Here is few more links that I got over last week:

• Media Contact – gives all updated PR contacts at price of €750 / year + VAT
• FAS work placement program – provides good specialists without monetary outlay
• Peninsula – outsource your HR. Helps you with contracts and deal with different HR issues over 3 period time for monthly payment
• IBEC – The Irish Business and Employers Confederation – membership that also helps you with all HR issues
• Evergreen Internships – if you are searching for Intern, this is good place to do so

It is my second year attending Barcamp Cork and I thought that this one was even better one than last year. It had great location (Webworks in Cork centre), tasty snacks and lot of interesting speakers. I do believe however that social media dominated most of the talks (or maybe it is just me attending those kinds?).

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to stay for drinks. Going back to Dublin does take a while. But I was rather happy to meet everyone I met on the night. Looking forward to next barcamps. Presentations should be uploaded soon on the website. Some photos from my iPhone are below.

AudioBoo

Even thought I did hear about AudioBoo before I never actually downloaded application. For those of you, who actually do daily podcasts – application will be soon available on Google Android.

Bootcamps

I really loved Sabrina Dent bootcamps – going through different websites and telling some good / bad things about them. It might be harsh, but it is always usable.

12 free tools for start-ups

Really loved this session by Brian Walsh and I will try to check out those tools which I still dont know:

1. Dropbox – free file sharing
2. Hootsuite – social media tool
3. pixlr – get graphics from web
4. SEO Firefox – tells you seo stats for sites
5. Firebug – allows you to modify HTML / CSS yourself
6. Google Webmaster tools – for sitemaps & other things
7. Prezi.com – zooming presentation tool
8. Photoshop – everyone can do that
9. CuteFTP or FireFTP for downloading / uploading files that has been changed
10. Google Adwords – for getting traffic to your website
11. WordPress – for blogging, simple first website (and don’t forget to use AllInOneSEO plugin)
12. Google Analytics – to know traffic sources, visitor browsers, countries etc for your country
13. ZohoCRM – how much sales calls you have to do to get stabile revenue?

Hmm… somehow I got 13 instead of 12 advertised. Not sure which one wasn’t there. I’m sure we talked about all.

How to create a social media strategy in 10 steps

Conor from Connector always amazes me with different interesting ideas. To hear more about his 10C tips, watch video here.

And more..

I really loved Catherine Wilson talk about e-mail Newsletters. If you are interested, definitely contact her.

I loved  Elaines tips for how not to run away from your business and how actually start earning something. One amazing coach!

And finally my last session was about debt collection from Ciara Crossan. I do believe that it is very vital question in recession. Even listening at her experience made me think.

Over the weekend I found this great sentance and put it on my wall:

“Grant me the strength to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I hope it will help somebody else to accept things and to keep moving forward.

Good news is that we finally launched our new website for Agile. It took half year. It’s funny how companies own website is always at last place. But its finished now and I got a lot of good reviews.

Another news – I’m now on M50 Platform Program to launch our new framework. I will be posting more news about that later.

Event page is updated again. Click here to see all events for August & September and some for October. There isn’t much happening now, but still some interesting conferences upcoming in September.

• M50 Enterprise Platform program provides – free desk space for 1 year, training full-day twice monthly, end of the program pitch to investors, possibility to apply for EI Cord funding, different events over year. I just got on it for next year!
• EI Innovation voucher for €5,000. If you own or manage a small limited company with a company registration number and you have a business opportunity or problem that you want to explore, why not apply for an Innovation Voucher worth €5,000? One place you can use it is in Usability Lab.
• Studentfinance.ie – in case you want to get back in education, there is a lot of information how to get funding for that.
• Dublin Cycling actually costs only €10 for annual membership if you cycle less than 1/2 h every time. If I win over my fear of busses, I will return to cycling.
• Student Internships. If you have too much work and you need some help I think this program is brilliant. Thinking about it now.
• WiseStamp. Most amazing e-mail signatures you will get. Includes your latest blog post or twitter feed or links you need. Have to try it out.

While front of the card is more or less clear (basic person / company information), back of the card is always a challenge. All my previous cards had blank backside and I think it is waste of paper.

So I did my little research going through 500+ cards I have collected over past 2 years and sorted them by back idea.

Quick tip: When designing cards, keep in mind to leave space for receiver to put notes on. They would like to remind themselves where they met you and how can they benefit from you. Glossy cards that you can’t write on is a bad solution.

Colorful background or Irrelevant photos

If you really want to spend money on printing bacground black, at least put logo on it or link to your website.

Colorful background and logo and/or slogon

This is very powerful solution if you want to remind people of your brand. Very often you can put there link or other contact information in small print below logo.

Bullet points

Be careful with bullet points as there isn’t much place at the back of the card. If you want to put 10 bullet points – don’t! Nobody will be able to read it. Three to five bullet points are the best.

Tag clouds

Pretty good as it tells people what can you do and highlights things you want them to notice.

Client names

I actually don’t know why people put their clients on the back of the cards. If they are popular – I don’t believe person really worked with all of them. If they are unpopular – I won’t even know them. I think tag cloud is much more beneficial than client names.

Request for action

If you are in medical, training or service business, then making next appointment, scheduling meeting or writing down next training session is a good selling point.

Product photo & slogon

If you selling product then photo with slogon should do it. And don’t forget your contact information

Unique

The more unique is card, the more there is possibility that it won’t be thrown away later in the evening. Think about how to make people to keep your card. Some make it bigger or smaller so it won’t fit with other business cards. Some make it transparent or opening like book. Maybe there is something that you can do with your card because of your business that some others can’t?

For more successful networking read 9 Networking Success Tips.

Update: Designer created design of my business card. I love it. It can have 3 different backgrounds. I love first one, others love 3rd one. How do you think? See my Business card (PDF)

Yet another great night for girl geeks in Dublin. This time event was targeted to mobile phones and everything around them.

While I’m not directly into mobile market, it is important to know what’s new in market. Phone industry, its applications and usage is quite amazing and is growing every day. While most of the people would discuss iPhone only, there are Androids, Blackberries, Nokias and much more used by people. And each of them are trying to launch application store, make browsing and communicating over web easy.

Of course, we did fun part as well – ate cake, watched movies about cat Roomba drivers and cat playing with iPad.

I heard a great presentation from Ana Nelson about Tropo – VoIP solution with voice recognition. It was interesting tool you could decide to implement on your website to help your customers. Check her blog for more information (code & examples).

Why would you decide to attend GGD next time?

• it’s definetly fun
• great to learn new things
• meet fellow IT girls

Next time is planned somewhere around June.

While I have been working in IT space for 10 years now, I have been working mostly with guys only. It is nice to see other girls in this space and for them being techie enough to understand me..

>> Sign up for Ireland Girl Geek Dinner Newsletter here.
>> Follow organiser of IGGD Martha Rotter on twitter

Don’t take any offense regarding it. I just want to follow people I know personally. And it hard to keep track of 600 people anyway.

But there is one good thing in all this. I’m creating lists that might benefit to you. So go to my profile and you can see following lists:
- Irish Enterpreneurs – people who setup their own business in Ireland
- Irish Web Creators – designers, developers, hosting providers in Ireland
- Training in Ireland – people who train and coach in Ireland
- Irish Online Businesses
- Financial Ireland – accountants, accounting companies and accounting software in Ireland
- Events Ireland – profiles that gives you updates on events in Ireland
- Marketers in Ireland

This is very nice list for anyone and I will keep it updated. Let me know if I add you in wrong list.

Update: It seems unfollowing people doesn’t really help much. I will be back to following everyone, but will be looking only at particular lists when opening twitter.

Project is still for limited users only. Tweet me if you are interested to try it out.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…