Geek of the Week

This is IceBlue's lovely Hannah, who's just made company history by winning our first ever Geek of the Week award. She's been slogging away at a highly technical molecular biological thingamebob website for days now, and we're worried about her sanity. Watch out everyone else, you could be next ...

Duncans blog -Training day

Since we've managed to get over the launch of www.finditinsandwell.co.uk, we've found that things have changed quite a bit around the office. The work load is still there of course with 11 new clients coming in this week alone but somehow we feel that thngs aren't quite as pressured now. One of the reasons for this is the fact that although we have these new clients, we are dedicating time to each member of staff now for pure training purposes, whether it's surfing the net for inspiration, tricks and tips, attending a more structured course or putting on our own in house training sessions, we've decided that, save for an imminent deadline, training is now top priority.

I kicked off the in house sessions with a training session all about.... how to give training sessions, using the structures that I learnt from my career in the Royal Navy I taught everyonen the principles and structures they should be applying to their in house lessons and now we can see the results coming through the ranks with the more senior designers, programmers and client side staff able to pass on their knowledge to everyone else. The result hasn't beeen a drop in production from the people attending the sessions but a massive increase in productivity and motivation. The teachers feel valued as their skills are recognised and shared and the students can now do things better and faster.

It is too easy to put training onto the bottom of the list of priorities when it comes to workload but by giving everyone a seperate training plan and work schedule, we have overcome this trap tha we fell into with our last large design project. Now instead of having and relying on just one person to perform a task, we can rely on several, it just makes good sense all round really. As for my own personal training. I like to take an hour out of each day to look at the different seo blogs and sites to see what's new. Internet world is on in London in May which hopefully I can find time to attend the whole show or if not then definately one day, in fact, I want everyone in the office to spend at least a day there as you can't beat talking to other people in the industry to give yourself a lift, it's definately not the most sociable activity, sitting behind a computer all day and it will be good to see who else is out there and share some ideas. Also the Miami search engine strategies conference 2007 is looming on the horizon so I'm in the process of sorting out if and who gets to go there (always a lot of competition) which is a good thing really as it shows how keen the staff at www.iceblue.co.uk are to learn as much as possible about search engine optimisation and search engine marketing (or then again they could just be wanting to go to Miami (I know I'll be taking my surfboard if I let myself go!)

The launch of finditinsandwell.co.uk

On Friday we hosted the launch of http://www.finditinsandwell.co.uk/ in association with Sandwell council. Sir Digby Jones attended and encouraged the launch of such an innovative idea. The first Business to business website of its kind, where you can post business opportunities, find employees, find local suppliers and rate your suppliers by awarding them a star.

Ice Blue marketing and Design Ltd first met Sandwell council back in August 2007, none of us could have imagined at that time, the amount of hard work and dedication required to make the website a success. Not only did we plan, design, build and put the magic touch in to the website, we designed the graphics, designed and printed all the media from leaflets to flash presentations, co-ordinated the launch and invited all the guests.

The website built to encourage local procurement, has so far been a huge achievement with many local companies registering and posting great opportunities worth up to £1100,000.
Cant wait to see how the site develops over the next couple of months, and with Ice Blue in behind the driving seat i know the best is yet to come!

So Whats Next
We now intend to sell the advertising, improve the usability, and have developed a marketing strategy forward for the next twelve months, in association with Ian Jones From Illumini. Watch this space, enjoy the website and see how it develops!!!