I also blogged from City West on Friday and Saturday but, due to essays, I’ve been unable to blog a summary of my views on the blogging experience.

I’ll make a view quick comments here for the time being. For the record, the FF Ard Fheis was the third party conference I have blogged from; I was at SF’s Ard Fheis the previous weekend, and at FG’s national conference in Wexford last November (as far as I know, I was the only blogger at the FG and SF events). In my experienece, I have received absolutely no negativity from mainstream media journalists in the press room. I didn’t introduce myself to every single one, but those I spoke to on all three weekends were friendly even though many were quite busy. And yes, some were curious about blogging in that they might like to give it a try (only it would be more work for them on top of their day job).

I’ll go into more detail on this on my blog, but I think FG, SF and FF did reasonable jobs in accomodating me at their conferences. Yes, there is room for improvement and I think they will up their game when they see how blogs are growing in readership and influence. I only have minor qualms about how they handled us and I will detail them later on our blog, when these bloody essays are done.

However, I will be attending the Greens conference in Wexford this weekend and I hope to see a few more bloggers there.

Regarding the points she made of advice to political parties already the Green Party have taken on board many of her observations and made suitable arrangements for this weekend.

Can we take it that this is the view of everyone in the mainstream media? I doubt it but maybe you doing a father of the chapel on it?

I would think if you polled any blogger who attended an event where mainstream media were present you’ll find stories of people getting questioned as to their motives or would you believe an actual ‘right’ to be present. No wonder people keep their heads down. And with this sort of drivel from a sister paper of yours who could blame them! One friend at a business conference last month was publically abused by someone from a national paper for daring to ask a question during a press briefing.

By the way Politics.ie is a message board which is now completely discredited as a recruiting ground for Libertas. Publishing press releases and giving YFG/Ogra/SF/BNP types a place to hang out and swear may be a form of online engagement to some but it’s not creating content of any note. The founders may well have liked to dine out on it but that train left the station a long time ago.

Interesting to get your perspective on the press room on Saturday.

As a freelance journalist, working (and yes I do consider it working because I put in the same amount of effort as I would had I been getting paid) at his first Ard Fheis in a blogging capacity I was unsure exactly as to the etiquette.

I had briefly met John Burns and Deaglan DeBreadan several months prior but the rest of the journalists there were all new to me.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t go around and introduce myself to the rest of the newsroom because one, I didn’t want to step on any toes and two, everyone seemed busy and focused, I reckoned the last thing they needed was some laptop-jockey interrupting their train of thought.

Regards the first point, there are journalists who think bloggers are trying to take their jobs, I’ve met a few in the last year or two, and the last thing I wanted to do was sour relations with anyone early in the day. I figured banter would flow naturally between anyone who wanted to chat, and it did, I had a good natter with several journos and snappers throughout the day. Unfortunately I didn’t share a few words with yourself but after your post here I’ll make an effort to do so next time.

Regards the “if they took their heads out of their laptops” comment. Look, I can understand where you’re coming from. I urge you to consider my perspective however, I posted 6 articles (nearly all somewhere between 500 and 800 words) between 12 and 9PM on Saturday. I didn’t eat, I didn’t watch the match. I was working right through. As someone with much less experience than the majority of other journalists in there it took me longer to analyse the comments and speeches and pick out the parts worth writing about. If I had time to pull my head out of my laptop I probably would of gone and found something to eat to be perfectly frank…

Personally speaking at least, it wasn’t a conscious “snub” on anyone not to go around and shake hands. Probably more nerves.

Either way, I’ll probably be there at the Greens on Saturday, if you’re around I’ll make sure to approach you to say hello, hopefully you’ll be willing to do the same.

Mark Coughlan

going cap in hand to the ECB in not my idea of a solution.

of course, Iceland, outside of the EU , is another example and they got royally screwed.

but if the EU doesnt bail us out, and we end being shafted as much as Iceland was, then the question is – whats the point of the EU? is it more of club for France/UK/Germany? for if we get shafted as much as Iceland, then what was the point of losing our fisheries (an immense resource that we lost to Spanish fishing fleets..)

when this disaster is over, you’ll find that our real masters are not in dublin or even in brussels – they’ll be in frankfurt and berlin.

which might not be a bad thing – the germans know a thing or two about avoiding downturns. is germany in meltdown right now? no it isnt.

but i fear we’ll end up doing a deal with the devil – if we hand over financial matters to the germans, then you can say bye bye to the Irish Republic. of course, the “republic” will still be there for show – but underneath, we will have lost our independence.

is that a price we’re willing to pay? or are we willing to think the unthinkable. are we willing to break away from the EU and make our own way in the world.

i think we can – if and only if , we go hell for leather with forging alliances with the irish abroad. and if we really sell ourselves as a bridge between europe and america.

Well, that explains how he was able to divine the mood of the nation on the front page of the Indo on Feb 13th after the poll showing their support has plummeted.

“the opinion poll was taken after a relatively good week for the Taoiseach. There was a widespread perception of a “lift� in the public mood after his impassioned speech last Thursday.�

Granted, this scientific poll suggested that perhaps the public mood towards the Taoiseach is one of black, unrelenting hostility. But using the powers shared by all members of Fianna Fail since Dev looked into his heart, Fionnan can sense their true, lifted mood.

All one big family all right.

even though i dont live in ireland, i felt irish, and part of the process. and i havent felt like that in all the years i’ve lived abroad.

david mcwilliams is right – ireland needs to engage the diaspora.

i think we saw that first engagement at the ard fheis. but it wasnt exclusively because of FF. it was bloggers like suzy, gavin , slugger and others that brought it together in their own spontaneous flash-mobby way. and twitter was an important vehicle in doing that.

suzy – yer onto something. keep doing what you do. appreciate it!

i was “blogging” back in 1996.

it was called a home page.

joking aside – i think the very term “blogging” is a bit of misnomer. what was quite new about what suzy, gavin, mark and all of us on twitter were doing was a far more flash-mobbish kind of affair. sure blogs are part of the equation – but other technologies are now part of the whole experience. twitter, qix, twitpix, flickr , mobile comms, iphones, youtube etc

rather than just reading a “live blog” , its now a much more immersive affair – gavin, for example , was posting youtube vids taken on his phone minutes earlier. lots of folks were tweeting pics taken from their mobiles.

and then there was slugger with his live chat widget, and the #ffaf tag on twitter. it was a far more immersive affair than just live blogging – and far more social.