Meetings and Interesting Projects

It's been a really hectic week as alongside the usual work there has been a lot of meetings. Sometimes that's a bad thing as meetings can be talking shops where you meet some interesting people and we all tell the others how good we are but there is never going to be any useful outcome. We've all been to those and I still sometimes end up in such meetings but this week has seen me at productive meetings.

There have been meetings to collaborate with a few other more commercially-minded creative businesses in Redcar & Cleveland including the idea of creating of something more formal to put our local creative industries on the map and generate income for artists, photographers, musicians and yes, even web agencies. Early days yet but there is a willingness amongst a small group of businesses, ours included, to take that forward.

We've had a meeting with the college tutor of our apprentice, Peter. The Social Digital Apprenticeship through Middlesbrough College and the Digital Youth Academy is proving an ideal vehicle as Peter further develops his multimedia and social media skills and gains a qualification in the process. We know the social media strategies that Peter manages and largely runs for us take time to bear fruit but they are already increasing our audience as a quality and customer-focused, and customer-friendly, business. Peter has great artistic skills which we are utilising in our web graphics and we are providing him with time to develop some of his digital artwork and encouraging him to get it published, hopefully in the soon-to be opened Palace Hub Gallery. If you are a local artist and would like to exhibit there then get in touch with Mark or Nel.

On Friday we had a visit from Keith, the owner of Moseley Marketing in Birmingham. A bit disconcerting as I last saw Keith around 30 years ago when he was about 17 and he is a couple of years younger than me, I recognised him straight away as he looks about 25! Anyway, a great meeting and we will be developing Moseley Marketing's website and there may be some collaborative work where we work with their customers in the future as well - so great news all round (apart from the bit where Keith looks 25 years younger than me!).

On Friday I was also at a meeting in the HQ of Cleveland Police over the border (one for my fellow Boro dwellers there). Due to work commitments I didn't manage the full tour by popping into Boho and The Bongo as well but stuck to the focus of the visit. And that focus is GiveitaGo, a project aimed primarily at youth in the Cleveland area. We are providing support for the development of the website for this, primarily for the back end as it is a data driven site but also support for the web designer looking after the front end via advice, support and some jquery work. A worthwhile project which does not have a lot of cash behind it - so whilst we are doing this as a commercial company we are charging very little for our time and services. Money isn't everything so if you are a local company and would like to get involved and sponsor the project then I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

And that's about it - time to spoil my mum's Mother's Day by visiting her.