Why the delay in posting? Solar Powered Laptops No Good In Scotland!

Well, if you are my employers reading this, you will have been delighted by my absence, as I have been too busy with work to get a blog post updated.

If you are not my employers reading this, you will have been delighted by my absence, as you got some rest, but in the words of the song by The Contours

“And now I’m back, to let you know
I can really shake ‘em down”

So what’s been happening, well, busy times at the hotel in Hamilton, which is great. The hot, Holiday Inn Express, Hamilton, continues to be well received and enjoyed by our guests. I myself had a break recently and I would like to record that the team at the hotel did a fantastic job, especially given how busy the hotel was. If you are sitting there thinking why did I take time off during a busy time, then the answer is that we are always busy, and sometimes you do need to give people the space to perform in!  But anyway, well done to all and thank you.

I am really delighted to have been asked to sit on the Advisory Board for Social Media Week Glasgow, which takes place from 19th to 23rd September. Glasgow is one of twelve cities around the World taking part, and this is an excellent week of wide ranging activities taking place across the city. See the website at http://socialmediaweek.org/glasgow/ and do join in! You can also follow them on Twitter at @SMWGlasgow

Otherwise, check out this GREAT video

Still on a local theme, had a great lunch at my local Beanscene in Clarkston last week. Tremendous value meal deal of a drink, sandwich, packet of good crisps and a copy of The Guardian to take away, all for £5. It’s been newly decorated, and looks great,  so I for one will be back soon.

As regular readers will know, I do like to keep an eye on the latest technology and software and since my last post, I have come across the much vaunted Google + and also Last.fm. Now,  my knowledge of Google + is minimal, I have an account and if you yourself need an invite, then use this

https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3Fgpinv%3DjPpF_Qy0t6Y%3AlKJLPCFK6sE

In the past few days I have attended my first Google + “hangout” as part of Social Media Week, and it was great fun. The hangout is like a video conference call, which apparently you can also now do on Skype. What aspect I really liked is that the main picture image seemed to move to the person who is talking – cool! If you want to

The other bit I have found is Last.fm which is like your own library of music. You type in the artistes or genres that you like and it plays these and similar artistes. Great and the variety gave me more than I got from my own library of music on my pc. Again, well worth a look, and like Google+ both are free.

This past week there has been a lot written about the troubles in cities in England and also about the part that Social Media has played in this. Like any tool, Social Media can be used for negative and positive means. I would like to share the latter, with a picture that caught my eye at lunchtime on Tuesday, showing the good people of Clapham working together to restore their area. The photo was posted on Twitter by @Lawcol888 and I liked it so much I sent it on via Twitter to @RiotCleanUp which had only been created that morning and by lunchtime had around 72,000 followers. They were good enough to ReTweet my post and as a result I received a lot of positive tweets from people, which was nice, but even more significantly, I had literally hundreds of Retweets of my post. As a result of all this activity, my @Klout score rose by 6 points overnight,  and now sits at the lofty score of 66, which is great and no doubt will head south very soon! The work that the likes of @RiotCleanUp have done this week has been highly commendable, and I wish them well.

If you wonder what this @Klout stuff is all about, then login in using this link, http://klout.com/perk/Klout/Topicpagespreview?passalong=ODUvMzA5NzI4LzI&passalongSig=8edc2db8dbef62b7bbdca6609eded8a21ce73f7915fda703fbf2e6a1842dd58b and get some ideal of what your social media presence is like online.

Anyway, good to have been back in touch with you, if you wish to get in touch, you will find me on Twitter under @HIEHamilton for the hotel, or @markcalpin for my own, personal account (albeit I don’t post often enough) or perhaps I might bump into you at own of the Social Media Week Glasgow events.

Take care folks,

Mark