Tag Archives: storycubes

On Social Media in Ireland

Having taken a step back from blogging and all that ‘meta jazz’ for a while, I’ve had a good long think about the Social Media Guru (SMG) vid I put together in September, and what motivated me to be so cynical. The video is the only web ‘thing’ I’ve ever really created, it has generated 143,000 hits and counting. That’s unexpectedly large given what it was (ten times the hits of the much-vaunted DJ Hip Op vid), yet infinitely small in Youtube terms (20 million people have watched this surprised kitten video).

It sparked some pointed animosity from American SMGs, already sick of being mocked, despite the video being aimed squarely at their clients, whose gullibility and laziness of mind is the root of the real issue. One full-on viral case study was done on its global spread, which was very interesting indeed.  The video was met largely with a wall of silence by those in the sector in Ireland, in comparison which is unsurprising due to the small marketplace here.

I’m not a guru or a techie, I’m not selling any guru-like services (at present), but I have helped friends get started in the sphere and written copy for plenty of websites. I’m also a chronic lurker. read more »

ireland media Portfolio

Play the hand you’re dealt

Last week I took a bunch of college students back to school. After three hours of poker, I stood up and walked away with 70 of their softly-bludged euros. It was a rare, rare win.

While I was busy fleecing them, we got talking about work, and the fact that I’m back freelancing again. The lads started asking me about what articles I most enjoyed researching. I’m not a big poker player, but when I mentioned a long feature on student poker, and promptly scooped another hefty pot of chips, there was a collective groan. He’s a fucking shark.

The article appeared on the front of the Agenda magazine while I was still a student myself.

Sunday Business Post, Feb 27, 2005

Poker School

It’s 7.30pm and the last of 270 students are trickling through the doors of the Gresham Hotel. Ten to a table, they sit and make guarded small talk, eyeing each other nervously.

With a top prize of €1,500 on the line, there’s little time for making friends, and everyone is anxious to get down to business. Niall Hughes of Trinity College’s Card Society announces to much applause, that the prize fund has reached €6,500. read more »

books ireland irish Portfolio Sunday Business Post

“When my clients die of Aids … I count those deaths as victories”

It’s not easy to like a man who says things like that. Even less when he fills a book with similar throwaway phrases and sundry self-aggrandising sop, and you have to read the whole thing and turn in a review at the end.

I like reading books. I count book reviews as a perk of working in journalism, but this death row lawyer-cum-author made me want to fly to Texas just in the hope I’d get to punch him.

Sunday Business Post, January 31, 2010

David R Dow, the high profile death-row lawyer responsible for Killing Time: One Man’s Race to Stop an Execution, would have us believe he is among the highest ranks of legal martyr. His job is, after all, an endless moral conflict. read more »