North East Digital Awards

Awards, business plans and new projects

I'll get straight to the title of this post, the North East Digital Awards at the Hyena Club next Thursday. It's pretty exciting stuff for us because it's the first time we've ever been entered into an award evening on the premise of our work alone. We're nominated in two separate categories so hopefully we stand a good chance of walking away with something to put in the trophy cabinet. For trophy cabinet read bathroom.

The other news is really just updates rather than anything new. Progress has been steady with the business plan and we're at the stage where it's going to be read over by our mentors. I'm sure there will be some work to do after that but all being well we should be in a position to sit down with investors again by the end of the month and start to get our in house project off the ground.

It seems as though our work load is changing by the day at the moment with new stuff coming in, old stuff coming back around and other bits getting delayed. The only real downside is that there isn't much I can tell you about on here because nothing is set in stone at the moment. Rest assured when it does I'll put something down on here.

On a side note it looks as though we're going to create our own time management tool to keep tabs on the work we're doing at the moment. To date we've always had pretty much one or two projects on the go at any one time but at the moment we are chopping and changing between projects on a daily basis and it's hard to keep track of what we are working on and when. So in an effort to monitor progress internally and make visible to our clients how their projects are progressing we're going to start work on our own tracker. You never know, if it proves useful we might make it available on the website.

Other than that there isn't a lot to tell, it's all project work and business plans. I'll keep you posted about the tracker tool, the awards and the business plan but until then I'd better get back on with some work. If you want to ask me any questions about anything on the site then drop an email over to and I'll get back to you.

Touting ourselves around

Strategic partnerships, Investor pitches and community schemes

I'm posting the news early this week and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was because I have been so poor the last couple of weeks that I must be trying to make up for it. In actual fact it's because I already know this week is going to be manic so I'm picking the easy stuff off first, hence the Monday morning news.

The reason this week is already looking busy is three fold, Tom is away for the first part of the week, we are pitching to potential investors for the in house project mid week and we've still got paperwork to put together for a potential project we're pitching for.

It goes without saying but that is all on top of the development work we have on for our current clients and the work I'm doing on developing strategic partnerships. We're in with another potential partner this week and I'm putting the feelers out for anyone else who might be good to speak with, so I'm sure that will keep me busy for a while.

Also this Thursday we're at the 'Make Your Mark' evening in Mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art). Long story short the 'Make Your Mark' campaign is aimed at helping young people to make their ideas happen and we've been asked to be ambassadors for the campaign. It should be an interesting evening and we're looking forward to giving something back and hopefully getting the next generation of entrepreneurs thinking about business.

I'll leave it at that for now and get on with some of this work but if you want to give me a shout and find out more about what we do, how we can help or maybe think we you could be a good partner for us then drop me an email at .

Could be a busy end to the year

6 months in and already it's looking busy till the end of the year

Alright, alright, I'll put my hands up and admit this week's news is on the late side and even thought you probably don't care what my reasons are I'm going to tell you anyway. As ever it comes down to the long running battle we have with volume of work and hours in the day.

It's funny how quickly things can change in a week and that's a big part of the fun of being in a small business. Last week it was full steam ahead on project work, developing for new technology, working out solutions to problems and generally doing what we do best, bespoke development. This week it's all changed, there is still development going on but focus has been moved to the business plan for our in house project, an RFP (Request For Proposal) has landed in our inbox and a job we were planning for looks to have fallen by the way side.

It's always disappointing when a prospective project doesn't come in especially when we were as far down the line as we were with this one but maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Our project timeline is already looking pretty busy for the next few months and there seems to be more in the pipeline and who knows maybe the project will come back around in a few months, I suppose only time will tell.

On the up side it has give us a little (and by little I mean two days max) breathing space to get out paperwork together and start pitching for first stage seed funding for our in house project. We're already speaking with three different investment groups and one second stage investor who are all keen to get around a table when we are ready.

Hopefully over the next few weeks the project work will settle down a little and we'll get some dates in the diary to meet with the investors, but then again the ways things are going at the moment it could all change overnight.

If you want to know more about what we do and how we do it then drop me a mail at and I'll do my best to answer any questions you have.

Strategic Partnerships

We can always use more friends

I realise this post is a week late but you'll have to be patient with me, sorry. Basically what's happened is we're working flat out on a project trying to get everything tied up for a demo later this week and things haven't gone as smoothly as they could.

The project involves delivering web content onto a next generation media device and whenever you start working with something on the bleeding edge there's always that risk that things aren't going to behave as you'd expect and this is just what's happened. But we've built in healthy safety margins with regard to timescales and all is looking well for this week's demo so everyone should be happy.

To cut a long story short my background is XHTML and CSS development and so every now and then I get called in on a project and have to drop everything else I do (including the latest news) to help with delivery and this my friends has been one of those projects. So as I say I apologise for the absence of the news but I'm sure you understand and I promise service will resume as normal next week.

On a separate note I've been doing a lot of thinking about why this year has been so successful for us and how we keep this momentum going into the last half of this year and beyond. The answer I have come up with is strategic partnerships Now I'm not talking about touting my name around all the local graphics/print companies, I'm talking about really high quality partnerships with companies who need to know they have the ear of a professional development company should they need it.

We've always taken pride in having a great relationship with our clients and we want to extend this to our partners, we believe from great relationships you get great communication and that's the key to delivering great work. So In the coming months I'm going to start building this network of partners and see if we can't build upon our reputation for delivering high quality bespoke web solutions by taking what we do into new sectors and you never know maybe even onto more new media devices and hopefully making a few new friends along the way.

So if you fancy meeting with us to discuss strategic partnerships or just finding out a bit more about what we do and how we can help you then drop me an email at and say 'hey, I'd like to talk with you, fancy a cuppa?' - we always do!