Social Media

Powerpoints: Keep them simple and don’t have the screen too bright

September 13, 2021 by dsmooney, posted in communications, Social Media, Writing

This is a short (and very non-political) piece by me about the continuing criticism of MS PowerPoint as a business presentation tool. It appeared in the BEERG Global Newsletter of Sept 9th 2021

An old PowerPoint – dull, but in a good way….

Derek Mooney writes: Over the years BEERG has seen very many PowerPoint presentations, not to mention the hundreds it has given, so it was most interested to read this article criticising PowerPoint as a business tool.

The article, which appeared on INC.com at the beginning of August, was itself based on a Harvard study from back in 2017, though it also cites research from as far back as 2007. This rang a bell, as a communications consultant in both the political and business fields I have been reading criticisms of PowerPoint as a presentation tool for over a decade and a half, yet BEERG has been using it at various face-to-face and online meetings and at training programs without any negative feedback.

It occurs to me that the issue is not with PowerPoint itself, but with how some of us use it. Looking back at thousands of presentations that have appeared at various BEERG meetings, it is true that there have been a few horrendous ones, including one deck that contained over 150 slides for a 20-minute slot, plus assorted other decks that either contained slides with text the size of the font you are now reading or were so full of complex and busy charts as to be indecipherable.

Continue reading “Powerpoints: Keep them simple and don’t have the screen too bright” →

My interim by-election review for Fianna Fáil

July 14, 2021July 14, 2021 by dsmooney, posted in By-Election, Confidence and Supply, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Government, Irish Labour Party, Sinn Féin, Social Media

This column first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on July 12th, a few days after the Dublin Bay South by-Election result. That result shows that Fianna Fáil is facing a crisis of relevance and viability, one that its leader of over 10 years is unwilling to address or acknowledge. This column was offered as an independent review of what I think went wrong in the by-election.

A few weeks after the February 2020 election I said that Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin needed to stop and “take a hard look at why his party lost support and seats”. I said it again, several times, over the weeks and months that followed. I even offered the independent review the Australian Labour Party had commissioned into its electoral failure as a template.

I thought it was essential that the party examine why it had done so badly before doing anything precipitative, such as going into government with the party it had promised to put out of office.

The leadership thought otherwise. It felt Fianna Fáil’s best course of action was to get into office and that its political revival would come from the government program for recovery. It seemed to miss the inconvenient truth that this meant giving Fine Gael a veto on Fianna Fáil’s fortunes.

This was one of the main reasons I ended my 40 plus year membership of Fianna Fáil. Why would I knock myself out trying to rebuild a party, when the top Fine Gael brass would have a bigger say in it than grassroot members?

Continue reading “My interim by-election review for Fianna Fáil” →

Why does Martin’s Fianna Fáil have such a stubborn problem with young people?

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 by dsmooney, posted in By-Election, Elections, Fianna Fáil, Micheal Martin, Social Media, Taoiseach

This week’s column first appeared on Broadsheet last Monday (July 5th). In it, I look at the argument on Fianna Fáil’s real and demonstrable problems with young voters that mysteriously leaked out from the parliamentary party. Indeed, it is long past time for folks to wonder why (and how) there are so many leaks from what is supposed a confidential meeting of elected colleagues, particularly when most of that leaked material is often detrimental to those not on the leader’s side. I also take a final look at the Dublin Bay South By-Election.

According to the many detailed leaks from last week’s Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting (an issue itself worthy of an article) the suggestion that young people perceive the party as toxic and inimical to their needs, angered and upset several TD’s and junior ministers.

And not in a good way. Rather than being angered that young people feel this way – and sadly they do, as almost every poll published over the past 18 months has shown – some ministers were outraged that colleagues would dare point this out.

Even the recent Irish Times Ipsos/Mori, which optimistically showed Fianna Fáil’s support increasing nationally by 6pts to 20%, still found that the party is only on 8% among Dublin voters aged under 35. This puts it in a very weakened 5th place in Dublin, well behind Sinn Féin, Fine Gael, The Greens and Independents.

Continue reading “Why does Martin’s Fianna Fáil have such a stubborn problem with young people?” →

Why Fake Pollsters Do Not Mean Fake Polling

June 20, 2021June 20, 2021 by dsmooney, posted in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Politics, Sinn Féin, Social Media

This column first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on Monday June 14th. It looks at the recent “fake pollsters” saga that seemed to put all three main parties in a tizzy. Was it really as big a scandal as some thought… or… a bit like Watergate, was the real problem the struggle all three parties had in getting their own stories straight. Rather than being something “sinister” it was just a “paradox”. I also confess to my own bit of fake polling from back in 1985 and show how fake polls – as opposed to fake pollsters – rarely have the desired impact. This I discuss via some chat about political movies such as all The President’s Men and Nasty Habits, a quirkly though sadly forgotten movie that is well worth checking out.

While All The President’s Men remains the best Watergate related movie, there are some credible challengers. Indeed a new 5-part TV series, the White House Plumbers is currently in production. Directed by VEEP writer and producer David Mandel, it stars Woody Harrelson as Howard Hunt and Justin Theroux as Gordon Liddy, the leaders of the crew of “plumbers” who broke into the Democratic Party HQ in the Watergate office complex.

Another contender is the quirky “Nasty Habits”, a film which manages not to mention Nixon, the White House or even Watergate. Instead, this adaptation of the Muriel Spark satire: “The Abbess of Crewe” which transposed the Watergate scandal to an English Benedictine convent, moves the action again, this time to Philadelphia and an order of nuns led by the Nixonian Sr Alexandra, played by Glenda Jackson.

Alexandra has schemed her way to the top of the cloister by secretly taping the confessions of her fellow sisters. She has her Ehrlichman and Haldeman like henchmen in the guise of Sisters Walburga and Mildred, plus the globe-trotting missionary Sr Gertrude, who shuttles around the world’s trouble spots, á la Henry Kissinger, played brilliantly by Melina Mercouri.

Continue reading “Why Fake Pollsters Do Not Mean Fake Polling” →

There’s no big secret to good government communications

May 5, 2021May 5, 2021 by dsmooney, posted in Covid-19, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Government, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Social Media, Stephen Donnelly, Tanaiste, Taoiseach

This column appears here out of sequence, as it first appeared on Broadsheet.ie on April 19th. In it, I look at this government’s problems with communications, particularly the Fianna Fáil side of it.

According to the veteran American comedian George Burns there is no big secret to comic timing. It’s very simple, he said. You tell the joke, you wait for the laughter and when the laughter stops, you tell the next joke. That’s comic timing.

It’s something similar with government communications: you deliver you message and give the public the time to let it sink in.

What you certainly do not do is to talk across your message or try to chop and change the narrative while folks are still trying to take it in.

There is nothing wrong with a minister having a new idea, indeed it is something to be encouraged. What is important is that it is an informed idea. What you don’t do is to contact a journalist to communicate an idea to the public until it has been fully formed and explored with colleagues and – hopefully – some real live experts.

Continue reading “There’s no big secret to good government communications” →

Facebook threatens to quit the EU? As if…

September 24, 2020 by dsmooney, posted in Cyber security, data protection, Seanad, Social Media

I wrote this article for BEERG‘s weekly newsletter on Sept 23rd. The Newsletter goes to approx 1,000 senior HR professional across the EU and US.

I have been deeply involved in monitoring the development of the data privacy and protection issue since first working on the early legislative passage of the General Data Protection Regulation through the European Parliament and Council. This article features a link to an article I wrote for the EurActiv news-site in late 2012 on the complexity of GDPR’s employee data provisions.

I have added some extra paragraphs in this version that are pertinent to the Irish domestic situation and – not for the first time – I finish an article with my favourite LBJ saying/quote

This was the week when the stark reality of the Schrems II judgement became clear. When the rubber hit the road.

In last week’s BEERG Newsletter I portentously observed that the already complex position around Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) and other methods of transferring personal data to the US was about to become more complex. Little did we realise how quickly that would happen.

The Irish Data Protection Commission made a preliminary move to halt Facebook’s use of SCCs to cover the transfer of data from the EU to the US. Facebook has some 400m+ user in Europe. Facebook went to court.

Within days, the text of Facebook’s affidavit to the Irish High Court appeared online. Its contents fueled headline speculation in respected broadsheet newspapers and reputable media outlets that Facebook was threatening to quit the EU unless its concerns were addressed.

Continue reading →

Digital campaign wars and warm lettuce

November 18, 2019November 18, 2019 by dsmooney, posted in Confidence and Supply, Fake News, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, Micheal Martin, Politics, Social Media

This column first appeared on Broadsheet on Nov 4th, 2019 and looked at the weekend Fine Gael digital attack on Fianna Fáil which backfired badly and ended weak.

Being active on social media is not the same as being good at it. This is something Fine Gael learned yesterday morning.

At 9am it launched a digital attack claiming Fianna Fáil is not producing policies. Pretty basic stuff from a party in government, you’d have thought. Hard to screw that up. Attack the main opposition party for not doing enough. Claim they are just criticising you, trying to score points and acting like an… well… an opposition.

To be fair, Fine Gael got most of the basics right. They produced a decent digital video, loaded with graphics and charts and pumped it out across social media platforms. They backed it up with a press release in the name of Colm Brophy TD, hoping that the following day’s print media would pick up on it.

So far, so meh… yet, within barely an hour their digital campaign was not just misfiring, it was backfiring and going down in flames.

Continue reading “Digital campaign wars and warm lettuce” →

My 2019 Summer Political reading list

September 23, 2019 by dsmooney, posted in Enda Kenny, Northern Ireland, Politics, Social Media, Taoiseach, UK politics, US politics

Here is my annual Summer Political Reading List for 2019. You can find last year’s list here: 2018

The list first appeared, over two weeks, on Broadsheet HERE and HERE

I have the hotels and flights booked so it must be time for my annual summer political reading list. Below are some suggested titles along with short reviews of books that should be of interest to those who follow politics.

As with the previous two lists I have done for Broadsheet the books are mainly factual, though this time I have tried to go for less heavy reads than past years. The list is in no particular order, though it does start with books with a more domestic focus. Feel free to disagree with any of my choices in the comments section below and maybe suggest what books you have packed or downloaded for the summer break. Continue reading “My 2019 Summer Political reading list” →

Lights, Camera, Inaction – @finegael is a production company, not a government

July 22, 2018 by dsmooney, posted in Fake News, Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, Politics, Social Media

This Broadsheet.ie column appeared online on June 19, 2018

As part of the hoopla to mark Leo Varadkar’s first year as Taoiseach, Fine Gael produced a nifty infographic setting out some of the new leader’s biggest achievements.

The list offers an interesting insight into what the Taoiseach cares most about or, to be more accurate, what the Fine Gael pollsters tell him that his potential voters care most about.

Pride of place goes to the very frequently hyped national framework plan, Project Ireland 2040, followed by “Brexit Leadership” and the “8^th Referendum”.

At the other end you find “and gardai” shoehorned into a claim about hiring more nurses and teachers, followed by curiously worded item on housing, though the word itself fails to make an appearance.

To avoid embarrassing Leo by putting a figure on the number of houses and apartments built over the past year, the copywriters had to come up with some phrasing that managed to convey the idea of progress, without breaching the standards in advertising code. The result is this extraordinarily clunky and impersonal boast that: “There were 4,700 exits from homelessness in 2017”.

“Exits”?

If ever a single phrase summed up Orwell’s description of political language “… as giving an appearance of solidity to pure wind”, it is surely this.

It reads as if it came from the pen of someone who writes real estate ads. You know the ones, where “open plan apartment” means the bed is between the cooker and the lavatory and “close to nightlife” means the place is directly over an all-night, bikers’ bar.

Continue reading “Lights, Camera, Inaction – @finegael is a production company, not a government” →

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This column first appeared on Broadsheet on Nov 4th, 2019 and looked at the weekend Fine Gael digital attack on Fianna Fáil which backfired badly and ended weak.

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