The Irish launch party of web browser Firefox 3 last week (hosted by Paul Walsh, CEO of Segala) was a bit of a mini get-together of the Irish blogging community and gave me the opportunity to meet some of the great folks at its helm. Here are a few I got chatting to …
This Is What I do (pictured)
There’s a scene in Stephen King’s The Green Mile where a mouse named Mr Jingles is almost killed by a cruel prison warden. He’s the sole companion of a lonely old French man named Delacroix and King writes so beautifully about the friendship between mouse and man that I couldn’t help shedding a tear – a rare occurrence.
Although Doyle’s day job is as a ‘techie’, his writing too exudes emotion, honesty and compassion. His inspiring post, ‘Have pride in who you are’, on his difficult and sometimes lonely childhood, gave me hope and made me cry a little bit too.
One of These Days …
Roseanne Smith’s blog is as bubbly as the girl herself is in person. It’s bright, cheerful and shows a sharp, busy mind at work.
Smith likes to talk about life online and gives some good tips on how you should go about blogging. First of all, your mammy was right: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
Secondly: Before you blog it, say it aloud. “If you were a contestant on Big Brother, would your comment result in your being up for eviction?,” she asks. We can all take a leaf out of Smith’s book.
Darragh O’Heiligh
I discovered Darragh O’Heiligh’s blog last week after meeting him for the first time. As his job involves working on accessibility within Linux (particularly focusing on those with visual impairment as O’Heiligh himself is blind) there is a good amount of tech talk. But what really interested me was his frustration at all blind people being lumped together as one entity.
He has a good rant about Big Brother and everyone gushing about how positive it is to have a blind person on the show. What’s the obsession with defining this guy as blind first and a person second?, he asks.
Brightspark Consulting’s blog
www.brightspark-consulting.com/blog
As soon as I visit the Brightspark blog, maintained by owner Maryrose Lyons, I get the sense she really ‘gets’ networking, the online space and what it can do for a business.
Lyons attends all the right events and gives good insight and afterthought on her blog. After attending networking event Curry 2.1, she mulls over the big issues of the night, such as the VC scene in Ireland and why people expect everything on the web to be free.
By Marie Boran
