Connecting Italian flavours with a dollop of DCU & Media 2020 …

by Connector on April 30th, 2010

This week I connected with a bunch of great people and somethat I have not mentioned yet are here for you to check out.  The first photos is the Flavour of Italy team in Pinocchios Ranelagh who treated me to a fantastic Italian meal while we chatted about their great Italian food and travel businesses … grazie! ciao! grazie!

Then I was interviewed by Sheena O’Dowd & Damien O’Ceallaigh as part of their Masters project in New Media in DCU.  And finally at the bottom, I was at the Media 2020 conference at Croke Park where my housemate Ronan Higgins had his head beamed onto the big screen while answering questions about mobile apps.  Coincidentally, speaking about mobiles, apologies for the grainy photos which are a bit iPixelated.

Lots of new connections and lots of new ideas cos you can’t beat having your finger of the pulse! ;-0

Connector @ The Entrepreneur Show

by Nicola OReilly on April 27th, 2010

Connector showcased its new training courses and connecting philosophy at this year’s Entrepreneur Event, Friday 23^rd to Saturday 24^th April.

Connector’s team helped man the stand for the weekend, making loads of new connections and spreading knowledge of the 10 C’s.

A huge part of the show this year were the bright and lively discussions that took place in the “Think Tank” and “Invest Test”  auditoriums which Conor helped chair as well as take part in.

One of the highlights of the show was hearing some of the Irish and UK dragons take part in these discussions. The connector team also had the pleasure of meeting Sean Gallagher who had his photo taken with them at the Connector stand.

Connector’s bright and inviting stand design, along with its engaging video content was down to the planning and hard work of new recruit David Dungan who has taken to his role with enthusiasm and gusto, as well as Sarai Fernández hard work managing the connector team and Connector’s Entrepeneur Networking Event at Lillies on Friday night.

Overall it was a busy but rewarding weekend at the stand for the Connector team and it will be a busy week again following the amount of interest shown at the show.

Review of iia Audio Video Culture Event

by Nicola OReilly on April 27th, 2010

On the 22^nd April 2010 the IIAs Social Media Working Group held an event entitled Audio Video Culture: Behind the scenes of audio & video content online.  Conor the current Chair of Social Media Working Group at the IIA was the chariman for this event.

Speakers from RTE, RaboDirect, Channelship, Mason Hayes and Curran, CEUD NDA, Google Ireland and YouTube all spoke at the event and helped to make it a great success.  Pictured is Sebastian Missoffe from YouTube in action from Conor at the top table!

There was very positive feedback with most feeling they learned a great deal about  audio and video content online.

Connector College – Career Connections Event

by Diarmuid ORiordan on April 21st, 2010

Connector college brought together speakers from Google, Microsoft, Careers Coach and Connector. The event for students took place at the Science Gallery and was themed around ‘I have my qualification, now what?’. It had some great insights for students in attendance on how to brand yourself, networking and job application techniques.

To organise the event, Connector collaborated with DCU masters student Roisin Lyons. Roisin did a really great job in organising the venue, bringing together our speakers and publicizing the event. Well done and thanks Roisin!

Bryna McCool works as a Senior Recruiter at Microsoft Ireland. She began proceedings and spoke about the process of graduate Recruitment. She continued on with some great interview tips before handing over to Careers Coach, Greg Fry.

Greg set up Careers Coach in March 2009 with the aim of assisting people with their Career Transition. He focused on using social media to build your personal brand, and urged attendees to bring these connections offline also.

Lindsay Brown continued the evening. Lindsay is a Recruiting Specialist. She recently moved to an in-house recruitment role with Google, having previously worked on the agency side. She gave great advice to students on dealing with recruitment agencies, techniques used by recruiters, networking and personal branding. Check out Lindsay ‘s great blog.

Conor Lynch rounded up proceedings and had a few hard acts to follow!  Conor capped off the evening with some good advice for students and information about how Connector gives students a chance to get great work experience and make connections . We collaberate with students, graduates & interns to run events, marketing campaigns and much more.

The ‘Career Connections’ event helped Roisin Lyons gain valuable project management experience, improve her personal brand and make some great connections. If any students would like further information about joining the Connector Team, don’t hesitate to contact conor [at] connector dot ie

Connector Weekly – 19th April

by Nicola OReilly on April 19th, 2010

Connector is set for another busy week of connecting! Here is a roundup of the main events for this week:

On 20th Connector will hold its Digital & Social Media Workshop. This strategy workshop will help participants understand how social media is changing our culture, and importantly, the way consumers share information and make buying decisions.

After that, Connector will also be hosting Career Connections a event only for students at the Science Gallery at 6:30 pm. With this event Connector is helping to connect graduates with potential employers. Many graduates this year will find it hard to get a job but those at the Students Event won’t be amongst them. Recruitment experts from Microsoft and Google will give advice about graduate programs, career choices and personal branding. Greg Fry from Careers Coach will be speaking at the event too.

Public Affairs Ireland presents a half-day event in Dublin on the 21st. It will be of interest to people who would like to have a better understanding of how new media, the web and email can enable better access of information and provision of services to the public.

Conor, as the current chair of the IIA, will introduce the Audio Video Culture: Behind the Scenes of audio and video content online on Thursday April 22nd. This will offer an in-depth look at how to maximise the impact of video and audio content for your business.

More updates next week.

‘Career Connections’ connect with Microsoft and Google

by Connector on April 14th, 2010

Connector has organised a very special event ‘Career Connections’ on Tuesday 20th April @ the Science Gallery, Trinity College.

Students and graduates are facing an uphill struggle to find a job these days.Sadly, Connector cant help you all ‘connect with a job’, but we do have the connections to help you get ahead of the pack in the hunt for a job.

This promises to be a great night, showing students how to pursue careers in the competitive job market.

Speakers include Bryna McCool: Senior Recruiter at Microsoft HR Ireland, Lindsay Browning: recruitment specialist at Google and expert careers coach: Greg Fry. Conor Lynch, the founder of Connector will also be along to talk about the use of social media to market yourself to employers.

Focusing on the theme ’you have the qualifications…now what?’ Connector wants to give students the best chance to land a job when they get out of college.

The event kicks off at 7 with doors open at 6.45. The event will conclude with some networking and a chance to meet the speakers.

Remember to bring your student cards, as this is a student only Connector event.

Check out the presentation below and register on our Facebook page to attend.

Rosin Lyons, DCU

South African Networking

by connector on February 19th, 2010

Good luck to our friend Patrick Dunne at the South African networking event tonight.  I might even see you there!

Connector Christmas Awards 2009 @ Lillies Bordello

by Conor on December 13th, 2009

Last night Connector presented the Connector of the Year Awards at Lillie’s Bordello at our second annual Christmas Party. We wanted to applaud the great work of Dublin tribes / online communities plus a guy and a girl who have done really well in the last year.

The prizes were presented by TV Presenter Michael Hayes & each winner received a framed certificate and a brand new mobile phone kindly sponsored by Nokia, Sony Ericsson & 3 Mobile.

The winners for ‘Tribe of the Year’ was Culch.ie, a community formed by Darren Byrne (pictured below).  He has rounded up team of talented volunteer bloggers who write about all things pop culture & attend many arts & cultural events around Ireland.

In the Connector Male category David Mooney was the winner for his amazing work with Funky Seomra while the Connector Female award went to Natalia Kostrzewa, who couldn’t attend as she was out of the country.

 Besides that, we have made some predictions for the Top 10 to watch in 2010. Have a look to their names (in slideshare below) and keep an eye on them, they’re doing interesting work and we wish them all the best in 2010!

Approximately 170 people came to the event & we raised approx. €850 TBC for Temple Street Children’s Hospital so thanks for all donations.  The event was kindly sponsored by Peroni & RealexPayments and thanks also to Applied Signs & Display.

We were entertained & enjoyed a fantastic night where we had Apollina tribal belly dancer and also comedy performances from Will Lynch, Ronan Grace, Paudy Byrne & Mark Hanratty.

Last but not least, I would like to thank the Connector team who helped organise this and all the events during 2009.

Job Hunting 2.0

by Rob Cumiskey on November 20th, 2009

The following is a guest post by Sarai Fernandez, and was posted originally on her blog:

It’s almost a month since I gave up sending CV’s out. Before, I used to sit down in front of my computer for an hour each day, log into different websites and apply for all the jobs that I thought would suit me. The only thing I achieved from this was feeling exhausted, and I have not had a single phone call from these applications since September.

So, my new strategy is focused in two main points: learning and networking. Besides my PR studies, I try to spend all the time I can reading articles on the web about new trends, new systems or anything else relating to Public Relations. They can be blogs, e-zines, or discussions in LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter what, because I am learning a lot and also improving my English.

The second point is Networking. I started this with the Connector Lunches, and the Connector Halloween Party, and I hope to continue with these, and also try more networking events in the future. Besides that, I was at the Monster’s Career Fair today and, as was expected, I didn’t get a job, or even an offer. I did get a few business cards that could be very helpful in the future. I also attended some motivating speeches, and I took some very good tips from all of them.

If I have learnt something during this year, it’s the importance of social media and networking for your own professional development. With these tools you will never be ignored, and that is the most important step in order to achieve a successful career.

Diary of a Meteor Apprentice

by Rob Cumiskey on November 18th, 2009

Last week, we were proud to announce that one of our own, Izabela Zelazna, was chosen to compete in the Meteor Apprentice competition. Izabela has written a diary entry about her first task in the competition:

My first task in the Meteor Apprentice competition was all about social media. We were given a week to get as many fans as we could for Facebook fan page.

‘Use all possible social media and scream about your case’, my friend told me. Scream is good, I thought, however I didn’t want to create too much noise. I think that people are usually reluctant and slow to join Facebook Fan Pages these days, not wanting their News feed to be spammed.

First of all, I decided to record nice and friendly videos and post them on my Facebook page and YouTube channel. I wanted to spread the word through the networks and personal contacts that I have made so far. Knowing that Meteor is about entertainment, engagement and humour, I wanted to incorporate it all, and make people interact and smile.

The number of people signing in was not impressive though. Facebook may have had spectacular results in reaching 100mln users in 9 months but it was essential for me to understand that my audience is dispersed and the key is to have an interesting twist and share worthwhile content.

With that in mind, half way through the task, I decided to use another angle –to position myself as a foreigner, who aspires to succeeed and boldly goes for a high profile job. I sent this positive release to the press and it worked perfectly. My press release got coverage in two Polish newspapers in Ireland (Gazeta.ie, Polski Express) as well as Polish newspaper in Poland – Gazeta Krakowska. I also asked my international friends from Amsterdam for support.

So after all the effort and campaigning, I ended up with nearly 780 of the most diverse and multinational fans in the whole competition.

This has great potential. What should the next step be?