We Got WiFi – It just doesn’t work (but don’t tell anyone that)

Sometimes, just the fact that I can blog about something makes me feel a little bit better as it’s happening. Didn’t help me yesterday, much as I tried. I was heading down to Mullingar for the National Womens Enterprise Day. The event was organised by the County Enteprise Boards and it promised to be a good networking session as well as an opportunity to hear Ruth Badger and Shiela O’Flanagan – couple of people I’m happy to pay (with time as well as money) to see.

Dunlaoghaire Rathdown County Enterprise Board had kindly offered to pick up the tab for accommodation (not just for me, but for 9 other clients of theirs – the first nine to ask) so I was going down on Tuesday evening. I had an important call at 7.30 so my bright idea was to leave Dublin early and set myself up and get a couple of quiet hours work done. I rang the Mullingar Park Hotel – where we were staying – on Sunday to double check that there was broadband in the room. Was assured there was and so planned it that way. Negotiated the M50, arrived at 6.00 – got my user name and password from the very pleasant young woman on reception for the broadband.

Arrived in room, kicked up laptop, started battle – searched for wifi with PDA, networks there but no connection. Ring reception, get told to re-boot my laptop. Fume. Re-boot laptop. Another 15 minutes of frustration. Ring reception, get told that the duty manager will come up and help to get me connected. Fume. Pace around room. Fume. Have now lost 45 minutes. Porter arrives in. Asks me to re-boot laptop. Tell him I have done that already and that I run a software as a service company and personally manage our IT infrastructure, travel extensively with my PDA and laptop and I know when it’s not possible to connect. He politely said that he was just the porter and didn’t know much about this stuff.

I asked him very nicely (honest!) to just tell me which room had the best reception – other than the lobby. Only the lobby was the answer (not quite as bluntly as that) – asked me if I’d like to walk around the corridors checking to see was there better reception anywhere. Honest!  I realised I was onto a loser and I’d better just try and calm down for the phone call, so I thanked him and asked him to leave.

Duty manager arrives 10 minutes later, starts out a bit badly by addressing me as Miss Flynn. eh, would that be another room she was on her way to? She explains that she wanted to sort this out. I explained that I was on an important phone call in approximately 3 minutes. She didn’t seem to get that, and continued to chat. I asked her politely to leave. Honest!

So now I hate the Mullingar Park Hotel, and every tiny thing like the buzzing that went on all night, the noise from the room next door and the elevator, the shower that ranged from scalding to freezing every 3 minutes, the stains (albeit cleaned stains) on the sheets all just came together to make me long to get out of there. All the good things about the place – pleasant staff, nice decor, plenty of parking – all just disappeared and I would be loathe to go to another conference there. And would never recommend them. Why?

Because they didn’t tell me the truth. Their wifi sucks and they know it. All they had to do was tell me that and I wouldn’t feel so hostile towards them.

Then I asked them for a comment card and they gave me a compliment slip. I wrote on it that it was a shame that the rest of world would see my comments before they did. And it is.

Finger Lickin’ Awful

You know the scenario, you’re in a shop and you ask for a plastic bag. They look at you as if you’re mad, they reach down under the counter, produce the offending item, and their hand goes up to their mouth to lick their fingers so that they can separate the plastic.

If there is one thing that would stop me from using plastic bags, it’s that finger lickin’. Tesco, Superquinn, Spar you are doing my head in.

Bums on Seats…

Big favourite topic of mine – needless to say – is how on earth do you get people to get up off their backsides and actually come along to your event? There are so many demands on everyone’s time these days that getting even a precious half day out of them to come along to an event can be like pulling teeth. This is going to be the topic for our NEO conference next year – Events Day 08 – so I won’t go on about it too much now – but a few comments on recent events:

The MashUp Camp – I posted in The Unconference Experience the other day about the discussion going on on Damien Mulleys blog (congrats on the Net Visionary Win Damien!) where a person going by the handle of Danger had some very sensible advise for event organisers. Danger has more to say and is also interested in speaking at a conference about conferences – you are more than welcome!

The CEO Forum – this was the 19th CEO Forum hosted by Enterprise Ireland and Deloitte and this year I got invited along. I’m going to do what a blogger should do and declare myself properly – most of the Enterprise Ireland events that I’ve been to have left me cold. Although I do admit to seeing a bit of shift in the past year or so. Why do they leave me cold? Usually because so much of what is supported and fostered by the establishment (now I sound like a commie – no offence to commies!) is just soooo last century (erk, now it’s a generation Y’er tone and I’m well past that!).

This century the vast majority of individual business deals are to small businesses, they are small ticket deals (under 1,000 Euros) and you have to have a lot of them to make ends meet, never mind build serious wealth into a business. I’m not entirely sure that the establishment actually gets that – and fairly certain that they don’t know how to really practically support building an economy which is based on the new way of doing business.

Although there are obviously many big deals out there – serious rocket sceince that sells for a several million a pop – in my (perhaps not so) humble opinion the real holy grail in software development and sales is providing software and services for the huge mass of businesses out there to improve their processes and make them more efficient and profitable at an acceptable price and more importantly at an excellent level of service. In Ireland, for example, most of us are actually employed by small businesses and micro enterprises. Small businesses need contact management, event management (of course), a little sales process automation, email marketing, accounting and invoicing, project management and frequently e-commerce and supply chain management.

We often don’t know that we need these things, nor that they are available, and we usually base our purchase decision on a) demonstrable value and return in investment, b) word of mouth recommendation and c) ease of use and availability. Why isn’t “the establishment” helping the software providers to market their products and services to meet these real needs instead of perpetuating the “enterprise sale” culture (cold call, get the meeting, convince the prospect, negotiate your deal and get out). People don’t buy that way any more – at least not willingly, and if they don’t buy willingly, they won’t willingly come back to you for more.

I’m going off topic here, what I really wanted to say about the CEO Forum is that there were some excellent speakers – Jim Breen from PulseLearning (someone said he should give up the day job and go into stand-up), Michael Carey from Jacobs Fruitfield and Ned Morse from CLG being my favourites. We were in the Pavilion at Leopardstown and the builders working on the LUAS cut the main power cable right in the middle of Michael Carey’s presentation. The EI and Deloitte event team, ably assisted by AvCom, had an emergency generator in place in record time and both Michael Carey and Ned Morse gave their presentations without any AV or visuals. Fair play to them both, they projected like Alan Stanford and kept us all interested, inspired (I would have to say) and entertained without any visual aids or props.

There was quite a bit of discussion around the question of why there weren’t more women at the forum – something like 9% would have been my guess. But this is for a separate topic after the National Women’s Enterprise Day in Mullingar next week…

The UnConference Experience

Interesting half a day at the Guinness Storehouse on Sunday at the Mashup Camp Dublin. I caught some interesting discussion on the legalities of mash ups and met a few people and had a few conversations. Good to catch up with Ultan O’Broin from Oracle (loving the new look!) and Richard Hearne from Red Cardinal (and Amitan). But I have to say that the whole event left me cold. One of the concepts that Mass Labs promote as part of the UnConference genre is that the agenda is set by the participants and when a discussion is over, everyone moves on.

The agenda for the Sunday afternoon was written up on a board in the Arrol Suite. Everyone was invited to arrive when they wanted and leave as they pleased. I think it must have been my need to please that meant that I did just that. But then I decided to go to a session that just didn’t happen. And it just seemed incredibly impolite to go to a different one. So I sort of wandered around for a while and ended up talking with the organisers – they were really nice people – but I just don’t get it. I wonder how much of it is the cultural divide?

Meanwhile, over on Damien Mulley’s blog, there is a discussion about the Unconference. And I found this little gem:

Danger says: Conference cost vs. real tangible benefit = probability of attendance

The exact circumstances in which a company might justify going to mashup camp:

1. They had recently identified a need to quickly understand third party APIs, either to build one themselves, or to leverage existing ones
2. They heard about mashup camp and had not yet done extensive research on the tech involved, so it was agreed that mashupcamp would be a good way to kick start the whole process
3. They could convince a developer/developers to give up their weekend
4. Send developer, promising him 2 days holidays in return

That’s pretty much exactly how I’d view it. The organisers had been convinced that the weekend would be the best time to run it, maybe in the US – but not here. But nah, I still just didn’t get it.

A Whole New Departure …

Latest just in – having lunch with Lucy Horan, course tutor in the Events Management Degree Course at Dublin Institute of Technology and NEO Ireland advisory board member – we were talking about the placements that her students go on. This one made me laugh (and cry).

One of Ireland’s biggest moguls (we have a few, honest!) recently passed away. One of Irelands top event organisers was hired to manage his memorial service and one of Lucy’s students (who also worked with us on the 5th P in Event Marketing) did a few of her placement hours on the gig. Amazing experience and at the far end of the spectrum from the Street Performance World Championships – the worlds largest free street event (and soooo enjoyable). And by the way, congratulations Mark & Conor for coming third in the National Enterprise Awards – shame it wasn’t top but it’s certainly worth a mention.

Yay! We Got Funding…

A later post will deal with all the ins and outs of this – but I just can’t keep it to myself any longer… We spent most of the Summer on our application for funding for the Events Industry Skillnet. Those of you new to this concept might like to know that Skillnets is an initiative of the EU and the Irish Government to help networks of businesses in similar domains to collectively define their training requirements and then deliver on them with up to 80% funding.

We received a development grant (like a feasibility study grant) at the end of May from Skillnets to see how viable the proposition would be. And during the Summer months many of us put in long hours and had sleepless nights putting together our application. Over 150 companies involved in the events industry in Ireland participated in our effort to organise this gigantic but fragmented and diverse industry, and more than 100 companies and organisations put aside significant time to support our application.

 Our hard work has paid off and we heard last night that we have received approval for funding for a training and accreditation programme for the events industry as detailed in our application. We thought that the Summer was tough – let’s just see how tough it really gets!! I am so proud to have had the pleasure of leading this initiative – and to have worked together with so many of my colleagues and peers to achieve this milestone event in bringing some semblance of serious business to the business of events.

Skillnets – you rock! Thank you so much for your support. More later… I’ve got a lotttttaaa work to do now… 

Click Here to Not Feel Like a Wally

So I’m booking tickets to and from Brussels on AerLingus.com and Ryanair.com (we can take our time coming back via Charleroi, but need to be City Centre quickly for a business meeting on the way in). I book away nicely on Aer Lingus, even get to pay to choose emergency exit seats (Robert is coming along for this meeting and he’s over 6 foot 7), until I get to the confirmation page. How I managed to miss the Click Here to Remove Insurance option, I really can’t imagine. Except that most everything else on the page is Click Here to Include and the Click to Remove instruction is buried in the middle of 6 bullet points of text.

Only 10 Euros, I can afford it, but man, did I ever feel ripped off. In comes the e-mail confirmation from the insurance company with the policy. It tells me explicitly to ring them on a particular number if I need to cancel the insurance. Monday-Friday, 9 am to 5 pm. Just to make myself feel better, I rang them this morning. 20 Minutes on hold only to then be told by the operator that any cancellations must be received by e-mail. Ya Wha?

Now that just makes me cry.

9 Phrases Women Use

I enjoyed this post on IrishBusinessWomen.com – the online network for business women in Ireland – see if you can relate!

9 Phrases Women Use

The network is an online network and is a really interesting picture of what women in Ireland (and some men and non Irish) are doing in business.

How to Increase Your UNSUBSCRIBE Rate

Yes, I did say Unsubscribe rate. People often ask us how do you get people to subscribe, and we go to great pains to come up with new and novel ways of building their permission based e-marketing database. One of the things we try and get across is that it doesn’t matter how much effort you put into building a list (and you really have to build the list, not buy it or rent it) if you don’t treat your list with care, you’re going to lose it fast.

An example – I’m on the mailing list of one of the large event managers in Ireland and they regularly send rather bland and irrelevant ads for events that they are promoting. But I put up with them normally because it’s kinda good to know what else is going on. But just now, when I checked my e-mail I received six copies of the same ad which were large enough to take minutes to download. Six copies. Sorry, that’s me outta there… I hit the unsubscribe button.

We’ve seen this so often – with NEO Ireland, the Network for Event Organisers that we run, we try and send fewer than 2 emails a month to our database. Every time we increase the frequency we lose people. On the one hand, it’s good to clean out the list on a regular basis, but on the other hand – each one of them is potentially a precious jewel. Treat ’em keen – you don’t want them turning mean!

PayPal – You Were Never a Friend of Mine…

:@ – Every time I have to hit that PayPal button I end up seething – why does it have to be soooo unfriendly? I once made a Paypal account with my AIB credit card – lost the password and have since retired the e-mail address. So I went to create a new one with my BOI credit card (I know, pathetic!) but hubby had that card number registered (he’s an e-bay hound). So I gave up and had to pass on anything that would only take payment through PayPal. Then they brought in this new Pay by Credit Card without having an account feature. Great, thinks I. Did it work? No, the scarroll email address had been registered before, and the card number belonged to a PayPal account so nope, sorry, no go.

Last week I successfully managed to pay for some software using my company credit card through PayPal – so I was pleased. But today – I go to pay for registration at the MashUp event (can not wait to see Tim Berners-Lee) and I’ve just spent 45 minutes battling with PayPal again! Mash up – I’m sending you over an e-mail with an offer to sponsor the online registration for the next Mashup Camp – although the whole tone of the event sounds a little too Californian for the cynical Irish, the line up is fantastic.

If you’re interested, Mashup Camp is for software people who are interested in, well, mashups. Mashup is the generic term for web applications which are built by using other people’s applications – if you get me. For example, embedding google maps into your web page could make you a mashup candidate. Many of the other software as a service providers do what is called “exposing an API” – sounds a bit rude, but it really means that they provide a way for developers to access parts of their application and/or data behind the scenes. API is Application Programming Interface.

The Dublin camp promises some interesting discussions on topics which are decided on the day – very participative (is that a word?) and open – probably very earnest too. I’m showing my age, aren’t I? But probably most interested for a semi-geek like me is Tim Berners-Lee, the man who was responsible for the internet (well, more or less). It’s a two day event, only costs 25 Euros for developers, and it happens over the weekend of the 10th/11th November so I don’t even have to take a day out of the office. More information and registration are at the mashup camp 5 Wiki. If you have to ask what a Wiki is, you probably don’t want to go to Mashup.

And I really do have to say this – the registration process for the camp is just ghastly. I’ve gotten my receipt from PayPal, but I’ve no idea whether or not I’m actually registered. I did tick the box to have my name published along with the other 63 listed, but it doesn’t show up – presumably they have to go through each registration and remove the mickey mouses and george bushes. I took a look behind the scenes to see what they were doing and I suppose at least the data is going into a salesforce.com database. The payment data is then going in to their paypal database, and I do not envy them having to reconcile up the payments and leads in salesforce.com.  Lads, here’s some software as a service that will make your lives a lot easier : www.eventznet.ie