New Year, New Staff, New Clients

The office reopened on Wed 2nd Jan with 2 new bits of work plus 2 new enquiries to quote for and we got our 1st new enquiry of the year on New Year's Day!

Thursday saw Peter, our new E-marketing Assistant, pop in to sign contracts. Peter starts on Monday 7th Jan with the primary role of developing our e-marketing strategies plus some of our print design and I know he will be huge asset and make a big difference to the company. Also he's not an old fart like me and Steve (feel free to reply Steve) so will bring a much younger and brighter perspective to all we do. His services will also be available to clients, so we are expanding our e-marketing and print design services. Peter is starting via a Social Digital Apprenticeship in conjunction with Middlesbrough College (http://www.mbro.ac.uk) and the Digital Youth Academy (http://www.digitalyouthacademy.com/)

We spent part of the week tweaking the Call Ouch! mobile website. So in time honoured fashion ...

... had an accident at work? Call Ouch!

We also did a bit of template and css work for one of our neighbours at the Wilton Centre. We didn't make their site and it's a bit hacked together in places and it can be a bit chewy finding the relevant bits of code to edit but Google Chrome is a godsend for finding exact lines of code in both php and css files.

The shortened week allied to a couple of jobs to quote for means today (Sunday) has become a workday for quote, and blog, writing. Still I'm sure I'll find time to watch a bit of Premiership rugby plus a bit of American football with it being Redskins (my 2nd team) v Seahawks (Steve's team) in the NFC wild card match.

Still, a great and relaxed day yesterday.  A short walk out in the morning with my lovely wife. A trip to the pub and then off to watch Boro beat the mighty Hastings Utd (who did themselves proud) in the FA Cup with Matt - a rare treat these days as he normally goes to the game with interesting people. I have to say that the beer, Mydilsburgh IPA, we drank in The Star brewed by Middlesbrough's very own brewery, Truefitt (http://www.truefittbrewing.co.uk/), was truly fantastic - give their beers a try whenever you get the chance (and no they aren't clients of ours but I do like to support great local businesses, especially if they produce great real ale).