Pinterest Infographic (Good One)
May 8, 2012 at 11:46 am
Just getting my thoughts together on Pinterest for a talk I’ve to give to a group who market to women, aged 25-44. This is a good up-to-date infographic that I thought worth sharing, sourced from Tamba via Quora.
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together
May 1, 2012 at 8:40 am
Publicpolicy.ie launches today. 22 minutes ago in fact. This is the result of a few months hard work by a handpicked team of talented people and typifies the kind of quality that Brightspark’s website broking approach can deliver. I believe that the best websites are produced by breaking up the tasks into their component parts. Let the designers design. Let coders code. Don’t dare use the same designer for print as you would for web! And work with talented people who will make you look good. That’s the approach I’ve been working with for years and this latest site Publicpolicy.ie is a great example of what happens when you get good people on the job – and the client trusts you. That last bit is very important. In my experience, it’s only the most confident in their knowledge people that can admit to not knowing how to doing something and are smart enough to get good advice and use it. (You will notice no dropdown nav bars in here, and content that is user focused from the start… board pics are there, but in second place where they should be).
Publicpolicy is a great initiative, funded by (my heroes) Atlantic Philantrophies. If you’ve never read this book, buy it today and read it over the bank holiday weekend, it’s inspiring. Publicpolicy exists because in Ireland we don’t get access to a lot of unbiased information:
- We get Government pushed information, which has an agenda
- We have the Media, whose job it is to create spin
- Now we have objective unbiased, agenda-free presentation of facts – publicpolicy.ie
The Board of the think tank are an illustrious group of thinkers.
I was asked to present and keep them informed of progress, and I was genuinely excited to be going in to a group of people, some of whose words I studied back in college, and talking to them as a professional with knowledge. I can safely say, hand on heart, that this was an enjoyable project from start to finish, with no difficulties, or conflict along the way. A joy!
The team I put together who all deserve credit are:
- Started out back before Christmas by getting in Darkhorse to help us choose a name. Without them we’d still be called the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre, which just doesn’t have the same ring to it as publicpolicy.ie
- We got Koh on the case to create the visual identity and all the graphic design.
- Bohoe who photographed the Board on a cold winter’s day.
- Modus won the web design tender and were a pleasure to work with. No job too big or small. A tendency to delight with the ease in which they facilitated my last minute requests and desires.
- Raic Productions as ever, the most professional and brilliant editors – they’re the ones to thank for the videos.
- And me on the rest. Architecture. Content. Project Management. Email Marketing. And training – we had a session on social media to see if it is ‘for us’. And the team at Publicpolicy are all clued up in how to manage this baby and keep her looking beautiful.
We know the site works and achieves its goals. Go on over and check it out – choose one of the content areas that interests you and have a little browse. This weekend, when you’re in the pub or at a barbeque, you will find yourself contributing to the debates on water / property tax / the state this country is in, with an informed voice. People will stop what they’re doing and turn around to look at you – Angelus style.
As with anything we’ve been working on for so long – we are dying to hear what you think of it. Please feel free to comment here below. Or contact me on Twitter (@maryrose), or comment on the vids.
PublicPolicy.ie
January 9, 2012 at 11:54 pm
It’s great when a project comes along that combines a worthy cause, the smartest minds, and a blank white page to begin from.
I’ve been working with the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre to create a website that will house the research and thinking that is sure to become the ‘goto’ place for Irish people when they want to get information. There is a lot of noise around the key economic and political issues of the day – that affect all of us. And it’s so important that we get accurate information if we are to understand and make our own opinions.
Perhaps the best explanation of what this is all about comes from the Chairman himself, Prof. Frank Convery.
In Ibsen’s A Doll’s House , Nora says: “I can’t be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what’s in books. I must think out things for myself and try to understand them.”
Our job at publicpolicy.ie is to make “thinking things out” as easy as possible.
Read the Irish Times article about publicpolicy.ie.
Sign up to receive an email alert when the site launches.
Tags: publicpolicy.ie
The Internet of Things
July 18, 2011 at 8:42 am
This is a really cool infographic posted by @jangles on Twitter (where all good things come from!) that reminds me of the kind of thing I’m studying in IADT as part of my Cyberpsychology Masters. Fascinating!
International Women’s Day is for life… not just today
March 8, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Happy international women’s day to one and all. I’m delighted to be a part of “100 Voices in Business” put together by @KrishnaDe. She asked put the word out there through her AMAZING online network to ask women in business what tip they’d give in 140 characters or less. There are some great ones in here – take the time to read every one.
Or if you could just skip to tip 94 where my one is!
Decembeard
December 8, 2010 at 10:25 am
Because Movember is so last month! Check out this fun little app from IdeaWorks in Australia: Decembeard. And for every beardy pic created, they donate $5 to charity.
Here’s me:
Tags: decembeard
United We Save
December 7, 2010 at 8:31 am
On this dark day of Budget 2011, I came across this very interesting (and rather cute) little site: United We Save.
Set up by Dubliner, David Slattery, it’s a group buying scheme for households. Much has been talked about and written lately about the rise of group buying schemes in Ireland. United We Save seems to be a slightly different take. Instead of the site only offering deals, we the people can pitch the kind of deals we want and the site will go off and negotiate discounted prices for us. I like the idea, particularly as I got stung with a rather large home heating bill last week! Even 5% discount would = significant savings.
Visit the site today and support another new indigenous Irish business. Sign up (it’s free and easy). Join a group based on what you need to buy. Let them get you a good price. Then save.
Note: while this blog post might sound rather gushy, I have nothing to do with United We Save, they are not a client… and I have to commend their designer as it’s very cute!
Tags: group buying schemes
Best 404 Page
November 16, 2010 at 7:54 am
Came out of the recent 24theweb challenge in which groups of intrepid designers, developers, ux people got together to create great websites for charities in 24 hours… this from the winning team, I love it. View it live, it’s cute.
Tags: 24theweb
What Political Websites Say About Their Owners
November 1, 2010 at 7:28 am
Now that we’ve done designs for the Labour Party’, I wonder who’d win the competition for best website? If you compare our own sweet Joan’s site with some of the others, she wins hands down by a long shot. Begs the question of what does your website say about you?
1. Joan Burton.ie - Bold Beautiful… and a little sassy!
2. Richard Bruton - from the men in grey suits, we present… grey & blue. Nothing striking and a little dreary.
3. Leo Varadkar – screaming for your attention, but not making it easy to take it all in.
4. My Personal Favourite Worst Website – Dan Boyle, sporting a peaceful agrarian theme (to divert us from what’s really going on?)
I used to use Dan Boyle’s previous site as an example of how not to do things in my famous Write for Web training course, so I know that site we can see now is only about 2 years old. He still hasn’t learned about how to present ideas in a reader-friendly fashion online. I think a more honest and realistic pic for that site would be:
Edvard Munch, Skrik, "The Scream", 1893
Tags: dan boyle website, irish td websites, joan burton website, leo varadkar website, political websites ireland, richard bruton website
That thing you always mean to do…
October 14, 2010 at 1:29 pm
I just did something that I’ve been meaning to do for – oh – about 3 years now! Have you ever been running to a city centre meeting, find a car park space, and have your stress levels rise a little due to trying to find a nearby parking machine AND having change to put in the machine? Or you’re in a meeting somewhere around Merrion Square where the parking police are nazis, and the meeting is dragging on and on. You know you’re paid up to 4.57pm, it’s now 5.36pm and you’re wondering whether you’ve got clamped or not?
If you answered yes, then you, like me, have probably glanced at the ad for mobile phone paid parking on the back of the parking ticket and think ‘what a good idea, I must sign up for that’.
Three years on, I’ve just done it. And what a pleasure it was too. Much has been written about some of the awful car fee related sites in this country. The ParkingTag.ie site is easy to use once you get past the fact that the main call to action on the home page that looks like a link is in fact an image (the click here):
It’s a smart service that will save me money. Now I will only pay for parking used. When the parking fairies are fluttering away on their gossamer wings having found me a space, I will take out my mobile phone, text a number, and go on my way. No more clicking in high heels down uneven Georgian pavements to find a meter. No more jangling of loose change.
If there’s one thing you to do make your life easier today, sign up for Parking Tag.
