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Dawn this morning in West Donegal - who needs Photoshop?
WHERE ARE THE DYNAMIC PEOPLE IN THE IRISH BORDER REGION?
Four years ago I wrote a ‘Note from the Next Door Neighbours’ called ‘Can we become the best border region in Europe?’ in which I listed some of the distinguished people from the Irish border region over the past 20-30 years and appealed to some of them to come together to promote, develop and celebrate this peripheral and often forgotten region.
I am now renewing that call, spurred on by a piece of research, a speech in Cavan, and a new website. The research is a study – commissioned by the Centre for Cross Border Studies and nearly complete – by two eminent economists, Dr John Bradley and Professor Michael Best, on ways to revive the border region’s economy. The speech was given at a November 2011conference to discuss the findings of this study by Padraic White, the Leitrim man who was the highly successful Managing Director of IDA Ireland in the eighties and early 1990s when many of the major multinationals who now provide much of Ireland’s growth were attracted to the country. He is now, among many other things, chair of the Louth Economic Forum.
Bradley, Best and White agree on one thing: the time has come for the cross-border region to forget about waiting for the development agencies in Dublin and Belfast to attract in big multinational firms and to look to their own entrepreneurial companies and local authorities to take a lead in providing and promoting jobs and prosperity in the region. As Bradley and Best say in the conclusion to their study:
‘If regions such as the Irish border region are to prosper, other than by depending on transfers from more developed regions, then they must build on and strengthen their productive base. And the existing productive base – good, bad or indifferent – is where you must start.’
In their study they provide case studies of some outstanding border region firms: Walter Watson (cranes and steel fabrication) in Co Down; Castlecool (food cold storage and logistics) and Bose (wooden cabinets for sound systems) in Co Monaghan; and Hunter Apparel Solutions (uniforms) in Derry. I can think of many others, beginning with Silver Hill Foods (poultry) and Combilift (forklift trucks) in Co Monaghan; the cluster of engineering and food processing firms around Dungannon, Co Tyrone; Norbrook (pharmaceuticals) and First Derivatives(financial services) in Newry; Open Hydro (tidal energy) in Co Louth; Glen Dimplex (electric heating appliances) in Louth and Newry, and SF Engineering (conveyor systems) in Co Sligo. Everyone will have their own list.
Padraic White gave five reasons why the Irish border region will have to learn to stand on its own feet in the foreseeable future: central governments will be focusing on national economic revival in the present dire circumstances and peripheral border regions will be well down their agenda; public spending cutbacks will mean little or no capital investment in border regions; multinational company investment will be concentrated on cities and metropolitan areas as such firms become more research-based; Enterprise Ireland, IDA and Invest NI are not geared to respond to the particular challenges of the border region; and (in the Republic) the current higher level of incentives to border regions permitted to government under EU rules may not be renewed after 2013.
He proposed that current cross-border initiatives such as the 2011 Newry and Mourne/Louth Memorandum of Understanding, the North West Partnership Board and the three cross-border local authority partnerships could form the basis of a ‘Strategic Development Plan along the entire border area from Derry/Donegal to Newry and Mourne/Louth. The number of key players on both sides – elected chairs/mayors and county managers/district council chief executives – is small enough to facilitate an effective momentum.’
He said this Strategic Development Plan should focus on four key sources of indigenous growth and enterprise: SME enterprise in goods and services with an export potential; tourism and recreation; agriculture, food and fish processing; and low carbon initiatives, energy saving and renewable energy. Funding support for such an initiative could come from the EU INTERREG programme and technical support from the Centre for Cross Border Studies and the International Centre for Local and Regional Development.
But are there the dynamic people in the Irish border region to make this visionary initiative begin to happen? We believe there are. The border region is famous for dynamic business leaders, even if occasionally some of them – such as Sean Quinn and Larry Goodman – ‘lose the run of themselves’ and crash and burn in spectacular circumstances (Mr Goodman has, of course, since risen from the ashes). Dundalk and Newry have a particularly impressive cluster of entrepreneurs, with men like Martin Naughton, the McCanns, Feargal McCormack and Gerard O’Hare. There are also some excellent county managers and local authority chief executives, people like Con Murray in Louth, Jack Keyes in Cavan, Jackie Maguire in Leitrim, Seamus Neely in Donegal, Tom McCall in Newry, Danny McSorley in Omagh and Sharon O’Connor in Derry. There are idealistic senior educationalists like the heads of the three Institutes of Technology: Denis Cummins in Dundalk, Terri Scott in Sligo and Paul Hannigan in Letterkenny, and Richard Barnett, vice-chancellor of the University of Ulster. There is the hugely committed head of the Ilex urban regeneration company in Derry, Aideen McGinley. Again, everyone will have their own list.
Another dynamic leader in a smaller place, Brian Morgan, a Clones solicitor, has recently started to put many of these people in contact with each other in order to discuss new ideas for the future of the region. He has started an online Linkedin group called The Border Counties Forum (http://bordercountiesforum.com/) which has very quickly grown to over 200 members, most of them business people. Go on line and discuss Padraic White’s and other people’s ideas for how we should revive the Irish cross-border region at this very difficult but also opportunity-rich time in the island’s economic history.
Andy Pollak
‘A Note from the Next Door Neighbours’is sent to everyone on the Centre for Cross Border Studies e-mail list on a monthly basis. If you have friends or colleagues who would like to be added to the mailing list for 'A Note from the Next Door Neighbours', please send their details to
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. or call +44 (0)28 3751 1550. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/crossborderstudies
How to avoid social media meltdown
When internet marketing experts are asked for an example of how not to use social media for business, they usually mention the Habitat Twitter incident.
In 2010, furniture retailer Habitat attracted a wave of adverse publicity by issuing irrelevant tweets in which they crudely forced themselves into highly popular Twitter topics. To add to the negative PR blizzard one of the topics included the Iranian democracy protests which were occurring at the same time. This effectively meant that people who were looking for Twitter updates on Iranian government repression were subjected to tweets from Habitat about their new range of bathroom accessories!
While Habitat blamed the incident on an inexperienced intern (which leads to the question – why did their communications manager give a student intern complete control over the company’s main social media channel?), the Habitat Twitter story also highlights the question of how brands should interact with social media.
Engagement
Probably the first and most important factor to consider about social media marketing is the need to engage. Many companies still use social media channels as broadcast tools. They think if they send out enough sales and promotions information then they have ‘ticked the box’ for social media. But as the Habitat example shows, there are inherent dangers in using social media as a broadcast channel if it’s not relevant to do so.
The key to social media marketing success is engagement with the social ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ your business has signed up. People who choose to follow brands on social media sites do so because they want engagement with the brand, which doesn’t mean they want to receive boring and irrelevant information on a daily basis. Effective social media marketing works by attracting fans and then using creative, thoughtful and interesting online content which engages with them on a regular basis. Social media savvy brands and agencies are great at designing material such as humorous video content, exclusive interviews and social media apps to share through channels including You Tube and Facebook.
Social Rules
If social media marketing goes wrong, as it did in the Habitat Twitter case, then it’s usually because the brand or business did not understand or follow the myriad of social media customs and rules that have developed during the years. One of the biggest conventions in social media marketing is to listen to what is being said about your brand online.
Typically this involves setting up online monitoring, finding out what your customers want and then communicating with them. Part of the reason why many marketing teams fail in this area is continued use of the same PR tactics used for online media as they deployed for traditional media. However the power to control a brand is fast moving away from the top-down, rigidly hierarchical methods that communications managers have been using for many years.
Social Media Strategy
Strategy and planning lie at the heart of social media marketing. Over the past year, businesses and organisations are moving towards incorporating social media as an integral part of their actual marketing strategy. It’s also no surprise that ‘social-savvy’ brands have developed real marketing outcomes and then sought to achieve their results through the use of creative and engaging online campaigns.
Paul McGarrity is Director of Octave Online Communications, an internet marketing consultancy based in Belfast. The consultancy helps business and organisations to benefit from online marketing strategy and campaigns. www.OctaveOC.com
February 6 will mark the 25th anniversary of the first edition of The Irish Emigrant, the online weekly news source for the Global Irish Community, and the world’s longest established email publication.
Publishers Liam and Pauline Ferrie have decided that their retirement should coincide with this milestone, and edition 1,305 will be their final edition.
It could be said that email was in its infancy in 1987 when the first edition was mailed to about 15 colleagues at Digital locations in North America and Europe. Over the following decades the readership grew to tens of thousands in some 161 countries and was for many years the main source of news from Ireland for Irish people living overseas.
For those who were able to obtain copies in the years before the mainstream media learned about the World Wide Web, The Irish Emigrant became highly valued. It was widely distributed in Irish communities throughout the world, used as a source of news on Irish radio programmes and was particularly appreciated by missionaries and aid workers in remote communities in Asia, Africa and South America.
The Irish Emigrant led to a number of spin-off publications aimed at keeping the Diaspora informed on a broader range of subjects. One of these, Professional Ireland, had a huge impact on the lives of the many who had been forced to emigrate in the 1980s. They were able to return to Ireland to take up key positions in business and academia through recruitment ads carried by the publication.
Many others were, of course, involved in ensuring that the Emigrant and its sister publications met their deadlines, and Liam and Pauline are deeply grateful to all of them for their invaluable contributions.
The Irish Emigrant has played a major part in the lives of the Ferries, bringing them to new destinations as well as creating a whole new circle of friends.
· In 1999 Liam was named as the inaugural winner of the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Award.
· In 2003 Liam and Pauline were jointly awarded a Golden Spider for their contribution to the Internet in Ireland.
· In 2011 Liam was conferred with an honorary degree by the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Liam and Pauline will certainly miss the contact with their readers, but feel that they can retire safe in the knowledge that none of those who once looked on them as their primary link with Ireland will be deprived of news from home in today’s interconnected world.
Irish Emigrant Publications
Bothar an Leachta
Menlo
Galway, Ireland
"News for the Global Irish Community"
_____________________________________________________
Phone: (353) 91-767534 .......... Mobile: (353) 87-2466996
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........... Web: www.emigrant.ie
2012 Conference Now Open for Bookings
Early Bird Discount Available
InterTradeIreland's annual Venture Capital Conference brings together in one room for one day the island's new and growing companies seeking investment, along with the funding organisations and individuals on the island with money to invest. The only Venture Capital Conference on the island, it is a must for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, business angels, investors and anyone with an interest in venture capital. The conference will again showcase the current sources of equity funding and also shine a light on alternative sources of funding. Last year's conference was completely booked out, so to avoid disappointment and take advantage of our early bird rate book before 31st January 2012. Date: 7th March 2012 Venue: Belfast City Hall Early Bird Discount Rate: £129 inc VAT* (€157 inc VAT ) *Early Bird Discount ends on 31st January 2012. All bookings made before 31st January must be paid in full by this date. Full rate of £179 inc VAT applies on all bookings made from 1st February 2012 onwards. *Euro rate dependent on exchange rate at time of booking. CLICK HERE to register your place. CLICK HERE to visit the 2012 conference website and to view Venture Capital Conference 2011 highlights.
Anyone for Facebook?
Facebook is facing EU curbs on how it exploits vast amounts of its users' most personal information to create bespoke advertising. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg must address privacy concerns or face fines under a new EC Directive By Jason Lewis, Investigations Editor The European Commission is planning to stop the way the website "eavesdrops" on its users to gather information about their political opinions, sexuality, religious beliefs – and even their whereabouts. Using sophisticated software, the firm harvests information from people's activities on the social networking site – whatever their individual privacy settings – and make it available to advertisers. However, following concerns over the privacy implications of the practice, a new EC Directive, to be introduced in January, will ban such targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it. Even though most of the information it harvests is stored on computers in the USA, if Facebook fails to comply with the new legislation it could face legal action or a massive fine. The move threatens to damage Facebook's plans to float on the Wall Street stock exchange next year, by undermining the way it makes money. Viviane Reding, the vice president of European Commission, said the Directive would amend current European data protection laws in the light of technological advances and ensure consistency in how offending firms are dealt with across the EU. "I call on service providers – especially social media sites – to be more transparent about how they operate. Users must know what data is collected and further processed (and) for what purposes. "Consumers in Europe should see their data strongly protected, regardless of the EU country they live in and regardless of the country in which companies which process their personal data are established." The move comes as a Sunday Telegraph investigation highlights the extent to which Facebook can help companies to focus adverts according to the profiles of users. The information analysed and stored by the company is not limited to users' personal details, and "likes" and "dislikes" that they input on their "walls". The firm also gathers details about their friends, family and educational background and detects subtle changes to their lifestyle, enabling it, for example, to target a bride-to-be with advertising for wedding photographers. Other commercially valuable information, such as what music people are listening to via the site, is also available to advertisers. Everything people share with their friends on Facebook is being tracked by the firm, retained, and can be used for commercial purposes. It can even harvest information by performing keyword searches on behalf of advertisers. In this way, it can find out, for instance, details about people's political beliefs or their sexual preferences. Facebook stores messages and "chats" sent via the site and keeps them on its database even after they are deleted by those involved in the private online conversations. The company says it does not use this informatin for advertising. The sheer volume of personal data accumulated by the company was hinted at earlier this year when a 24-year-old Austrian student, Max Schrems, asked it what information it held on him. The request led to the site sending him a CD containing 1,222 pages of data. He complained to data watchdogs because the disclosures were incomplete and made clear the social networking site retained further information about him which it had not handed over. Next week, the EU's data protection working party, which includes the UK Information Commissioner, will meet to discuss the "state of play" regarding Facebook. They will discuss an audit of the company's working practices being conducted by the data protection watchdog in Ireland, where Facebook has its international headquarters. The working group has warned internet firms over the use of behavioural advertising techniques which enable them "to track individuals ... to serve tailored advertising." A report from the group says in most cases, "individuals are simply unaware that this is happening" and adds that the authors were "deeply concerned about the privacy and data protection implications of this increasingly widespread practice." All Facebook's 800 million users, whether they realise it or not, agree to let the company use of their personal information. When signing up, they approve a 4,000 word contract, which licenses Facebook to use their data as it sees fit. This contract can be viewed by clicking on a link in the small print at the foot of each page on the site. Unlike other traditional media outlets, including newspapers, the website makes no distinction between information obtained for commercial purposes and details gathered in the course of its other activities, as people share content and talk online with their friends. In the past, Facebook was largely funded through a banner advertising contract with Microsoft. But the gradual increase in advertising on the site, which started in 2009, is intended to make Facebook self-sufficient and ready for a stock market flotation. In Britain, the gradual introduction of more targeted advertising has earned it £25 million in the last two years but this figure is expected to increase dramatically as it prepares to float its shares on Wall Street. A spokesman for the UK Information Commissioner said: "Facebook should ensure that any data it collects should be used in the manner that its users expect. "If personal data is being passed on to a third party or used for targeted advertising then this should be made clear to the user when they sign up to the site and reinforced when users are invited to use an application." Facebook last night said advertisers only saw "anonymous and aggregate information" to allow them to target their campaigns and that this meant they were not able to target named individual users. So while advertisers cannot say they want their adverts to go to specific individuals, they can spell out a very detailed description of the sort of person they want to reach – such as age, location, family background – which means the campaigns will only target a limited group of people. They said that people's political views could only be passed on to advertisers if the user filled out a specific section on their profiles. Advertising was also "age-gated", it said, so companies wanting to advertise alcohol would not be shown to people under the age of 18 in the UK. A spokesman for the company said: "We understand that people share a lot of information on Facebook and we take this very seriously. "We believe ads that are relevant, social and personalised based on your real interests are better. "We can show relevant ads in a way that respects individual privacy because our system only provides advertisers with anonymous and aggregate information for the purpose of targeting ads. "We do not share people's names with an advertiser without a person's explicit consent and we never sell personal information to third parties. "There is no connection between the privacy settings people choose and our advertising. Whether you use your privacy settings to keep your profile very private, or very public, everyone sees the same amount of advertising down the right hand side of the page. "Adverts are personalised to the individual user. We do not track peoples' behaviour to serve advertising."
TENDERS For Northern Ireland specific contracts, there are a number of sources of information specifically for contracts within Northern Ireland. The Central Procurement Directorate (CPD) handles contracts for a number of government departments. You can find a list of current tender opportunities on the CPD website. Again, there is no email alert facility that we can find which makes the content difficult to adapt to the Bulletin format. Please see https://e-sourcingni.bravosolution.co.uk/esop/toolkit/notice/public/opportunities.do?reset=true for the current list of Northern Ireland opportunities. Ref: JAN308275
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Provision of Risk Governance Panel Training
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: Central Bank of Ireland
Deadline: 21/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308275
Ref: JAN308195
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Explore the Nore Leisure Trail - analysis and scoping report
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: Trail Kilkenny
Deadline: 13/03/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308195
Ref: JAN308295
Notice Type: Contract Notice
Title: Strategic Technology Consultancy Services Framework
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: An Post National Lottery Company
Deadline: 16/03/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308295
Ref: JAN308255
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Control of Equatic Invasive Species-Research and Development Consultancy Services
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: Inland Fisheries Ireland
Deadline: 17/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308255
Ref: JAN308275
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Provision of Risk Governance Panel Training
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: Central Bank of Ireland
Deadline: 21/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308275
Ref: JAN308155
Notice Type: Contract Award Notice
Title: Procurement of Telecommunications Network Services
Published: 31/01/2012
Published by: An Post National Lottery Company
Deadline:
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN308155
Ref: JAN307535
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Media Monitoring Service
Published: 27/01/2012
Published by: Fáilte Ireland-National Tourism Development Authority
Deadline: 16/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN307535
Ref: JAN307635
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Provision of manual handling & first aid training services to the Coillte Group
Published: 27/01/2012
Published by: Coillte Teoranta
Deadline: 17/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN307635
Ref: JAN307515
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Public Relations Consultancy Services in Northern Europe [BeNe Region]
Published: 27/01/2012
Published by: Tourism Ireland
Deadline: 17/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN307515
Ref: JAN307475
Notice Type: Invitation to Tender
Title: Training in the development of Micro-Enterprises (including Agri-Business)
Published: 27/01/2012
Published by: Avondhu Blackwater Partnership
Deadline: 17/02/2012
Full Text: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/search/show/Search_View.aspx?id=JAN307475
Belfast City Council Tenders are available at www.belfastcity.gov.uk/tenders 
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