In all the excitement  I seem to have neglected to mention that I’m now working full-time on a digital publication startup called woop.ie. You can learn more about it by signing up to the mailing list and following @makewoopie but basically we want to help people create digital publications that look beautiful on every device – we’re prototyping it with Idea Magazine to give you a basic… umm… idea… of what we’re at.

If you’d like to hear myself and Martha Rotter talk about Idea and woop.ie then have a listen to this episode of the Technology.ie podcast: Martha Rotter and Stewart Curry from Idea Magazine [Tech Heroes Podcast #2] with Conn Ó Muíneacháin and Internet hero Michele Neylon

A SOPA style law is being proposed for Ireland, without any form of debate or discussion. It will give music and movie companies legal powers to shut down websites suspected of having copyright material on them.

This will have a chilling effect both on large international companies we want to have here in Ireland (like Twitter and Facebook) and on indigenous startups who allow for any form of content uploading or creation – stifling the chances of local startups developing the next Tumblr or Facebook or Flipboard or whatever.

Smarter people than me have written about it, so please have a look at the following posts and take action at Stop SOPA Ireland.

• TJ McIntyre’s FAQ on Ireland’s SOPA
• The Business Post’s article on it
• Michele Neylon’s rallying call
• Karl Monaghan has written about how it sucks
• Want a side of sarcastic comments with your info? Broadsheet bitches!!

They Work for You!

Be sure to let the relevant Minister Sean Sherlock TD know how you feel – he’s on Twitter too @seansherlocktd and let your local TDs know too.

Thanks to James for the image.

(update: spelling)

A few months back Martha Rotter asked me if I could give a small bit of advice in making a digital magazine for the tech community in Ireland & Northern Ireland. As I really like having side projects to work on, to keep me fresh and allow me to experiment, I said “of course!”

Coming out this Thursday 8 December, Idea Magazine should be something special and really interesting to anyone involved in tech startups and making things for the web, so please sign up and check it out when it comes out!

Here’s the three sites that were created – I think they all reflect how a professional design process can produce exceptional results. They were conceived, designed and developed by: Tom Cunningham, Donovan Hutchinson, Ciarán Harris, Colm McBarron, Anne Magner, Fabrizio Calderon, Cory-Ann Joseph, Christian Hughes, Mark Wallis, Stephanie Francis, Celine O’Neill, Matt Finucane, Una Vejsbjerg, Neil Turner, Elaine Larkin, John Rainsford, Ken Stanley, Aoife Ross, Michael Flanagan, Paul Watson and Martha Rotter – you can follow them all here.

My job was just to find volunteers and charities, find a venue (Engineyard/Orchestra – thanks to Eamon Leonard) and get sponsorship (thanks Blacknight and all the sponsors) with the help of Darragh Doyle, who also helped document the whole event.

There’s some cool time-lapse stuff to come!

How others can do this

I’ve seen a few comments saying how this would be a good idea for other people to try. It’s very easy to say ‘somebody should do XYZ’ but to be honest with a good support network of friends and businesses, a very patient partner, a bit of time in the evenings and a good old spreadsheets of tasks, it’s not that difficult to organise a design event like this. The hard work is all from the volunteers’ side. Hopefully the following might help, based on what I’ve learned over the last two 24 the webs (or 24s the web I don’t know…)

Volunteers

• You need great volunteers, who really know their shit. They are 99.9% responsible for the success of the projects. I’ve been lucky to have fantastic volunteers sign up.
• You need a diverse range of skills.
• Selecting people is very difficult. Sign-ups for the last two events have always been to very high standards. Can’t really think of any easy tips for this one, except to encourage teams to sign up.
• To get signups make a form in Google Documents, and stick it on a website. This is saved to a spreadsheet. Add some columns for who’s picked or not, and team names.
• Import this into Mailchimp and use its segmenting tool to send certain emails to specific people.
• Ask for confirmation that people are coming, so there’s no surprises on the day. Mailchimp is handy for seeing if an email’s been opened or not.
• Be sure to thank everyone who took the time to volunteer, selected or not, and ask permission to contact someone again if you need a substitute.
• Tell them what they need to bring and what’s supplied, including hardware, software, hosting and licensing.

Logistics

• Set a deadline. Building stuff ‘in your spare time’ makes it very hard to get things finished, especially if many people are involved. Sufficient time (debatable!), a fixed end point, and everyone in the one place means you get something done.
• You need a venue where everyone’s together, so there’s more team spirit, energy and banter. A separate room for naps, meetings and quiet time is important too.
• You need to keep people fed and full of caffeine. It’s at least four meals – lunch, dinner, supper, breakfast.
• Be sure to ask everyone to thank and promote the sponsors.
• If you’re running the show your job is to make sure everyone’s ok. After 10 hours stop doing this, you’re annoying them and they know where to find you!
• Ask people for help – donations of time, money or resources are out there, you just need to ask.

Charities

• It’s up to you how you select charities. A mix of charities makes for more diverse work, while a theme might be good too. Up to you really.
• As this is a one-off build and not a relationship the charity needs someone who will keep the site alive and updated, so an active Facebook page, Twitter account or blog is a good indicator.
• You need to make sure the charities have a great brief and decent content – depending on your criteria the content may not be available, but they should at least have a strong idea about what exactly they need.
• This website briefing document is a good starting point. Make sure they also have all their passwords etc. If they haven’t a domain name they can get a free .ie if they are a registered charity. You could also look for sponsored hosting.
• A quick elevator pitch at the start from each charity is a good way to get people excited about the project
• Encourage the charities to stay for at least 8 hours. Or never leave.

Promoting

• Still getting the hang of this one, but a twitter hashtag seems like the best way to have 20+ people share what they are doing. Could do a lot better sharing what’s happening, with auto-screenshotting and video etc. Maybe next year!
• Nothing worse than hearing ‘oh if only I’d known, I’d have signed up/helped out’. Star-tweet or bookmark anyone who says that and remind them for the next event!
• I live-blogged the event, sharing what people were doing and snippets of their work. More than 50% of referrals came from Twitter. Had just over 1,500 visits, which would be better if it were a weekday but not doable, as people have to work!
• Getting a professional photographer in to snap photos produced some amazing photos, so ask volunteers if there’s anyone they know that wants to pop in and help out.
• The most important part for me is the work produced and crediting the volunteers – so try and get as many people to see that as possible.

I’d be happy to talk about this if anyone wants to get in touch – stucurry at gmail or Follow @irishstu

Journalist? Get a full press release here!

Last year I organised (with a LOT of help) an event where 21 very talented and hard-working people built three websites for charities in 24 hours. It all went pretty well so I thought we thought we’d do it again!

Application are now open for people who want to take part in building sites and for charities who needs sites built. Please read the requirements on the right when signing up.

The event is a great opportunity for experienced web professionals to donate their time & talent to charity in a fun and exciting event, and for charities to avail of services and talent that they couldn’t otherwise get access to.

There’s a few simple rules for charities, but it basically comes down to: we can’t take work away from people (so charities must have no budget for a website); they must have great content and practical needs that can be accomplished in 24 hours; and they must have someone willing to take care of the site on an ongoing basis, so that it can be a useful tool for them in the future.

For volunteers, we just need skilled people who can stay awake! This year it would be handy if people formed groups before applying, to make life easier when matching teams.

A 5×7 board book that has 16 pages of bold col­or­ful, pos­i­tive words wrapped in lov­ing HTML mark up tags for imag­i­na­tive code geeks in train­ing.

via Cameron Moll

Nerds on a Boat is a get-together of Dublin web people for beers on a boat. It’s open to anyone and is on the MV Cill Airne, 16 Merchant’s Quay, Dublin, Ireland. (The floating bar boat on the north side of the quays, halfway between the Conference Centre and the o2.) It’s organised by the Contrast guys and happens TONIGHT (if you are reading this after Friday 1 JULY, then it’s over. Sorry.)

Speaking with the Contrast guys about how we could rally the Dublin web community for some summer fun, we came up with an exciting idea! Hire a yaught, buy ten cases of Cristal, throw a few quid at Bell X1 for a short set and invite 500 of our industry buddies to join us. But that’s completely unrealistic. So let’s meet at the Cill Airne for a few pints on Friday? Everyone’s welcome.

Edit: Thanks James!

To be clear – I have zero issues with people who take up unpaid internships, and only hope this might help in some way stop this practice. This is all opinion, please contact the NERA if you have a question about your employment right.

Bullshit Ads

I keep on seeing bullshit ads like this one on Gumtree for Dealbook.ie (screenshot) for a “Website Graphic Designer Intern”. You are expected to work for nothing – for what? Doesn’t say. What will you get out of it? Doesn’t say. What do they get out of it? Free work produced for them, that they can use to make money. So, you work, get nothing. They use your work, get money. (Well, they might make money. The Groupon bandwagon must be very close to tipping over right now.)

Here’s another one for GoHop.ie (screenshot – ad no longer online). They are looking for “a bright, bubbly design/multimedia graduate” to work for nothing for them. You’ll be “creating faxes/email newsletters and designing print collateral/ads & web banners and roll out some microwebsites.” This job is apparently for someone straight out of college, however you need “an excellent working knowledge” of the Adobe Suite (Photoshop etc), Dreamweaver and WordPress. In return for producing all this marketing collateral that they will be using to make money, you will gain “all important working experience” and your bus fare. No training mentioned at all.

My issue with this is that if someone has excellent skills and experience – sufficient to produce work that is of a professional enough standard that it will be used to market the company – surely they deserve to be paid?

I’ve seen other internships posted for agencies where they again won’t pay you but are asking you to either doing cold-calling and data-entry for them (which is not valuable work experience) or asking you to do client work. Now, if the work you produce is of a high enough standard that the company will charge a client for it, then surely you have enough skills and experience to be paid for that work?

Why “you’ll get training” is Bullshit

Hey, if you genuinely do get training, good for you. You still should get paid though. (See footnote 1).

If you’re spending most of your time: 1) Cold calling and filling databases – you’re learning fuck-all and just generating new business for your boss; 2) Doing work you’re already good at, that the company is charging for – you’re learning fuck-all. And you’re not on an internship. You are working, in a job, and are entitled to and deserve AT LEAST the minimum wage.

It’s the responsibility of an employee to stay up-to-date and the responsibility of an employer to facilitate that – by allowing time for learning and training throughout the year. In web design, development, social media – new shit is coming at you all the time. Work for nothing for three months, struggle to get a job (because all the good ones are gone to the next batch of interns) and in a year a lot of what you learned is out of date.

People used to enter into years-long apprenticeships as stone masons – but they built cathedrals. Magnificent feats of engineering that have lasted hundreds of years and inspired religious devotion and artistic delight. You can’t apply the same logic to an “apprenticeship” building Facebook pages.

Why “we might hire you after the internship” is Bullshit

There’s often the carrot dangled that after three months, there’s the chance of a job. Well big fucking deal. Surely that’s what a job interview is for. Say you do get the job – after a year there you’ve only earned 75% of what you should have been paid, because you spent three months working for nothing.

Why “you get to work with an awesome team” is Bullshit

First off – are they really that awesome? Secondly – will it really look great in my CV? If I Google the team I’ll be working with, will I see incredibly talented, thoughtful, engaging people who are famous in their field or industry, and acknowledged by awards and/or peer respect for the work they do? When I move on from my internship with this awesome team, will my next potential employer go “Wow, you worked with ‘Famous Web Designer who spoke at Build’ … what’s he/she like?”. Or will they just go … “who?”.

Why “it will look great on your CV” is Bullshit

Did you do work experience at Pentagram? Ogilvy? Happy Cog? No – you worked for some company I might barely have heard of, doing work that they didn’t consider was good enough to pay you for. I’m sorry, but the big message it sends is that you were desperate and taken advantage of.

Why “you’ll make great contacts” is Bullshit

Go to Refresh Dublin, Refresh Belfast, Build, Pub Standards, Open Coffees, Bar Camps, meetups, Nerds on a Boat even – and you’ll make great contacts. Follow people like @SabrinaDent or @EamonLeonard or @DesTraynor on Twitter and ask them questions and you’ll learn a ton.

But who does it hurt?

Here’s who it hurts – interns. You have them working for nothing. Zero. That, after coming from a period of unemployment so bad that they would consider working for nothing for three months, must kill someone’s self esteem. Plus, from the ads and job expectations I’ve seen I struggle to see any benefit.

Here’s who it hurts – people who need a wage in order to survive. If a company can get away with having people work for free, why would they bother to employ someone?

Here’s who it hurts – companies that want to pay people a decent wage for work they do. If a company can get away with getting someone to work for free, AND have their clients pay for this work, then how can their competition (that’s paying its employees) match them on price? Either they go bust, or sack their employees and take on some interns.

What’s the legal side?

I’m not a lawyer. And as with any discussion about the law on the internet, we can talk about it all we want but only a Judge’s decision matters. But the main points, to me, are:

1. If you are doing work, you are entitled to the minimum wage.
2. If the minimum wage doesn’t apply to you, you are STILL entitled to be paid – see rates here.
3. If you are in training, you are STILL entitled to at least 75% of the minimum wage
4. Employers CAN get an exemption from this, BUT they have to be able to prove they couldn’t pay the full wage, they have to go to the Labour court for it, and they can only do it for one person.
5. Ref: Citizen’s Information

It’s also my understanding that no employment contract can over-rule your basic right to a minimum wage. So you can’t “give away” your rights to a wage. From doing a bit of research, the guidance in the UK seems to be that if your work is not focussed on training, and you are doing the work of an employee, then you are not an intern and have the right to the minimum wage – I haven’t seen anything to the contrary in Irish law.

I struggle to understand how it’s not a criminal offence to have someone work for free given our minimum wage laws, and would love to hear to the contrary.

What should you do if you’re in an internship/were an intern/thinking of being one?

Ask why you’re not being paid. Try and learn more about your rights. Take a test case (if you’re able) looking for lost earnings, as this journalism intern has done in the UK. Consider pro bono work (pro bono means “for the good” not “for free”). Help out a local charity or organisation in return for creative freedom and a chance to experiment. Network, go to events, meet people, develop your skills, and don’t get taken advantage of.

The Good Guys

Just wanted to end on a positive note – here’s some good guys:

• Altier, Zero G and Detail created a paid graphic design internship.
• Mark Boulton Design hired a paid apprentice. Mark’s process shows: that you need to tell applicants what they will get out of it, not what’s in it for you; what’s reasonable to ask for as an application from prospective employees; and how it’s the duty of the employer to take the time to go through these applications and treat applicants with politeness and respect.
• iQ Content created four paid summer internships – see comment below from Lar Veale.

1 (If you’re in the 1% of unpaid internships where you are actually getting some training, I also think you deserve to be paid so everyone has the opportunity to apply. See Intern Aware for UK specific information about this).

Update: Please share this and vote up on Hacker News if you want to spread the word.

Update: corrected information about iQ Content internships.

via politics.ie

Greenpeace to Facebook, originally uploaded by irishstu.

One of a series of posters reaching out to Facebook staff as part of a guerilla protest campaign. These were stuck to hoardings on Grand Canal Dock, near Facebook’s Dublin HQ. Facebook staff are shown good and bad energy sources and directed to visit http://greenpeace.org/gpheartsfb

Greenpeace also protested outside Facebook‘s HQ on Tuesday