IIA Congress was great success this year with speakers such as Google, Facebook, Realex Payments and dotMobi. Each of us could learn something and do quite a nice networking meanwhile.

See all the presentations here

See all photos are here. There was even one photo of me (in red).

Unfortunately I didn’t went to awards ceremony, but everyone told me that it was very nice. Hopefully someone else will blog about it.

Small review of presentations:

1. Interesting news from IIA: there will be IIA board elections in August this year. This was first time I heard about it and I would like to know more
2. Realex payments presentation was all about how to understand what is winning in your business. How to find it and how to implement it. Realex called it F5 (refresh) strategy. Also they told us about new website that has been launched together with IIEA, EI and ISA – check it out www.alliance.ie . This website will help scale up Irish websites.
3. dotMobi told us quite interesting facts. There are 3.5+ billion people now using internet and there will be 1 more billion joining soon. But this billion will be joining through mobile phones what completely changes our web strategy. If we look at our websites now on mobile phones they do look crap (check yours on http://ready.mobi). Maybe it is worth to invest in .mobi domain and ensure your website shows correctly on all mobile devices
4. Google concentrated on their 3 tools to improve your website traffic – Google Analytics, Website Optimiser and Conversion Tracking. All three are free but so far I was using only first one (didn’t know there were others). And of course best example of SEO online is Obama campaign – it comes up in every SEO related event.
5. Nobody needs explanation what Facebook is, but still quite a few people are unsure what benefits it can give to them. So lets see statistics Facebook provided us with. There are 200 million users interacting with Facebook every 30 days from which around 70% is outside US. Average user spends around 25 minutes on the site, does around 2 visits per day and 50% of users return to Facebook daily. Advertising on the Facebook is growing surprisingly because it can target just the right people (age, gender, country etc). If you don’t have company site on the Facebook (and I don’t have one) you should setup one up. I also really liked their video about how they translated Facebook in all possible languages. I couldn’t find it over Google so I hope someone who reads my blog can point me in right direction.

Workshops (I attended only 3 from 6 because of time limit)

Using Video to Boost Your Search Rankings

So how hard is it boos your video? What do you need?

1. Equipment. Digital cameras isn’t so expensive any more so buy the best one you can afford.
2. Setup YouTube Channel – can be done in few min
3. Transferring video from camera to computer. You might need some program for this to convert it to the right format to edit. Presenters used AVS Video Converter
4. Edit. Optimal video length is 3-5 min. Make it interesting / entertaining / informative. Keep just one clear message. Put link to your website or e-mail at the end of video. Be sure to use licensed music or you might be sued.
5. Put on YouTube. Max length of YouTube video is 10min.
6. Optimise keywords and tags. Proper tagging is one of the most important things of the whole process. Without it there is no point putting video online. “how to” category is most searched over web.
7. Put it on your website
8. Use TubeMogul to distribute your video over other sites

Reduce Costs, Increase Revenues with Effective eBusiness

This workshop was presented by 3 companies – Realex Payments, jenerate.com and Ringjohn.

Effective eBusiness is achieved by:

• eMarketing – try different site versions – design wise and keyword wise. Check the one best working for you.
• eCRM – automate your sales process, manage campaigns and decide do you really target correctly. Few CRM’s mentioned during meeting was – salesforce.com and Soho
• eCommerce – commercial sites should be easy to use, they have to have consistent price and they need to decrease administration costs. Jonathan Forde from Realex mentioned that currently one of the commercial solutions that is growing rapidly is Magneto.

Leverage Your Networks to Save Money

While I haven’t been using Microsoft solutions for few years, it is always interesting to hear what’s new out there. Microsoft is very powerful in Ireland – about half web development projects is written in .NET.

There is new cloud system coming out – Windows Azure that will include Windows Live, Microsoft Dynamic CRM Services, .NET, SQL Server and Share Point Services. Prices aren’t still worked out but they might be different what we are paying for Amazon Services now. Toolkit can be downloaded already and Beta will be available in few months. This is great solution for start ups who want to try out their idea and don’t want to buy expensive servers, but still get 99.9% uptime.

Meetball (2nd day event)

It might be because of rainy weather and the IIA Net Visionary Awards in previous day late evening that attendance for this event was quite small. It seemed to me that there were more presenters than listeners. But from other point of view – it was very good for networking as it was more intimate and you could talk with everyone in room.

Few more things to note about event

Realex payments was main sponsor this year. Their logo was everywhere, but what really caught such a chocoholic as me was free chocolate. I could get free chocolate this year from Realex payments, IQ Content and independent.ie . There was few more gifts such as USB from elucidate, T-shirt and voucher for 150k (won by Fiona) from Realex Payments and few iPhone lotteries from FBD and iedr.ie

Event place and surrounding was quite nice but it was way too far at the Dublin North. It was trouble to get to the events both days as they were starting at 8.30 am. I was very tired after second day.