Dominic “The Hodge” Hodgson

When most people want SEO its because they are seeing some search traffic and want more, a lot of clients will do a one keyword search for a product or service and want to be number one for that “shoes” for example, that’s all well and good but in a world where places like Amazon are selling almost everything (and I mean everything (nsfw)) its hard for your smaller niche store to even get a chance at the top ten of a major search engine.

(more…)

Anyone that has met me at a meet up or barcamp knows I usually wear a Nintendo T-shirt and it started off as a joke but now people get a little worried if I don’t wear one (Sorry Matt) anyway April the 11th is the release date of Mario Kart Wii… REALLY excited by this.. and its a perfect excuse for a little get together… I’m buying a copy on release day and I know a few other people are… I can probably get a venue with a few projectors for us to meet up and race to the death finish.

This would just be a bit of fun and for a couple of hours

Just throwing the idea out to anyone?

Well its now tuesday night, barcamp manchester was on saturday so by the time you read this you’ve probably already had your fill.. but anyway

I think it was a really good day, although on the day I only sat in one session (and spoke in one session), I met a lot of old and new friends and learned a lot, We as NorthCrew had a good session and won an xbox (even if a bloke from the bbc blamed us for the north / south divide) but we will talk more about that on the northcrew blog when Ryan gives me access to it!

There seems to be a video floating around the internet of me, I believe its called Gravy in yer Servers… I deny all knowledge of it.

I will say on a personal level, having people tell you that they honestly think your doing a great thing for the community and give you ideas and suggestions is an amazing feeling and even the people who had concerns or didn’t find the service useful offered suggestions and ideas… we take each one and talk about them… we will be blogging about a few of them soon (but anyone paying attention to the northpack website will notice that we now have search button (I’m told theres an easter egg in there as well)

As for barcamp Leeds, im unsure what I’m going to be able to do with it this time around, work, northcrew and the missus take up a lot of time :)…

I can say that northcrew has some things up there sleeve but its more local developer / designer focused… *ooooooo** suspense!!

Well this post could go wrong, very wrong, the latest in the Geek Girl dinners has just been announced and this time it’s in the North, Manchester to be exact, and I think that’s fantastic, I’m in support of anything that helps women in technology (a nod to PHPWomen) infact I’m in support of anything that gets anyone into technology but I have mixed opinion’s on this one..

Last summer I wanted to do something good, a run or a walk (I eventually settled on the great north run) but I found the 1^st St. Gemma’s Hospice midnight walk, all was good and I was up for it until I read the small print that it was yet another women only event (much like the race for life) , I called up to ask why and was given the blank response that men are too competitive and less women would enter. I was quite pissed off at this overgeneralised statement (at 17st with some good sized man boob’s a competitive run was the last thing on my mind) but was assured they would run this years event and reconsider for next yet (which is on this year and still a women’s only event).

So the Geek Girl Dinner is soon, a good mate of mine (Imran Ali) has been on about organising one of these for months in Leeds and we’ve had the discussion several times that it defeats the point of the group if he organised it..

I think splitting things up into sexes does more harm that good in most cases, but with technology, I think that its such a visibly male dominated industry, I think we need groups like PHPWomen and GGD to provide not just support to women in the same field but also ideas and discussion.

This isn’t a dig at Imran (or Manoj)  for helping with organising these things (I know I’ll get an MSN message about it as soon as he reads this) because hes working on whatever he can to get the community working together however I carn’t help but feel that with (at least partly) male organisation and presence, the discussion, questions, answers and ideas generated will be affected.

Whilst thinking this it brought me back to the overgeneralised statement that the hospice made last year and how not everyone is the same but it also reminded me that just last year when I went to my first Geekup and didn’t know anyone how difficult it was to have the ball’s (a pun) to go to somewhere I’ve never been with a group of people I’ve never met).

I don’t think I can go to a Geek Girl Dinner as a participant (I’d go to give it some coverage from northcast if they wanted it) but I know I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from being the big gobbed guy from Leeds and I think that would be detrimental to the event