Tommy Collison

Yesterday, I attended Simply Zesty‘s Winter Camp, an event centralized around PR, improved communication and the internet in general. The day was an astounding success and I learnt a lot of cool stuff – what’s the most searched term on Google in Ireland? ‘Facebook’. Take that, Bebo.

I woke up 7am, after making a last minute decision to get the 9am train instead of 10am. When I got to the station, I found out that Irish Rail are a bunch mindbogglingly stupid folks. My ‘student identity’ card, which I’d gotten while intern-ing in Tipperary, only functioned when it was a weekly or monthly ticket – not a day return.

“That’ll be 47€, for the adult ticket” said the attendant.

LOL no! went my brain. “Ehh, no” I said, “a child’s ticket, please”
“How old are you?” she asks, suspiciously.
“14″ I said, rationalizing that it doesn’t matter if you get away with it.
“Oh, okay, here you go” she says.

Smiling, I board the train.

Only as we were pulling away from the station did I spot that Irish Rail consider ‘children’ to be people up to 16 years old, so my superspy lie had all been in vain.

Arriving into the station, I hailed a taxi.

“Hi” I said, “you know where the Camden Court Hotel is?”
“Yes”
“Can you take me there?”
“I could”

That was good enough for me, so I got in. The journey passed amiably. I engaged in Taxi Driver Banter, telling him about my ticket problems, and he told me about one time the attendant tried to charge him 20£ for a ticket from the city centre to Bray. I think I’ve got the knack of this banter – from what I can see, you talk about nothing in particular just to pass the time. In fairness to him, he was quite nice, and didn’t use me as his agony aunt (this has happened before).

The event itself was top-notch, with talks given by the head of Google in Ireland, and also a director in Facebook Ireland. Pat Phelan, James Wheatley and Damian Ryan all gave great presentations too. Facebook’s one in particular was interesting, as people put forward their questions to her afterwards. She didn’t see my hand, though, so I never got to find out their plans for a “Dislike” button. Ah, no matter.

Also, Simply Zesty continued to make a name for themselves in the quirky department by cool additions on the day – having a projector set up to display any tweets marked with the hashtag #SZCamp, and also getting Phil O’Kane in to do impromptu avatar shots – a high-quality picture of yourself on a plain background to use on all your different profiles. These are the sort of small, yet cool, things that will make Simply Zesty stand out from similar companies.

After the event, Niall very kindly dropped me to Hueston on his Vespa, and it’s now my firm belief that they’re the coolest things on Earth, and I’d strongly consider getting one. There’s just no satisfaction in a car any more, after you’ve cruised through Dublin at 6pm on one of these – your ears filled with roaring engine and your body leaning this way and that.

Plus, I don’t think there’s any greater satisfaction on this planet than passing out 20 cars at every traffic light.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a picture mid-journey, but Niall got a picture of me at Hueston:

In the queue for the train at Heuston, @replies started appearing in my stream, indicating delays on all trains. AA Roadwatch’s website confirmed this. I got chatting with the guy behind me, and we struck up a great friendship, having a lot in common. I found him to be a very witty, astute individual, and in turn, I think he was impressed at my passion for writing and my independence (he knew someone with Cerebral Palsy too).

On the train, I told him about this blog, and he jokingly asked if he’d appear in a post. Well, here he is :)

He was impressed at the cane :-)