Toobla provides one other interesting feature that has great implications for business. Each folder’s content can be viewed in a custom mash-up “channel view” where the user defines how content is arranged, layered and resized. A user might take a webcam widget, a PowerPoint document, a Meebo chat widget and a company image and arrange them into four quadrants on the same Toobla channel. In doing so, they’re effectively creating their own drag and drop WebEx application they can deploy to their blog or other social networking sites to produce their own live interactive podcast.

Social bookmarking is evolving, but one theme is constant: The human element leveraged across large crowds enables new ways for businesses to discover and collaborate.

Image credit, kertlis, via iStock

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/11/23/social-bookmarking-for-business/

Get ready for an EPIC battle over Facebook privacy settings

18.12.2009
Facebook's new privacy settings have invited the wrath of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) and eight other organisations who have all filed legal complaints to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about the changes the social-networking site has made recently to its privacy settings.

The lightning growth of Facebook from a college dorm project in 2004 to the more than 350 million users of the site certainly could not happen without privacy issues cropping up. But now, thanks to the new privacy settings, users who Google themselves may be surprised to find that their entire page that they hitherto thought they had secured is now available to view, including photos and other personal information.

When it began

The saga kicked off last week when Facebook called on its users to review and update their privacy settings, promising it would roll out new tools to give users better control over their information and the audiences they want to reach. Facebook said users from all over the world have requested the ability to dynamically control who sees each individual piece of content.

The problem with the new controls is that if you changed your privacy settings in the past these will be kept as default. However, if you have never done this you will by default have status updates made completely publicly available. “Facebook has become unsafe almost overnight,” commented one user on the Facebook blog.

The key issue is that users can certainly block particular people, but can’t prevent the masses accessing their information, opening people up to potential stalker problems. Another problem the new settings pose is that third-party applications can now legitimately publish people's names and profile pictures to whoever they like. Blocking individuals won’t prevent this.

EPIC's stance

In its complaint to the FTC, EPIC said that Facebook’s changes to users’ privacy settings effectively results in information being disclosed to the public that was previously unavailable. “Facebook’s changes to users’ privacy settings also disclose personal information to third parties that was previously not available. These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy and contradict Facebook’s own representations.

“These business practices are unfair and deceptive trade practices, subject to review by the Federal Trade Commission under Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act.

“These business practices impact more than 100 million users of the social-networking site who fall within the jurisdiction of the United States Federal Trade Commission.”

EPIC has called on the FTC to investigate Facebook, determine the extent of the harm to privacy and safety and require Facebook to restore its previous safeguards.

By John Kennedy

Photo: The Electronic Privacy Information Centre and eight other organisations have filed legal complaints to the US Federal Trade Commission about the changes Facebook has made to its privacy settings.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14737/comms/get-ready-for-epic-battle-over-facebook-privacy-settings

Bridging the digital divide

29.12.2009
Broadband is a must-have for everyone in Ireland at present if we are to encourage local entrepreneurship, according to Kevin Ryan, CEO of Satellite Broadband Ireland.

Internet is the future, Satellite Broadband Ireland CEO and co-founder Kevin Ryan believes, and his company is working to connect rural Ireland to the information superhighway that leads to the digital age.

“Broadband is a must-have for everyone now, regardless of where you want to go or what you want to do,” Ryan says.

One group that will benefit from access to satellite broadband is entrepreneurs in rural Ireland. Once online, they will be able to create, develop and maintain their start-up, thereby contributing to economic growth and sustainability.

Starting a business is something Ryan knows a lot about, as he co-founded Satellite Broadband Ireland, an internet service provider that can install satellite broadband, in 2008, with Sean Óg Brennan.

“Broadband, being enabled in the most rural parts of Ireland, will help similar entrepreneurs get online, search the internet, and explore projects themselves,” says Ryan. “It’s basically bridging this digital divide that exists and opening up the whole knowledge economy.”

As part of the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) being rolled out by 3, the Mullingar, Co Westmeath-based company will provide satellite broadband services to up to 5–8pc of the 223,000 targeted buildings throughout rural Ireland, Ryan says. The contract 3 awarded to the company has led to the creation of 30 new jobs for the firm.

The NBS sees an estimated €223m investment by 3, of which the Irish Government and the European Union will contribute a maximum of €79.8m, to provide broadband services to the designated electoral districts the scheme covers.

“We created our business model a couple of years ago. We looked at the statistics in Ireland – there was a huge digital divide there,” Ryan says. “Ireland is catching up on the rest of Europe and we hope to make more inroads in this, but as regards broadband, I think it’s the same as electricity, it’s the same as water – it’s a must-have for everyone these days.”

Satellite Broadband Ireland is helping to make that must-have available to those in rural Ireland through Eulestat’s Europa 3 satellite-broadband technology.

“We’re providing a 3.6Mbps service at the minute, which is open to everyone in Ireland, and then in future, the KA-SAT, which is going to be launched mid-next year, will offer minimum speeds starting at 10Mbps going all the way up to next-generation, which is 40 to 50 Mbps,” Ryan explains. “You’re going to have digital services en masse.”

What satellite broadband offers in comparison to fixed-line and mobile broadband is speed, for rates comparable to DSL, says Ryan.

“Historically, satellite was prohibitively expensive and you were only getting speeds of about .5Mbps,” Ryan says. “Satellites, along with LTE, and all these other emerging technologies, are improving day by day – it’s just technology emerging the whole time.”

Interest in Satellite Broadband Ireland has boomed recently, especially since the NBS announcement in the past weeks.

“It’s breaking down these barriers that previously existed with people who might have looked into satellite broadband and saw the prices and saw the speeds, and certainly now they’re beginning to realise that through ourselves we can offer an affordable and viable alternative to DSL,” Ryan says. “We’re seeing a huge take-up now. The hits on our website have tripled and quadrupled in the past couple of weeks. A lot of people are taking it up now – we’re talking from the furthest reaches of Kerry to Donegal or Galway, Achill Island, everywhere. Even in urban areas where you would think that Eircom or normal DSL carriers might be able to provide a service.”

The cost of satellite broadband service to consumers within the NBS areas will be the same price as 3’s NBS mobile broadband service: €19.99 per month, plus a one-time fee of €49 for installation and hardware.

Progress has already been made in connecting rural Irish areas to satellite broadband, says Ryan.

“It’s ongoing – we have teams throughout the whole of Ireland installing. The satellite portion is going to play a part in the most rural, further west and southern regions. We’re installing daily.”

The NBS project is to be completed by 2013, but regarding when he sees a fully connected Ireland, Ryan sees next-generation access coming into play, which, he says, is going to be a combination of fibre-to-the-home, fibre-to-cabinet, LTE and WiMax.

“It’s hard to answer that one,” he says. The NBS is going to roll out the standard speed of what it has been contracted to do, but coming up behind that is the next-generation access, for example, via KA-SAT. “If you were to put a time frame on it, I would say certainly 2012–14, something around that time for next-generation speed, certainly.

“We’re looking to the future the whole time.”

By Tina Costanza

Photo: Damien Gallagher, NBS project director; Kevin Ryan, CEO, Satellite Broadband Ireland; and Sean Óg Brennan, managing director, Satellite Broadband Ireland.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14714/comms/bridging-the-digital-divide

Get ready to enjoy wireless freedom

30.12.2009
The ability to work wherever and whenever you want is possible, thanks to advances in wireless broadband technology for businesses.

Mobile-based technologies, according to Satellite Broadband Ireland’s Kevin Ryan, who has just returned from the International Telecommunication Union Conference in Geneva, will be a driving force in the future of broadband.

He cited the CEO of Ericsson, Hans Vestberg, who said that by 2014 two thirds of the world’s three billion internet users will be mobile users. “And 80pc of these will be using technologies like LTE [Long Term Evolution].”

Ryan said that technologies such as satellite broadband will also have a large role to play in the evolution of universal broadband provision.

Satellite Broadband Ireland’s service, he said, is designed to work regardless of where a user lives or works.

In the midlands, where Satellite Broadband Ireland is based, Ryan said many small businesses are moving premises to work from home or in converted garages. “The problem is many of these businesspeople live more than three miles from the nearest telephone exchange and therefore aren’t eligible for DSL broadband.”

Satellite Broadband Ireland uses technology from European technology player Eutelsat, which is investing €7m in its Irish build-out.

“The roadmap that Eutelsat has set out currently sees services of 3.6Mbps available, moving to 10Mbps next year, and there are plans to even expand this to 40Mbps or 50Mbps.”

Ryan said the service works by connecting a special satellite dish to a modem and then rebroadcasting broadband throughout the premises using Wi-Fi. “The service is robust enough to support office environments of typically 10 people or more.”

Imagine

The newest entrant to the wireless-broadband space in Ireland is Imagine, which was founded by telecoms entrepreneur Sean Bolger. Imagine recently announced it is to invest €100m in upgrading its technology, a move that could result in the creation of up to 200 new jobs.

Imagine plans to cover 90pc of the country by 2012 with WiMax services. At launch it will be available in Dublin, Athlone, Waterford and Sligo.

Bolger said Imagine’s WiMax service – which will debut at 8Mbps – is capable today of reaching 17Mbps and higher. The pricing for consumers and businesses that will adopt the service will be unveiled next week, but he promised it will come at a lower price than current fixed-line broadband services.

“4G broadband is not about speed, but about being more competitive.” He went on to say that Ireland has plenty of fibre, “now the problem is connecting to that fibre.” Bolger said WiMax could solve that access problem.

One thing is for certain, WiMax has some impressive backers. Last year, US telecoms giants Sprint and Clearwire, as well as tech firms Intel, Google, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House Networks, all agreed to invest US$3.2bn in a new mobile-broadband

company, which will deploy a nationwide WiMax network to provide broadband to consumers and businesses. In Ireland, Imagine is supported by Intel, HP and Motorola.

Vodafone

3G mobile broadband has the capability to move from 7.2Mbps today to 28.8Kbps within the next six to 12 months, explained Paddy Collins, head of SME business at Vodafone.

“We’ve invested significantly in our 3G network and in enhancing our radio access network to an IP-based transmission network.

“We will be able to offer over the next six to 12 months 28Mbps and the network will be 4G ready for LTE.”

Collins said that the new network will enable not only faster download speeds but also greater countrywide indoor and outdoor coverage.

“We cover 90pc of the country today, but we want to grow that and improve coverage in every way possible.”

Collins said there are two main type of bundles on the Vodafone mobile-broadband network – a €16.45-per-month option with a free modem and a 10GB download limit, plus there’s a pay-as-you-go option of €4.12 per day.

“People who go for the latter option tend to use it as a business backup service. Many don’t have to pay a monthly fee, but will use mobile broadband on a day-to-day basis for employees who need to stay at home but want to continue working.”

O2

The nature of mobile broadband – giving the user freedom and control – is what makes it ideal for businesses said Ronan Whelan, head of Corporate, Telefónica O2 Ireland.

This year, O2 is seeing more and more companies supplying their sales team with a mobile-broadband solution to enable them to spend more time in the field selling, while also remaining connected to the office.

“It is definitely a growing market: O2 currently has over 120,000 mobile-broadband customers on its base and this is rising. Research commissioned by O2 at the end of 2008/early 2009 also highlighted a major uptake of mobile broadband amongst SMEs in particular,” explained Whelan.

“According to the research [carried out by TNS mrbi], the number of senior SME managers using mobile broadband has jumped from 12pc in 2008’s survey to over a third at 34pc.”

This research clearly suggest that more Irish SMEs are seeing the benefits that mobile broadband can offer them in terms of convenience, productivity, cost effectiveness and control, said Whelan.

“Quick and easy installation is key, particularly for smaller businesses that may not have dedicated IT resources.

“High-speed and reliable access is also key. To that end, O2 completed a major network upgrade in 2008 readying it to offer a range of high-speed services, including HSDPA. Last year, O2 announced a new first-to-market enhancement to our mobile-broadband service, which enables customers to upload content at broadband speeds of up to 1.4Mbps,” added Whelan.

3 Ireland

While 3 only entered the SME business market over a year ago, it has already connected thousands of businesses through its price plans and services.

“We have witnessed a strong uptake amongst the business community for our mobile-broadband service. Our unique business sharer price plans can offer businesses savings of up to 20pc compared to their existing broadband choice,” explained Robert Marshall, corporate affairs manager, 3 Ireland.

“Typically, our business customers are looking for a network with a wide geographical coverage. 3 Ireland has nationwide voice and text coverage, and over 90pc broadband coverage at the moment.”

As regards the kind of businesses that gravitate towards mobile broadband, Marshall said that the customer base is a healthy mix across all sectors.

“Our business customers are looking to have their mobile office on the move, which is what mobile broadband has allowed them to do, to use all of the applications of the office while on the move.

“Many of our customers want to ensure a proper work-life balance; with mobile broadband allowing employees to work remotely, this is now a reality,” he added.

As regards the broadband checklist for businesses, Marshall is of the opinion that mobile broadband ticks all of the boxes.

“To install it, all you have to do is plug your modem into your laptop, and all the work is done for you. Mobile broadband combines the very best of fixed-line broadband connectivity with the flexibility of a mobile device.”

He is confident that mobile broadband can replace the fixed line for businesses in all instances: “3 Ireland is currently upgrading its network to I-HSPA, and is now operating on 7.2Mbps technology, 14.4Mbps next year and 28Mbps by the end of 2010, bringing higher speeds and higher capacity to businesses across Ireland.

“The next major technology leap is the deployment of LTE, with 3’s network ready. LTE has the potential to deliver significant speeds.”

Eircom Mobile Broadband

While coming from a legacy of fixed-line broadband, Eircom has been finding the uptake of its mobile broadband offering has been on the rise this year.

“We anticipate continued steady growth in the segment, as businesses look to make the most of every minute of every day. This means being connected and getting work done from every part of the country,” said Fraser Heaslip, national sales manager, Eircom Mobile for Business.

Interestingly, Eircom is finding that the conventional takers for mobile broadband – the road warriors – are not alone anymore: “The traditional office-based working model has been transformed since the advent of mobile broadband, not just for the stereotypical ‘road warrior’. Thanks to good-value pricing the mobile office is also a reality for those who only require mobility on an infrequent basis.

“Allowing staff to respond to emails and access office and web-based applications while on the move or in remote locations ensures greater productivity and, ultimately, a more agile business overall,” he added.

However, while many businesses in Ireland choose to use mobile broadband for their primary connectivity, Heaslip said most companies find that a combined broadband solution of fixed and mobile offers the most flexibility and the greatest competitive advantage.

“More and more businesses are complementing their existing fixed communications infrastructure with Eircom mobile broadband to drive additional benefits to their business and their bottom line,” he explained.

Despite the advantages of fixed-line connectivity, there is no getting away from the fact that while the advantages of mobile remains the same – mobility and quick and easy deployment – high speed and reliability, which was once the domain of fixed line, is now increasingly true for a mobile connection.

“Our brand-new network is 14.4mbps capable, even faster than the devices that are currently available. Installation takes minutes and couldn’t be easier, and Eircom Mobile Broadband customers can avail of free access to our nationwide network of Wi-Fi hotspots,” said Heaslip.

By John Kennedy

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14717/comms/get-ready-to-enjoy-wireless-freedom

RTÉ Announces Expansion of Digital Radio Network

RTÉ Radio is expanding its digital radio network, making its four nationwide FM services and an additional seven exclusive digital radio services available to over half of the population in nine counties via the digital platform.

By Christmas radio fans in counties Kildare, Laois, Louth, Meath, Offaly and Westmeath can enjoy an enhanced radio listening experience using new digital radio sets. The announcement comes as RTÉ celebrates the first anniversary of its launch of digital radio on 1 December 2008.

By re-using equipment used in previous digital trials, RTÉ has been able to deliver this expansion without incurring any capital costs. RTÉ's development of its digital radio infrastructure will allow it to continue to give Irish radio listeners the best possible services in the digital age.

RTÉ Radio Director of Operations JP Coakley says: "I'm delighted that digital radio is now available to over half the population, meaning more people can experience the benefits of digital radio. With this latest expansion of the network RTÉ Radio is contributing to the development of Ireland's digital infrastructure and bringing a new free-to-air method of radio listening to audiences in a very cost-efficient manner."

Expansion
Digital radio has been available to listeners in the Greater Dublin area, Cork and Limerick city since last year's launch which followed a twenty-month period of extensive trials. This latest expansion is the second phase in RTÉ Radio's digital radio network rollout with 52% of the population now able to access the service.

According to a recent radio listenership survey* 198,000 or 6% of adults aged 15+ live in a digital radio household. This figure is set to rise over the coming years as availability and awareness of digital radio grows and commercial broadcasters join RTÉ on the digital network.

New Experience
Digital radios provide listeners with a whole new radio listening experience. The new radio sets are easy to tune, include information on programmes, songs and artists in the radio display, broadcast a clearer sound that is free of hiss and provide owners with new radio services in addition to their favourite FM services.

The Future
RTÉ intends to roll out digital radio to 56% of the population over the coming two years. However any further roll out will require a regulatory framework that will allow commercial broadcasters to move to digital radio. This is to ensure that the whole industry moves together for the benefit of the listener. The BCI commissioned a report on digital radio in Ireland and published the findings in September this year. The report makes a series of recommendations including the establishment of a digital radio forum and the development of a policy white paper. RTÉ looks forward to the opportunity to contribute to the development of this policy.

The European Context
RTÉ's development of digital radio reflects progress in other European countries. More than 170 different radio brands already broadcast digitally in Northern Ireland and the UK. Digital radio is available throughout Northern Ireland. The UK Government is aiming to secure digital radio as the primary radio broadcast platform in the UK and is proposing that all national radio stations will be transmitted via digital technology only by 2015, signalling the end of national FM services in the UK. The UK Government has also put forward a five point plan for digital radio to be in all new cars by 2013. At present the UK market is the key supply point for electrical goods in the Republic and this migration is likely to have a significant effect on the products offered for sale in Ireland.

RTÉ Services
RTÉ's four well known services: RTÉ Radio 1, RTÉ 2fm, RTÉ lyric fm and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and RTÉ's seven exclusively digital services are all available to listen to in digital quality sound on new digital radio sets that retail from approximately €50.

RTÉ's exclusive digital radio services are Ireland's only children's radio service, RTÉ Junior; speech services: RTÉ Choice and RTÉ Radio 1 Extra; and music services: RTÉ 2XM, RTÉ Pulse, RTÉ Gold and RTÉ Chill.

http://www.rte.ie/digitalradio/faq_availability.html/

Twitter begins beta testing new business service

15.12.2009
Micro-blogging site Twitter is about to start testing a new service aimed exclusively at businesses using their service, enabling several individuals to essentially "guest tweet" from a single business account.

“It enables users to engage in more authentic conversations with businesses by allowing those organisations to manage multiple contributors to their account,” said Anamitra Banerji for product development at Twitter.

The feature, called Contributors, will allow for an organisation to represent its brand or service on one Twitter account while allowing for several contributors to post from their own account while appearing as a byline.

This feature will be supported in the Twitter API (application programming interface), which means that third-party applications, such as HootSuite, will be able to integrate this functionality, too.

Limited release initially

Contributors is first going to be released in beta to a limited number of testers and after this will get a full launch to businesses and ecosystem partners.

“Our goal at this time is to get basic feedback from business users and ecosystem partners,” added Banerji.

Banjeri also indicated that Contributors was among several new features in development at Twitter right now and that some of these new features will be available to all users while others will be targeted at a specific market.

By Marie Boran

Photo: Twitter's Contributors will allow for an organisation to represent its brand or service on one Twitter account while allowing for several contributors to post from their own account.
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14682/new-media/twitter-begins-beta-testing-new-business-service

ComReg expands fixed wireless broadband coverage by 33pc

14.12.2009
ComReg has unleashed additional wireless spectrum in the Irish marketplace which will increase the amount of spectrum available for fixed wireless broadband by 33pc.

The Irish telecommunications regulator says that 28 MHz of spectrum is being released in Dublin and Cork only (Channel F) and 56 MHz of spectrum is being released for operation on a national basis, excluding Dublin and Cork (Channel G).

These spectrum allocations are located in the upper end of the 10.5 GHz FWALA band.

Fixed Wireless Broadband has in excess of 110,000 customers, representing more than 8pc of all broadband connections in Ireland.

ComReg said it believes this increase in available fixed-wireless local area (FWALA) spectrum should help to address the spectrum needs of existing and new FWALA operators by facilitating network expansion.

It should also provide for increased availability and choice in broadband services for Irish consumers.

By John Kennedy
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14669/comms/comreg-expands-fixed-wireless-broadband-coverage-by-33pc

Social network for guitar lovers goes live

15.12.2009
A new online social network aimed at guitar lovers and collectors has gone live.

www.dbtwang.com aims to become the world’s largest online guitar database, where collectors and guitar lovers globally can not interact, but also protect their guitars and share their history.

What's on dbtwang

By logging onto dbtwang, guitar lovers can view individual profiles of guitars with details of their history and an online guitar photo gallery where they can show off their prized possessions and check out what other collectors have.

Users also have the ability to "follow a guitar" and converse with its owner.

The website so far registered more than 1,000 guitar enthusiasts. The majority of registered users are based in the US (42pc) and the UK (40pc), with the remaining 18pc made up of users from Ireland, the rest of Europe and Asia.

The site is hoping to increase that membership to more than 10,000 users worldwide over the next six months.

According to dbTwang chief executive Keith Bohanna, the new network is the first of its kind: “Up until now, passionate guitar fans have had very limited access to their peers through online forums. www.dbtwang.com will offer them a new, complete social and interactive experience, where they can share details of their collections, but also protect their instruments.

“We aim to have over 4 million dbTwang members worldwide by 2015. By that time, dbTwang will be the world’s number one online guitar database, where registered users can check up an instrument’s history and credentials before investing in it,” he added.

Vintage guitar market

The market for vintage guitars is a thriving one, Bohanna said. According to guide prices, a ’54 Fender Stratocaster would set you back between $55,000 and $100,000, while a ’58 single-cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior would have a range of between $7,000 and $13,000.

dbTwang will offer basic services free of charge but does intend to offer a premium service with a small charge for use of exclusive services, including a number of ways to protect these instruments.

“We're currently in talks with a number of established guitar businesses and individuals with regard to providing this protection and partnerships with these companies can be expected in January 2010,” Bohanna added.

Article courtesy of businessandleadership.com

Photo: Guitar lovers can now interact on the social network dbtwang.
http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14680/

Ireland has the safest web domain in Europe

01.12.2009

Ireland (.ie) has emerged as having the safest web domain address in Europe. Africa’s Cameroon (.cm) has overthrown Hong Kong (.hk) as the web’s riskiest domain, according to McAfee’s third annual Mapping the Mal Web report.
At the opposite end, Japan (.jp) is the safest country domain globally, landing in the Top 5 safest domains for the second year in a row.
Ireland's .ie domain, which is managed by the IEDR, came second, followed by Croatia (.hr), Luxembourg (.lu) and Vanuatu (.vu).
World's most heavily trafficked web domain
The most heavily trafficked web domain in the world, commercial (.com), jumped from the ninth to second most dangerous domain, while government (.gov) is the safest non-country domain.
“This report underscores how quickly cybercriminals change tactics to lure in the most victims and avoid being caught. Last year, Hong Kong was the riskiest domain and this year it is dramatically safer,” said Mike Gallagher, chief technology officer for McAfee Labs.
“Cybercriminals target regions where registering sites is cheap and convenient, and pose the least risk of being caught.”
Cameroon, a small African country that borders Nigeria, jumped to the number one spot this year, with 36.7pc of the .cm domain posing a security risk, but did not even make the list last year.
Often a typo
Because the domain .cm is a common typo for .com, many cybercriminals set up fake typo-squatting sites that lead to malicious downloads, spyware, adware and other potentially unwanted programs.
Following aggressive measures from .hk’s domain managers to clamp down on scam-related registrations last year, Hong Kong fell 33 spots from the most risky domain in 2008 to the 34th most risky domain in 2009. Now only 1.1pc of .hk sites pose a risk, whereas last year nearly one in five .hk websites were risky.
Among country domains, the People’s Republic of China (.cn) and Samoa (.ws) remained in the Top 5 most dangerous places in the last two years.
By John Kennedy
Photo: Ireland (.ie) has emerged as being the second safest country domain globally.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14562/

UCD technology to mine more than 300k articles and 4 million blog posts a day

02.12.2009

Technology developed at UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics will be used to power one of the most powerful media intelligence tools on the planet, and will mine its way through 300,000 news articles and 4 million blog posts on a daily basis.
Polecat, a market-intelligence provider based in Dublin and in the UK, has signed an exclusive, worldwide licence for advanced software algorithms developed by UCD researchers to enhance its strategic market-intelligence platform.
About the licensing
The technology licensed by Polecat arises from a research programme funded by Science Foundation Ireland at UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics. The licensing deal was negotiated by NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre and Beauchamps Solicitors, the Dublin-based legal firm.
Polecat’s MeaningMine platform analyses statistical and linguistic trends in publicly available digital and broadcast media by mining 300,000 articles and 4 million blog posts daily.
Using a combination of data mining and text analytics, Polecat can extract dominant themes and emerging trends which enables its clients to be informed, monitor and report on the value of their strategic and communication activities.
Polecat’s MeaningMine platform is part of a new market category of advanced software analytics which, according to Forrester, will fuel year-on-year growth in the business intelligence software market to an estimated US$14 billion worldwide by 2014.
According to IDC, the advanced software analytics market represents about 20pc of the overall business intelligence tools market and grew by 12pc in 2008.
What Polecat does
Using its current platform, Polecat can provide clients with insight into emerging trends, influencer networks, competitive analysis and dominant discussions empowering senior organisational strategists to keep up to date with relevant market-intelligence data.
As Polecat’s mining of digital and broadcast media grows and develops, the software tools licensed from UCD, combined with its current technology, will enable it to offer faster and more dynamic market-intelligence information to worldwide businesses and global organisations.
“We are very pleased to be working with University College Dublin,” said James Lawn, Polecat's chief executive and co-founder.
“It is a highly innovative university and, thanks to this partnership, we believe businesses and Government organisations around the world will soon be able to have truly reliable, measurable and live market intelligence available at their fingertips.”
The advanced software algorithms, or machine-learning technologies, developed by Prof Pádraig Cunningham and Dr Derek Greene, researchers in UCD’s School of Computer Science and Informatics, are based upon "unsupervised learning" algorithms, which enable smarter and faster ways to collect and analyse vast amounts of online data from which meaningful knowledge can be extracted.
If there is a huge amount of data ...
This technology has particular applications where there are enormous amounts of data to be extracted and analysed from “noisy” sources, such as the internet and internal organisation networks.
“The collaboration with Polecat is very valuable to us as their experience in market intelligence will inform us about the technology requirements and research challenges in this area,” explained Cunningham, UCD Professor of Knowledge and Data Engineering.
“Research progress in this area requires collaboration between business experts and technologists in order to direct research to address real business requirements.”
Significance
Dr François Pichot, NovaUCD, technology transfer team, said that the licensing deal was significant for UCD on several levels.
“Information overload is now a well-known problem in the current data-rich environment, and is not likely to diminish. UCD has licensed advanced software tools to Polecat, enabling meaningful knowledge to be extracted from vast amounts of data.
“This is an exciting space, one which UCD is motivated to see flourish and is all the more relevant in the context of the development of a Smart Economy.”
Polecat, founded in 2007 by James Lawn and Bronwyn Kunhardt, will continue to work with UCD to further develop this technology.
By John Kennedy
Photo: Polecat online.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14572/

Email is dead, long live collaboration!

02.12.2009

Email is losing effectiveness as a standalone communications medium, according to international expert Erik van Ommeren of Sogeti, who claims collaborative technology is the new paradigm.
Speaking at a SOCITM (Society of Information Technology Management) Northern Ireland event recently, Erik van Ommeren explained how collaboration and cloud computing are a natural fit for communications in the new global business environment.
Workforce changing
“The way public and private organisations work and are managed is changing in the new economic environment and in response to changes in broader society. To better interact with the public, clients and partners, practically everybody is looking at how we can better collaborate internally at all levels and with the external environment.
“Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS), when deployed with the newer collaborative technologies, will increasingly be used as a more cost-effective and efficient approach to harnessing the power of IT.”
“The role of IT will change, it will be less IT-like and more business like. The IT department of the future will make a significant contribution to the organisation achieving its goals by facilitating, enabling and supporting the users. IT will broker services in a collaborative cloud-computing environment, build knowledge, provide guidelines and inspire the organisation to deploy technology in support of the organisation’s goals.”
Here's TeamPark
Van Ommeren also cited the example of Sogeti’s newly released TeamPark global collaboration platform, which facilitates collaboration and social networking for its 20,000 globally distributed employees.
A copy of the presentation slides and a pdf copy of the book Collaboration in the Cloud by van Ommeren are both available on the Sogeti Ireland website.
By John Kennedy

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14571/

BT’s 21st-century network rollout to deliver Ethernet speeds across Ireland

03.12.2009

BT has deployed 150 new Etherflow nodes in areas currently under-served with broadband.
In what might be considered a strange quirk of fate, rural areas of Ireland previously under-served with broadband because they weren’t considered economically viable enough could emerge at the coalface of Ethernet-like speeds that only big corporate firms would have once been able to afford.
150 Etherflow nodes
All of this is being made possible by the rollout of some 150 Etherflow nodes by BT to serve mobile operators in rural and urban areas and provide speeds of up to 1Gbps to local businesses and home owners.
According to Shay Walsh, head of wholesale services at BT Ireland, the investment represents one of the first examples of BT’s 21st century network deployment in Ireland and can be considered a response to "bandwidth hunger" – the scale of the appetite that mobile operators are experiencing – in trying to cope with growing demand for video and voice over internet services.
In just 18 months, BT has deployed 150 Etherflow nodes to create a next-generation Ethernet platform that will allow it to increase bandwidth speeds that operators such as O2 and 3 can, in turn, sell to the market.
The idea is to create a national Ethernet wide area network (WAN). The new service will deliver core bandwidth speeds of up to 1Gbps that will provide businesses and residential users with access speeds of 10Mbps, 100Mbps and 1Gbps.
“The predominant driver for this has been the rollout of the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) that we are rolling out on behalf of 3 Ireland. Etherflow will deliver carrier-class Ethernet to businesses in urban and rural areas,” Walsh explains.
“What this means for mobile operators is that instead of delivering low bandwidth to traditional mobile masts at typically 2Mbps to cover 30 voice channels, they are now able to deliver 50Mbps services to towers with the last piece covered by microwave.”
Walsh continues: “What Etherflow allows us to do is put fibre deeper into the network and cut down on the number of hops that providers used to have to make from mobile mast to mobile mast. This reduces it all down to one hop.
“The irony is that because we will be focusing mainly on NBS areas, the areas that were traditionally victims of the digital divide with virtually zero coverage will get state-of-the-art carrier-grade Ethernet broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.
“The value for this is once you have a 3G dongle you can connect via the device and connect at higher speeds as defined by your provider.”
Laying foundation for future
He says the Etherflow deployment will underpin the future rollout of long-term evolution (LTE) or 4G broadband technology by mobile operators. “This will lay the path for the upgrade to LTE for mobile operators and will boost BT’s ability to provide wholesale services to a variety of broadband providers.”
In recent months, BT entered into a pact with Vodafone that will see the mobile operator take over the company’s local loop unbundled (LLU) network of 22 exchanges and offer business and residential areas voice and broadband services. The move makes Vodafone the second biggest telecoms provider in the country and BT will expand this LLU network to 60 further exchanges by 2011.
Returning to the Etherflow network, Walsh says that on top of the 150 nodes already deployed, a further 200 sites will be delivered across Ireland.
He says the problem facing Ireland isn’t so much the core network, but the access layer. “All this talk about a one-stop shop for fibre isn’t going to solve the access problem. We need to be enabling people to provide better access services.”
3 nets contract
Mobile operator 3 Ireland was awarded the State contract to build the NBS earlier this year. The NBS sees an estimated €223 million investment by 3, of which a maximum of €79.8 million will be contributed by the Irish Government and the EU, to provide broadband services to the designated electoral districts covered by the scheme. This will see broadband being made available to some 220,000 homes and businesses in areas on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Robert Finnegan, chief executive of 3, explains that already a number of rural communities, including people living on the Aran Islands, are getting their first taste of broadband. Under the NBS, 3 will extend its network to provide mobile wireless-broadband services into the NBS area. Initially, the service will have a minimum download speed of 1.2Mbps, moving to 6.8Mbps by next year and 10.4Mbps by 2012 as part of scheduled upgrades.
“Small businesses in rural communities are now able to communicate and offer their products and services on the internet,” says Finnegan. “People will get a minimum speed of 1.2Mbps at the edge of the network and there are a range of repeaters that will boost signals in homes.”
He says it is vital to provide these services to all areas of the country to give firms a chance of competing for business. “These technologies also allow businesses to empower a mobile workforce that can work from home or on the move. The mobile workforce is no longer a thing of the future. It is a thing of now because that’s what businesses need.”
Wholesale services' availability
Finnegan says 3, which has more than 440,000 customers, 35pc of whom are 3G mobile broadband users, and other operators are no longer hindered by a lack of wholesale services in rural and urban areas.
“Eircom’s core activity should be to build out a core network around the country, provide backhaul and make a return from wholesale services. But what they are finding is other providers like BT are making the necessary technological investments and allow other operators to bypass them. The days of Eircom being the only show in town are over. They need to move away from activities that are bleeding their cash reserves and get real about the wholesale opportunity.
“The landscape is shifting. If you talk to a sector like banks, the amount of money some of them are paying for leased lines to transfer data back to head office is enormous. Mobile services can provide that with greater security for 10pc of the price.
“We are talking with a lot of companies who are looking at cost cutting and are ditching fixed lines and moving to mobile because it is more cost effective.
“BT is continuously investing in fibre on our behalf and we are going to continue to push at the access layer. The key is to provide consumers and businesses with services they want at an affordable price.
“The days of obstacles like the digital divide are past. Now the challenges are around coping with growth in data traffic in terms of backhaul. With Ethernet and satellite we can do it.
“Our data traffic has trebled in the past 12 months – the challenge is keeping pace with that in terms of network and fibre. But we believe the market will find its own level. Compared to European norms, Ireland has lagged behind in terms of broadband penetration rates – that will change over the next 24 months,” Finnegan promises.
By John Kennedy

Photo: Getting reading for the next evolution of broadband are Shay Walsh, head of wholesale at BT Ireland, and Robert Finnegan, chief executive of 3 Ireland.
www.digital21.ie - Digital 21 is a campaign to highlight the imperative of creating an action programme to secure the digital infrastructure and services upon which the success of the economy depends.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/14581/

Mentoring scheme – new media marketing

By James Kelly, November 27, 2009

Arts Audiences is pleased to announce details of the New Media Mentoring Scheme, in which experts from a variety of organisations offer their time, for free, to mentor arts organisations seeking to build relationships with new and existing audiences online.
Mentoring in the area of..Mentoring will be provided in the area of new media marketing / audience development, and will respond to the specific requirements of participating arts organisations, who are asked to submit details of the project for which they would like mentoring (more details below). As such, mentoring could be in one, or a combination, of the following areas;
∙ Social media strategy∙ Search engine optimisation∙ Online community building∙ strategies around specific applications – e.g. facebook, twitter∙ Customer service online∙ Using new media to drive sales∙ Bringing your organisation onto another platform (e.g. YouTube)∙ Strategies around metrics and goal setting
Suitable projects for mentoringThis scheme is designed to provide organisations with mentoring support around specific finite projects, which could be realised within a 3 month timeframe (see below). While we are looking for projects which are ambitious, such projects must also be realistic!
Some possible examples;
∙ A dance company may wish to start a facebook page from scratch, with a goal of attracting 300 fans.∙ An orchestra may wish to cull, rebuild and re-imagine how to use it’s emailing list of over 3,000 names.∙ A venue may wish to put together a strategy to use Google analytics to optimise its search rank∙ A festival may wish to put together a strategy to build a community around it’s new YouTube channel
Just a few examples, of course there may be many more, but these give an idea of scale & scope we would be considering.
The mentorsWe are delighted to announce that there are mentors on board from a variety of organisational backgrounds, and we will be able to provide mentoring to organisations working at various levels, from those looking to engage with new media at the most basic level, to those looking for advanced guidance, for example in terms of developing a co-ordinated strategy across a number of different media.
The following mentors have been confirmed;
RTE PublishingRTÉ publishing will provide up to 3 mentors as part of this scheme. While RTÉ Publishing’s brands operate across many traditional and online platforms (including RTÉ Guide, RTE Player, RTE.ie, Facebook, YouTube, Aertel), underlying each of these strands of activity is one clear and common goal – to deliver RTÉ content to audiences in the manner in which the audience wishes. With 2.5 million unique users, RTE.ie is Ireland’s leading media site, and as such RTÉ Publishing have a highly skilled team available to provide mentoring across a number of areas.
Rosita Wolfe – Head of Marketing & Communications, National Concert HallThe National Concert Hall is host to a diverse programme of events each year, with on average 450 events annually being attended by 300,000 ticket holders. Recent strategies which have included the use of social media and blogging have seen a 400% increase in online sales, and in 2009 the NCH expects that almost 40% of of their sales will be online. In recognition of their success in this area, the NCH was awarded the Customer Care award in this year’s All Ireland Marketing Awards, a significant achievement for an arts organsation.Aoife Flynn – a squared consultancyAfter six years as Development Manager of The Model (Sligo), Aoife Flynn founded a squared earlier this year, to provide consultancy to arts and cultural organisations in the area of marketing and management.
As part of her ongoing work, Aoife continues to manage web development for The Model, recently completing a three year Marketing Strategy for organisation, of which digital marketing (including facebook, twitter, vimeo, youtube, flickr, blogging, digital content and email) is a major aspect. A significant element of this strategy is the Model’s upcoming web platform, which will to be launched in tandem with the Model’s new building in spring 2010.
David McCadden, Press Officer, The AbbeyAs Press Officer at the Abbey Theatre, David has overseen the introduction of Facebook and Twitter into the company’s marketing strategy. With over 3,000 Facebook fans and 750 Twitter followers, a YouTube channel and a Vimeo channel, David has developed a social media strategy which enables the Abbey to listen and respond to it’s audiences, as well as to tap into new audiences.
The timeframe:Deadline for submissions is Friday the 18th of December. Mentoring will be one-on-one and will begin in early January 2010, with all projects completing by 31st of March 2010. It is envisaged that mentoring will take no more than 10 hours time in total, and may involve a mix of face to face meetings, phone calls and emails.
How to participate:If you are interested in participating, you should submit a short application (500 words approx) by email to karenlee.walpole(at)artscouncil.ie (on or before 18th of December), outlining the project for which you would like to receive mentoring.
In this document you should outline ;
∙ Details of the project for which you would like mentoring.∙ Details for which aspect of the project you would require mentoring∙ How you think the realisation of this project will benefit your organisation∙ A time frame for the completion of the project
As part of the process, participating organisations are required to produce case studies, which will be published online to share learnings with the broader arts sector.
The match making process:Once all the applications are in, in consultation with mentors and applicant organisations, there will be an element of ‘match-making’ to ensure mentors will be matched to an organisation whose needs match their expertise.
The process will be mediated throughout by James Kelly, Audience Advisor to the Arts Council. For further enquiries, please contact Karen Lee Walpole at karenlee.walpole(at)artscouncil.ie, or James Kelly at james.kelly(at)artsaudiences.ie.
http://artsaudiences.ie/activity/mentoring-scheme-new-media-marketing/