Happy Birthday to Us!

Eventznet was six on Thursday – and finally spurred me back to the blog. It has got to be one of the most difficult things to do… not the writing, not the ideas, but the consistency required for a live blog. New year’s resolution : Just do it!

What did we do in our sixth year? First we moved offices – out of NovaUCD where we were kindly incubated by Pat Frain and his team. We made the leap to our very own office in Dun Laoghaire, where we’ve been happily settled for almost a year now. One thing that surprised me about that was the number of people we deal with who don’t have a good contacts database, or way of filtering change of address/phone number throughout the organisation. Hmmm… smell the need for some training…

Next, we re-branded – and started this blog! We changed our corporate colours from blue to grey and red, and flipped our mark to be a little more forward facing. We exhibited at the Marketing Expo and had so much fun getting all the new collateral and brochures ready for that… I’d forgotten what a drama it is, but enjoyed working with Dan Mulcahy from Arrow Print Management.

Conor moved on from NEO Ireland, and Sigrid stepped in. We got the news that the Events Industry Skillnet received grant approval, and then had to accelerate the setting up of the Centre for Excellence in Events – and the Events Industry Skillnet. That took some doing – getting all the ducks in order to be able to start delivering training in early January. Which we did.

Since then, it’s been a bit of a blur. Along with all the extra curricular activities over the past 12 months we’ve been delivering online registration for conferences, exhibitions, seminars, networking events and festivals. Over 50,000 bookings in total and almost 1 Million Euros in payments have been processed through our systems . We’ve produced and delivered e-marketing campaigns for events, corporates and many others. We’ve worked on websites and new projects for some great clients, including a number in the UK.

It’s been hectic, but still fun and I’m looking forward to what this next 12 months brings… Interesting it’s bound to be…

Back After The Break

Did you miss me? I know you did! Back after a couple of weeks in the U S of A – the land of customer service. Do I want to talk about that? Yes and no – except I’d probably cry as I’d love to go back for another couple of weeks holiday. Vegas Baby… Did me the world of good.

We had a couple of really great examples of how good the Americans are at customer service. An example being the Embassy Suites LAX South – after landing into the Four Points by Sheraton and stopping only long enough to find an alternative on the PDA – arriving into the Embassy Suites was a real treat. Calm and peaceful, shining and smiling we were welcomed with open arms and complimentary everything. Hilton, you know how to look after your brand. Sheraton, we’ll have a hard time ever booking anything with the Sheraton name on it again. You should be ashamed to allow your brand to be abused that way. We loved the porpoises and ducks in the Embassy Suites as well!

In Santa Monica we stayed in the wonderful Viceroy. First time I’ve ever been asked to sit down at check in. No big counter inbetween the receptionist and guest – a very welcoming experience. I believe they keep it so dark so that you can’t quickly spot the “Celebs” – I did hope for a glimpse of George, but would definitely be back even though it didn’t happen – lovely place.

We were back to South Point in Vegas – this year they were doing some building work and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. They still gave us 25% off our entire stay when we complained about building noise going on up to midnight. We love that place though, it’s so relaxed and homey compared to the madness of the Strip – will definitely be back next time.

Tomorrow, I’m heading up to the Irish Business Women’s Conference in – of all places – the Mullingar Park Hotel again. I’m reminded of Terry Harmers story about how in an excercise to judge how first impressions matter a hotel treated two sets of guests completely differently on arrival. One set got treated abominably, the other got treated like kings and queens. The following day, they switched the treatment. Group 1 (the badly treated one) were so hostile to the hotel that even 5 star treatment was perceived as sub standard. Group 2 (the well treated one) forgave anything the following day, perceiving dreadful service as quirky or charming. I can’t forget the nightmare Mullingar Park put me through back in November, so I’m just going to set out early in the morning instead of going up this evening. I’m not looking forward to it… such a shame.

 

Peter Renwick of Irish Boiler Services I Love You…

Last post you may have seen that I was impressed by young Peter Renwick of Irish Boiler Services – good customer service was my conclusion. Now let me tell you that this young man has that golden touch. So much so that I wasn’t entirely convinced that his actual technical work would be up to much – I mean, if the guy was so good at customer service could he also be a good engineer/technician?

Let me tell you a little story:
Year 2000 we gutted our new house and got a new plumbing system installed.
Year 2000 we discovered that the plumbing was, em, crap.
Years 2000 – 2008 we stuggled along… by late 2007 I could only ever have either a lukewarm shower or a shower with rotten pressure. I was miserable.
Years 2002 – 2006 we spent a small fortune replacing parts in the gas central heating boiler that had been destroyed by the leaking pipes. That fortune went to boiler repair men (Robert loved the name the Gas Man so much that he insisted on using them).
Last week when the boiler went puff the Gas Man didn’t answer his phone (for what is a fairly large company, a bit below par to still have the out of office hours message on the phone up to 9.45). I rang two other companies found in the golden pages. Company 1 told me it was unlikely that an engineer would be able to ring me back to make an appointment or discuss anything with me until after lunch and I’d be better to try someone else (hallo???). Company 2 – nice gentleman answered the phone, discussed the issues and told me that Peter would call me back within a half hour to see if he could help. Peter rang me back within a half hour and after discussing said he’d pop over in his lunch hour to see could he help.

Over he popped, took a look, hoped that a simple fuse change would work and re-arranged a few things for the afternoon to go find one and come back. Came back (with his brother Barry, an electrician) and discovered it didn’t actually help. We had a confab. He treated me like a human being, had great pride in his work, but offered to help however it was going to work best for us.

He gave me quotes for a) patching up the old boiler and repairing the pipe work (and I would have had a serious problem paying him as little as he was asking for) and b) replacing the pipework and the boiler with one that he could personally stand over. He said if we wanted to do a) we could get it done on Friday, but he’d reallly recommend b) and would need to give over all of Monday for it.

Tempting as it was to go with the Friday option – it’s a little chilly without central heating and limited hot water – we went for b). I trusted him as a professional – but still wondered if he could possibly also be as good technically as he was with customer service.

Peter and Barry came when they said they would on Monday morning, laid straight into fitting the new boiler in an impossible space. All done with great attitude, attention to detail, pride in their work and humanity. This evening, I came home pretty tired and a bit cold from getting tomorrows conference finalised – went to take a shower, stood under it and had to turn the heat setting down for the first time in 12 months and I’m telling you – I said out loud – Peter Renwick, I love you.

You got the point eh? He was there when I needed him (well, his company was). He treated me like an intelligent human being. He came over to me in his lunch hour and then re-arranged a few things to try and help. He was straight and honest. He did what he said he’d do. He even made sure to clean up all the debris and dust! He was human… And he was every bit as good technically as he was with customer service. If you need a plumber or a boiler man, I wholeheartedly recommend Irish Boiler Services. They don’t have a website, but you’ll get them on:

(01)2164396

(087)4183758

Tell them Sarah Says that they’re brilliant.

Thank You Times Two

So nice to be able to say thank you for a really good experience with not just one but two companies this week:

1. Kimpton Hotels – last year we booked to stay in one of their hotels in San Francisco – looked lovely, fantastic reviews on TripAdvisor. Booked a smoking room. Went about our business and the day before leaving lovely Las Vegas for SF checked up on the room. Found they had become a no smoking property. Rang them to confirm, and cancel. They had changed to being a non smoking property on the 1st of May, but had not contacted customers who had booked a smoking room, or even told us at the time of booking (March) that this was happening.

They did have a good ruse of sending emails to suggest that you upgrade your room – I got two of them between booking and arriving – so they had systems in place to be able to identify potential upgradees. Anyhow, upshot was that they refused to refund the first night fee as I only managed to cancel 20 hours in advance. I phoned and emailed and received a really unpleasant email back from the hotel marketing representative. The amount was debited from my card. Without taking them to court, I wasn’t going to get the 250 bucks back. Instead, I put it down to experience and tried to forget about it. grrr….

Then a week or so ago I received a cheery newsletter from Kimpton Hotels. I got a bit mad so I wrote back asking them to immediately unsusbscribe me –  I do blush when I read what I wrote (it was late at the end of a looong day) “You might consider not sending e-marketing to people who are already totally turned off you. I would never stay at a kimpton hotel after your money grabbing treatment of us last year”

Fair play to them – they got back within a couple of days and said they’d remove me, but could I please let them know what had happened… So I forwarded the e-mail thread, thinking I’d get more of the same. To my total astonishment I didn’t! I got a lovely e-mail from their director of operations, apologising unreservedly for how we had been treated. He said the charges would be reversed immediately and offered a complimentary stay if we’d give them another chance.

That’s good customer service.

Number 2: Our central heating blew up on Tuesday night – thank heavens it’s spring! I called three separate companies, only one came back to make an appointment within an hour. Peter from Irish Boiler Services arrived when he said he would, checked out the boiler, re-arranged his day to come back to try and put a fix in place. And made me feel like I was a valuable customer. He didn’t manage to fix it yet so we’re still a little chilly, but I feel he’ll do a great job.

That’s good customer service.

Doing Business Differently…

The UCD Quinn School of Business are hosting what looks like a very interesting public dialogue. Renegade builder Mick Wallace (is there any other type?) will be in conversation with journalist Sara Burke on the topic of “How well do ethical, political or moral obligations combine with business?  Can we do business ‘differently’? You may remember Mick Wallace from his No to Nice banner debacle, or if you’re into football, then he may be more familiar to you from that.

I’m looking forward to going along to thank Maeve Houlihan for the lovely basket of chocolate she sent to our office after we finished up the ILPC Conference with her. I mentioned Maeve before, as even before she sent more chocolate than one small office could eat over to us, she was high up in my list of people I’d love to work with again. Looking forward to meeting her finally on the 24th April.

This event is being jointly organized by the Equality Studies Centre within UCD’s School of Social Justice, and UCD Quinn School of Business collaborating through the UCD Egalitarian World Initiative – for more info see http://www.ucd.ie/ewi/

 

Some Conversations May Not Be Worth Having

You may have been one of the many who read my post earlier this week on the issue of my personal domain name, sarahcarroll.ie, which our good friends over at register365 managed to retrieve for me after they had allowed it to be assigned to another Sarah Carroll (an actress who just happens to have the same name as me, but shares little else and who can be found at www.sarahcarroll.org now). If so, here’s the follow up, and a little follow up from the credit card number issue as well.

I promise that normal service will resume shortly, and this blog will not degenerate into a H365 bashing rant – it’s not my intention at all. But I have to say I’ve had some truly interesting conversations as a result of these few posts, and some conversations that really were not worth having…

So – on Paddy’s weekend I was sitting watching telly with the laptop keeping me company as I set off to point my personal domain name (sarahcarroll.ie in case you hadn’t noticed) to this blog – to at least do something with it. See my last post on the subject for the details, but I discovered that the domain was being occupied by another Sarah Carroll. After a 30 minute live chat session, Marek retrieved it from the other Sarah Carroll’s hosting account. So far so good.

Last Thursday, my mobile rang and a well modulated voice introduced herself as Sarah Carroll. This is the young woman who had been using my domain name. She explained how she had registered it through Register365 on the 1st of November last year and then had opened a hosting account and had the domain name assigned to it. Unfortunately, she registered it an hour or two after I did, so the IEDR processed my application first and I became the owner of it. The other Sarah Carroll never received a confirmation that she owned it, and Register365 didn’t think to question it.

As she is an actress (funny that, I was one of them once – thankfully for her she didn’t have to change her name to get her Equity card, as I gave mine back in 1988 at the same time as I resigned from the Executive of Irish Actors Equity when I finally decided to have a real life…) she had given out the web address sarahcarroll.ie and the email: sarah_at_sarahcarroll.ie in thousands of resumes. She wanted to know if she could buy the domain off me, but unfortunately I wasn’t intending to sell it. Her biggest problem was that e-mails were now bouncing, which at least I could do something about, so I set up an autoresponder, letting people know what email address they could contact her at. So good so far… still sitting comfortably?

So far, we have register365 wasting a little bit of my time, but doing a fair bit of damage to the poor kid who takes her career very seriously. So seriously that she rang me again yesterday to ask me to remove the blog post where I outlined what had happened. She had a couple of good points, if you googled the web designers name, the post came up and it was a bit unfair to her as the incompetence was on Register365’s part, not hers. And she felt that the post showed her in a bad light as it looked like she had deliberately hijacked the domain name. I told her I’d do something with it this weekend – when I had time. I’m not going to go into the details of the email she then sent me today (tempting as it is to do the Cattey Kathy Bates – I’m older and I got more insurance – thing), as really, she is the victim in all this, and I hope that she gets some compensation of some sort from Hosting365.

Final word on the subject: Register365 ought not to assign a domain name to any account without confirmation that comes from the e-mail address of the registered owner that this assignation is done at their behest.

So now, instead of having a Friday evening, I’m editing my other post and writing this one. While I’m at it, I’ll update the credit card number issue (this at the request of a number of regular readers who are desperately waiting for the next installment). Well, you’ll know that as I registered or updated a domain name in Register365 they were capturing credit card details and storing them in my profile in their “uber” (which, in case you don’t know German means really high up and best) control panel. So it wasn’t possible to use the stored profiles to pay for renewing a domain name or to delete them. Particularly not possible to delete the multiple versions of the same card that were all stored in the system. And all stored without my permission.

The next time I went to renew a .ie (have almost moved the .coms out of there – working on it!) they wanted me to pay by credit or debit card. I wrote to them and asked them to invoice me so I could do an EFT. They responded that they’d prefer to have a card payment. I told them I wasn’t going to put my card details in to their system again. They replied (and the writing looked suspiciously like Stephens although he didn’t identify himself) that their system was really safe. That the terms and conditions clearly stated that the card details would be retained and that they were registered with the data protection commissioner and I could delete the payment profile at any time. eh, ya wha?

Go back to the live chat and see how it went, lads. All the answers are there, and the number of pings from your intranet means that at least someone in there is looking at it. But it’s a conversation I’m not having again – I’m just movin’ on.

Ah – the Beauty of Live Chat

I do love the old live chat, and the lovely fellas over at Hosting365 (or Register365, try as I might, I can’t work out which is which or what is what) really give it some welly. I’m technically on holiday this weekend, so last night I thought I’d get my personal domain name active, and actually do something with it. In November, I registered www.sarahcarroll.ie through Register365. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have seen my last live chat with the delightful Stanislav, where I found out that Register365 were collecting card details and storing them on their database in my account every time I registered a domain name with them. Without any indication that this is what they were doing, and without any way of re-using them, and without any way of me deleting them from the account. That did give me a good giggle – once I got up from the floor.

Anyhow, recently an email arrived into my mailbox from register365 which I think was referring to domain name registration, but might have had something to do with hosting. I didn’t get an email to the email address that I registered with them when I registered sarahcarroll.ie, though. The email told me that “As you might be aware, we have been working hard over the past year to improve the quality and responsiveness of our customer care”. It then went on to tell me that  “In August 2007 we launched a new web site at www.register365.com, which delivered an industry leading range of web hosting and domain name registration services. Register365 became the cost and feature leader of the Irish market.”

So far so good. The email continued to explain how they have launched a new support system, extensive searchable knowledge base and some video tutorials. And live chat on every page. Then the email said “Over the years, we’ve provided freephone telephone support during office hours. In that time we’ve learned through experience and feedback that telephone support is inefficient, expensive and not as effective as email or live chat at delivering problem resolution”. And it went on say that they are discontinuing telephone support but now offer premium support during office hours at a cost of 95c per minute.

Needless to say, there was quite a bit of discussion about this on various forums and email lists – my favourite one is the e-business  list where the moderator pulled the plug after quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between the messrs McCarron and some of their less than happy customers.

Now, I’m going to have come clean here – after many years of having domains registered at Hosting365, having our dedicated servers there and helping many customers to set up hosting with them, over the past 6 months I’ve just found it impossible to continue working with them. The reason it’s impossible is because of the way that they communicate with their customers, how they are delivering and how they respond in an emergency situation.

Two emergency situations in the past 12 months. Not great for a datacentre, and it did prove that most of us didn’t have adequate disaster recovery plans. (It’s not an easy overnight fix, but most of it is in place). All datacentres have their problems, but like everything else in life, it’s not the problems that are the really telling thing – it’s how you deal with them.  

Personally, I can not believe that someone would make a statement like that. I’m not sure who should be more insulted – their customer support team or their customers. Yes – there are always customers who make telephone support inefficient. Just last week I sat on the phone with one of our customers as he asked me to hold on whilst he logged into his own website admin to make a change before coming back to the query with his invite site. I did ask him if he’d like to ring me back when he finished that operation, but he didn’t get the hint. Ah well, you grin and bear it. And yes, during that time other customers are suffering because they can’t get through to talk with someone, and you are suffering because you can’t continue working on what you were working on – but hey – he’s a customer. He’s probably been on the receiving end of rotten customer service before, and possibly felt that whilst he had me on the phone he wasn’t going to let go in case he couldn’t get through again. Or maybe he was just having a bad day and didn’t feel like respecting my time or thinking that it was valuable. Maybe he thought he was the only customer we had. Did we make him feel that well looked after? I’d like to think the latter, but suspect one of the former. I feel a guidebook to good customer relationships coming on…

So to last nights efficient live chat. Please note that the hour was actually 11.40 pm not 12.40 as recorded.

Marek Baba [12:41:05 PM]: Welcome to our real-time support chat. How can I help you today?
Sarah [12:41:05 PM]: hi – how come somebody has put a web site up at my domain name – sarahcarroll.ie?
Marek Baba [12:41:15 PM]: Hi Sarah
Sarah [12:41:22 PM]: hi marek
[12:42:18 PM]: you still there?
Marek Baba [12:42:27 PM]: it is not your site??
Sarah [12:42:45 PM]: nope.
Marek Baba [12:43:23 PM]: give me a moment please
Sarah [12:43:30 PM]: sure.
Marek Baba [12:44:06 PM]: do you know [edit: name has been obscured to protect the innocent who should not have to suffer because of the incompetency of others]Nnnnn Mmmmm?
Sarah [12:44:11 PM]: nope.
Marek Baba [12:44:19 PM]: I found this domain on her hosting account
Sarah [12:44:52 PM]: well, somebody at hosting365 let her add my domain to her hosting account. Please remove it.
Marek Baba [12:45:39 PM]: it’s not that simple
[12:45:45 PM]: first couple questions
[12:46:06 PM]: what is your login/password to this domain on register365?
Sarah [12:47:19 PM]: of course it’s not. As always, you guys mess up and I gotta jump through hoops to get things put right. my log in is [xxxx] and the password begins with [x] followed by [xxxxx]- for security purposes I’m obfuscating some of the characters.
Marek Baba [12:49:28 PM]: what is account ID?
Sarah [12:49:50 PM]: [yyyyy]
Marek Baba [12:50:02 PM]: good
[12:50:42 PM]: btw how is this possible that she know about domain name?
Sarah [12:51:01 PM]: duh – I’m supposed to know this?
Marek Baba [12:51:47 PM]: I’m asking about this stuff cause last time when I romoved domain from someones account I had a lot of problems
Sarah [12:53:01 PM]: You guys have a policy of parking new domain names until someone asks to activate them. I’ve never been asked for my credentials when I request a domain to be added to my account… I think it’s an issue with your process. All I can tell you is that the domain is registered to me, I have paid for it, I got the log in info. You might like to ask Nnnnn these questions…
Marek Baba [12:53:51 PM]: I didn’t want to be rude, sorry
[12:54:58 PM]: last question to you: on IeDR site I found admin contact of this domain
[12:55: 03 PM]: what is address?
Sarah [12:56:30 PM]: no – you’re not being rude, that’s fine. It’s just I have really bad experiences with hosting/register365 so I’m probably a little hostile 🙂 It’s not you. I’m just amazed that someone can hijack my domain like that. What is the address? on the IEDR site, you’ll see that hosting 365 are the contacts. The address that should be there is my office addres, no 1 rogans court, patrick st. dunlaoire.
Marek Baba [12:57:22 PM]: ok it is sufficient to remove domain from that account
[12:59:04 PM]: btw it’s a pity cause this site is very cute 🙂
Sarah [1:00:59 PM]: great, thanks, please do that. And can you get your managers to introduce a process where they verify that a domain name actually belongs to the person who asks for it to be added to their account before adding it? Dealing with register/hosting 365 is a pain in the backside compared to other registrars. And Marek, that is a completely inappropriate note there, not intending to be rude or anything.
[1:03:00 PM]: Now, I’m signing off. Please confirm by email to [registered email address] that the site that is in another person’s account is no longer in it and that I can assign an ip address to it myself.
Marek Baba [1:03:28 PM]: please wait a minute
[1:03:54 PM]: after I remove it you can add domain to your account
[1:04:28 PM]: ok done
Sarah [1:05:10 PM]: thanks, i don’t intend to do it tonight – i’ve lost the 30 minutes that i intended to do it in – between finding that the site had been hijacked to finishing this chat. Bye
Marek Baba [1:05:27 PM]: bye

This one gets to go into the muppet of the week competition again. Not Marek, he seems like a really nice sort of fella, bless. Must be awful to be on the front line of that and to be getting into trouble for removing domains from peoples accounts. Not to mention being so disappointed not to be chatting with the pretty blonde 20 something Sarah Carroll whose web master cheekily [edit: see follow up post to hear how it happened] got register365 to hand them over my domain. Never mind getting a rap on the knuckles from the 40-something feminist Sarah Carroll for inappropriate comments (sorry, but I couldn’t resist it).

Note that no email has arrived for me at my registered email address. Betcha it’s gone to sarah@sarahcarroll.ie… .

Girl Got Giggle

Sorry, that should have been woman had a moment of sheer pride and joy but it doesn’t sound quite as fetching as Girl Got Giggle. So it was a moment of sheer pride and joy standing at the edge of the CHQ in the Docklands, watching 5,000 people or so watching the spectacular Pearl show. Show – what kind of a word is that? Spectacle of course. Pride and joy was that little moment that went – you all used my software…

We had the honour of providing the online ticketing system for the Pearl @ Docklands and National Lottery Skyfest @ Cashel this week – funny how little things trigger that sense of pride? Our national day, our national festival and we got to be a service provider for it. I probably shouldn’t have that little buzz, it’s just another event really, but I do. And then I had the pleasure of being introduced to many of the team behind St Patricks Festival 08, as Sarah – you know, the one with the ticketing system. And then them saying, oh that Sarah! The first time, I quivered, waiting for the guy to say something bad. But it turns out it was all good! They were able to get numbers and stats on all sorts of things – like where people were coming from, how they were travelling there, if they were staying in the area … all things that you need to know when you’re trying to manage huge crowds like the 20,000 expected at Cashel this evening.

At the same time as our servers were handing out tickets to Skyfest and Pearl, we were also helping almost 2,000 people donate in excess of 120,000 Euros online to the 98FM Care4Kids Radiothon at DonationPoint.ie. DonationPoint is one of the other companies I’m involved in (I’m called technical director, but most of my direction is over…) and this is the second Care4Kids Radiothon we have supported. It’s amazing to see the generousity of Irish people, and heartbreaking when you hear the stories of how people have had to interact with the 4 Dublin Childrens Hospitals. You can still help out at www.donationpoint.ie – and there is more information at www.98fm.ie .

So it was with a lot of disappointment that I couldn’t find the Conway Institute in the dark on Friday evening, after watching some of Pearl at the Docklands. The lovely Dr Antonio Campos-Torres from the Marie Curie Molecular Neuroimmunology PhD Programme who organised the International Neuroimmunology Symposium at UCD this week had invited myself and Cathal to the closing reception. Cathal, in case you don’t already know, is our superstar webmaster/technician who looks after our customers better than I can. But he was off on holidays, and I was lost in the middle of UCD so I never got to go and say well done, and thank you for being such a pleasure to work with to Antonio – nor to meet our friends at Unique Dining who were catering the event. They had catered the NEO Ireland members away day at Derrybawn House last May and their food, yum!

Now I’m off to have a long weekend, and get ready for the next onslaught! Although I don’t think we can bite off much more than we bit for the last few months. We launched new systems and applications for the Pine Forest Art Centre (I love the new look and feel), as well as for NEO Ireland (more butterflies!) as well the many conferences and exhibitions, networks (like NetWorth – you should pop over there if you feel like joining a new network) or Tricia Murphy’s lovely Networking Salons (you can contact Tricia to get onto the invite list at www.tig.ie).

Definitely time to debrief and relax for a coupla days – sayonara!

Anyone Want to Know How to do it Right?

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Radisson SAS Leeds at the moment, just having thoroughly enjoyed their excellent customer service and hospitality. If anyone wants a lesson in how to do it right, come here. From the minute I walked in the door last night to the moment of writing they have been efficient, friendly and welcoming. I’m well impressed. The room was gorgeous – fabulous mosaic stuff going on over the bed and mirror, bed was perfect. Bathroom perfect. Spotlessly clean, quiet and wi-fi that’s easy to access and excellent strength. And it didn’t cost the earth – even though I wasn’t paying, it was nice to know for when I would gladly pay myself.

I’m seriously hoping that the lovely people in the UK Centre for Events at Leeds Met invite me back so that I can stay here again. The events department invited me over to present to their network of events suppliers on NEO Ireland – the network for event organisers that we set up in mid-2005. They are hoping to set up an events network and said some really kind things about ours. I think that what was most interesting for them is the issue of being able to reach all people who organise events. As somewhere between 70 and 80% of all events are organised by people who are not professional event organisers, this has always been the biggest challenge for our industry.

 Anyhow – on to real work! We’ve a new website to launch tomorrow for Events Day 08 as well as our updated NEO portal.

Thanks Sabrina!

I just came back from the “Ladies Tea Party” that Sabrina Dent and Ina organised (with the help of Microsoft who kindly sponsored the food) for Irish women bloggers. All the rest of them were off to the blog awards, but I’m back to the grindstone to clear the decks for Monday when I have to start looking for a new network manager for the Events Industry Skillnet. bah humbug.

Anyhow, thought I’d get to be the first to blog about it [natch] – great turn out, met some lovely women bloggers including re-aquainting myself with Maryrose Lyons of BrightSpark Consulting [http://www.brightspark-consulting.com/blog] we first met about 5 years ago at my kitchen table in Blackrock when we were both in the early stages of our businesses. Her blog was one of the first I ever read, and I used to absolutely adore the rants. She’s a little more grown up these days, but still comes up with the goods from time to time!

Also met the delightful Hangar Queen [hangarqueen.blogspot.com] and the equally delightful Deborah [blog.humblehousewife.com], Jen [littlebirdeats.wordpress.com], Granny Mar, Ina, Cathy, Jo [www.infantasia.blogspot.com] and several others whose blogs I look forward to reading. When I get a life.

Looking forward to hearing that Sabrina [sabrinadent.com] won the best designed blog because if she doesn’t then it’s a travesty! Thanks Sabrina and Ina – much appreciated the opportunity and sorry not to stay longer.