Category: My Network

So, just as I hit the lunch break on a Sunday I’ve realised that its been a good weekend of planning and there’s nothing better than sitting down, fleshing out ideas and schedules in big monster sessions.

Friday saw it happen for eventIreland as we detailed our new range of offers for 2007; Saturday saw almost 9 hours of talks for KilkennyMusic.com resulting in our announcement of an initial 28 shows for 2007 outside of our plans to extend the main website itself; today (so far) has been a mix of eventIreland work coupled with a break for a three hour meeting with the board of The Devious Theatre Company where we’ve managed to announce a second theatrical production (and book the theatre) for 2007, following on from the Irish debut of Cannibal! The Musical this coming August.

There should be some fund-raising and advertising opportunities with Devious Theatre closer to the August dates.

Only thing is, once you spend your entire Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the office your weekend is gone. But isn’t that part of the joy of working for yourself – being able to look back on days knowing that they made you quite happy in looking forward?

If anyone is interested, the initial range of dates for KilkennyMusic.com can be found on the KKM MySpace while The Devious Theatre Company will be presenting ‘Heart Shaped Vinyl’ from June 28th – 30th along with Cannibal! The Musical (from Trey Parker, creator of South Park) from August 22nd – 25th.

Been a quiet week in the blogging sense as literally all my spare time during the week has gone into relaunching KilkennyMusic.com. The site had previously been working on a PHPNuke 7.8 install with phpBB integrated for the forums…. no more!

After pulling the site down last Tuesday in the very wee hours of the morning, it has relaunched this morning on a Joomla install. Most of the work involved was in getting all the users and forum posts migrated to the new setup, then spending a good bit of time templating up the site (and the forums to match) before getting all the components installed.

For anyone who is interested, the site is running the latest version of Joomla with the latest version of phpBB backing the forums. Community Builder looks after the members and integrates well with the forums. That too has had a bit of work done to it to cater for pulling in users posts from the forums, linking their avatars, providing each member with their own homepage and guestbook setup (MySpace comments style). There’s a new free classifieds area, post up some photos, sell your bits and pieces. The photo galleries and Artists Area of the site have been revamped thanks to some new components (thought slightly lacking in content as I’ve to load the backups in today). There’s new live chat features, blogs, podcasts going in this week, free mp3 downloads, KKM radio… and more besides!

The site now also boasts our new online magazine, ‘Sound System’ which has been made free to non-members as well, we’ve got interviews from some nice bands on the horizon (Laminate, Republic Of Loose, Fugazi, Yo La Tengo and more), a few new writers on board (or just people who were on board before but are now adopting a writers position as well) and overall the site – performance-wise and user-wise has improved a hell of a lot from its PHPNuke incarnation last week.

If you’re interested in the music, or you’re based in Kilkenny, do drop in and register – its free!

My thanks to everyone involved in KKM with me behind the scenes, to all the bands that have joined us for live sets during the past 12 months, to the Kilkenny Arts Office and the Arts Council for approving KKM for the Arts Acts Grant for 2006 and to everyone else that we’ve met along the way.

Why the relaunch?

We turned 1 year old on September 19th… gotta put something nice on for your birthday! Maybe now I can actually get to bed at a decent hour!

Bit of a mad past two days workwise but its time to get back to brass tacks on the blog. Kilkenny Music going 2.0? Not another Web 2.0 novelty…. Its just time to launch the second iteration of KKM, which I’ve begun to implement following a few weeks of hard planning. Those podcasts are finally closer as well 😉

What started out as a one man project rather quickly grew to a two man project and is currently running with three people now involved. Not bad turn around for kicking off last October. It is planned, at least, to have KKM2.0 live and online in time for, if not before our one-year anniversary, the site having launched private on September 18th, with a public launch on October 8th last.

The interface as a whole is getting a major face lift, out with the greys that currently grace the screen and in with some more powerful, vibrant colours; there’s a more indepth service for artists; full syndication of all gigs and events, straight to your inbox; wiki resource for those interested in music technology, covering techniques, tips etc; full podcast access and streaming audio from all the bands involved. For something thats working extremely well at local level, its time to start looking at bringing it a little further afield.

The podcast plans are finally nailed down as well, again, three of us going to be involved in an initial monthly distro. I’ve already entered into talks with getting them carried on local radio.

Speaking of local radio, we’ll be taking over the airwaves this coming Tuesday night, going out on air for the hour between 8pm and 9pm discussing a lot about KKM, what goes on behind the scenes, before delving into resources for bands, a look at online resources and technologies, the local music scene and more.

Busy few days gone and a serious amount of them ahead!