Social Media

Ina O'Murchu is an occasional contributor to socialmedia.net. She will be speaking at Ignite the West this Friday, September 10th, and at Bizcamp Galway the next day.

Could you tell us about your background (where you're from, what you've done)?

I’m originally from Galway City. I grew up here but spent some time in London and Dublin. I’ve worked in the technology sector for fifteen years, and I have worked in the Social Web space this past seven.

What was your route into social media?

A degree in chemistry started it all off. I was twenty-two and had just bought .net magazine. I had to select a final year project as part of my course that summer. Always interested in new things, I applied to design the chemistry department’s website as my final year project. The more time I spent on the Web during that year, the more I realised the huge impact the Web was going to have on society, and the more and more I got into it. I abandoned my chemistry skills and ended up working in tech. After a number of years working I went back to retrain, and I completed a Master's degree at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in NUI Galway.

Deanna Lee is Vice-President of Communications of The New York Public Library, (NYPL.) Before that she was at the Asia Society and before that she was a Senior Producer at ABC News.

As part of her current role she has been active in extending the reach of the NYPL’s social media presence. In one instance, through her efforts and the efforts of her team the follower account for @NYPL has risen from about 4,000 in January 2010, to over 65,000 as I write at the end of August 2010, seven months later.

I asked her how she did approached the task of managing the NYPL's online activities.

Making content that really stands out and then very proactively and consciously pushing out all this great content. Because, of course, we are all working in a world that’s very exciting but the sea of content is growing and growing. So how do you make what you do stand out?

Audioboo is a web and mobile application that enables you to record and publish audio segments directly to the web and straight into other social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook if you have enabled the connections.

In this debrief one our correspondents, Bernard Goldbach, shares his enthusiasm and his experiences with the application as an educational and Social Media tool.

You may want to listen to this compilation that he and Peter Donegan put together to get an idea of the breadth and depth of what is possible with the audiboo format. It is also a rather lovely soundscape of Ireland in 2010.

click image for "Irish Boosters"
(background via Google Earth)

So how did you get started?

Over the last 13 years, Mark has worked with major corporations such as Dell, Airtricity, Trinity Biotech and Johnson & Johnson. Mark is one of the founding organisers and speakers at Bizcamp Limerick. He is also a member of Engineers Ireland (IEI), the Irish Internet Association (IIA) and the MBA Association of Ireland (MBAAI). Mark is also a guest lecturer in the University of Limerick, Ireland, in entrepreneurship and marketing, with a focus on social networks and social media. Mark is also a co-founder of Social Bits, an Ireland-based consultancy firm specialising in the application of social media and Semantic Web technologies. You can follow him on Twitter at @markcahill.

1. Could you tell us about your background (where you're from, what you've done)?

My background is in engineering and information technology. I have a BEng in Computer Engineering, and I have always had an interest in anything computer related. I worked with Dell for over 11 years before leaving to work for myself. Before leaving Dell, I commenced my Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA) which I completed in 2008.

Facebook is engaged in another legal fracas in Germany. But that won’t date this article as I am sure Facebook and other social media services like them will continue to be hauled before the courts until they wake up and realize what the real issue is here. It is not about privacy. It is about consent.

If someone takes something without permission, it’s not inconsiderate, it is stealing. Taking other people’s information is not about whether it is private or not. It is about acting in a non-consensual manner, very much in the way of tin-pot dictators and other assorted bully boys throughout the ages.

One argument goes that because anything you put on the Internet is public or is assumed to be public, even if protected, then it is somehow fair game. We know this isn’t true because if you libel or defame someone on the Web, you face the same legal consequences as you would if you had done it any other medium.