Writing for life

Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 27/02/2008

A beautiful, innocent young girl looks out from my computer screen. For a long moment she gazes, smiling enigmatically as a soft breeze tugs at her strawberry-blond hair. It’s serene, peaceful. And then it begins.

Image after rapid-fire image of the “perfect” body flash onto the screen. Promotions pushing products that promise to make women slimmer, lighter, younger, sexier. Called “Onslaught”, this is Dove’s latest online video in their “Campaign for Real Beauty”, which the company claims is all about restoring women’s self esteem in a world that bombards them with a body-image that’s impossible for a real woman to obtain.

Dove’s "Onslaught" — a wake-up call for parents

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 18/02/2008

Valentines day has been and gone, but the date (pardon the pun) prompted online recruitment portal RecruitIreland.com to conduct a survey of romantic antics in the Irish workplace. Some of the findings of the survey were:

• 44% of workers admit to having flirted with a fellow colleague by email or text
• 7% have unwittingly sent a flirty text or e-mail to wrong person
• half of all respondents think that a Valentines Day proposal is tacky
• 92% of females said there was no way they would ever pop the question, despite this being a leap-year
• 2 out of 3 workers believe that foreigners are more romantic than their Irish counterparts

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 20/02/2008

It’s been a tough week.

We’ve been dropping like flies, if you’ll pardon the use of a terribly tired and clichéd phrase. I just don’t have any energy left to come up with something more original. The Jones household was hit by a curious illness about a week ago, and one by one it felled everyone bar me and one of the twins. How we escaped I don’t know – but it knocked everyone else for six.

It all started when twin-one and the little-one both got a bit of a temperature. Now, a temperature in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. Temperatures are a natural part of the body fighting the illness. We rather stay away from drugs, if possible, and apart from the high temperature the girls seemed quite perky, so it was off to a warm bed early for them. We checked them through the night, and the temperatures seemed to be stabilising. Sleep would, we thought , prove to be the best medicine.

Next morning I was up early, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, when twin-one – the one who’d had the temperature the night before – marched in wearing her school uniform. She seemed much better. We bid each other good morning, and she went over to the sink to get herself a glass of water. Then I heard what I can only describe as a whimper, and she started to shudder.

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 18/02/2008

After years of waiting I finally got hooked up to a broadband internet connection just before Christmas. I was over the moon. No more clunky dialup, no more dropped lines, no more waiting around for sites to load, no more being tethered to the phone line when I wanted to check my e-mail.

I was delighted with my 1Mb/sec fixed wireless connection – at last I could experience what this much touted “Web 2,0” had to offer. Then my wife’s sister and her family, who live in France, came to visit for New Year. I was waxing lyrical about the joys of my new broadband connection, when her partner took the wind from my sails. He told me that in France they enjoyed a 24Mbit/sec unlimited download connection for just €15 per month. My contract, for something 1/24^th of the speed with a download cap of 15GB, costs me more than twice that at €37.50… and it’s the only game in town.

Suddenly my enthusiasm began to wane.

When I couldn’t get broadband I was complaining about lack of availability. Now I have it I’m relieved… but not satisfied. Why should we have to endure sub-standard connectivity compared to our European neighbours, especially when the Irish government is touting this country as a centre of technology excellence, and harbours ambitions to become a leading light in Europe’s emerging “knowledge economy”?

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 13/02/2008

“Look dad, a Robin,” called one of the twins as we stood waiting for the school bus.

The object of her scrutiny was perched on the branch of a nearby ash tree. Head cocked on one side the little bird was watching us as intently as we were watching it. Suddenly it fluttered to the ground just a few feet away, pecked at a few crumbs, then hopped back up to its perch, where it continued its vigil.

Of all the birds that visit the garden (and there are a lot of them at this time of year) the girls have developed something of a special bond with the Robins. With their bright red breast, distinctive plump shape, upright stance and a tendency to sudden, jerky movements, these were the first bird they learned to identify, and will always be one of their favourites.

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 11/02/2008

I’m a natural sceptic, and nothing triggers that scepticism more than the swathe of self-help books that seem to weigh down the shelves of the business section in every book shop I venture in to. How many of the people who invest in these tomes actually use them to bring about real change?

Self help is an enormous industry, and has spawned some of the most “successful” self-styled gurus on the planet. With their audio programmes, seminars, books, courses and coaching services these people have become successful and wealthy beyond belief by offering others the hope that they too can achieve their own form of greatness both in their careers and in their personal lives.

But how effective are they? If these programmes, books, tools and philosophies are so great, then why aren’t there a a million Anthony Robbins (…or insert the name of your preferred self-help guru here) clones out there harnessing their “Personal Power” to achieve unlimited success?

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Wow! Just saw a post about this great competition on Tom Raferty’s Social Media blog (sorry Tom, but I don’t think your appeal for people not to enter is going to work).

This has to be one of the most compelling pieces of “link bait” I’ve seen in a while, and a great way to generate buzz in the local blogosphere. Who, within striking distance of this superb looking accommodation, wouldn’t want to enter this competition?

Glengarriff Lodge — a former hunting lodge of the Earls of Bantry

I’ll have to post this as an example on my Digital Marketing blog… which is woefully in need of more attention than it’s getting. Funny, but researching and writing the book it sits alongside (due for publication by Kogan Page later this year) seems to be taking up all of my time!

I wonder if posting the competition to another blog means I get two bites at the cherry?

All you have to do is link to their homepage using Luxury Self Catering as your anchor text, and, in the same post, link to the site of a friend who might also be interested in the competition.

For more information take a look at the Luxury Self Catering Weekend Give-Away Competition Page on the Glengarriff Lodge website.

Now all I have to do is think of a friend who’d be interested in the competition and link to their site. Now, let me see… friends with websites I can link to…. Hmm… that’s trickier than it should be… OK, how about Marc Holden over at Firehorse Imaging.

Good luck with the competition… as long as you don’t win, of course! I’ve decided that’s my prerogative.

Technorati Tags: luxury self catering,competition,digital marketing success,viral marketing,link bait

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Published in the WOW! supplement of the Evening Echo 06/02/2008

I’m a digital immigrant.

Yes I embrace technology: I have a mobile smart-phone with built in WiFi, I use a computer for long periods every day, I do much of my work from home via e-mail and the Internet, I use Skype, I recently set up a Facebook account, and when I need to look something up Google is my first port of call. I’d say that makes me pretty connected… but in an increasingly wired world I’ll never quite fit in.

I’m a hybrid – spanning the divide between generations – understanding both of them, but never truly belonging to either.

In the ’70s, when I was a child, computers were hulking great things that occupied entire wings of universities and needed their own power stations. Today they’re a small, self contained hub for communication, productivity and entertainment. Computers are everywhere: in your car, in your fridge, in your toaster, in your music player and in your wristwatch. Pretty soon they’ll even be able to put computers in your clothes!

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Published as an opinion piece in The Evening Echo on the 06/02/2008

Take a human being and scratch away at the thin veneer of civility, and before long you’ll reveal the true nature of the beast beneath. For all our trappings of a sophisticated society, culture and civilization, at our very core we’re driven by a much more basic set of rules. The instinct to secure the resources we need to survive; to protect ourselves, our families and the members of our particular “tribe”.

Every now and then you’ll notice our thinly veiled tribal roots bubbling to the surface. It happened last week, when former Archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, secured a temporary injunction to prevent a State inquiry into clerical abuse from accessing Church documents. This was in spite of a promise by current Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, to allow the inquiry “open access” to church files.

To the layperson this turn of events is incomprehensible. It flies in the face of reason, but then the urge to protect members of one’s “tribe” is a base human instinct that can sometimes by-pass reason, common sense and even common decency.

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“Working it” column published in the Career Moves section of The Evening Echo on 04/02/2008

Unless you’re a model, or perhaps an escort, then surely the way you look doesn’t have the slightest bearing on your ability to do your job. Which means, all things being equal, that you can wear what you like to work, right?

Wrong, apparently!

Workplace dress codes have slackened quite dramatically in Ireland over the past decade or so – driven in no small part by the casual jeans-and-t-shirt approach to work attire adopted by high-profile, high-tech international employers like Google and Microsoft, and high-flying column-hogging executives like Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary, with his trademark casual shirt and jeans. But it looks like the tide is about to turn… at least according to some career pundits.

As the economy slows, belts tighten and competition for jobs becomes fiercer, dressing to impress is coming back into vogue, they say, and career conscious employees need to take note if they want to bolster their position in the company.

Perhaps unsurprisingly one advocate of “dressing up” for work is Dublin tailor Louis Copeland. Talking to a Sunday newspaper recently he declared that jeans should never be worn in a business environment, even on casual Fridays, and that no matter how hot it gets you should always wear a long-sleeved shirt.

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