So, nothing on the official twitter account in a week.

has their been a fall out with CaleyD and the new regime?

has he changed the password of the official account and not told anyone?

lack of communication with the support at a time when it is arguably most needed is another reason to shake the head at ICTFC just now.

whilst Don may have had his reasons for stepping down, it beggars belief that there's no one at the club just now that can operate a twitter account.

what exactly was the point in the m-word if we still act and operate like a Highland League club?

Dunno. Guess you don't know what  you've got till its gone...

Huge amount of personal statements on this very feed abusing the media team and himself. 

What would you do in that situation apart from close down and drop out. 

Keep waiting for his critics to step up to the mark and help the media team. Always easier to take no responsibility and throw rocks than glaze the windows.

 

@CaleyD has indeed hung up his media credentials ... for now. Whether he resumes those duties in future or not is undecided. That will be between him and the club. 

I don't think I am breaking any confidence or privacy issues in saying that he is currently taking care of some professional development that he wasn't able to fit in before, and will be taking a well earned holiday after that. Much like the posts about Kenny I have seen some very personal and plainly wrong things written about @CaleyD and others from the media team on here. However, I figured he was big enough and ugly enough to answer those critics or complain if he wanted to, but for the most part he just let it slide off him like water of a duck's back. I can say for sure that I would not have been so tolerant ! 

 

 

13 minutes ago, Scotty said:

@CaleyD has indeed hung up his media credentials ... for now. Whether he resumes those duties in future or not is undecided. That will be between him and the club. 

I don't think I am breaking any confidence or privacy issues in saying that he is currently taking care of some professional development that he wasn't able to fit in before, and will be taking a well earned holiday after that. Much like the posts about Kenny I have seen some very personal and plainly wrong things written about @CaleyD and others from the media team on here. However, I figured he was big enough and ugly enough to answer those critics or complain if he wanted to, but for the most part he just let it slide off him like water of a duck's back. I can say for sure that I would not have been so tolerant ! 

 

 

I will not be so tolerant in the future and be much quicker to criticise personal attacks and rants in the spirit of optimism and positivity. 

As part of that media team for a long time, I can safely say that without @CaleyD there would have been no media presence at the club and what you are getting now is what you would always have had - or worse. Another guy who took nothing out of the club - no pay, no freebies, nothing. Someone who drove the team all over the country in his own car, sometimes at his own cost. A guy who drove a clapped out club minibus to Charlton and back with @ANDYCAM. Someone who singlehandedly got the team progressing from written previews and reports to pre and post match video and then on to match coverage with commentary. Someone who occasionally bought equipment that was needed. Someone who put our club twitter account into the realms of national coverage and recognition and facilitated the main star of that twitter account into accomplishing things that he never thought he could. (In the spirit of the "stig", that bit will remain cryptic) Put the club and CJT's web pages together and maintained them. All of this was done in circumstances that were far from ideal, sometimes with little cooperation and appreciation and occasionally at detriment to his health. Of course, being club media, it was never our job to hold the players or manager to account. We were there to support and the MSM could do the other stuff. It has been difficult sometimes to see the carping and personalised rubbish written on here and directed by people who, if they had put in half of @CaleyDs effort would have made a real difference to the club and it's suppporters. Still, it's easier to snipe.

As @Fraz says, sometimes you just don't know what you've got until it's gone. Thanks for a great experience Don. You'll be missed.

Well said.

I hope Don realised that the critics were a very small minority. I'm sure I don't just speak for myself when I say I have enjoyed the vast improvements in club media in recent years and should have expressed some appreciation of the volunteers who made it all happen.

16 minutes ago, davie said:

 

.......As @Fraz says, sometimes you just don't know what you've got until it's gone. Thanks for a great experience Don. You'll be missed.

Well said Davie.  Good to see someone 'in the know' sticking up for CaleyD. I'm sure all the hard work he put in, for no reward, is appreciated by many, if not all, of us.

He will be a hard act to follow, even if the multitude of tasks he performed for ICT, might in the future fall under the responsibility of a paid employee.

 

Thirded. As Yngwie says the critics were in a small minority and if anything some of us didn't always stick up for him often enough, usually feeling that he was big and ugly enough to cope with it himself 

Has he left because of criticism or is there another reason? Sorry if I missed it I just didn't know why he had stopped completely that's all. 

 I think big and ugly covers everyone on the forum but I think if we really want to make ourselves and the club feel better we will need to challenge these negative and personally critical posters more. They affect our enjoyment on match days and on the forum.

 

There are some fantastically eloquent responses here in the banter   and some very clear and simple tactical and technical discussions that are great but I think all the personal stuff stiff about kc , foran etc and any new club personnel should really be driven out as far as possible.

 

 

It really does amaze me how people can give so much of their time, most days, most weeks without any reward. They must either be very rich or have an income source which does not require their time input.

2 hours ago, davie said:

As part of that media team for a long time, I can safely say that without @CaleyD there would have been no media presence at the club and what you are getting now is what you would always have had - or worse. Another guy who took nothing out of the club - no pay, no freebies, nothing. Someone who drove the team all over the country in his own car, sometimes at his own cost. A guy who drove a clapped out club minibus to Charlton and back with @ANDYCAM. Someone who singlehandedly got the team progressing from written previews and reports to pre and post match video and then on to match coverage with commentary. Someone who occasionally bought equipment that was needed. Someone who put our club twitter account into the realms of national coverage and recognition and facilitated the main star of that twitter account into accomplishing things that he never thought he could. (In the spirit of the "stig", that bit will remain cryptic) Put the club and CJT's web pages together and maintained them. All of this was done in circumstances that were far from ideal, sometimes with little cooperation and appreciation and occasionally at detriment to his health. Of course, being club media, it was never our job to hold the players or manager to account. We were there to support and the MSM could do the other stuff. It has been difficult sometimes to see the carping and personalised rubbish written on here and directed by people who, if they had put in half of @CaleyDs effort would have made a real difference to the club and it's suppporters. Still, it's easier to snipe.

As @Fraz says, sometimes you just don't know what you've got until it's gone. Thanks for a great experience Don. You'll be missed.

Well said Davie! 

The communications from the club have been pish for years, the club statements are poorly written, aren't clear and in many cases are actually infuriating.  Things like the statement about Greg Tansey when he was targeted by Aberdeen, the bizarre statement when Hughes left, the fact that we were publicising a "one course meal and pay bar" for the Champions League final minutes after we were smashed by our local rivals.

That's continued in this close season.  A perfunctory statement detailing that Foran is leaving, a few puff pieces about the new board and then worst of all the announcement of season ticket prices.  If the statement on season tickets had been thought through even for a couple of minutes then it would've included an acknowledgement that some fans would be disappointed at the prices but that the club need to maintain them to allow us to challenge then people might have come around to it.  As it was there a single, throwaway sentence about the prices.  You don't need to be a communications genius to anticipate what the reaction will be to something and try to head it off at the pass, as it were.

When you look at clubs like Hearts and Hibs who have focused on communications from the board and club, it's night and day for us and it doesn't have to cost money.  The updates Hearts issue from Ann Budge, the way Leanne Dempster has had an impact at Hibs - this is a cultural change and it doesn't have to cost money.  Since the board talked about appointing a general manager, the role has been discussed as something like having a 'football man' on the board, like Malpas or Butcher.  I think the role needs to be more than that, needs to encompass how the club engages with the fans, with sponsors and local businesses, with government agencies, with the wider community.  A big part of that is having someone with overall responsibility for this and the GM could do that.

I'm sure Don did lots for the club without pay and the YouTube stuff is excellent.  The Twitter account was engaging and responded well to queries rather than just pushing out links to the website, which is a lot better than most clubs official Twitter accounts.  I do think that perhaps the club have taken advantage of him a bit if he's been doing all this without pay though and there's surely someone at the club now who can operate a Twitter account to send out the latest fixtures?  It's almost passive-aggressive to just not do anything.

@ictchris - The club operate on a shoestring and when it comes to media presence they prefer slip-ons so they don't need to buy laces !!! Davie is right. Without @CaleyD and other volunteers there simply would not be a media presence as it is (or was) viewed as secondary to the other parts of the business. Thats not a dig at the club its just a fact of how things are where everybody has their tasks and areas of responsibility and online media was not one of them so various people just took it on here and there rather than focused on it. 

Given my history with the club and also with the provision of hosting and website services to them over the years I know what they are billed for those services and without quoting any numbers, its basically just enough to cover the costs. No-one is getting rich off the back of any of these services and certainly no wage is being paid. @CaleyD may not be everyone's favourite person, and his personality may rub some folk up the wrong way but his 'dog with a bone' attitude and desire to do whatever he sinks his teeth into to the best of his ability mean that he has overseen a fairly radical overhaul of things and took on all the social media stuff and the website itself. Is it perfect? No. Could things be better? Yes. Will he get a chance to continue or want to continue? I have no idea. The twitter and facebook accounts are now 'award-winning', the audio and video files published pre and post-match are a far cry from the couple of column inches in the Courier of the past or the one page word files we received from the club with interview quotes, and the effort to push on (for years) to try and get the infrastructure and investment from sponsors to be able to provide audio and video streaming at the stadium are all in large part down to him and the rest of the volunteers. He is (was) always looking for innovative solutions to things people brought up on here and elsewhere, and if some of the communications are/were cringeworthy or read like they were written by a committee it is because sometimes they were !!    

It pains me to see how things have gone over the last few weeks .... but as much as I dont like to say it, the expression "be careful what you wish for ...." keeps popping into my head when I see people who have at various times during the season call for the removal of almost everyone from the non existent tea lady to the chairman now start to bitch and moan when there is no-one manning the ship. What did you expect?   To keep the nautical analogy going ... There are new people on the bridge and they are familiarising themselves with the controls but its not going to be an instant handover  

2 hours ago, caleyboy said:

It really does amaze me how people can give so much of their time, most days, most weeks without any reward. They must either be very rich or have an income source which does not require their time input.

It is quite amazing that people offer much and ask for so little yes.

FB and twitter feed posting again. 

5 hours ago, ictchris said:

 As it was there a single, throwaway sentence about the prices.  

I think you are slightly overstating things there, Chris. I would suggest that it was more "a single, throwaway WORD about the prices" - so obscure that I actually missed it the first time I scanned through that car crash of a Season Ticket communication last Thursday. The word in question was that prices would be "maintained"! You would almost think that they were doing fans a favour by charging the same for one game fewer in a lower league. I really can't think of a more bizarre word than "maintained" to describe the scenario. And of course the revelation of a 5% discount come the certainty of a return to the Premiership in 2018 only made an awful situation a whole lot worse.

The timings of recent announcements have also been interesting... or should I say bizarre.... given that you need to take this into account when planning the impact of what you want to say. The revelation that Kenny had stood down appeared in two parts at 10:40 and 11:50 on a Monday night... too late to catch any newspaper on the Tuesday. Then the departure of Richie Foran appeared the following Monday after 6pm - in this case too late to catch Inverness's bigger selling local newspaper. All were issued electronically, putting the onus on the consumer to look for them. Was this simply an inept attempt to bury "bad news"? But then, when selling season tickets became the desired outcome (as opposed to the achieved outcome!), there was a complete U-turn and emails were fired out to all and sundry on a much more user friendly Thursday morning. Sorry chaps, people on newsdesks notice this kind of total failure to win friends and influence people and their perceptions of the organisation in question are bound to be affected accordingly.

I personally think that the club's twitter updates over the last few years have been excellent and in many quarters have seriously raised the team's profile. I feel it has been a "unique selling point" of the club.

Any truth that uncle Roy has tempted him across the bridge with the promise of a 64 bit dial up connection and the opportunity to post upsetting fans to the tic when meekings enrols with the staggies .....

Would make a change from us being raided by Aberdeen!

Beat me to it