The Dot IE Net Visionary Awards are one of the most hotly contested awards for digital businesses in Ireland. In partnership with the IIA & IEDR, the awards recognise best practice across four main pillars of digital excellence: technology, entrepreneurship, marketing and innovation. The Dot IE Net Visionary Awards showcase the businesses & leaders that are driving innovation in the online world and serve as role models for others. The Dot IE Net Visionary awards recognise the very ‘best of the best’ of Irish digital businesses.
You have probably heard the hype and a lot of you have probably already seen the Netflix original: 13 Reasons Why based on the young adult novel of the same name by Jay Asher already. It was the most tweeted about show of the last 12 months. For those who are not familiar is a melodramatic thriller about a young girl named Hannah Baker who takes her own life.
I am prepared for the backlash from people who are going to take this article personally because it relates to the feeds I scroll through every day and to be honest I will be relived if I get savaged or the usual threatening emails/DM's. I am confident that every person aged 22-35 will be able to relate to this article and I would be disappointed if it did not elicit a response from you, positive or not.
Sockies, which is short for the Social Media Awards are an annual celebration of the people who are killing it on social media in Ireland and guess who bagged a few nominations? Add this to the fact that the sun has been shining in Kerry, albeit in brief periods but we don't care, we just focus on good news at Avalanche! We are nominated for four awards at the 2017 Social Media Awards.
Happy Sunday evening! I just had a great weekend at the MBA’s in Waterford as I was lucky enough to be named Best Young Business Person. It was a fantastic honour to receive such a wonderful award and I truly hope that I can live up to the title in the coming months/years. It was a great ceremony in Dungarvan and I want to say thank you to all the organisers, judges, nominees and to absolutely everybody who was involved in a great event. I have no doubt that next year will be even more of a success!
Stereotypes exist for a reason, they can be used to describe a niche group of people/profession but by their very definition they are an oversimplification and while I see the merit in them it's hard not to take offence when you are grouped into a category you don't necessarily agree with.
The ego is an aspect of the human personality that has always intrigued me, it is something that I believe every person on this earth possesses to varying degrees. It is a particularly fickle thing and it can be the difference between failure and success.
As with a lot of my more personal blogs, I am beginning this article somewhat apprehensively because I have been sitting on the subject matter for quite some time, a lot of things you are about to read have only been revealed to a handful of close friends. Irish people have an unhealthy relationship with money at the best of times so it is not easy to admit when you are broke.
Let me be crystal clear with you, I absolutely adore video games. Crash, Sora, Spyro, Blue, Zelda, Yohimitsu, Cloud, Squall, Ryu, Ellie & Joel. The list of heroes who have engaged me for hours on end is nigh on endless. I can lose myself in a modern adventure like “The Last Of Us” because it is truly a work of art, I am an impatient mess waiting for the Crash Bandicoot remake and this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gaming.
We are thrilled to be nominated for two awards at the Eir Spiders 2016. We are nominated in Best in Blogging and Best Small Agency. It is always an honor to be nominated and I would like to take a moment to congratulate all of my fellow nominees.
As with the majority of people born in 90’s Ireland I was raised a Catholic, not by choice but by convenience and mostly because it was the societal norm. God forbid you would be the family with “notions”, they were reserved for that mad uncle/cousin you had in ‘Merica or somewhere like that, the relative that only shows up at Christmas that your mother drags you down the stairs to speak to when you obviously have an epic Crash Bandicoot run going.
Success is a strange word, you could organise the most diverse group you could get your hands on right now and you may very well receive 10 different answers. For some people it means getting a degree and a job so they can provide for themselves, for others it simply means providing for their families, as a single man in my twenties with few responsibilities I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what the word means specifically to me.
First of all, I would like to apologise to those who clicked into this article looking for some Jamie Dornan/50 Shades type of advice, read that terrible writing on your own time people. It’s the internet in 2016, nobody will judge you for it, at least not to your face anyway.
We are ecstatic to be nominated for 5 Sockies (Social Media Awards). Being nominated beside some huge names including Supervalu, Paddy Power, Lidl, Guinness, Trinity & The Irish Examiner to name just a few is a huge compliment to our business.
We never get tired of being nominated for awards & are over the moon to be nominated 3 times at the Irish Blogger Association awards! We are nominated in the Fashion & Lifestyle, Originality & Best Technology Blog categories!
Every man reading this article has been here at some stage so it won't take a huge amount of imagination to go through it again, for the ladies (& our site stats show it is mostly you reading this) you will just have to draw upon your own experiences!
Another year of the SME Awards and we are happy to say we have been nominated in 3 categories for the SME awards. We have been nominated in the Under 30, B2B SME Growth and I am most proud to say we have been nominated in the Community Minded category for our work with various clubs/charities. 4 clients have also been nominated bringing our tally to 7! Thanks to all the judges! Congratulations to all my fellow SME's, you people are awesome and finding similar people online is a daily pick me up!
There are many things in this wonderful world I will never understand such as men who feel the need to wear a suit that is obviously a cut too large for them, girls on Instagram who use that mirroring app and how Marouane Fellaini is a professional soccer player when he does not seem to know the basic rules of the game.
You are going to see lots of articles in the coming days/weeks about the "Top 10 things in technology" this year (FYI, ad blockers, Snapchat and chat messaging services (WhatsApp, Viber) are going to be the big movers in 2016 so if you are investing, that's my two cents). Some of these can be pretty interesting with some useful tips, the fact of the manner is that the majority are basically clickbait.
I am not going to lie to you, I am incredibly biased when I comes to this amazing piece of art and I am going to get that out of the way up front. It is been with me from a very young age and has transcended from being an amazing magical journey that stimulated my tender little mind into my way of being a grown-up (ish) every day.
It is with great trepidation I sit down to write an article that is intensely personal & some things within this article have only ever been told to a handful of people. As someone who has seen articles rehashed & transfigured based on reader impressions then spat back as something else entirely I am acutely wary of the threat lazy journalism provides.
The short answer is, a lot. Colour is incredibly important when it comes to the design of a website. It is one of the most powerful ways of subconsciously letting a visitor know what you and your product are about. It is an extension of you, your untold hours of hard work and as such it warrants a lot more thought then you may initially think.
A close friend recently asked me to give their younger sibling some advice, said sibling is to sit the leaving certificate next year and is unsure on what they want to do with themselves like every other 17 year old in the world. I am sure I was at the bottom of a well-worn list but I was happy to pass on whatever knowledge I could and offered what I thought a teenager would like to know, what trends I think are going to come into place in the next 3-5 years and my recommendations for college choices.
I have a running argument with my older brother that is nearly ten years old at this point. Since as long as I can remember I have never been someone to fret over much, looking over the biggest parts of my life, exams, awards, meetings, big games etc. I have never really been prone to nerves, I've always approached things in a light-hearted manner.
It is a well rehearsed line within developer circles that whatever a client tells you to do, ignore it and do what you know will make the project look it's best. I mean, we are the experts here after all, aren't we? It can be extremely hard to remove your ego from the situation and turn the solution into something that you want to show off as your work rather then what the client wants their website to eventually look like.
Good old Facebook, for most people it is a key component to their everyday life. If you get a new job, having some good/sad news to tell the world about or if you just update your profile picture it's a big part of all of our lives. It keeps evolving which is why it has been around for as long as it has but it's latest reported feature could be a massive mistake.
Starting a business, on paper it is supposed to be a fun an exciting time for anyone. There are plenty of important items to address upon startup such as research, competitor analysis and cash flow. I have found that the most important thing when it comes to starting a business is marketing.
It is said that nothing great ever came from a comfort zone, that a person must be stretching at all times to get to that next level regardless of their field. Only by moving outside of your "comfort zone" can you expand your learning and move on to greater things in life, etc. In my limited experience I have not found this to be true and find it a load of crap to be honest.
With news of many young people eagerly awaiting the results which they have worked hard for breaking midweek, One cannot but help think about the time when you were in the same shoes. I think everyone, especially people in their 20's has this moment every year and sure enough I felt the same familiar feeling of not caring about it.
We may well go down in history as the most self-absorbed generation ever seen. We are the generation of smartphones, 10 second attention spans and selfie sticks so why would a 20-something year old start a business and how would they ever pull it off?
You will spend the majority of your life working and even those who are lucky enough to love what they do can become disillusioned from time to time. This is where "distractions" may help you shake it up & become more productive than ever!