Below is a video Connector recently produced for HP Snapfish.  Although this video is for the UK market and used in a large marketing campaign with the Daily Mail, we had a happy client for this ‘How To’ video produced here in Dublin.

The lovely voice you hear is from the excellent voice-over artist Nicola Lyndsay sourced from Piehole.ie

I must say I really enjoyed the talk by John Boyle at ‘The Board‘ event last week in the Stillorgan Park Hotel.  He told the story of how he battled from being a van driver fired from his job with alcohol problems to being a hugely successful businessman with 170+ betting offices with Boyle Sports.

He was a very humble man and as he said himself ‘I used to want to be John Wayne, now I just want to be John Boyle’.  The main take away from his talk was how to achieve success and happiness with mind training combined with the correct work life balance.

You can find lots more notes here on ‘The Board and apologies for the poor lighting at the start of this clip. Thanks to The Board for arranging such a great event.

When I plan events, it’s always more fun if it is planned for a good cause. There is something to be said for doing an event with the purpose to help another. With this intern event, Barnardos was our charity partner.  Barnardos mission is to challenge and support families, communities, society and government to make Ireland the best place in the world to be a child.

To help this intern charity event come together we received sponsorship from The Church, Jameson and Shamrocker Tours. The Church allowed us to invade their club downstairs while providing us with welcome food and a free glass of wine or beer.  Shamrocker donated a trip for three days around Ireland, a chance for an intern to see other parts of the country. Jameson graciously donated several bottles of their famous whiskey, along with a lunch for four, and an 18 year old bottle all for us to raffle off; along with providing our guest speakers a bottle of their gold whiskey.
Our speakers for the night were Orla Tighe and Neil Leyden.

Orla Tighe is the fundraising manager for Barnardos. She told a moving story about a little boy she had met that is in programs at Barnardos, she talked to the struggles that he has in his life and how Barnardos helped this boy and his family move towards a better life.

Neil Leyden is the project manager at Gateway Ireland. He spoke to what Gateway Ireland is striving to do. They are focusing on promoting Ireland to the world and harnessing the vast majority of people in the world with an Irish connection. He focused on people with an Irish connection around the world and how they can bring these people together for a common purpose through various social media outlets.

The event all in all was a success; we talked, mingled, danced, enjoyed ourselves, and most of all did it for a great cause. We learned about the cause and we learned about how vast the Irish culture is spread no matter where you are in the world.

We would like to give a big thank you to all of our sponsors and our speakers for coming out last night. It was a great time and we could not have done it without you.

And thanks also to Jason Roe from BTW who kindly helped us raise more money for Barnardos at his event also in The Church.  Their collection brought in approx €250 which is brilliant for a meetup and much appreciated by us and Barnardos.

Ronan Higgins is founder and CEO of Locle.com, a company specialising in location-based social networking. In addition to this he manages and runs Appsie.  Appsie is  a Dublin-based mobile software development team of 4 highly qualified full-time developers who create tailor made mobile applications.

Recently Ronan set up a Bluetooth messaging welcome for the guests at Connector #Appy Hour is also the owner of a great party house in Rathmines where I also reside.  An expert in all things mobile and a nice guy too!  Thanks Ronan and here he is with his business partner Pieter Oonk in April 2009 @ Connector No.9.

There are many intern groups here in Dublin this summer and the interns here at Connector have been hard at work planning an intern event for all them. We wanted to create a night that brought everyone together, is fun, educational, and for a good cause.  Check it out here on Facebook.

The intern event will be benefitting the not-for-profit Barnardos, a local Dublin charity that serves the people of Dublin. The event will be on July 28^th from 6pm – 10pm at The Church. There is a suggested donation of €4 and every cent will go towards Barnardos. The Church has kindly donated a free welcome drink and finger food to all the interns that come and show their support for Barbardos.

We will also have several speakers for the night; a representative from Barnardos to talk about the work that they do, Bobby Kerr an entrepreneur that started the largest coffee company in Ireland, and Neil Leyden from the exciting new Irish global marketing project called Gateway Ireland.

We will be raffling off great prizes as well, including but not limited to a great 3 day trip around Ireland courtesy of Shamrocker Irish Adventures, 1 Bottle of Premium 18 year old Jameson Whiskey and much more!  We hope to see all the interns that are here in Dublin out for this special night of fun, community, and excitement.

You will receive a raffle ticket for every €3 donation or two raffle tickets for €5.

Andrew and Shelsea will be the MCs of the event for the evening and can’t wait to see you all there.

The design work I have done for Connector has been an interesting experience. I am caught between the styles and branding that was developed for Connector and my own design and style.  In my design work I like to keep things clean and simple, because I think that is the most effective type of design. Simple design allows for the strongest creativity and at the same time allows for a very straightforward clean message. I guess that’s my design weak point. I need to start developing more complex and interesting design, so that way I have a lot in my design arsenal to use.

Every time I go into creating a design for Conor, I try and do two or three different designs. The first I try to create something consistent with the Connector’s current style. The second I make something I like and I think is cool, and third I make a hybrid of the design I like and the design consistent with the brand. It’s hard at times to create something I like. Time constraints often leave me feeling like there is something left to be desired out of some of my designs. I guess college has spoiled me with a plethora of time to create and refine my designs. Now I am working under short deadlines and desire for high quality. It’s been a bit of an adjustment to this kind of working environment, but I am getting used to it and I am learning where I to focus to save time but still produce decent quality.

Overall the adjustment to office life has been good and interesting. I am still getting used to the fact that my designs are actually being used for the web, proposals, etc instead of for just portfolio development. I hope by the end of this internship I will be doing work on a fast paced basis, I will be able to create a piece that is high in quality but only takes a short amount of time.

Here are a few examples of the work I have created for Connector. Please share what you think about them. Any feed back I can get would be great!

Hundreds of social media and technology fans were at the ambient and stylish chartered accountants institute last Thursday for the Dublin web summit to hear insights, tips and predictions from top technology enthusiasts and business luminaries. Guests were treated to a 7-hour marathon of insightful speeches from not only Irish but also global presenters.

Hoping to become more savvy on social media and technology, I doubt they were disappointed! Looking at the line up for the speeches, I was undoubtedly impressed. Big hitters such as Michael Birch founder of Bebo, Mike Butcher Editor of TechCrunch Europe, Simon Cook CEO of DFJ Espirit, the worlds largest venture capital group, The charismatic Bill Liao an Australian tech entrepreneur and ex RTE political correspondent Mark Little, to name a few, all played their part in ensuring a high calibre and standard of presentations.

The event ran extremely smoothly and was well organised with a networking session taking place half way through the speeches to allow not only the members of the audience to indulge in a the eloquent food and drinks that were provided as a half time refresher but also to talk amongst themselves and offer their insights on not only the speeches but also how they could help and compliment each others services. All in all, the event was a huge success and a credit to everyone involved. The web summit was a great chance to see first hand how huge and paramount social media and online relations are becoming in Ireland and long may it continue.

Thanks a million to everyone who came along to the Connector #Appy Hour event last night at the Nokia Pop Up Shop on Grafton Street.  Congratulations to Suzanne Sheridan and Ger Canning who were the worthy winners of our competition on the night and proud owners of two spanking new Nokia phones! (Facebook Photos)

There were some great speakers in Anthony Lawless, Device and Software Manager at Nokia, and Edward Conmy, joint owner of Digital Times and winner of the Appys Awards.

They talked about digital innovation in terms of new mobile phone applications and how useful they are to create content for the computing, media, publishing and advertising industries.

After the talks, there was a raffle with amazing prices to win from Nokia, Abbey Theatre, The New Theatre, Lighthouse Smithfield Cinema and Millets Camping.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and make new connections and friends. Although the guest speakers were very popular they didn’t quite go down as well as the free refreshments! Hope to see everyone at the next one!

Connector has two interns working with them from the States this summer. Shelsea and Andrew have joined the team last week and will be with us for six weeks. They have come through EUSA, a not-for-profit internship organization that every summer brings 300 interns to Dublin so they get work experience in Irish companies.

Here it is some more background about Shelsea & Andrew:

Shelsea Rawson is currently attending Seattle University as a junior and a strategic communications major. She is very interested in non-profit event planning and social media. She is involved in on-campus activities such as Dance Marathon, a 16 hour event benefitting Seattle Children’s Hospital; not only did she help start the project but also was internal co-director for the 2009 marathon. Other campus organizations that Shelsea has been involved with include the Orientation Advisor program and the Student Events and Activates Council, where she brought bands to campus bi-monthly for students to enjoy for free. Shelsea is also a supervisor at the Connolly Center and works in the Student Activities Office as an information assistant.

Outside school, Shelsea likes to volunteer her time to others and was recently involved with Neighborhood House, a non-profit organization in Seattle. Her most recent project was the organization’s annual breakfast event, which will house more than 800 people at the Seattle Convention Center.
In her spare time, Shelsea enjoys being outdoors and spending time with loved ones. If she ever gets a free moment, Shelsea can be found enjoying herself on a hike or somewhere near the water. She loves to travel and is currently on a nine month traveling adventure through Europe and Central America.

Andrew Sides is currently a Graphic Design major at American University in Washington, DC.  He was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri where his family still resides. Andrew is very involved in his community service fraternity at AU, Alpha Phi Omega. From 2009 to 2010 Andrew was the Membership Vice President for the fraternity and will continue to be heavily involved into his senior year.

Andrew’s major is also his passion. He loves to work on graphic design and spends most of his free time learning, researching and creating graphic design work. He was the web intern for the women’s pro soccer team in DC in 2009. He tries to integrate his passion with his work as often as he can. He loves soccer so mixing his internship with graphic design was a unique opportunity.

In his spare time Andrew follows the United States national team and attends matches as often as he can. He also enjoys traveling, music, video games and movies. His long term goals are to become a packaging designer, branding designer, or a movie poster designer, or maybe all three. He is currently in Dublin working with Connector and has really enjoyed the time he has spent here thus far.