IIA Conference 2011
Minister Richard Bruton TD speaking at Open for Business
Okay this is (probably) the last post about Open for Business 🙂 Thanks to MerrionStreetNews for this video of Minister Richard Bruton TD speaking at our annual conference on May 12th last
IIA Conference 2011
Presentations, videos and slides from Open for Business
A number of the presentersat Open for Business: the IIA Annual Conference, which took place last Thursday May 12th, have made their presentations available online. There are a number available in the resources section of our own site and some others are here below.
- Dylan Collins has shared an edited transcript of his address on his blog.
- Open Government & Fingal Open Data – Presentation to Irish Internet Association 12th May 2011View more presentations from Fingal Open Data
- The Smart Future – An Amárach Research Report
View more presentations from Amárach Research - You’ll also find Georgina Bowe’s presentation on eircom group’s Social Media Strategy from the Social Media Breakout session online here. Well worth a look.
Also the IIA Social Media Working Group made a rough recording of their session. Many thanks again to Populis for sponsoring this session.
IIA Conference 2011
Our Twitter Wordle from Open for Business #04b
Here is a visualistion from Wordle.net of some of the tweets that were flying around yesterday afternoon and this morning about Open for Business the IIA Annual Conference in the Aviva. I hope to release the plenary sessions as podcasts in the coming weeks and I know the social media working group have a video of their session which we will share soon too. Hopefully one of our delegates might write a review for next week as well (hint hint everyone!)
In the meantime many thanks to all our delegates for engaging in such a lively manner at the event and via Twitter, thanks to all our brilliant speakers in the plenary sessions, hosted conversations and breakout sessions. Thanks also to our brilliant sponsors without whom much of the event would not have been possible. We appreciate your community spirit!
With many thanks to our supporters, sponsors and exhibitors | |
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IIA Conference 2011
Don’t miss these rocking Breakout Sessions at Open for Business
One of the most popular features of our Annual Conferences every year are the breakout sessions. This year we’re mixing it up a bit and in addition to our usual practical breakout sessions we are holding three hosted conversations in the morning. These promise to be fascinating and a great opportunity to get your voice heard on the following topics:
- A conversation about collaborative innovation hosted by Amy Neale and Gary Leyden of NDRC
- Seán Baker, Irish Software Association Board and entrepreneur and Peter Finnegan, Dublin City Council host a conversation about Open Data and Open Government.
- Neil Leyden, Your Country, Your Call winner, will host a conversation about his plan for Ireland as an international content services centre.
In the afternoon we will be running 4 breakout sessions covering smartphone insights from Amárach Research, the reality of cloud computing with the IIA Cloud Computing Working Group, social media strategy with the Social Media Working Group and Ecommerce Best Practice and Emerging trends with Realex Payments.
I caught up with Jonathan Forde from Realex Payments yesterday and asked him to share a little bit more about what delegates can expect from their breakout session on Thursday afternoon.
Jonathan, you are running a breakout session on eCommerce at Open for Business, the IIA Annual Conference on the afternoon of May 12th in the Aviva Stadium. Which key areas are you going to be focussing on during these 2 sessions
The focus of our E Commerce breakout session will be Taking Your Business Online and the different elements that you need to take into account when developing your own E Commerce Strategy. Three speakers will present on different aspects of E Commerce to give the attendees an indication of what they need to do to get up and running successfully.
I’m going to discuss your online strategy as a whole including
- how to go about getting your Merchant Service Agreement,
- choice of web developers,
- what to look for in a Payment Gateway and how to combat fraud.
Bob Curran from Buy4Now will present on the different options available to businesses in E Commerce Platforms and Shopping carts and some tips on what to look for and best practice.
Aileen O’Toole of AMAS will look at the State of the Net and the importance of knowing what’s going on in the market around you, the emerging trends in E Commerce, spending patterns etc.
Following the three presentations there will be time for questions and answers including some questions that have been received via Twitter and Facebook in advance of the session.
Realex Payments have been a great supporter of the IIA over the years, getting involved in the conference in some capacity every year; what are the biggest changes/ challenges you have seen for Irish businesses who are coming online or upping their online game in this time?
We’re always happy to support the IIA and the Irish internet sector! 🙂
In terms of changes, the biggest and most positive change has to be social media, a large majority of our merchants are now actively involved in Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn etc and have benefitted significantly from being involved in this area. Many of our merchants tweet specific deals, have discounts for consumers who like their product on Facebook etc, so social media has become an important sales tool for so many businesses. The ability to have frequent conversations with your online community offers an incredible opportunity, not just from a social engagement point of view, but from a commercial perspective too.
I think initially many businesses were a little reluctant to participate in social media, particularly those businesses operating in a B2B environment, but as times gone on, the likes of twitter and Facebook have become an integral of marketing strategies throughout the country, including our own!
If you have one piece of advice for an Irish business reviewing their ecommerce strategy in light of these new challenges what would it be?
Integration of social media with ecommerce has become a crucial element for every ecommerce business, for B2B as well as consumer companies. Whether it is integrating social sharing on purchases, offering special deals/incentives to followers or likes, adding facebook open graph to enable Facebook likes to see friends purchases on your ecommerce site or simply leveraging brand ambassadors who emerge on Twitter and Facebook, there are a wealth of opportunities for brands to enhance their ecommerce offering. It’s becoming more and more important for brands to have personalities, as people want to know and engage with the brands that they’re buying, integrating your ecommerce strategy with social media facilitates this process.
Thanks a million Jonathan! See you and everyone else on Thursday May 12th!
IIA Conference 2011
1 to 1 Web Strategy Clinics at Open for Business
As part of this year’s annual conference Open for Business in the Aviva Stadium on May 12th, Sandra Hennessy of Dynamic Web Marketing will be running a series of one-to-one web strategy clinics. We hold these every year, inviting a member to host them. Sandra may well be known to some of our members, attendees and readers already as she is one of the lecturers on our Diploma in Digital Marketing.
Conference delegates can book a clinic online but as they are one-to-one and run only in the afternoon the places are very limited so please no dawdling! (You can book your ticket for the conference online too and again less of that dawdling at the back please!)
I had a chat with Sandra last week about how she is going to run the clinics this year and here is how she replied
Q. Sandra, you are running a one-to-one web strategy clinic at Open for Business, the IIA Annual Conference on the afternoon of May 12th in the Aviva Stadium. Which key areas are you hoping to help delegates with at these clinics?
A. I anticipate a lot of questions around search engine optimisation and social media but I hope to help businesses identify new ways to increase their online profile and conversions. QR codes are getting popular and a lot of the larger businesses are using them, I am currently on a mission to get Irish SME’s using QR codes in innovative ways to help drive sales.
Q. Some of our delegates and members might recognise you because this isn’t the first time you have helped on the web strategy clinics at our annual conference. Tell us about some of the issues you managed to resolve for delegates in previous years.
A. I am delighted to be sponsoring the clinics, I only recently set up my own business but have been working in online marketing for 9 years now. Over the past few years the clinics have centered around websites evaluations, giving delegates advice on how to improve their website usability, search engine optimistion and conversions.  I expect this theme will run into this year but the web is moving and how we attract new business online is changing every day. Setting up and using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter was discussed last year but I anticipate a lot more questions in this area as it is now paramount to any online marketing strategy to include social and business networking.
Q. And in the (2/3) years that you have been doing this and working in this area in general what are the biggest changes/ challenges you have seen for Irish businesses who are coming online or upping their online game?
A. The biggest challenge I have seen since the birth of social media is time. It’s great that we can use Facebook, Twitter etc for free but it does take time to set up and manage. Part of what I do every day is help businesses establish and implement their social media strategy.  I help them build social media it into their working day. It eventually becomes habit rather than a chore but it takes time to get to this stage.
Q. If you have one piece of advice for an Irish business reviewing their online strategy what would it be? I know tough question!
A. Three words –  PLANNING, DELEGATION and ANALYSIS. Planning will help structure things, plan out a time line for different stages and don’t be afraid to delegate out some of the work to colleagues. Once upon a time looking at your website once a month and making a few changes would suffice but now online marketing is an integral part of any marketing plan so it needs to be planned into every day tasks. Decide when things will be completed and who will complete them.  Once they have been implemented, analyse. No point in taking the time to plan and implement if you are not going to review how successful your online marketing campaigns are.
Big thanks to Sandra for answering those questions and giving us a flavour of the good sense Open for Business delegates can expect at her one-to-one clinics at the Conference.
If you do hope to participate please book online. In this form you can include details of the particular issue you wish to discuss so Sandra can prep in advance and you can really make the most of your half hour with her.
IIA Conference 2011
Open for Business: Accommodation special rates
The Pembroke Townhouse got in touch (on the advice of a member: now there’s networking!) and are offering a special rate on B&B for attendees of Open for Business: the IIA Annual Conference 2011. Fiona Teehan, the general manager, sent the following to us here in IIA HQ:
Our normal single rate is €89 room only on the 12th May, but I can do a special rate of €75 single room to include breakfast and parking to attendees of the IIA event at the Aviva.
If they would like to book, please ask them to contact me directly on fiona@pembroketownhouse.ie or 01 6600277 and ask for the special Irish Internet Association rate! Â Our website is www.pembroketownhouse.ie
If you are an accomodation provider in the area and would like to offer our conference attendees a great rate in the Ballsbridge/ Dublin 4 area please send your offer to members@iia.ie. Thanks!
IIA Conference 2011
Hello Birdy: get the BEST seats at Open for Business
We have fifty – yes only 50 – early bird tickets for this year’s IIA Annual Conference Open for Business available at the fabulously fabulous price of €120 (normally €150 for members/ €180 for non-members). Please email me at members@iia.ie or ring 01 5424154 and get yourself to the internet business event of the year.
Among the speakers and panellists this year are Dylan Collins, Founder Jolt Online Gaming and 2010 Net Visionary, Neil Leyden, winner Your Country, Your Call, Theo Lynn, Director DCU LINK, Amy Neale, National Digital Research Centre, Constantin Gurdyiev, Economist and many more.
As the sign down the road here on Thomas St says: “When they’re gone, they’re gone” so get in touch today!