Ambrose sat motionless, staring at the screen in front of him. He couldn’t quite believe what was slowly unfolding before his eyes.  Slowly, because he was, unfortunately, still on dial-up – even though he’d promised himself that he would find a broadband provider as soon as she… well, he couldn’t contemplate thinking about that now.  The message on the email newsletter left him in no doubt as to what he needed to do.

Had another year gone by that quickly? Ambrose quickly checked the date on his calendar, and double-checked with his desk diary – it was indeed a year, and he knew what that meant. Before he could allow the million things that entered his head to clutter his thoughts and distract him from the task in hand, he clicked on the ‘Internet Explorer’ icon tucked neatly between the  ‘Her Pictures’  shortcut and the recycle bin on his desktop momentarily hesitating before beginning to type in the address that was familiar to him oh so long ago..  “No! I can’t..” he quietly hissed  “It.. it’s been too long … and it may not be the same ..”

Ambrose stood up and walked away from his desk. He needed time to think.
Stepping into the kitchen he picked up the kettle to check that there was enough water before firmly pressing the ‘on’ button with the intention of making himself a cup of tea.  He busied himself with the other preparations, getting out the cup, opening the box of teabags, taking one out and putting it into the cup, placing a clean teaspoon in with it because she always said to do that in case the hot water cracked her fine bone china  – never mind that his cup is oven-proof,  it’s his favourite and she was always right -  emptying the old teabag from the teabag saucer, brushing the biscuit crumbs from a previous tea break off the worktop onto his hand and then into the bin. .. somewhere, a dog barked.

It seemed to take forever for the kettle to boil, and rather than stand watching it in case the difficult thoughts should begin to well again, he stepped out into the garden to take the washing in off the line. She would like that, he mused.

Once he had taken the first sip of chamomile tea, Ambrose felt better prepared to tackle the inevitable.  As he strode briskly back to his desk, he wondered if the action of making the tea or the drinking of the tea was the cause of his new-found strength and determination.

Ambrose tapped random keys on his keyboard to awaken his screen which had gone to sleep in his absence. He chastised himself for leaving his connection open, made another mental note to check available broadband in his area,  took a deep breath and started typing into the address bar of his browser: ‘www.’ he paused – was it still the same address? Better just to type into Google’s address bar in case the address has changed, he thought.. tap.. tap.. tap.. .enter…

Results 1 – 10 of about 234,000

Luckily he was well versed on the workings of these Internet contraptions, so he know that the first result was the one he wanted.

He was instantly glad he did because the first thing he saw was the smiling face of Colm Lyon from Realex Payments, quickly followed by Colm Long of Facebook, Ronan Harris of Google and Trey Harvin of Dotmobi.

The Irish Internet Association’s Congress 2009 -

“Better Business Online in a Tough Economy: Money, Marketing, Monitoring & Mobile.”

IIA Congress 2009 was indeed going to be great – every bit as good as the one last year, and this year Ambrose was determined that he was going to secure his place straight away.

Take a leaf out of Ambrose’s book, secure your place at the IIA  Congress, 21st & 22nd May 2009 at the  Crowne Plaza Dublin Northwood.

Read all the details here