Slow News Day
September 11, 2007 at 8:22 am
My new discipline of reading blogs around my subject started back today. I’m at the desk 21 mins and I haven’t touched FB yet! Not much happening news-wise in the industry, someone posted a tweet yesterday asking when silly season is going to end. So in the absence of news, I’m going to add a bit of my own:
I didn’t get elected to the IIA Board. I don’t know yet who did, but I got confirmation that I didn’t. This is no bad thing. I am sure that whoever did get elected will be very good because the other candidates running were good strong people. Also, I was running on a negative – ie. I was sick of giving out about the organisation and not doing anything about it. Now I have put myself forward and failed, at least I can say I tried, and can continue to grumble from the fence!
There is still the problem of a lack of proper representation for those who are in the industry. A quick look at the current crop of IIA events:
- Online Marketing Best Practices – at a nice high level so you get to know the what, but not really the how
- Is your website working for you? – how to get the most from your website – I presume it will cover things like ‘don’t forget to have a contact us button’
- Make Money from Your Website – about ecommerce, with speakers from Realex, so I presume it will cover things like ‘use Realex as your payment gateway’
There is nothing going on there that would attract the likes of those who attend Open Coffee Clubs, BarCamps, Ruby Tuesday, Podcamps, and the many other events that take place around the country for those who are passionate about doing.
Comments (8 responses)
completely agree,same thing happens with the ICS, they try but its not enough.
Thanks for your comment Andrea – what’s the ICS? Irish ?? Society?
Maryrose – commiserations on not being elected.
I sympathise completely with your views on the IIA’s events which is why I haven’t re-joined in a long time and throw my energies into it@cork.
You should see the events we have already held this year and the annual conference is going to blow people away!
By the way – ICS – irish Computer Society at a guess.
Thanks Tom. I’ll be keeping an eye out – last year’s was impressive enough! http://www.itcork.ie/index.cfm?page=events&eventId=73
Totally agree. Would have loved to have seen you get the gig at the IIA. As it currently exists the IIA can’t hope to compete with the appeal and energy exemplified by BarCamp etc. They need an injection of that stuff in their DNA. If they keep doling out more of the same I think they are missing a real opportunity to reinvent themselves. Their loss
Comiserations on not getting elected. You may have been ultimately frustrated in the iia anyway. My experience of these industry organisations is with the restaurants association of ireland and if iia is anything similar then there motivation is largely profit driven. This means that they put on the same old seminars such as those you descibed in order to maximise the attendance(revenue) thereby alienating those people(like yourself) who are more interested in discussing where things are going rather than where we are.
Completely agree, the events are very tailored towards people that are new to the industry.
I cancelled my membership many years ago simply because not only did I feel I was getting very little from it, the board members at the time hadn’t got a clue about the Internet. Thankfully that has changed, but there’s still not enough change for me yet to get a new membership.
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