This is it.  It’s alive!  Jobless And Proud.

One week later and David Jones will be on Newstalk tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 7.40am.  Do like the Angeles and stop whatever you’re at to listen!

UPDATE – switch on TV3 Tuesday lunchtime and you can see David Jones being interviewed.  You’ve heard the voice, you’ve read the words, now see the man!

This Story Has Changed

This story has altered from being one of a man committing himself to paper and sharing his experiences… to one of people supporting people.  At a time when I fear this country is being over-run by the new creed of ‘cute-hoorism’ it’s restored my faith and shown that there are a great many people out there who don’t subscribe to that.  Who give.

My Observations:

• Efficiency. With very little time, there has been no messing around.  But truly this project has run in the smoothest most efficient manner possible.   I’m not praising myself there.  I believe it ran so smoothly because everyone on the team believed in what we were doing.  We were given free rein to unleash our creativity and show off how good we can be.   There were no agendas about things, so sign off and agreement was reached pretty quickly.
• Everything seemed to be in tune with this little project. While all of this was going on, I was hearing news of friends losing their jobs.  No, not 15% pay cuts.  But job losses.  It made the words of David’s book all the more meaningful.  I’m hearing too many tales of people down the dole office being treated badly; the staff who work there don’t seem to know how to deal with people with MBA’s and former six figure salaries.  I got to listen to the inspiring Lucy Gaffney speak on Thursday and she was telling how Newstalk (and other stations in the Communicorp group) now have a positive editorial policy.  And all the time people were coming out of the woodwork offering themselves and their services for free.
  
• Exhausted in Dunshaughlin. All the while we’ve had David up and down (by bus) between Dublin and Dunshaughlin.  We’ve done most of the web work remotely, ranging from Belfast to Cork, but David had to be photographed, recorded for podcast, and interviewed.   The poor man is exhausted – but I know, exhilarated too!  He’s a 57 year old who didn’t know what a blog was this time last week and has just now published his first post!  He has shown a remarkable ability to learn so quickly, to take everything in, and importantly – not to knock it.  Too often I’ve come across people who don’t get the web and they knock it because of that.  But David has taken all things www in his stride.

I wish David Jones well in this next chapter of his career and yes I know that was a very poor pun indeed.  I also wish these fine people lots of joy and success and I say thanks for being so generous, quick to respond, and for taking that asking call!

• Mega talented Rachel Earley for coming up with a kickass design, for putting her own portfolio site on hold to do this, and for being there for all the little iterations.
• David McDonald, the only one amongst us who has a clue what book design is about.  His mention of ISBN numbers at an early stage instilled confidence in me!
• Gordon Murray for quietly answering every request that was asked of him.
• David Duignan for managing to capture the real David on digital film.
• Alex Gibson for recording him and making him feel at ease.
• Seamus from Corkmedia.net for making some intro’s.

Now goodnight, I have to be up early to tune in the wireless to FM 106 for the launch of Jobless & Proud.

If you have a blog, please link to the new site.  If you have a spare fiver buy the book.  It’s a good read.

Oh and we’re still looking for someone to skin the blog.  If that’s you, please get in touch.

Adding an international dimension to this project, we’ve just got our blog skinner upper – Dennis Deery.