There’s always something good about February (besides my birthday). The sense that Spring is in the air - or not far off. For us here at Athena Media February 1st, St Brigid’s Day, has come with a sense of a new beginning. We’ve moved once again. Only this time its just around the corridor in 10-13 Thomas St, Dublin 8. More space, light and since we’re at the back we’ve lost the soundtrack of city tours and hospital ambulances. Peace at last. We’re also celebrating our new radio series ‘Field of Dreams’ which goes out on Newstalk in a special broadcast on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th. Its a series telling stories with a sporting angle but with a different twist - like ‘Count Us In’ which is a sports project run by Sport Against Racism in primary schools in Dublin’s inner city to open children’s minds and bodies to new sports, from badminton to basketball, and to show how sport can unite across all boundaries. There’s also a documentary following the uplifting story of Portumna hurlers, heading for their 3-in-a-row Club Championship. That’s a story of brothers, like Ollie and Joe Canning, but its also how parish pride out-weights anything else and how the Club Championship represents the very best of the GAA tradition and legacy. The third in that series is about competitive sisters like athletes and twins, Rebecca and Charlotte ffrench O Carroll and sisters Annalise and Claudine Murphy, who are both laser sailors. Its great a series which showcases inspiring sports stories and people goes out on the national holiday and we hope it will give more people a chance to catch them. (We’ll also release them as podcasts so visit our new blog site www.podcastingireland.ie and you’ll find the podcast there after march 17th).
So besides our Spring move we have also welcomed a new office member, Niall Brew, who joins us on work placement for the next nine months. Niall’s a rugby man from St Mary’s with a ton of interests so expect to see his name around our projects across the year. We’ve been busy in January shooting in Kerry with Pat Falvey who heads off shortly for his trek to the North Pole so we’ll be following his progress and I’m sure he’ll be doing lots of radio updates for shows like Gerry Ryan. Our shoot the other weekend brought us up the highest mountain in Ireland, Carraountouhil, which was amazing and we hope to share some of those shots with you soon.
Back here in Dublin we’ve been busy with our Belmayne project and we’re out there again this week, talking to 4/5 year olds about their world! One of them wants to be the pizza man when he grows up!
So a new month, a hint of Spring, new work in radio coming up and a new person in the centre. What more could we want this early into 2010?
(By the way the podcast download numbers on our www.joycesdublin.ie site are quite incredible - over two thousand in just over a month. Visit and tell us what you think)

Well that will teach us for taking the met office as gospel. We had hoped to get some great snow shots this week for our film documentaries - Belmayne - and Pat Falvey - but sadly by Monday it was all slush and a fading memory of whiteness. We’re back in the swing of things with a bright new year 2010 and hoping to see lots of new projects come on the table. There’s been a wonderful reaction to our Joyce’s Dublin series of audio podcasts (check out www.joycesdublin.ie) and they’re currently running on RTE Choice, Digital Radio (thank you to the Sunday Business Post for a glowing review). We’re nearly finished editing our three part sport series for Newstalk 106, Field of Dreams, and we hope we can give you transmission dates soon for the series. The first in the series is ‘Count Us In’ a lovely documentary following a schools project run by Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI) which uses sport in primary schools in Dublin’s inner city to help break down barriers of race, gender and class.
We’re busy with a few tenders which have opened up for the New Year and we’re recruiting a new production assistant under the FAS work placement scheme which gives unemployed graduates a chance to get work experience. Its a sign of the times that there has been significant interest in the posting and we’re looking forward to welcome someone new to Athena Media soon. This Friday evening Anita, Barry and myself head down to Kerry to work with Pat Falvey on our biographical documentary. Pat is getting ready to take on his latest challenge and trek to the North Pole with fellow explorer Clare O Leary. Its a pity to have missed the snow……but who knows it could be back yet!
Happy New Year to all our blog readers and we hope its a bright one for all of us.

Its been a roller coaster of a year for most media businesses and lots of people may not survive the long winter as the credit freeze continues. For Athena Media 2009 has been a year with distinct highs and lows and like most of you we’re looking forward to a better one in 2010. A big highlight this year was the completion of our 10 part series on young people and mental health ‘ is it just me?’ which went out Jan-March on RTE 2. The series is now entered into the Celtic Media Awards and IFTN TV awards for next year. The series was launched in January and we’re delighted to see so many of the young people involved in the series doing well and thriving - like Daire, Emma, Tim and Akeem who are now all active in Headstrong - the National Youth Mental Heath Organisation - www.headstrong.ie. A second major highlight was the broadcast of our radio documentary ‘Tower Songs’ on RTE Lyric FM on February 14th. The documentary told the story of a community music project in Ballymun, led by an inspirational teacher Ron Cooney, and featured the voices and work of children and young people in Ballymun who used music to tell the story of urban renewal. The documentary later went on to win gold at the PPI National Radio Awards in October and it’s also entered in the Celtic Media Awards which take places in Northern Ireland next Spring. It’s still available as a podcast on our site www.podcastingireland.ie under Athena Media podcasts in the directory.
Lows, we’d have to say, was the lost of our sponsor 02 for Making Waves - our podcast music channel which we’d been running every week since 2006. Sadly sponsorship of content has been more challenging this year and our music channel was a casualty. But we’re hopefully that the channel and the concept of an online new Irish music channel can be re-born in a better economic climate.
One of the surprises of the year, which has taken us a new documentary route, happened in April when we filmed a short feature for RTE’s Capital D series on a new eco-park along the north coast of Dublin in an area called Belmayne. The park, Fr Collins Park, is a jewel in Dublin City’s crown, but our find on the shoot was a nearby new primary school St Francis of Assisi in Belmayne which started us thinking about a full film documentary around the school. We’ve been filming since Sept 1, on and off, around the school and the area and we hope to create a very special piece for Autumn 2010.
In radio work Spring also brought us to the end of a big four part series we did for Newstalk 106 (under Sound and Vision Funding) called Urban Beauty, Urban Blight which traced the story of our cities and the legacy of urban planning or the lack of it. It was a fascinating project (we learnt a lot!) and brought us the opportunity to meet some interesting people like architect Sean O Laoire.
In May we moved office again - back to Thomas St again and we’re now based in 10-13 the old project office for The Digital Hub. We also launched a new initiative Athena Media Training and from May to December we ran a range of digital media courses and workshops in podcasting (both audio and video) and a very popular Social Media for Business workshop. We’ll be announcing our training schedule for 2010 shortly.
In September We once again worked with the wonderful folk at Women Mean Business and created short videos around this year’s event 02 WMB Awards and Conference. Its our third time to work with the conference and last year we met someone - Pat Falvey - who again triggered a documentary concept which is also (finally) coming to life. Pat is an extraordinary adventurer who has climbed Everest four times (reaching the summit twice) and the only man to have completed the seven summits challenge twice. We’re now working with Pat on a new documentary for Setanta (under Sound and Vision funding) called Pat Falvey; My Private Everest. Pat is currently in Canada training for his North Pole expedition next Spring while we’re beginning to get the project off the ground now that all the (lengthy) paperwork is completed.
We also re-visited another Capital D featured we shoot for Dublin City Council. The dublinwaste.ie initiative was up for a major international award last month and we re-cut a short package to help them tell the story. (You can see it online if you visit www.vimeo.com/athenamedia)
But a real highlight in the last month has been a project we’re just finishing for UCD and its online archive project. Joyce’s Dublin is a multimedia project showcasing the archive resources and for this online project we’ve taken the story of The Dead and shown what the archives can tell us in documents, manuscripts and photographs about Dublin in 1904 and the world that Joyce reflects in The Dead. The project will be online shortly and we’ll keep you posted on it.
So at the end of a challenging year lots to celebrate (and somethings to mourn). But the key is the coming year and all it offers and promises. We hope it will see streams of new work (particularly in the documentaries we’ve mentioned) but also that it will be a year when digital media in Ireland comes centre stage and begins to realise its potential to both enhance our lives, societies and economy.

One of the interesting aspects of the new broadcasting legislation, which has created the BAI (Broadcasting Authority of Ireland), is that it has sought to deepen the definition of public broadcasting or more precisely public content and increase the public’s access to the institutions which create public content. The new law mandates all broadcasters to create audience councils which will represent the public and ensure the public interest is served. It also allows for a public right of reply which means people have a channel to seek a right of reply outside of the courts and gives greater weight to the concept of the public ownership of broadcasting in terms of the content that is delivered to the public. While the new regulator, the BAI, now takes care of both public broadcasters like RTE and TG4 as well as commercial ones like TV3 and Newstalk 106, the law tasks the BAI to test new offerings, new broadcasting media offerings, against public need as well as market feasibility. The BAI may now feel daunted by the amount of new tasks which are piling up due to the new legislation but from the public’s point of view it is all good and put the focus back on the public concept of media rather than on the institutions which provide that media. While the new legislation gives a strong sense of the secure future for institutions like RTE it also makes clear the accountability aspects to ensure that public monies deliver relevant and appropriate content.

The broadcasting fund, Sound and Vision, now gets 7% of the TV licence fee (which may simply be tagged a public content licence in the future) and that money can benefit any Irish licensed broadcaster once they commission/create content which meet a public content criteria which includes children’s programming, arts/culture, history, Irish language etc. A new category has been added which means the fund can also now benefit programming which seeks to tell the story of development, international development and Ireland’s relationship with it, providing a global perspective on our story-telling which will allows projects relating to the developing world to come under the scheme, for both radio and television. One category which has existed since the Funding Act was passed in 2003 is archives, particularly digital archives, and this category has, to date, not benefited from the fund and indeed the whole sphere of archiving remains at an embryonic stage in Ireland. While RTE has a clear archiving policy and has been digitising its archives the lack of a national plan on a national audio visual digital archive is holding any progress back.

Other countries, like Norway in the mid 1990s, have long since grasped the nettle and invested to create an open access and free national digital archive which draws on all the cultural institutions from broadcasters to universities to ensure that the public, (whose money created the content in the first place), can freely benefit and enjoy the archives as a cultural and educational resources. The lack of policy on this is more significant than revenue since a policy led approach would mean that the 7% allocation to Sound and Vision could finally begin to benefit archives and assist the creation of a national audio visual archives which exploits the best digital technologies we have for public and educational use. One last thing - where would be a good place to house and create this digital national archive? The GPO of course. A central building in both our national history and cultural life which could be the new centre for the irish digital archive where people can walk in and enjoy the experience of the archives from RTE, the universities, the museums, the private institutions which may share their collections. It would cost less than moving the Abbey there - and would avoid the horror of trying to match the needs of a future focussed performance company like the Abbey with a protected and historic building like the GPO. Ironically now is the time, in the midst of this recession, to plan and get the policy right and then to ready to create a central and accessible resource which will be a lasting and living monument for the island and a lasting and living installation of the legacy of public content. What do you think? Let me know.

Its been a long time coming but finally a combined broadcasting regulator for both the public and commercial sectors in Ireland has arrived. From this month the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) becomes the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI). It is the same place and largely the same people but underneath a lot is changing as the new broadcasting act takes effect and brings the once divided worlds of RTE and the independent commercial sector closer. The BAI will replace the RTE Authority, the Ministerial appointed body which governs RTE and to which the Executive board of RTE reports. The current Authority will integrate into the new board of the BAI ( to be chaired by former RTE DG Bob Collins) and over the coming year we will begin to see changes as the regulation of both RTE and its competitors, like TV3 and Today FM, comes together. For most listeners and viewers the switch over won’t mean much. They shouldn’t notice anything different. For the organisations it will mean a bit of re-thinking as the changes roll through but that will be healthy for the sector. For the BAI, the emerging BAI, its a significant step-up in terms of operations and one can only imagine the amount of charts being drawn and re-drawn at the moment.
The new organisation also has a slightly bigger pot of funding with the new broadcasting act slicing 7% off the TV licence (was 5%) under the Sound and Vision Scheme. The change combines with a review of Sound and Vision and how it is operating and many in the independent sector, both TV and radio producers, will be following those changes closely and hoping that it leads to an electronic commissioning system like Proteus in the BBC which cuts out the acres of dead trees which are presently being created by Sound and Vision Radio and TV rounds where 4-6 copies of everything need to be supplied in paper form. One of the pressures on Sound and Vision is to remain committed to independent production and to enriching the creativity of the sector by supporting diverse and challenging projects which would not normally be made without the support of the fund. With pressures on budgets many in broadcasting stations are now using the fund to support internal production and are relunctant to support independent ideas as the funding goes to the independent producers who ultimately remain the rights holders. For the broadcasting and digital media sectors in Ireland to grow we need producers to have rights returned to them so they can develop, mature and ideally export their content internationally.
It is encouraging to see the significant level of funding the recent TV round awarded to Irish independent film and TV makers, We’re fortunate to be one of the 13 companies who, this time round, got a Yes for our Pat Falvey documentary project. We’ll be telling you more about that along the way. It is often a tough battle to get funding and in this case we got a yes on the second submission after we had re-worked the concept and taken on board the feedback from the review panel. Our broadcaster Setanta Ireland has also had a tough year and again its good to see two projects from this round going into Setanta as its in everyone’s interest to see a strong and vibrant TV sector. Sound and Vision, under the BAI, has the opportunity to ensure the fund makes outstanding programming but also to ensure that independent production houses grow. One of the real strengths the scheme offers independent programmer makers is that they remain the ultimate rights holders and can benefit from any long term exploitation of their ideas and work. A stronger intellectual rights basis is the key to the future growth of the creative industries as Neil Leyden from the Digital Media Forum has outlined in his proposal to create an IFSC type rights clearance house in Dublin. To assist that broadcasters, like RTE and TV3, need to recognise that its in everyone’s interests that producers gain more returns from their work and from any exploitation of their work. Without that independent production will remain fragile and under-resourced. A loss not just for the sector, in terms of ideas and creativity, but also for Ireland in terms of its creative future.

The BAI can assist this was supporting research on IP and the creative industries and by becoming a force which independently looks at the future of broadcasting, including online, and drawing on international case studies. One of the major advantages of the broadcasting regulation integration in the UK, which created OfCom, has been the commitment to research and media literacy. The opportunity here is that the BAI is more than a name change for the BCI but contains the potential to future proof the broadcasting and creative industries for the benefit of everyone in the country.

We seem to be drowning in online, web and social media conferences, seminars and even summits. Yet very few of the events really inspire. One of the difficulties with the forest of events tagging themselves social media is that most of them are being run from a solely sales and marketing view of online communications and many are run on a sales basis looking at how people gain quick fixes from the convergence of content online and transfer their analogue thinking to a digital habitat. Its the wrong way to start the discussion and probably ensures people miss the nature of what is changing in an online world. For us the journey is a communications one where a Web 2.0 environment, where high speed interactive content meets high speed broadband, is build on relationships and trust rather than exploiting tools to leverage your product. One of the most basic things I try to do in our workshops is underscore the discussion about technology and trends with the fact that what people need to do when they start to see online as a place to do business is to change their mindset, change the way they think about communications and consequently sales, marketing and advocacy.

We had a sales executive in recently who wondered how quickly they would see a return from their online activities. I reminded them of how we build relationships and how we use them. We create an understanding, we exchange information, we build trust and then sometimes we ask each other for help. Translate that to a business relationship with clients or customers and its not wildly different. Social media is about flow, building relationships, maintaining them, feeding them (which is where content comes in) and establishing an understanding or what in business is brand loyalty.

In a digital media landscape of rapid and continuous change the key is to remain open to learning, to growing, to developing. The only thing constant is change the ancient Greek philosopher Heroclitus once said and that is at the core of social media but hand in hand with that is ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’. In adapting to the new opportunities of interactivity and high speed blogging like twitter the principles of good communications remain the same. Know your audience, understand your message and know where your audience is so you match your message to them. Building strong interactive relationships takes time, but its not a matter of 12 hours a week as one supposed social media guru recently claimed, its about a little often. Feed your relationship, build it and it will grow.

I am clearly not destined to actually be at the PPI radio awards when we win something. Some years back, 2001 I think, I was then Head of RTE Radio and Head of RTE Radio 1, but when the station won the best station of the year award I was in my sick bed and had to get it all by text message on my phone. Any time since when I have gone it has either been in another capacity or like last year when ‘The Last Wake’ was short-listed - we didn’t win! But I am not complaining. Last Friday when our music documentary ‘Tower Songs’ was up for the music special of the year award I was once again in my sick bed with the flu, enjoying a quiet lemsip induced sleep, when the text came in that we had won. Sweet at any time and even sweeter for this project as it was such fun to make and record.
The strange thing was as I read the text messages from Lochlainn Harte, who edited the programme, and was at the awards for us, I suddenly remember what day it was and figured maybe it was all meant to be. When Lochlainn and I were editing Tower Songs just before its transmission for RTE Lyric FM my mother Rose who had been ill died and in the end the programme went out on Valentine’s Day -the day after her funeral. I asked Lyric Fm’s commissioning editor Olga Buckley if she would let me dedicate the documentary to Rose since Rose lived and died within a stone’s throw of Ballymun where Tower Songs was based and because of all things in life she loves a song more than anything.
So when the show went out it was dedicated to her memory. On Friday night when the text messages came in I realised it was October 2nd still and Rose’s birthday. It seemed apt - a birthday gong to remember her by and a chance to celebrate again.
My thanks to Niamh Kinane our researcher on Tower Songs and to everyone in Athena Media, Linda, Chris, Susan and Paula who helped with the production. To Dusty Rhodes who being so supportive during the final edits when he gave us time and attention and let Lochlainn finish it when I had to go to be at Rose’s wake.
So we’ll celebrate in an old fashioned style soon with some liquids other than lemsip and profound thanks to Ron Cooney and all the children of St Joesphs in Ballymun who made the project possible and showed the transformational power of music.

Sing on.

Its that time of year again. Dark evenings beckon and award ceremonies on a weekly basis for every sector and activity. I’m waiting for the ‘Best Aunt’ competition which is probably the only one worth winning. But in the meantime there’s the PPI Radio Awards in Kilkenny in October when the radio industry prove that some of us (a very rare few) have faces as well as voices. Its a big ticket affair with lots of frocks, alcohol and just an element of in house bitching (and that’s just Tony Fenton..polishing his array of shiny toys). But it’s also about radio and some really great radio from features and documentaries to music shows and news & current affairs. For that we love it - since it celebrates radio. And once again we’re happy to have one of our radio babies of 2009 acknowledged and recognised. Tower Songs our music radio documentary for RTE Lyric FM in February is up for an award in the music special along side some other great documentaries. We’re happy to be on the shortlist and to be in good company. Tower Songs was special for lots of reasons. It’s about children and teenagers in Ballymun telling their story through the power of music. It’s about a dynamic and inspiring music teacher Ron Cooney and a talented composed called Dara O Toole as well as the charismatic, duracell bunny that is RTE conductor David Brophy. It is also special because of the people who worked on it Niamh Kinane, researcher and Lochlainn Harte, sound engineer and editor. But most of all it is special because my mother Rose died while we were editing it and we dedicated the one hour piece to her memory and love of song. It remains our favourite documentary of the year and it gave us the chance to work with, and get to know incredible people. So to make the shortlist is sweet and nearly as sweet as making the documentary.
Good luck to everyone in the awards shortlist (including Tony Fenton….!).

The climate is already turning cold. It’s windy and wet outside. The late promised heatwave has not broken through the cloud-storms and the radio news continues to pile red figures upon red figures. Climbing debt and unemployment. Namarama. Those of us running our own businesses and looking to the future are projecting a difficult winter and hoping for some respite in the late spring. That may be optimistic. But working and planning for the future and for future growth and development is what businesses are all about. It is against our nature as a media company to get involved in the midst of a public debate and against my journalistic core to take a public position on something we’re going to vote on but it is time to stand up and be counted. We’re not involved in the Lisbon Treaty campaign on either side, nor am I covering it, so in the midst of what is a challenging month for our society perhaps it is time for those of us we are not politically affiliated, and who are deeply concerned about our future, to use their voice.
Outside my window on Thomas St, in the heart of a piece of the city which felt little of the so called Celtic Tiger boom, there are posters claiming the minimum wage will fall to 1.84 and that Lisbon will somehow make the 1916 leaders rock in their grave. Maybe that is the language of desperation but there is a danger than once again lies, damn lies and rather weird statistics are used in the public debate. It seems the anti-Lisbon campaign has run out of headlines on abortion and gone for a whole new list of creative, alternative realities. Let’s be clear. The defeat of the Lisbon treaty first time round has to be seen as a failure by the Government to even bother to read the thing. Second time round if we reject Lisbon again it is a failure by us the public to engage with the facts and figure out what is in our own national interest and in the wider interest of Europe.
A young colleague tells me that many of her friends in their 20s are voting No for ‘nationalistic’ reasons. ‘We’ll lose power’, one said. Hmm imagine how much power we’ll lose when we’re on the slow track in the EU and being cold shouldered by Brussels. The image of our wet and windy little island (or our bit of it) going it alone, face firmly to the Atlantic, raising credit from Iceland, clinging to our flimsy cloak of ‘national power’ is hard to shift.
A Polish colleague in Warsaw complains we took the good times and the cash flow and now seem unable to face our responsibilities in terms of the continent. A French colleague in Paris says ‘we’re waiting anxiously for the Irish so things can get moving again’.
Those who are thinking of voting No because they are quite rightly cross with the Government have to think who is going to help us work our way out of the mess our own national policies have created; in health, planning, urban development, housing, transport and education? The EU helped shaped Ireland as a more equitable society for men and women. It has opened us up from some of the insular thinking which had previously defined us. It has allowed our national pride to find its home within a European context; a context which has respected our language, our traditions and our culture. The mess we are in can not be blamed on the EU, that’s something we have to own ourselves, but the way out of this mire is surely not isolation, going it alone, but by being part of a vibrant and diverse community which we have helped shape and which we will continue to shape and influence by saying as Molly Bloom did. Yes.

It seems everyone is talking social media these days but often meaning quite different things. Like Henry James’ image in Portrait of a Lady it depends on what window you are observing the courtyard from, as that defines what you see and understand. In essence social media is communities of people connecting via new technologies and communicating using content whether text, audio or video. It’s about sharing everything from news to views, music to video clips. It is the extension of our offline lives, whether in work, at home or in the pub, the way we create and gather networks of friends and colleagues. It is the Internet - and high speed broadband - which has enabled that natural human instinct to connect, communicate and share to mushroom, accelerate and expand. Many of us now have online networks through social networking sites like Linked In, Facebook or MySpace which have gradually become part of our daily lives and integrated into the one thing that tends to go everywhere with us - our mobile phone. Today social networking is the 4th most popular activity on the net globally and its rapidly moving up the ranks and in some areas it is already number 2 just behind email. Facebook has a global community of over 250 million and yet its still very new, very recent and run by a CEO in his mid twenties. Facebook has now overtaken MySpace as the world’s most loved and used social network and the fickleness of our digital habits is clear; if something more useful comes along we shift happily and quickly. Its hard to think but just a year ago Twitter was still only a bubbling undercurrent. Today its one of the most significant forces in shift-changing social media and the concept of the micro-blog, the 140 character message, has taken root. Whether Twitter itself is here for the long run is a debate (remember how dominant MySpace was just a short time ago) but the age of ego-media has spawned millions of tweets and re-tweets. Recent research shows that up to 40% of tweets globally are ‘rubbish’, global chit-chat about standing at the bus stop or getting caught in traffic. Equally about 10% of all Twitter accounts generate the message traffic while the rest are ‘following’ in that quaint, rather passive language of Twitter. Effectively the ‘follow’ in Twitter is simply an RSS feed similar to what brings you this blog, or our podcasts or even your news alerts. It allows you to follow strangers, like Queen Rania or Brittany Spears, unlike Facebook where you are required to become a ‘friend’ or a ‘fan’ but increasing the lines are blurring somewhat between the two worlds as middleware tools like Seesmic allow you to integrate your social media life and your updates to Twitter and Facebook.
While trends may come and go the underlying nature of social media is about connections, trusted and valued connections which communicate and share; from the family photos to a hidden treasure of an article, essay, poem, song or story which comes to you via a link. While there are lots of one sided conversations going on in Twitter (technology enabled monologues!) the real story happening right across the Internet is of a rapid expansion of communications, conversations and information sharing. The filter for many of us in that fast fire of content is our trusted networks, our ‘friends’, and the continued growth and presence of trusted portals whether in news, entertainment or education. In a sense that may be Twitter’s weakness. Its reach is wide, its a global megaphone but the communities it creates are weaker, more fragile. In a sense Twitter is an extension of blogging which sits within social networks so perhaps the future is equally that Twitter is a mico-blogging channel steaming in and through social networks but not replacing them.

What is the fuss about social media? Effectively its a reflection of the shift to new media habits and the dynamic shift in user behaviour. For those attempting to communicate, to market, to sell, to persuade, to build advocacy or awareness you ignore it at your peril. On the other hand don’t assume it all about sending endless tweets all day flogging your stall. The marketplace has altered. Social media requires investing not just time but a little of yourself in order to make it work. Sadly there are few really outstanding business bloggers in Ireland and as a country we’re still behind our European partners in fully embracing the digital transition. It has been about broadband. But now it is also about ideas and how we use this altered landscape to create vibrant communications for both social and business needs.

Let me know what you think. (by the way we are on Twitter @athenamediaie and try not to inflict our bus queues and traffic jams on you!)

(We’re also running a Social Media for Business workshop on Sept 5th and Sept 18th if you want to find out more… check the news story on our website)