CreativeCamp Belfast This Weekend

The first CreativeCamp (in Ireland) hit Kilkenny this past March (I had a helping hand in organising the event), an event which started to bring in a nice concentration on design and the arts online. I had many a good conversation with film makers, visual artists, a writer, a theatre director - all of whom were starting to explore the online world as a means to promote their work and connect with fellow artists.

While artists and creative practitioners made up a small portion of the blend of people there (there were initially 120+ subscribed to attend and likely 80-90 there over the day), the key thing is that it brought creative people together from all walks of life both online and off.

So it was great to see Andy McMillan (who I got to meet at this year’s Irish Blog Awards, briefly) annouce earlier this year that CreativeCamp Belfast would be taking place. And wouldn’t you know, it’s taking place this weekend.

CreativeCamp is a self-organised “unconference” - made up of open, participatory workshop-events where the participants are responsible for setting the agenda, deciding on topics and generating the content. CreativeCamp Belfast brings together technology and creative enthusiasts who want to make things happen with web, mobile, open source, new media, music and design.

Of all the events and unconferences to provide some kind of online coverage or online archive of the day, this is one of those events I hope archives everything.

When I passed my driving test earlier in the summer (before the need to have a second driver regardless of your license kicked in) I thought, “this is great - have van, will travel. Dublin, Belfast, anywhere with a bit of motorway”.

Then in typical Irish form you get an invitation to a wedding and two fall on the same weekend, pinning me to Kilkenny on Friday and Mayo on Saturday. So there’s a slight part of me (the musician and music promotor / sponsor / butcher / baker / candlestick maker) gutted that I’m going to be missing out on talks like

• Nick Fitzsimons - Music Licensing - What is it, how to approach it, and why it’s important
• Rich Dale - A Manifesto for a sustainable NI Music Scene
• Anto O’Kane - Building a new model of the music industry from the ground up - open discussion on the best way to keep a band afloat, and even make a few quid.

not to mention the rest of the talks that are taking place on the day, a number of which have yet to have their details published.

Plus it would have given me the chance to spread the wings and head to Belfast, take in a load of new faces on the day - the key thing for me behind these unconference events.

So, long spiel aside, here’s the facts -

• CreativeCamp Belfast takes place this weekend, Saturday September 6th
• It runs 10am to 5pm in Blick Shared Studios (map)
• You can still register here, here or here
• It won’t cost you a penny to attend

To those involved in CreativeCamp Belfast and those attending, have a good one!

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Irish Web Awards Nominations Close Tonight

The deadline for getting nominations in for the inaugural Irish Web Awards is tonight, August 29th at 23:59. Typically I’ve left my decision making until the last minute but I’ll be submitting my nominations before the deadline passes. While registration to attend the awards night itself has yet to open, there’s still the opportunity to step in as a sponsor for one of the categories like Best Education Website, Best School Website, Best Practice, Best Videocaster etc.

(Note: those categories may well be sponsored at this stage).

However, you can learn about sponsorship opportunities for the awards here.

Time to get the thinking cap on…

More Online TV From Kilkenny

We’re a talented bunch of people in Kilkenny. That said - Kilkenny people are quite talented. “The Creative Capital of Ireland” it has been called in the past. I’m also lucky and consider myself privileged to travel in quite a number of creative circles, one of those would be an association with Mycrofilms.

Though not directly involved with Mycrofilms, I’ve spent a few days on set with them in the past and there’s a crosspolination of bodies involved with The Devious Theatre Company and KilkennyMusic.com, both of which I head up.

So as the music calendar heads into the latter part of the year and our theatre programme takes a bit of a breather, I’m delighted to see that Mycrofilms (who are filming this week) have just released the trailer for Episode 3, due for full release later in the year.

You can watch episode one ‘The Kris Kringle Konundrum’ and the second episode ‘The Scarlet Lady Vanishes’ right here. If you’re in Kilkenny this week then keep an eye out of the Myrcrofilms crew this week. Rumour has they were spotted in the Castle Park vicinity…

Podcasting Takes Time, But They’re Coming Back

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m currently ‘Smitten‘. In a pure theatrical sense that is. Since the third week of May this year for three nights a week or more, plus weekends (taken up with theatre and gigs) I’ve been spending my nights at a variety of rehearsal venues, nights I had previously dedicated to other things I thoroughly enjoy such as the Sound System Podcast and the Playlist Mix.

Now that we’ve hit show week on our second of three productions for the year I can look forward to having my evenings come back and getting into the podcasting groove again.

There’s a perk in this for me as for the third production, I’m looking at producing a radio play. We had been speaking to one radio station to look at carrying the play in October but whether the show goes across the airwaves or not, we’re going to be releasing it as part of a short series of podcasts from the theatre company, a nice way for us (as the theatre company) to embrace podcasting and reach a new audience.

What I’m also looking forward to is returning to the Playlist Mix (Tuesday nights) and the Sound System Podcast with KilkennyMusic.com (Wednesday nights). Producing podcasts, the way we’ve gotten into producing them, can take anywhere up to 3 hours if you allow a half hour for pre-production and notes.

While the Playlist Mix will return with it’s regular and healthy dose of podsafe music, the Sound System Podcast will be showcasing highlights from gigs since May this year, for the first few shows with five weeks worth of live music to offer (20 live tracks) though an overall format change has not yet been decided by myself and co-host Ross Costigan.

Thanks to my theatrical commitments and weekend engagements, three hours is a lot to ask when you’re in “show mode”. So from the first week of September, both podcasts (which collectively have almost reached the 90-mark in the last year) will be returning to an iTunes store near you.

I’m Smitten, All Week

My evenings are about to come back to me once again, returning a sense of normality to my days and my blogging routine. What has been “normal” to me for the past 3-4 months have been intensive nights of rehearsals, mornings and weekends of production meetings, script meetings, safety checks, sound design, set design, more production meetings and more food than one could ever possibly consume at ‘The Field’ in Kilkenny.

Tonight sees the opening of my second show in two months. For those of you who don’t know, I’m one of the four heads responsible for the running of The Devious Theatre Company in Kilkenny, at it’s core a six-strong group of actors and theatre lovers striving to develop and promote new programmes of theatre aimed at people our own age. Out with The Field and Oklahoma, in with Trainspotting and Cannibal The Musical and, this week, Smitten.

In a round about way I got to join Darragh Doyle on KCLR 96FM last night (both of us pre-recording at separate times on Monday night) where listeners would have heard myself and writer John Morton talking about Smitten, opening tonight in The Barn at Church Lane, Kilkenny (behind The Good Shepherd Centre / St. Canice’s Cathedral) and running until Saturday.

Smitten is, unashamedly so, a play about Kilkenny, set in Kilkenny, hosted by Kilkenny actors. A mish-mash of stories focusing on topics from alcoholism to pregnancy, mystery girls to testicular cancer, broken hearts to broken hands, make-ups and break-ups… but it’s a comedy at the heart of it all.

John has actually put together a great piece here that’s well worth the read, from the writer’s perspective of Smitten.

This is the fourth new production I’ve been involved in staging over the past two years where this time around I play ‘Niall’ who could quite possibly charm the pants off anything if he put his mind to it. For me it’s been a great role to take given I’ve been wearing other hats as producer for the show, sound designer and general Mr. Transport (have van, will travel). Having played a nice guy record collector, to an all-singing-all-dancing lover of snowmen, to a good-guy-turned-junkie, it’s nice to play someone with a bit of sleaze to their character, shake things up a bit.

If you’re interested in finding out more, check out DeviousTheatre.com. I’ll be hanging out in The Barn pretty much all week and would like to extend my thanks once again to Barnstorm Theatre for providing us with a most excellent rehearsal and performance venue. If you would like to pop along to the show or reserve tickets, drop me a text or email me and we’ll sort something out.

Until then, I’m Smitten.

Irish Web Awards Announced

If you have doubted web award ceremonies in Ireland in the past, then doubt no more. The Irish Web Awards 2008 have just been announced with Moviestar.ie as the headline sponsor. As with the Irish Blog Awards, Damien Mulley is the brains behind the operation so you know you’re in for a good night and a solid show.

Nominated sites will be judged in areas such as

• Interactive Design
• Content
• UI Design
• Feedback
• Extras such as web standards, mobile compatability etc

A full breakdown of the scorecard can be found here.

Registration to attend the awards ceremony to be held on October 11th will open soon. The best thing about it? It won’t cost you a penny It will only cost you €30 to attend and nominations are entirely free!

Update: Damien has posted an update re: pricing.

The PodCamp Ireland Podcast Series

In case you’ve been in hiding for the past few weeks or haven’t yet heard, myself, Krishna De and Bernie Goldbach have started a PodCamp Ireland podcast series, distributed through Blog Talk Radio and iTunes every Wednesday. As it is hosted through Blog Talk Radio, the show goes out live at 9am each Wednesday morning and you’re able to listen live or dial in to the show to take part.

The podcast, heading into its fifth week, features a weekly tech / domain / hosting tip from Michele Neylon, a feature interview by Krishna with a new guest each week as well as other topical discussion on the build-up to PodCamp in Kilkenny this September.

Already interviewed have been Johnny Beirne (DownloadMusic.ie), Campbell Scott (IGOPeople.com), Cathy Fitzgerald (ArtLinks.ie), Darragh Doyle (re: 4DayMovie.com) while this coming week sees an interview with Deborah Hadley (Tast.ie).

If you would like to get involved, offer yourself available for an interview or suggest a topic for discussion then drop an email to podcampireland [@] gmail.com.

Ken McGuire, MaxRoam And The N95

I feel I’ve been neglecting my blog of late, getting drawn into the many other blogs one keeps and watching my workload pile up online and offline.

However, here’s an interesting one.

Keeping an eye on Twitter during the day, I caught a tweet from Laura Czajkowski referencing potential employers googling your name. I’ll admit that I do have a Google Alert set up to catch mention of my name (as it turns out, it’s quite helpful) but I wouldn’t regularly Google myself.

On top of that, I’ve always wondered about the secondary results on Google, especially those one-word or sectioned links under the primary search result.

So to my amazement I run a google search for Ken McGuire just now and I’m presented with the above.

Explain that one…

That said, if a potential employer was to indeed “Google me”, I’d be quite happy with the results thrown up on the first page highlighting my blog, my photography, my music, my work with KilkennyMusic.com and a newspaper interview covering everything else (about a year ago).

Beating The Cinema Queue With MovieTickets.ie

Having spotted an advertisement for MovieTickets.ie (possibly during a trip to see the latest Indiana Jones flick when last in Dublin… love the Savoy) I decided last night would be the right time to give it a spin.

Having taken a trip to see ‘Wanted’ recently, seeing the hoards of people turned away from the Kilkenny Omniplex for the consecutively sold-out screenings of ‘Hancock’, I figure I may get the tickets in early for Thursday night’s opening of Batman.

With booking available via Omniplex.ie and MovieTickets.ie all I needed to do was pick the day for the screening, the time for the screening, select the number of tickets and away I go. A painless service that I’m happy to pay the .50c booking charge on tickets for if it means avoiding the usual horrible queue on opening nights in Kilkenny.

The tickets are set for collection at the cinema within 30 minutes of purchase so I may swing by this afternoon and collect them for Thursday’s screening of The Dark Knight. If it all works out, I don’t think I’ll be queuing in the cinema again any time soon. Though it would certainly help if you could pre-order your food / popcorn / drinks as well.

Cost Savings On A Full Driving License

Last year, aged 24, I forked out around €1,220 for comprehensive insurance on my 1.9l Peugeot Partner. My license date and insurance renewal date were in days of each other, the license passing into its second year just before paying out the insurance renewal.

The first year I had the van, aged 23, I paid out over €1,700 for comprehensive insurance on a first provisional license.

When the letter from SGS (driving test) came in the door a few months back to tell me I would be sitting my test on June 26th I thought it couldn’t have come at a better time. My license would be up for renewal come August, along with the insurance - failing the test would mean moving onto a second provisional and possibily reducing the cost of the insurance. Passing the test would mean a full license and a definite reduction in insurance.

So, delighted as I am having turned 25 in May, passing the driving test in June and picking up my insurance quote from Quinn Direct in the post today to offer me insurance at €560 give or take a few pennies.

The no-claims bonus was represented a saving of around €190 so when you take charges into account (for direct debit payments), I’m still left with an additional saving of around €430 having turned 25 and earned a full license.

Now to direct that saving into something nice…