Dennis Deery

Since our time living in Ireland, I’ve been using a great online service called ConnectMe Anywhere. This service allows you to purchase phone numbers in dozens of countries and forward them to your own phone. Using this, I was able to provide a U.S. phone number that rang my mobile phone in Ireland, and since we’ve moved back I’ve been able to keep an Irish phone number that rings here in the U.

I recently attended the Midwest Rural Assembly in Sioux Falls, SD. I wrote a short guest post on the Wisconsin Rural Partners web site describing the conference. 

It’s been quite a long summer, but we’ve survived and Kathleen has returned home from her long sojourn in Detroit. We decided a short break was in order before the fall semester starts, so we booked a last-minute deal to Washington, DC. Kathleen did her master’s degree at Gallaudet in DC, and I’ve worked there a lot, but we’d never been there together, so this trip was a good chance to share stories and favorite places.

I just sent the following to the Obama White House: Dear President Obama, I’d like to offer a perhaps radical suggestion for remaking the health-care town hall discussions. The town hall meetings you’ve held thus far are a start. But they’ve not substantially moved the debate, and I suspect in their current form they’re unlikely to. Perhaps it’s time for some new thinking? Schedule some more town hall discussions. Give away tickets through the White House as you have been.

A lot of people have been showing up at town hall meetings these days screaming about the inevitable ineptitude of any government-run health care system. I wonder how many of those same people spent the last eight years (or their whole lives) screaming about how our military is the best in the world? Why do people in this self-proclaimed Christian nation believe that our government power can create the best military in the world, a force for killing, while that same government power cannot possibly run a health-care system?

Hey, it’s been a lotta fun. Especially gotta admire the way you lowered the bar to the level where a mentally-troubled weasel could leap over it. Thanks so much for knowing when to go. Don’t let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out!

Irish Rose Consulting client Hartung Brothers, Inc. was recently feature on the National Ag Report. Congratulations!

Congrats to our good friend Herby Radmann of Bullfrog Fish Farm who was featured in “Questioning the Locals” column in the most recent issue of Volume One magazine! 

Congratulations to Irish Rose Consulting client Hartung Brothers, Inc. of Madison. They’ve signed an agreement to sell their wholesale fertilizer division to The Andersons, an agribusiness based in Maumee, Ohio. We’ve enjoyed working with the folks in the fertilizer division over the past several years, helping with custom software as they expanded their operation. We wish them all the best in their new home. 

This past weekend Kathleen and I headed up to Duluth, MN for a weekend getaway. It was a pretty low-key weekend, we just hung out in Duluth’s Canal Park neighborhood, wandered around a bit, caught an IMAX movie, ate out, walked along the lake. Check out some pics from the weekend. Click here for slideshow [](http://flickr.dennisdeery.com/flickrimages/3425947406.jpg "Lake Superior scenes from Duluth, MN")[](http://flickr.dennisdeery.com/flickrimages/3425113563.jpg "Lake Superior scenes from Duluth, MN")[](http://flickr.dennisdeery.com/flickrimages/3425113863.jpg "Lake Superior scenes from Duluth, MN"

PortalWisconsin.org has launched a new arts and culture blog focused on the state of Wisconsin. Our good friend Ricky Rolfsmeyer is a contributor to this group blog. Check out his great post, “The Gift of Communities,” and be sure to add the blog’s feed to your newsreader. 

This year Irish Rose Consulting is celebrating 20 years in business. Since the exact start date has been lost to the mists of time, I decided what better day to call our birthday than St. Patrick’s Day. In 1989 I was a student at UW-Platteville. One of my part-time jobs was working on an excellent research-and-development project for Niall Enterprises, run by Jack O’Neill, a professor at Platteville. My friend Rick Eagen was also working on the project.

[WBC Protest at UChicago - a set on Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/froboy/sets/72157614979271411/) The hateful folks at Westboro Baptist Church recently brought their lame protest to the University of Chicago. Students responded with a little protest of their own, nicely proving that the best counter to hateful speech is more and better speech. (tags: [politics](http://delicious.com/ddeery/politics) [religion](http://delicious.com/ddeery/religion)) [SUB-MIT: The Great McMurdo Jello-Wrestling All-Hands Meeting | Frontierwatch](http://bigdeadplace.com/frontierwatch/?p=748) Apparently, Jello wrestling is NOT acceptable behavior at the McMurdo Antarctica research station.

[/ BEVOdesign / print and webdesign by Ben Voos](http://zoomism.com/) A very cool portfolio site using a zooming interface. (tags: [interface](http://delicious.com/ddeery/interface) [zoom](http://delicious.com/ddeery/zoom) [zui](http://delicious.com/ddeery/zui)) [Zoomii.com - The "Real" Online Bookstore](http://zoomii.com/#) A cool online bookstore with some of the feel of a real bookstore. (tags: [book](http://delicious.com/ddeery/book))

[Acquia Drupal | Acquia](http://acquia.com/products-services/acquia-drupal) A pre-built installation of Drupal with common modules included. (tags: [drupal](http://delicious.com/ddeery/drupal))

[The Places We Live](http://www.theplaceswelive.com/) An amazing site showing slums around the world. An incredible reminder of how fortunate we are, and how much more we need to be doing. (tags: [poverty](http://delicious.com/ddeery/poverty) [slums](http://delicious.com/ddeery/slums) [storytelling](http://delicious.com/ddeery/storytelling))

Hey, did you hear our economy is collapsing? Oh, what’s that, you haven’t heard anything BUT that? I figured it’s high time for a little bandwagon jumping. Everyone on the web has an opinion, so I’m not going to be left out. But I’m going to start with one stipulation. I contend, and I would hope you’d agree, that nobody really knows how the global economy works. Sure, there are lots of theories, and everyone’s got a favorite.

February in Wisconsin can tend to be quite a long month. We’ve all generally reached our limit in putting up with the cold weather. Things are usually at their grayest as we see some thawing and lose our snow cover. And winter usually works up a snow storm or extra-hard cold snap to remind us that she’s not quite done. Well this February has had all of that. And as our first real winter weather in two years, it’s been a hard go.

The Eau Claire Area Economic Development Corporation on November 25, 2008 launched a new web site called the SMARTT Network. SMARTT stands for Strategy for Marketing and Recruiting Top Talent. I’m sorry to say, two months on, it looks to me like this was a bad idea and unfortunately fairly poorly implemented. So what does SMARTT do? The idea is to provide an “online network that connects talent to career, business and technology-based opportunities in western Wisconsin.

David Jones recently lost his job. He quickly sat down and wrote a book about his experiences. A friend of ours, the ever-sunny Maryrose Lyons of Brightspark Consulting in Dublin, heard David talking about his book on the radio. She decided to tap her network to create a web site and marketing push for David and his book - in a week! A web designer, web developer, artist, photographer and several marketing folks all came together to pull off this project.