Plodding along

We went away last weekend, and it was just what I needed. By the end of Sunday I was so chilled out. I had hardly looked my mobile all weekend, let alone took any calls. But I’ve needed a rocket up me this week to get me going again!

It’s been a steady kind of week. The boring stuff is taking precedence now. We’re just concentrating on getting as much into the database as we can, before we have to freeze the database to upload the new site. Then it will be chaotic trying to enter information that we can’t do until some new functionality is added.

Oh my Lord – we launch a week on Monday!! Where has the time gone? At the moment I’m swinging from sheer panic to complete denial! I think it’s just the nerves that after all the hype and build-up, will people actually like it enough to buy into it? Everything we’ve done in our planning and research suggests it’s going to be huge success, but I still can’t help being apprehensive, and in one way I wish the launch wasn’t actually here yet! If we don’t press the button we can live in blissful ignorance for a bit longer. Although maybe not, ignorance whilst living in poverty is not such a good idea!

If I’m objective, on the whole, things are progressing quite well. And as usual I’ve got lists by the armful.

A list for each team member so I know what they’re currently concentrating on, and a list of work still to be done which I need to share out when they’ve finished. I’m balancing the work for our journalist students, so that they are each getting a bit of ‘glory’ by doing something to increase their profile, but in return they each have to do a bit of legwork and the boring stuff like data entry. I think that’s a fair exchange of time and opportunity.

Then there’s the list for the Bambinos exhibition. The planning’s going okay, but we need to step it up a notch now. We’re discussing this again on Saturday (which has turned into our usual management meeting day) when Ross will have designed the stand layout.

Then we need to go shopping next week. We need something to mount the posters on, Velcro to attach the posters to, and we’ve a hundred other sundry things to collect, including waste bins, paper cups, membership forms to design and print, fleeces to buy and print for the team, H&S policy to write, and so it goes on and on!

Hopefully we’ll be able to deal with most of this whilst we can’t enter information into the database.

There’s been a slight technical glitch with the programming on the site, which can be resolved easily enough, but which means the team have lost some time. So they’re going to be on the last minute finishing the site – but let’s face it, is it ever any other way?

We met up at fluid’s offices this week and spent a while with Steve discussing the functionality. After an email from someone reading this diary (hello out there!), we’ve decided to add an RSS feed onto our site for the news items. A great idea, which means that other websites can hold some content from our site and it’s automatically updated for them every time we update it.

My next big job is to rewrite the copy, bearing in mind the keywords we want the search engines to recognize. This will be about the fourth time I’ve attempted the copy, and although I think I improve it each time I’m confident that now I’ve got some extra hints from Steve and Lee, it’ll be on the mark. They have a really good track record with this type of thing. The first time I attempted it, it was awful – not written for web at all, more like a novel!

We’ve also approved the print work for the launch. We’ve decided on A5 single sided posters which can double up as leaflets if required, and some business card sized handouts. The print costs seemed much higher than last time we did a print run for our earlier promotional work. Apparently, the cost of paper has gone up! Does that mean we need to start speculating on commodity prices too? I ask you. It has made quite a big difference to the price overall, but it’s the best price available so we’ve had to go with it. Whippee dee!

But on the plus side, Andy at Fluid has done a fantastic design for us. They’ll certainly get attention! So we’ll have these for the end of next week, and then we can send them out to various organisations that may be able to refer members to us, plus we can use them at Bambinos.

We’re looking at our advertising again at the moment. I think we’re going to go down the route of doing some very targeted, and fairly low cost, adverts initially. Once we’ve launched and start to generate some income, we also need to look at our online advertising. So any tips welcomed!

Without doubt, next week is going to be extremely hectic, and I think I’ll have to sort some extra childcare out so I can really focus. Me and Gregg (& Ross aswell) have given up alcohol for Lent, maybe not the best timing eh? How many days left until Easter, oh only 36…..ha! Do you think Shloer would have the same effect?...

Luke’s currently emptying my briefcase so he can use it as a car - think I’d better go and rescue it!

Kirsty