… or for those who love their job. After a well-deserved holiday in early October (two weeks in sunny Portugal, it was lovely) and struggling with a persistent flu I’m balancing a heavy but much appreciated workload with pedagogical commitments and interesting events.
Barely back from vacation I attended the first day of the Dublin Web Summit – read my conference write-up on State of Search here. The second day my colleague Toby attended and his experiences are also published on State of Search.
Last week, while in the midst of a severe case of debilitating man-flu, I delivered the first of my two guest lectures for the University of Ulster’s Digital Media Communication course, which was a case study on effective web design (and some multi-channel digital marketing as well).
Tonight I’ll deliver my second guest lecture – a case study on advanced on-site SEO – and I expect it’ll totally boil the students’ brains. If any of the students understands everything I’ll be talking about, I might just have to offer them a job.
Next week the amazing Build conference will be held in Belfast, which is one of the best web design conferences in the world. Three of my colleagues are going and I hope they’ll bring back lots of great insights and ideas.
In the same week there’s a new event taking place for the first time, called the Digital Exchange NI, which aims to bring together Northern Ireland’s digital crowd – marketers, developers, designers, and anyone else involved with or interested in all things digital. I’ll be there as well, hoping to network with local digital professionals. Always good to get to know new people and have a chat with familiar friendly faces.
Also in the same week is an event called Destination Belfast, organised by the city council and aimed at the local tourist industry. For this event I’ll be giving a half-hour talk about the power of social media.
Then at the end of November I’ll be delivering a crash-course in SEO and PPC for the joint iON/UU Digital Marketing & Execution training programme. I’m in distinguished company there, lecturing alongside some of the biggest names in the Northern Irish digital industry. I’ll have about three hours to give an overview of SEO and AdWords, so by necessity it’ll be a brief introduction to these two wildly expansive disciplines.
Finally in early December I’ll give a half-day workshop for Mckelvey Associates, which is aimed at local solicitors and where I hope to educate them on ways to use the internet to grow their business.
The rest of December is looking relatively clear for now, which is just as well as there’ll be numerous corporate and private Christmas events where I can work hard at diminishing my supply of braincells through excessive consumption of Guinness and whisky. I think I’ll need some rest after all that.