Irish Theatre

Surprising as it may seem, Ireland has made a disproportionally large contribution to the history of theatre in the Western world. Famous playwrights like Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett are only some of our world renowned playwrights. Unfortunately a lot of Irish playwrights including George Bernard Shaw found it necessary to leave Ireland to establish themselves.

The golden age of Irish theatre arguably commenced in the second half of the 19th century with Dion Boucicault who achieved great success in New York. Dion Boucicault was an Irish actor and playwright who became famous for his melodramas and became as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers in the English-speaking theatre.

Oscar Wilde soon went on to eclipse those who came before him with a series of four plays 'Lady Windermere’s Fan' (1892), 'A Woman of No Importance' (1893), 'An Ideal Husband' (1895) and 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895). More than a century later, Wilde's plays are still mainstays of theatre companies around the world. The other figurehead of 19th century Irish theatre is Dublin-born George Bernard Shaw, whose play 'Pygmalion' is a timeless classic. Shaw's play was turned into the movie 'My Fair Lady'.

Many Irish writers created plays over the last two centuries that are still popular on stages around the world and a new generation of dramatists is keeping the tradition alive. The creative flame is fuelled by lively, passionate audiences.

My experience of the Irish is that they go to the theatre to have a good time, so next time you visit Dublin, why not take in a play and make a night-out of it. Regardless of what your taste is, be it classic or contemporary, solid entertainment or biting social or political commentary, Dublin offers a wide range of theatre for all tastes. And don't bother to bring evening wear or a suit - Dublin's theatre audiences don't go for formalities so when in Dublin just enjoy yourself.

Attraction Shadow Dancers

This just goes to show the diversity and inspiration of theatre. The Hungarian dance group Attraction was founded in 2004 as part of Hungary’s Black Lights Theatre group. It combines theatre with dance and is so incredibly creative that it has since inspired many similar productions around the world. Attraction consists of twelve members, although only 8 performed and won on Britains Got Talent: Torda Katalin, Tóth Alexandra, Fehér Norbert, Lakatos Andrea, Szűcs Zoltán, Szentinek Csaba, Szabados Flóra and Kántor Janka.

Why do we love theatre so much?

Why do we love theatre so much?

Powerscourt Theatre

I'm currently working with the Powerscourt Theatre in Dublin as their web developer and digital marketer, so I thought it might be interesting to write a blog on theatre as we all love theatre in one form or another. 

We've all heard "There's No Business Like Show Business" and that’s certainly true for those of us who like theatre. Why do we love it so much? Does it inspire us? Make us think? Changes our lives? Or move us? It should certainly transport us in to the story and connect us to the story line and its characters. It’s an escape from the reality of life, full of its own emotion, a release from the drudgery of our daily life. 

The live performances of theatre tend to attract a very diverse group of people. There is no typical person who goes to see a performance; you can stand on the stage of any theatre and look at its audience and it would be composed of everyone from teenagers to the elderly, with one thing in common – The love of theatre, the live performances, and the escape from reality, even if it’s only for an hour or two. 

We all enjoy a performance; it doesn't matter if it's a performance by our kids in a school play or the Shakespeare Theatre Company. We should appreciate theatre for what it is. Theatre brings people together! It's not surprising that, in repressive societies, theatre has often been aligned with the movement towards openness and freedom.

Take the ‘Freedom Theatre Company’ for instance. They are a community-based theatre and cultural centre in Jenin Refugee Camp in Palestine and they regularly perform the renowned South African anti-apartheid play “The Island”. In Czechoslovakia in 1993 a playwright became the first president of the new Czech Republic. Theatre is powerful! So let us be passionate about the theatre and enjoy its escapism and pleasures. Let us live in the wonder and magic of what live theatre brings. 

Blogging as a strategic communication tool

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Blogging as a strategic communication tool

A blog is a web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Because the blog can be used to convey various types of information, such as personal, public, commercial, and political, it has become an effective communication tool over the internet. With the rising popularity of blogs, a growing number of organisations, such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, now look for ways to accommodate this blogging phenomenon.

Blogs are collections of articles, ideas, news, facts, opinions or inspirations that are “posted” on the internet. They are usually structured, organised by category and are updated often, if not daily. The owner of the blog is able to control the content. The term, which stands for "Web log," was coined in 1999 and has caught on like wildfire.

So how can we use blogs in our business in a way that’s going to promote what we do? Well they provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of our business that we may want to feature or highlight and we could use it as a unique, informal way to:

1.  Communicate with colleagues, partners, suppliers, existing or potential customers
2.  Showcase our industry/company news, introduce new products or services, marketing promotions or provide tips
3. Establish a company or individual's reputation or brand
4. Improve operations (e.g. project management or tech support knowledge-sharing)
5. Demonstrate expertise
6. Establish competitive differentiation
7. Simplify and accelerate the publishing process
8. You direct the content but let your readers guide you. You will also need to establish when you will post more articles and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it.

We can use our blogs to actively engage customers. Macromedia, one of the first major companies that officially adopted corporate blogs, encouraged its bloggers to post not only product information that will bring value to customers but also enough personal information that will humanise the company and build a sense of community around the products. Despite many potential benefits, many organisations do not appear to embrace blogs with open arms. This reluctance is primarily due to the lack of rules governing the blogsphere, and has resulted in disputes between employee bloggers and management over what is appropriate blogging content.

Worse yet, some employees were even fired over their blogs. A Microsoft contractor was fired after he posted pictures of Apple G5 computers being unloaded at Microsoft. The entry, “Even Microsoft wants G5s”, was deemed as being a security violation (Bonne, 2003). A Delta Air Lines flight attendant lost her job after she posted photos of herself in uniform on her blog. Delta stated that those photos, in which she is wearing Delta uniform with the blouse partly unbuttoned, were “inappropriate and unauthorised use of Delta branding” (USA Today, 2005). A Google blogger was terminated because he posted some complaints about Google’s compensation package, compared to his previous employer Microsoft (Perez, 2005).

When top executives appear in the blogsphere, their blogs generate instant traffic and can be an effective tool to establish a direct connection with stakeholders. Some organisations have launched a newsletter type of blog that officially represents their positions. This type of blog tends to be filled with well-polished messages; examples are Yahoo! Search Blog, Google Blog and Red Hat Magazine. They cover a variety of topics such as company news and product information.

Microsoft is well known for its support of blogs, and this is evident by an army of online evangelists who shed light on the human side of the company. Their efforts are primarily led by celebrity bloggers who are changing public perception of this formerly faceless company. As public awareness of blogs is dramatically growing, organisations are increasingly attempting to exploit the value of blogs. The most important message for those companies is that blogs are all about communication and conversation, and let’s not forget, its enormous marketing potential!

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Topic of Choice – The forgotten children of India 

I'm giving gifts I bought to the children in Chennai orphanage

Building the Rajasthan children's home

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Topic of Choice – The forgotten children of India

For my topic of choice I decided to raise a bit of awareness for the work I do in India. I’m on the board of directors for a children’s charity called Sharing Hands, in which I raise funds and build orphanages for the children’s charity. I also encourage people to sponsor children in the orphanages, €15/month pays for their food, clothing, school bag and books and education. We now have homes in many states throughout India catering for over a 1,000 children. I try and visit the orphanages every year, take a look at any new projects and see the needs of the children.

I’ve also worked on projects in the slum areas of Mumbai, with the people who live on the rubbish dump and along the sewer pipes, and also with the people who live under plastic sheets along the railway lines. The last orphanage I build was in the mountains of Rajasthan. This is the only desert state in India and has the world famous Thar desert which has rippling sand dunes that keep you mesmerised. Even on the streets of the towns I’ve seen camels and elephants walking on the roads alongside cars.

Rescued Rajasthan children with gifts

New orphanage been built in Andhra Pradesh

All the children we placed into the Rajasthan children’s home are rescued children. We rescued them from factories, quarries and even a zinc smelting plant. Initially the owners refused to hand over any children to us, but eventually they gave us the children who were dying because they were of no use to them anymore. These children were so sick and were unable to walk, so they had to be carried out to the vehicle and be brought to hospital.

All these children were between 5 and 10 years old and each child had to spend 1 month in hospital before they were well enough to move into their new home. We built the home up in the mountains to make it more difficult for their former owners to track them down and bring them back to servitude. And another advantage to the location is that there is a school right across the road from the home. All the children have their own school uniforms, bags and books and they are now the most wonderful happy children you could ever meet. After the first year of opening, the home was full, so by the following year we had to rent a house in a town 2 hours drive away to put more rescued children into. A year later we were rescuing children from child prostitution. But that’s another story, maybe for another blog. 

Children in Andhra Pradesh with gifts I bought them

Girl in Andhra Pradesh with new skipping rope

In some of these photographs you will see children receiving gifts, and for many of them it’s the first gifts they have ever received in their lives.  But this blog is not about me, its about the children in need of someone to love them and care about them. I've over 70 people sponsoring children and none of them have ever gone to India. But in the letters that they get from the children every year, the children refer to them as father or mother, because they know that these people love them, and that is so important to an orphan child – to know that someone loves and cares for them.

Children in Andhra Pradesh playing with gifts

Children in the Chennai orphanage

Elephant walking on the roads in Rajasthan

Mobile Commerce & its impact on you personally and on modern business

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Mobile Commerce & its impact on you personally and on modern business

Well I better start this with an explanation of what mobile or m-commerce actually is. Essentially m-commerce is the process of buying and selling goods and services through the use of handheld wireless devices. The most traditional devices capable of m-commerce are our mobile phones and other personal mobile digital devices. However newer devices are continuously being introduced that can perform these functions as well. For example, e-readers such as the Kindle allow users to shop for new reading material anywhere directly from their device.

For me personally, I’d use my phone more for emails and Google search, and then make the purchase on my laptop. Maybe it’s because I’m more confident with the security on my laptop, but it is essentially a mobile device anyway. We hear talk now of a mobile wallet, this is a digital avatar of your real world wallet on your mobile phone. It can hold your cash, your bank account, your credit card, your loyalty cards, your coupons, your pre-paid items, and lets you conduct financial transactions in-store, online and over mobile channels as you purchase goods and services. I haven’t made up my mind yet if this is exciting or scary? This one device has so much power and contains so much information on us!

The New York Times reports that owners of BlackBerry or iPhone mobile devices will in fact be able to purchase their Starbucks products though downloading a free Starbucks Card application and holding their phones in front of scanners at the retailer’s registers. The money is electronically subtracted from customer’s Starbucks accounts, which they can load with credit cards or PayPal funds via there iPhone.

By 2015, over 36% of all US consumers are expected to be using the mobile internet. Worldwide, mobile phones are forecast to overtake personal computers as the most common web access device within the next three years, and in many developing nations, such as Egypt and India, this shift has already occurred, with up to 70% of the online population exclusively using phones to access the internet.

For businesses to remain competitive, they must understand the strengths and limitations of emerging mobile technology and the context in which each is used. They may also look and see how other enterprises have begun to leverage them. As e-commerce moves away from a singular website experience to the modern landscape of mobile devices, apps and social networks, executives will also need to focus the service-oriented technology that is rapidly becoming essential to keeping up with the pace of change.

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  Provide an Assessment of the opportunities and challenges afforded by

  e-business from a business perspective 

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Provide an Assessment of the opportunities and challenges afforded by e-business from a business perspective

E-business and associated technologies continue to have a major impact on the way organisations conduct business. The Internet and new technologies have transformed commerce and allow traders and consumers to transact irrespective of time, place and device. This new commerce also presents new challenges, because traders now need another set of expertise and tools, and often opt for partner solutions such as online marketplaces.

The eBay marketplace is an example of how the internet and technology lower trade costs for merchants of all sizes, by enabling them to connect, find a match, establish trust, transact and pay. We can see how these lower trade costs also lead to traders expanding their operations to foreign countries. European Union cross-border trade via the eBay marketplace has grown six times faster than offline cross-border trade for the period 2004 to 2010. Moreover, lower trade costs translate to consumer welfare gains.

The lower online trade costs stem from, amongst other things, the way in which the Internet and technology can help establish trust between trading partners and between buyers and sellers. This is done by facilitating communication throughout the transaction process and providing transparent, interactive ways of displaying and sharing information between parties.

The mobile device is fast becoming perhaps the most important channel empowering both merchants and consumers. Retailers whether large or small need to embrace this evolution in order to stay relevant in today’s commerce landscape. We also see the emergence of a consumer, using his or her mobile phone to research and purchase products, as well as to receive advertising and promotional messages.

The uptake of mobile technologies is causing a change in the dynamics of commerce. There is a shift away from the traditional retail store and towards the consumer who is empowered by their smart phone and who can purchase items any place, anywhere and at any time.

The adoption of e-business can be considered from two different perspectives, namely the threat perspective and the opportunity perspective. The opportunity refers to the situation of adopting new business initiatives such as internet technologies, making it possible to achieve advancement to overall business. Business threat refers to how businesses or new market’s entrants will ultimately fail if they do not go for e-business competitively. They will have to invest in e-usiness to offer services to customers who have come to expect from them.

The exponential growth and rapid changes of e-business technologies bring both new opportunities and challenges to businesses. The market has forced companies to focus once again, on the basics of cost, quality and profitability. This presents unique challenges (and opportunities) with conducting commerce via the Internet.  The business model should enable the cost, quality and profitability necessities, while utilising a long-term profit-based business plan, and simultaneously accommodating the unique business issues associated with e-commerce.  

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