The Project

Mayo County Manager, Peter Hynes, recently launched a major project.  A team within Mayo County Council is to design, develop and market a website to help Mayo people and people interested in Mayo to connect with one another.  In addition, the site will be home to "all things Mayo" including information on events and groups, news, sports and general information about attractions, towns, etc. which would be of use to both the resident and visitors.  But, the website is only part of the story.  There will also be other activities centred around this same theme of connecting people.

This will be a huge effort and, for it to be a success, we need the help and advice of people around the world.  So, this is really what this blog is about.  We want to share our work and our ideas for this project with ye and get your ideas and feedback about what we're doing.  The website we're building is for Mayo people and Friends of Mayo worldwide--so we want to involve as many of ye in the process as possible and--hopefully--you'll all join us on the new site when it's launched in April/May 2011.

So, what are our plans?

We're still nailing down the exact scope of the project.  But, the current idea is that the site will be a social networking site where people can form groups and networks of friends with Mayo people worldwide based on common interests.  There may be a business listing as well to help people find similar businesses around the world or to simply find a business in their town.

We're also looking at an "All Things Mayo" section of the website which will be based on a Wiki.  This area will become a living website about both towns and villages in Mayo as well as Irish communities world-wide. 

We're also examining the possibility of on online shop to sell hard-to-get Mayo items such as locally published books and annuals, music, products, etc.--anything related to Mayo.

The big challenge of this website, though, will be finding all of our friends worldwide and telling them about our site.  So, over the coming months, we'll be trying to get as many email addresses of people who would enjoy using our new website so we can invite them all to join us when it's ready and online.

If you're interested in being informed of website developments and being invited to join the new site as soon as it's live, join our Facebook group "Mayo Worldwide Community".

You can also sign-up to our mailing list by completing our short survey (please excuse the ads, we're using a free service at the minute).

I'll also be updating this blog so ye can chart our progress and give us your suggestions on what we should do to make the site as fun, friendly and useful as possible.

Finally, if you have some ideas you'd like to share with me personally, email me at webmaster@mayococo.ie

Looking forward to hearing from ye and getting to know ye better in the months to come!

Rick Love
IT Section
Mayo County Council
County Mayo, Ireland