McAWilliams Photoblog

This is probably the last picture I am going to put up from the Irish Web Awards since I took feck all pictures, this one though I felt I had to put up.

SiliconRepublic won the best technology site category and I was thrilled for them. The webpage is somewhere I find myself going to on a daily basis to learn all about whats happening in Irish technology news so I can keep upto date, and it makes talking to some of my twitter followers a lot easier, since I am not as techy as them!

Pictured is Marie Boran and John Kennedy accepting their award, Marie was also the woman who wrote the blog digest of this site only a week or 2 ago, and it was great to meet up with her on the night and thank her for that.

So normal service can resume, last week blogging was least of my priorities as the first Irish Web Awards were being held yesterday and Damien Mulley the man above kindly asked if I would be able to help out with the videos for the night. I of course was thrilled to have been asked and jumped at the opportunity.

The only thing was I had to get them all done in a week, which was a good bit of pressure but to be honest thats exactly how I prefer to work. Anyhow got all the work done and went to the event last night and what a great night was had by everyone. Damien once again proved to be an expert in organising the evening, I think this is his 4th big do, and with each one they just keep getting better and better.

My good mate Rick O Shea was, as always, fantastic entertainment as MC and a fair play to all the guys behind the scenes helping Damien out, they helped make the night just flow perfectly. I also got to meet a lot of people I have known for a long time on Twitter but up to last night, had never met. I could go through all the names and give the link love but to be honest this post would just look silly, with the amount of people, but you guys know who you are!

One other thing I was looking forward to doing was Qik’ing the event as much as I could, this I did with some results, but at one stage I was holding my iPhone aloft for 30 minutes streaming like crazy and when I got home today I noticed that only 2 minutes had gone live, this has really annoyed me as I could have been taking more photos instead.

Anyhow many many thanks to Damien for a fantastic night, I will wait and see if he will trust me to do anything for the blog awards after last nights DVD disaster (less said about that the better) but I hope he may keep me in mind to do it!

UPDATE : Alexia has captured lots of video from the night thank god after my qik mess. Peter Donegan has put up a shed load of pictures, and the near DVD disaster is fully explained by the man himself Damien, with a hilarious video, pity I was out having a smoke and missed this on the night!

Yep I threatened to put this up so its only right I keep to my word, here he is having a ball, not in a fun way but in a tearfull way.

I have uploaded all the other shots I think are worthy to the irishblogawards2008 section on Flickr, if you have any yourself please please upload them and guess what fellow photoblogwalkers, today at long last I decided to become a Pro on Flickr, all tips on what the hell to do welcomed.

Oh forgot to say the interview on RTE1 is now online check it out if you want a laugh.

Well what will follow for the next few days will be some images from the 3rd annual Irish Blog Awards. A great night was had by all from what I can gather on sites I have been to today. Damien as usual did a fantastic job and a big up to all the sponsors who once again have made this happen.

The Photowalk was a great success, and a big thank you goesout to Redmum for organising that.

McAWilliams.com did not win, but Claire from Gingerpixel was my tip for the win and I was thrilled to hear her name called out.

Once again the community feel was in full flow, and it was great to meet up with Ryan, Catriona, Twenty, Fustar, Phil, Raptureponies and many others again.

On another note it was also great to see so many of my 4nine£’er friends at the awards, many of whom had never been before. I hope the blogosphere made you realise just what it is that we love about blogging.

Talking about what we love about blogging brings me to Sunday morning where the interview on RTE radio went according to plan, I took it easy on the gargle so did not have a hangover but I was shitting it in the studio. Fiona handled the interview really well while I shook my water all over the place, but it was great fun been on the other side of the microphone for once, all thanks to my next paragraph.

Mr Rick O Shea, it was himself that put me forward for the interview, but once again he did a great job of mc’ing on the night and I was touched to see him get so emotional when he won the best pop culture award. I know how much blogging means to him, I mean he eats sleeps and drinks blogs except when he is on air (thats facebook time), so it was great to see him start crying, that may well be tomorrows picture.

Still trawling though the archives and coming up with some really nice photos unfortunately my photoshop skills are so lacking that I cant seem to do much with them.Anyhow here is a shot from Saint Stephens Green, my favorite haunt, of a guy taking photos of leaves, madness if you ask me, you would never catch me doing anything as silly as taking photos of leaves.