The Hotel Technology Briefing 2011, Dublin

Following on from the Belfast briefing, we decided to run the event again only a bit bigger and this time in Dublin.

The event is specifically for hoteliers and is a informal place to learn from the speakers and other hoteliers just what is going on with technology that effects their business, without being ‘sold’ to.

Next stop………. London (or Cork)

Isn’t our designer just fantastic ?


The Hotel Technology Summit // Belfast 2010

Just a little event we have been working on for hoteliers.   I am not loosing any sleep or anything about over it !


BBQ at McQuillan Manor in 32 seconds …… and a great chance to chat about Gawker

Gawker is an amazing piece of software for Mac OS that I have just discovered.  With very little effort it allows you to put together a short movie of still imagines to track a day of work or an event.

Time lapsed BBQ at McQuillan Manor – 11th July using Gawker from Russell McQuillan on Vimeo.

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Ultimate Hide and Seek (IN CARS!!!) Lisburn

Take back the city for yourself tonight, I’ll take back the city for me.

When I was a young boy my mother used to say to me ‘grow up!’ her father always retorted with ‘Don’t be silly, boys never grow up, they just get more expensive toys’

On this basis I wanted to see if we could take the simple childhood game of Hide and Seek and make it expensive and that is exactly what was acheived ! Read the rest of this entry »


Dont believe everything you read on the Internet – It was not my Birthday yesterday.

Congratulations! Your e-mail address was pre-selected and entered into the Nigerian lottery and guess what you won ! 500,000,000.

I must be the richest sob in the world, except I have never seen the money. I have though been getting these emails since 1994 when I first joined the world wide interweb, or compuserve as it was back then.(the ISP that is).

At the age of 14 something was clear to me. My details online in the wrong hands were dangerous so since then I have never given a web site my date of birth or home address with the expection of eBay or play.com when I need something delivered but they never get my date of birth, sometimes they are lucky if they even get my real name.

So in 2007 when I signed up for facebook the same thing went. DOB 5th May, I always keep my online birthday the same so it’s easy to remember. Read the rest of this entry »


It's time to talk about rental cars

I have been holding off writing this for quite some time, partly because I was so fuming with rage, partly because I was waiting to see how it played out and partly because it take’s more time than one might realise to write these things.

That said, the dust has settled and my boiling blood has reduced to a low simmer so here goes………

In February.  I along with my fellow Network Scouters embarked on another Top Gear Adventure.  This time the plan was to race from Edinburgh Castle to Buckingham Palace.  Car vs Public Transport.  The date and time was set, as was the accommodation now it was just time to figure out how to get our vehicle from Northern Ireland to the UK Mainland for the race and back again after-wards.  Scouts being Scouts, we always try to go for the most cost effective solution after all we do favor sleeping in tents rather than the ritz !  So it was clear from the outset than renting a car was going to work out much cheaper than booking a ferry. * Read the rest of this entry »


Stephen Brown from The Adventure Team talks about Social Media

I met Stephen just over a year ago when he followed me on Twitter.  We quickly began exchanging tweets, Facebook messages and texts until we finally met in person some months later and have bumped into each other several times since at various networking events.

As a scouter, his business fascinated me from day one as he basically gets paid to do all the fun stuff we do at scouts…. and he does it full time.

I booked him for a black tie event last year to do some pre-dinner games which turned out to be very novel, great sport and people are still talking about it today!

So what does this have to do with Social Media, well its simple.  Stephen started his business (The Adventure Team) just over 12 months ago with virtually no money and absolutely no money for marketing or sales.  What Stephen did have though was a computer and he quickly was able to build a large following on Facebook and Twitter.  I look forward to Stephen’s daily Facebook update where he talks about what he is going to get up to that day. Read the rest of this entry »


Open Coffee Lisburn, new day and location

Numbers at the Friday meeting’s have been dropping of late so Simon McC set up a quick survey to find out what day suited people best.  At the same time people were complaining about the venue.  Daltons has been good to us but the feedback was that the breakfast was not up to scratch (being that its a sandwich bar) and the parking was not the handiest.

So we have came up with (based on the survey and feedback) what we think is a good plan, and we will trail it for the next two meets ups to see how viable it is. Read the rest of this entry »


What a weeks its been ……. for the McQuillans and for Politics

I have had loads of stuff I wanted to talk about on russellmcquillan.com this week however I have been so busy I have not had a chance to open the laptop and think about writing something, so most of my thoughts have been pushed out on twitter.

Anyway, I though I would just grab a moment to put the week down on paper (so to speak) and what a week it has been ! – not only but for Northern Ireland politics and in the McQuillan household’s.

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Open Coffee Lisburn on tour / Open Coffee Banbridge, a new beginning

I am not sure if we should say that Open Coffee Lisburn is on tour or if we should just go right ahead and start calling it Open Coffee Banbridge, after all the Lisburn (cell / chapter / branch / franchise / who cares?) was started by a few of us that were attending Belfast Open Coffee.

Anyway to make a short story long a few of us were chatting about how to expand on our bi-weekly meeting, get more people involved and generally shake things up a bit in 2010 ( twenty ten / two thousand and ten / again who cares? ) and Open Coffee Banbridge was born (exactly one year on from Open Coffee’s birth) !

However rather than Belfast’s weekday evening or Lisburn’s Friday early o’clock, this will be on a Saturday at Outlet, meaning you can bring the family and make a day of it.

The first meeting will be on Saturday 16th at 9.30 at Starbuck’s, of course Open Coffee Lisburn still continues as usual on Friday mornings with our next meeting being on Friday 8th at 7.15am in Dalton’s Lisburn.

If you have never heard of Open Coffee, here are a few links to help you better understand what on earth I am talking about !

Open Coffee Lisburn andrewgribben.com, Open Coffee Lisburn on russellmcquillan.com, Open Coffee Lisburn on Twitter, iCal / gCal subscriber tool

I hope to see you there !!

Russell