BBQ at McQuillan Manor in 32 seconds …… and a great chance to chat about Gawker
Gawker is an amazing piece of software for Mac OS that I have just discovered. With very little effort it allows you to put together a short movie of still imagines to track a day of work or an event.
Time lapsed BBQ at McQuillan Manor – 11th July using Gawker from Russell McQuillan on Vimeo.
Dont believe everything you read on the Internet – It was not my Birthday yesterday.
Congratulations! Your e-mail address was pre-selected and entered into the Nigerian lottery and guess what you won ! 500,000,000.
I must be the richest sob in the world, except I have never seen the money. I have though been getting these emails since 1994 when I first joined the world wide interweb, or compuserve as it was back then.(the ISP that is).
At the age of 14 something was clear to me. My details online in the wrong hands were dangerous so since then I have never given a web site my date of birth or home address with the expection of eBay or play.com when I need something delivered but they never get my date of birth, sometimes they are lucky if they even get my real name.
So in 2007 when I signed up for facebook the same thing went. DOB 5th May, I always keep my online birthday the same so it’s easy to remember. (more…)
It’s time to talk about rental cars
I have been holding off writing this for quite some time, partly because I was so fuming with rage, partly because I was waiting to see how it played out and partly because it take’s more time than one might realise to write these things.
That said, the dust has settled and my boiling blood has reduced to a low simmer so here goes………
In February. I along with my fellow Network Scouters embarked on another Top Gear Adventure. This time the plan was to race from Edinburgh Castle to Buckingham Palace. Car vs Public Transport. The date and time was set, as was the accommodation now it was just time to figure out how to get our vehicle from Northern Ireland to the UK Mainland for the race and back again after-wards. Scouts being Scouts, we always try to go for the most cost effective solution after all we do favor sleeping in tents rather than the ritz ! So it was clear from the outset than renting a car was going to work out much cheaper than booking a ferry. * (more…)
Stephen Brown from The Adventure Team talks about Social Media
I met Stephen just over a year ago when he followed me on Twitter. We quickly began exchanging tweets, Facebook messages and texts until we finally met in person some months later and have bumped into each other several times since at various networking events.
As a scouter, his business fascinated me from day one as he basically gets paid to do all the fun stuff we do at scouts…. and he does it full time.
I booked him for a black tie event last year to do some pre-dinner games which turned out to be very novel, great sport and people are still talking about it today!
So what does this have to do with Social Media, well its simple. Stephen started his business (The Adventure Team) just over 12 months ago with virtually no money and absolutely no money for marketing or sales. What Stephen did have though was a computer and he quickly was able to build a large following on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to Stephen’s daily Facebook update where he talks about what he is going to get up to that day. (more…)
Open Coffee Lisburn, new day and location
Numbers at the Friday meeting’s have been dropping of late so Simon McC set up a quick survey to find out what day suited people best. At the same time people were complaining about the venue. Daltons has been good to us but the feedback was that the breakfast was not up to scratch (being that its a sandwich bar) and the parking was not the handiest.
So we have came up with (based on the survey and feedback) what we think is a good plan, and we will trail it for the next two meets ups to see how viable it is. (more…)
What a weeks its been ……. for the McQuillans and for Politics
I have had loads of stuff I wanted to talk about on russellmcquillan.com this week however I have been so busy I have not had a chance to open the laptop and think about writing something, so most of my thoughts have been pushed out on twitter.
Anyway, I though I would just grab a moment to put the week down on paper (so to speak) and what a week it has been ! – not only but for Northern Ireland politics and in the McQuillan household’s.
Open Coffee Lisburn on tour / Open Coffee Banbridge, a new beginning
I am not sure if we should say that Open Coffee Lisburn is on tour or if we should just go right ahead and start calling it Open Coffee Banbridge, after all the Lisburn (cell / chapter / branch / franchise / who cares?) was started by a few of us that were attending Belfast Open Coffee.
Anyway to make a short story long a few of us were chatting about how to expand on our bi-weekly meeting, get more people involved and generally shake things up a bit in 2010 ( twenty ten / two thousand and ten / again who cares? ) and Open Coffee Banbridge was born (exactly one year on from Open Coffee’s birth) !
However rather than Belfast’s weekday evening or Lisburn’s Friday early o’clock, this will be on a Saturday at Outlet, meaning you can bring the family and make a day of it.
The first meeting will be on Saturday 16th at 9.30 at Starbuck’s, of course Open Coffee Lisburn still continues as usual on Friday mornings with our next meeting being on Friday 8th at 7.15am in Dalton’s Lisburn.
If you have never heard of Open Coffee, here are a few links to help you better understand what on earth I am talking about !
Open Coffee Lisburn andrewgribben.com, Open Coffee Lisburn on russellmcquillan.com, Open Coffee Lisburn on Twitter, iCal / gCal subscriber tool
I hope to see you there !!
Russell
A Nation revolts and online is the medium they are using !
I won’t get into the detail about Wednesday nights football match against France and the handball incident. The truth is I don’t really care much about football although it would be nice to see our Irish neighbours have a bit of luck for a change.
I can see their point though, clearly rules were broken and clearly this should not be allowed to happen.
What has happened since this however is truly amazing, in true Irish style the nation is revolting but this time rather than use traditional methods they are using online forums such as Facebook to gather momentum on their war against the French.
A Facebook Fan page was set up just hours after the event entitled
Petition to have IRELAND Vs FRANCE REPLAYED!!!
and in no more than 48 hours they have received over 201,000 fans, thats over 5,000 new fans an hour, over 52,000 people have clicked the ‘like’ button on posts from the fan page creator and over 6,000 comments have been left………… some going !
The page is now being used to rally support for protests outside the embassy and users are calling for a boycott of all french goods. One user has said ‘I’ll not be buying any baguette for a while, that’s for sure’ Many of the comments cannot be repeated !
As Facebook grows in users both in Ireland and globally people need to wake up to the power things like fan pages have, whilst the petition is not an offical one there is no way Fifa can ignore this…. Can they ?
Open Coffee Lisburn – 21st Aug – Seed Funding opportunity
At our next OC Lisburn Meeting, we will be joined by Diane from Invest NI’s Propel programme. (Daltons, 7.15am)
I’m Not sure if you are aware of it (was formerly Transform) but the aim is to
take 30 of the brightest knowledge/technology ideas out there in NI and give them the necessary mentoring, support and guidance to make progress ( as well as a salary support to help soften the financial blow!) with at least 15 of them getting seed funding at the end of the six month intense programme.
The programme will be delivered by Xcell Partners and officially launches on August 17. The founder and partner of Xcell Partners, Diane Roberts would be keen to come to your next open coffee meeting on 21st August and if possible give a five minute intro to the programme.
She has an interesting background having operated on both sides of the Atlantic specialising in guiding and mentoring early stage and venture start up companies. Prior to heading up Propel, she was based in Silicon Valley, California, where she was West Coast Director and Manager of Enterprise Ireland’s US Software and Services team. She has also enjoyed considerable success operating in sales roles for international telecoms companies in the UK, Europe and Asia Pacific regions. Diane also acts as National Director for the Halo Business Angels Network (HBAN) in the Republic of Ireland (funded by InterTradeIreland and Enterprise Ireland.)
Spread the word and see you there.
Russell
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