Taekwon-do Grandmaster Robert Howard on TV3′s Morning Show

We invited TV3′s Morning Show and presenter Sybil Mulcahy up to Taekwon-do Grandmaster Robert Howard’s ‘dojang’ (Korean for school) in Cabra this week for a demonstration on the skills of Taekwon-do.

Grandmaster Howard talked about his promotion in North Korea and showed that at 73 he’s lost little of prowess. Some of his younger more nimble students did the more complicated kicks and punches including a smashing of brick with one punch and the breaking of up to ten tiles with flying kicks. They were even able to break tiles just with their wrists, thus proving that any part of your body can be used to defend yourself.

Sybils was a great sport and even held board as it was broken by Grandmaster Howard’s seven year old grandson Finn.

Please click here to view the TV3 feature

Taekwon-do Grandmaster Robert Howard snr on Today FM

72 year old Dubliner and Taekwon-do Grandmaster, Robert Howard, has been having a whirlwind few weeks. After being inducted to the Taekwon-do hall of fame in North Korea he has been in much demand from the media wanting to talk to him about his achievements.

Journalist Matt Cooper is a big sports fan and his drivetime radio show, whilst it does feature heavily on current affairs does like to focus on some stories that are a bit different. So they had Grandmaster Howard on the show yesterday.

PLease click below to hear the interview.

grandmaster-howard-todayfm

Shane Curran makes an impact with Kathryn Thomas

Shane Curran the head of Global Flood Solutionsm, the Roscommon flood prevention firm, made his mark on national radio this week when he was interviewed by the lovely Kathryn Thomas. She was standing in on the John Murray Show, which airs at 9am every weekday on RTE Radio 1.

Shane was asked to come onto the show after his Big Bags System flood barrier was used to protect the largest wasterwater treatment in the world, situated along the Potoman River in Washington DC. As Hurricane Irene hit last week there were fears that the treatment plant could be flooded. Thankfully disaster was averted.

Being an ex-professional footballer and former GAA Inter-County player Shane is no shrinking violet and he certainly wasn’t complaining getting a chance to talk to Kathryn. She must’ve enjoyed talking to him too as she had him on for nearly ten minutes.

Please click the link below to listen to the interview:

RTE Radio 1 John Murray Show 08-09-11 Big Baga System

Global Flood Solutions featured in The Irish Times’s Business section

For anyone that missed it, here is the coverage of the Global Flood Solutions deal from the Irish Times yesterday.

 4th January, 2011.

Global Flood Solutions bag's UK deal - The Irish Times coverage (click on image to zoom for more details).

Stephen Fry’s letter to his two millionth Twitter follower

Broadcaster extraordinaire and British national treasure Stephen Fry got his two millionth follower on Twitter (to see Stephen Fry’s Twitter page click here) this week and to celebrate he penned an open letter to his two millionth follower @mobijack. In his letter he talks about his relationship with tumultuous relationship with Twitter.

It’s very long so I haven’t pasted in here but it is well worth a read. Entitled “Two Million Reasons To Be Cheerful”, to read it in full click here.

Twitter allows people to send Tweets direct to anyone else on Twitter and as a result people can message celebrities. Naturally by allowing this type of direct communication celebrities have a fantastic way to communicate at arms length with fans, but with this comes the downside that critics or anyone that wants to have a go at a celebrity now has the conduit to do so. This has led to a couple of incidences when Mr Fry got a lot of unwarranted flak for some of his comments. He says he was misquoted and whether you believe that or not he has his right to his opinion. This does not give the users of Twitter the right to abuse the freedom the Twitter provides haranguing and vilifying other users. On a couple of occasions this is has led to Mr Fry saying he was going to give up Twitter and some people still think he still has. Thankfully he hasn’t and Twitter and @mobijack is richer for it. Long may it continue.

Long after me and Mr Fry are long gone I have no doubt that our Twitter accounts are going to provide a unique insight for historians into what we were like as people far more than has been possible with previous famous figures. Hopefully it will stand the test of time and our sarcasm and facetious on Twitter won’t be taken the wrong way.

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Award winning Irish film ‘8.5 Hours’ gets Guaranteed Irish DVD release.

'8.5 Hours' the most controversial film of recent years.

Award winning Irish film ‘8.5 Hours’ gets Guaranteed Irish DVD release.

5th November, 2010; Dublin, Ireland: Award winning Irish film ‘8.5 Hours’ gets Guaranteed Irish DVD release. The Irish feature film 8.5 Hours will be released on DVD on November 8^th. The film is a controversial mix of intense drama and very black comedy and charts one chaotic day in the lives of four Dublin office workers in a Dublin software firm in the final days of the Celtic Tiger.

The film was independently made on a tiny budget but was screened in many festivals, won several awards, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and got a national cinema release in Ireland earlier this year. The film sharply divided critics on its cinema release but built up a strong cult following.

The film is rated 18s for its DVD release as it features some very challenging material, striking sex scenes, an outrageous blackmail plot, violence and drug taking, as it depicts the lives of the four characters falling apart at the seams.

8.5 hours is also the first film to be awarded the ‘Guaranteed Irish’ brand recognition and will carry the logo on its DVD cover. Director, Brian Lally, says: “I thought it would be a novel and cheeky use of the iconic brand that would help the film to stand out on shelves alongside Hollywood film made with big budgets many multiples of ours, which the film will be competing against. The people behind Guaranteed Irish really liked the film and appreciated the quirky use of the brand. As the film was all shot and financed in Ireland, and features an all Irish cast, it truly is 100% ‘guaranteed Irish’”.

The films four main stars are well-known faces on the Irish screen and stage:
Lynette Callaghan (The Clinic, Raw, The Tudors, Cold Feet); Victor Burke (Fair City); Art Kearns (The Clinic) and Jonathan Byrne (The Honeymooners; On Home Ground). It also features well known Glenroe actress Geraldine Plunkett and Gary Egan (Adam & Paul).

Lally adds, “It’s a provocative and gritty film that shows a group of white-collar Dubliners behaving badly as their personal lives are pushed to extremes. Though I use the ending of the boom years as a backdrop to the drama, that’s just a starting point as all the stories spin off in completely different directions and by the end of the film, the characters find themselves in some very surprising places.”

There is renewed interest in the film recently as the Irish American magazine Irish Connections has a feature article on the film and called it “the best Irish film in years” and strongly disagreed with some Irish critics reaction to it. A recent audience screening of the DVD, to an invited audience of people from the IT people got a very positive audience reaction. You can view the audience reaction on the link below or

A trailer for the film and learn more on the official website: www.8point5hours.com

The DVD will be available to buy from most branches of HMV, Tower Records, Easons, Zhivago, Celtic Note and the IFI.

For more information on ‘8.5 Hours’ or interviews with any of the cast and crew, please contact Simon Palmer of Republic on +353 (0) 1282 204 or email simon@republicpr.ie.

Notes to Editors

Festivals Awards Won

Winner Best Feature – International Film Festival Ireland – Clonmel 2009

Winner Best Actress – Lynette Callaghan – Yellow Fever Film Festival Belfast 2009

Winner 2nd Place Best Feature in Festival – Waterford Film Festival 2008
(early version of film)

About Brian Lally, Director

Brian has worked in the film and television industry for over 12 years. He has written several feature length screenplays and short films. One of his early screenplays was the 40 minute film Boys & Men which was voted best short Irish film by the Irish Times in 1996. It was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival and was broadcast on RTE and Film Four. He set up Instigator Films in 2004 and has produced over 100 corporate video productions as well as the atmospheric short film Aftermath. This film  was screened in several international film festivals and led to Brian being awarded a scholarship to study video art in Rome. “8.5 Hours” is Brian’s first feature and he plans to direct a second feature in 2011.

Other Credits

Liam Moran, Maria Hylton, Richard Callaghan: Executive Producers

Karim Elmahoudi: Composer

Ends

Winners announced of 53rd Annual National Skills Championships

Mary Gore, National Skills Champion 2010

The 53^rd annual National Skills Competition ended today with a lavish awards ceremony in the Round Room at Dublin’s Mansion House attended the by the current occupant the Lord Mayor himself. Sponsored by Snickers Workwear [disclosure: client] for the 5^th year in a row, the competition pitted apprentices from all over Ireland, head-to-head in 13 trades.

Run by the Dublin Institute of Technology, the competition tested every aspect of the skill and workmanship of the apprentices over an intense period of two and a half days – imagine sitting a the equivalent of a practical exam over two and half days. That’s intense stuff for young apprentices, but will probably be more pressure than they will ever face on the job, so it will serve well in their chosen careers.

We’ve had great interest from RTE this week with the competition featuring on the RTE’s Six One and Nine O’Clock News. The News featured an interview with Mary Gore, who’s at the front of the photo above; she’s now Ireland’s National Car Painting Champion. National Skills will also feature on the Thursday’s Capital D programme at 7pm on RTE1. We’ve also had great support in the press with the papers all over country featuring their local winners.

“The numbers of apprentices in Ireland is down 86%[1] since the boom” said David Macken, Managing Director of Snickers Workwear (Ireland) Limited. He added: “most of the firms in the competition, which are still supporting apprentices, are SMEs such as auto technicians, auto dody painters and repairers, builders, narpenters and furniture makers, electricians, painter & decorators, plumbers, sheet metal workers etc. They are the backbone of our economy and should be supported by the government and applauded by their community.”

Snickers Workwear provided all the clothing for the competitors, who were kitted out from head to toe in gear from Europe’s leading Workwear manufacturer.

The National Skills Champions in each trade were as follows:

Aircraft Maintenance

Name: Padraig Molloy

From: Nurney, Co. Kildare

Employer: Dublin Aerospace, Dublin Airport

Automobile Technology

Name: Brian Durning

From: Creeslough, Co. Donegal

Employer: Creeslough Tyre & Battery Centre, Co. Donegal

Autobody Repair

Name: Justin Moore

From: Carlow

Employer: Nigel Pratt, Bennekerry, Carlow

Beauty Therapy

Name: Claire Cullen

From: Foxrock, Dublin

College: Dun Laoghaire CFE

Bricklaying

Name: Paul Molloy

From: New Ross, Co. Wexford

Employer: Self Employed (student at WIT)

Cabinet Making

Name: Gerard O’Loughlin

From: Inagh, Co. Clare

College: Institute of Technology, Galway/Mayo Letterfrack

Car Painting

Name: Mary Gore

From: Clonsaugh, Dublin

Employer: Lois Colley Motors Ltd., Santry, Dublin

Cookery

Name: Colm O’Sullivan

From: Kenmare, Co. Kerry

Employer: Mulcahy Restaurant, Kenmare, Co. Kerry

Heavy Vehicle Mechanics

Name: Colm Carberry

From: Kilcock, Co. Kildare

Employer: Bus Eireann, Phibsboro, Dublin

Painting & Decorating

Name: Daniel Pepper

From: Ballyphehane, Cork

Employer: Mr. Eddie Pepper, Ballyphehane, Cork

Plumbing

Name: Shane Stringer

From: Doolin, Co. Clare

Employer: Albert Stringer, Doolin, Co. Clare

Polymechanics

Name: Fintan Collins

From: Dunmanway, Co. Cork

Employer: Port of Cork Company, Cork

Sheetmetal Work

Name: Michael Savage

From: Clondalkin, Dublin

Employer: Chambers Engineering, Coolock, Dublin

These winners will now have a chance to represent Ireland at the 2010 World Skills competition in London. World Skills has been dubbed the Olympics for tradesmen. For World Skills 2011 please see: http://www.worldskillslondon2011.com/

Photos or interviews with any of the winners can be obtained from Simon Palmer of Republic PR; tel: 01 282 2504, email: simon@republicpr.ie or Twitter: @simonprepublic.

About Snickers Workwear

Snickers manufacture and provide workwear for professional tradesmen and service people. Their products are renowned for their quality, function and innovative solutions. The company was founded in Sweden in 1975 and since then has grown strongly so that today, Snickers Workwear is one of Europe’s leading brands in work wear, and is represented in 15 countries.

Snickers was founded by Matti Viio who worked as an electrician from 1959 to 1972 Whilst in those years working methods, technology, materials and tools evolved, but workwear was still the same as in the mid-nineteenth century. Workwear failed to fill modern requirements concerning function, comfort and design with manufacturers showing no interest in the workers real needs. In the end Matti Viio designed his own garments to work in.

Sophisticated testing and quality control procedures are carried out at every stage of the process, from the moment a new design leaves the drawing board through to final quality certification. Snickers Workwear makes relevant functions on durable and reliable garments to fit the roughest conditions.

About Dublin Institute of Technology

Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) is one of Ireland’s largest and most innovative institutions of higher education.  It is credited with the development of technical education in Ireland in the late 19^th century and continues to build on this tradition, providing education from certificate to doctorate level.

The Institute currently has some 20,000 students, fulltime and part-time, studying at all levels from certificate to Doctorate.

DIT is part of the landscape of Dublin city, with six major campus locations around the city centre.  A new single campus for DIT is being developed at Grangegorman

End

Benefiting from exhibitions

I used to run the press office at Europe’s largest exhibition, the MIPIM show, which is a property conference held in Cannes every March and the smaller retailer property exhibition MAPIC, held in September.

MIPIM and MAPIC is held in the Palais Des Festivals, which is the same building the Cannes Film Festival is held in. The famous ‘bunker’, the converted basement car park is where most of the exhibition is held, however, a few years ago the Palais was given a nice shiny extension.

Exhibitions can be a fantastic way of building your business but there is no point just turning up and expecting to find new business. Attendance can be expensive so attendance should be planned an executed carefully.

16,000 people officially attend MIPIM but thousands more visit Cannes without actually buying a ticket for the exhibition in belief that most of the business is done in the bar/restaurants or on the boats that surround the Palais Des Festivals. A lot of them believe that the €1,000 ticket is not good value, however, this is missing the major benefit because as well as providing access to the exhibitions, seminars and launches at MIPIM, the tickets also provides access to the database of attendees prior to the event and this is invaluable.

If you’ve ever tried to grow you’re business you’ll appreciate how hard it is to tie the key people down in the companies and organisations that you’re targeting. However, if you working in the property and development sector all the major figures in your target companies will be at MIPIM. By buying a ticket to MIPIM you can use the database to trawl the companies attending, see who from them is attending and contact them prior to MPIM in order to set up a meeting with in Cannes. This way before you have even attended you have diary of key meetings set up.

Equally all the major national and trade media will be there so you should target your key contacts and arrange to meet them when you are there. They have to give there editors a good fill of stories in order to justify there attendance and there is tough competition for exclusives. If the media aren’t on the main attendees database then contact the press office for the event and get a list of the media who are attending.

Because of the high profile of an event like MIPIM often organisations will hold their news back and make an announcement at MIPIM. A few years ago Boris Johnson, London’s Mayor attended, which was covered by the BBC, when he launch the Olympics masterplan. All the major cities of Europe take stands and launch their development and regeneration plans there, so if you’re into development you can get head start  identifying sites and meeting key public figures.

An event like MIPIM can also help you renew your relationships with existing clients or contacts. Many companies will have an annual event at MIPIM even if they don’t have anything new to launch, although most ensure they do as it’s such a good opportunity. Irish companies will often take have a Guinness and Oyster event and one year we organised a fish and chip party on the beach.

Once you have planned you new business meetings and meeting with media, i.e. the business the next to ensure you have tickets to major parties and launch events, you need to ensure you’re seen at these. The top parties are often in the five star hotels that line Croisette, Cannes famous palm-tree-lined beach side road, such as the Martinez or the Ritz Carlton.

Lastly if you are going to take exhibition stand plan well ahead and ensure you exhibition is design and built down to the finest detail. The exhibition stand says a lot about your company, so it needs to be high quality and stylish in order to attract people. Lots of them can often look like coolest of bars. As well as presenting details of your services, you often want a novel way of attracting people there, so you have to think about what people need at and exhibition. People are often hungover so you could provide coffee and bacon sandwiches every morning, these novel ideas go down well. Providing a toilet is another pull (make sure you have a big toilet sign). Later on in the day you could have cocktail waiter from a local bar teaching people how to mix cocktails. Most of all you want a way to get people to your stand that is NOT hard sell. Getting to know someone over a drink or a much needed bacon sandwich can be infinitely more valuable than trying the traditional new business route.

Here is a great video from Ciaran Adamson on how they design and build and exhibition stand. It shows how much planning and work actually goes into making the right stand. It’s also a great example of using social media to promote your business. I’m sure Ciaran needed a way to reinforce how much time and effort it takes to build a stand and how a good concept comes together – this video captures it perfectly.

In Summary

The success of attendance in an exhibition is all in the planning; before you even get on the plane you should have a full diary of meetings with business contacts and the media, a list of launches and events you are attending, and aims of what you want to achieve at the exhibition. So buy a ticket, even it is expensive as it should more than pay for itself if you plan your time properly and execute your time properly.

Ends

Twitter by numbers – Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

This post is an extended version of the article featured of August’s issue of the Irish personal finance magazine You & Your Money.

Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

Yes, Twitter is a great communication tool and it’s free. But there are a lot of misnomers and misunderstandings about the social media tool. It is very effective at growing your on line network, highlighting your skills and business and, because it is used to share information, it is very good at keeping abreast of the news and developments in business.

Twitter started of as being called a ‘micro-blogging’ site, but since it has migrated into a much more general communication tool with very rich and varied content, albeit with on proviso, that the each ‘Tweet’ you can post is limited to 140 characters.

Here are a few tips:

1. Before you start using Twitter for your business set up a personal account and get used to using it.
2. It’ll be easier and quicker to grow followers to your personal account as people are much more likely to follow you back, so start by getting to know people personally.
3. Use your company account to post links to news on your website, services, or articles on issues in your industry or commentary.
4. In order to promote your business follow potential customers either in your target sector or in the locality of your business.
5. ‘ReTweet’ your company Tweets using your personal account to the higher level of followers.
6. Respond to every Tweet you receive addressed to you.
7. Never ever do hard sell. It simply does not work on Twitter and you’ll lose followers.

Before you start a corporate account use Twitter via a personal account first so that you can get a feel for it and use it properly. The way you grow your follower numbers is by following other people because most people reciprocate and follow you back.

As I am a freelancer I only use one Twitter account because I am currently the only person in business, and I want to be as transparent as possible in how I operate.  But, if you have a large business it is best to keep your business and personal accounts separate, especially if other staff members are going to be using the account.

More people are likely to follow your personal account and less will follow your business account. This is because there is a lot of spamming and hard sell by businesses on Twitter. Therefore, you should concentrate on building follows for both your personal and business accounts, then post any company announcements only to your businesses Twitter account and then ReTweet is via your personal account.

Twitter users are heavily focused around smart phones users because people often Tweet updates on whilst they are on the move. This means Twitter users are skewed to those who are more affluent, so it’s a great way to target a higher demographic.

Twitter is now being used by Google to help assist their Page Rank of websites. This was revealed by Google’s Matt Cutts at a recent presentation in Dublin. He indicated that using Twitter to promote information on a website can help boost how Google views the authority of the website. Google considers each ‘ReTweet’ of a link to that website by other Twitter users is considered a vote of confidence in that site by other Twitter users and also by Google, so it is a great way to boost your website’s search engine optimisation and your Google Page Rank.

If you have multiple members of staff posting to your businesses Twitter account then you need to be careful as the Twitter feed will be considered the official voice of your business. It is best to nominate one member of staff t to post to it and at first get them to approve the Tweets with you.

Ensure all your company details and website etc are in your Twitter accounts Profile details as this will make it easier for Twitter users to find your business. If you staff also use Twitter get them to put your website address in their Profile, but ensure they put a disclaimer that all Tweets are there own and not that of the business.

If you have any questions about Twitter please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Ends

You & Your Money

I have been asked to do the PR column in the ‘Business Bulletin’ section  for Ireland’s leading personal magazine You & Your Money. The focus on the Business Bulletin is to offer free advice to businesses on different corporate issues.

The initial focus on the articles will be to help businesses use digital PR and new media to promote their business. This approach has been taken because a lot of new media is free and can learned fairly easily. Whereas by focusing on traditional media i.e. press and broadcast is a bit harder to teach in 180 chunks and comes more from experience. This is not say I won’t touch on the traditional media in the future.

Here is this month’s column. In it I show how businesses can use blogging software such as WordPress, which this website is built in, in order to add content to their own websites, boost their SEO profile and link to social media.

(Please click the link below for the article).

You&YourMoney(June2010)