Cricket on TV no less - no not T20, pro 40, England v Windies or any such low level performers but the Strasbourg Strollers v ICI Wilton C Team (yes that's us) on French TV. After around 37 years of playing competitive cricket I finally make it on to TV (albeit French TV) as a cricketer when I'm fat, old and half blind. Mind you I am seen taking a wicket on TV!! My French language skills are not great and despite our several minutes of fame I think it's more of a "what are these mad English ****ers doing in the rain" piece - and we lost match which also meant losing the 3-match 10 year series, 2-1 - great fun though.
After returning back to Blighty I had a chess match for Middlesbrough in the Northern Counties Chess Union Major Club Championship final in Heywood, Lancs (oh the glamour of it all). A bit of a trek, including a flat tyre, for a game of chess but we won which made it almost worthwhile (it meant I missed watching Boks v Eng 2nd Test which did not please me).
On the work front, today is the last day for our two French interns so an early finish for a quick couple of beers to say goodbye. There's still a lot of work to do on their two projects so we're looking at how we can progress these. Our thoughts at the moment are that unless we source some funding with our business partners then the projects will be developed in slack time which is not ideal, we have funded most of the work so far so business partners need to kick in with their share plus funding applications or we go it alone on one project and take the plunge to develop it as a commercial application.
We're interviewing for a marketing/sales apprentice next week, the idea being that a few months down the line, when they can work more independently, we will increase sales sufficiently to take on a new web designer/developer and expand. Yes we're in a double dip recession but after a month of things quietening down as everyone hears the news and stops spending, orders are coming back in plus we have a number of other potential sales leads to follow up as well. We aim to use freelancers on short-term contracts for specific projects in the period between now and requiring a new full-time developer in order to meet peak needs. To that end we have meetings with a small number of freelance developers in the next couple of weeks.
The last couple of weeks has seen us adding solutions to websites so they meet the new "Cookie Law", if your site does not comply give us a call on 01642 438173 and we will give you a very reasonable quote to provide a solution for you. We've also been developing new sites for a pest control company based in Surrey, a local windows company and the e-commerce section of a first aid training site which we hope to complete in the coming week, along with the usual SEO work plus some mentoring training via the Experience Bank as I look to get involved in that.
We're also meeting up with a Redcar & Cleveland Council representative next week regarding their new Hub on the seafront. We've expressed an interest in moving premises there and we're meeting to firm up prices, what's included, incentives, etc. so that we can make an informed decision on whether a move would be beneficial to the business or not.
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