We have a new addition to the Ellis clan, who we’re currently training up to do a little bit of HTML in between chasing balls and small children and snoozing on the sofa when he thinks that nobody is looking. He’s called Bob and is Thirty8 Digital’s much longed for office dog.

We totally blame Bath Half organisers Mel and Andrew for our foray into dog ownership. Their lovely dog Poppy is always around when we visit them down at Bath Half HQ and made us realise how nice an office dog would be.

Bob has been my constant companion for the last two weeks and is a very good reason to take a break from the computer and get some fresh air every so often.

As well as blaming Mel and Andrew for our dog, we can also blame them for keeping us very busy over the last few months too. We have loved being part of the Bath Half gang, who are a brilliant and inspirational bunch.

Our work has included helping them with their digital strategy, managing their social media channels and writing copy for their newsletters and blog posts. We also built them a mobile version of their website for race day.

We were thrilled to be part of the team on race day. The Bath Half really is a  spectacular event and we’re really proud to have been involved in it although Mike missed the actual running of it!

March also saw the culmination of a rather gargantuan piece of work from Mike – Bath’s first ever Digital Festival. Working as the festival’s Creative Director, Mike, and an amazing gang of other talented folk, brought together an array of events which showcased Bath’s thriving digital scene. You can see the fruits of his labour on the Bath Digital Festival website.

Away from Bath we  were commissioned by destination marketing consultants, Blue Sail, to deliver the digital strand of a large piece of consultancy for a the South West Museums Regional Hub. We have very much enjoyed working back on home territory - in the Museums sector.

Our work has been wide ranging and has included devising a digital strategy roadmap,  wire-framing for a new website, editing web content, delivering a workshop with a hub museum and  its partners to scope an extensive digital project, advice on digital marketing as well as critiquing current web presences. It’s been a brilliantly varied project and we’ve loved helping people think about their presence on the web.

The consultancy and content work has meant we’ve had a little mini-break from web builds, something that we both needed after all the sites that we built in 2011! So with our web-building brains refreshed, we’re back into site build mode now and are about to begin work on a brand new web presence for a new organisation called the Home Owners Alliance.  This week we’ll be working on site maps and wire-framing before the fantastic Genevieve GemSquash works her design magic.

And in between all of that I will be juggling evaluation reports, holidaying small boys and a dog called Bob.

More soon,

Rachel

Thirty8 Digital, our newest baby; conceived earlier this year, and born at the beginning of July, has been keeping us very, very busy.

Minus the sleepless nights, our experience of setting up on our own has, rather strangely, been a little bit like becoming parents again.

We were nervous at first, when we started out. We wondered whether we’d miss our life before, when kindly employers popped some money in our bank account at the end of each month. We wondered whether we were getting things right and making the right decisions. And then, when the offers of work kept coming in, we worried, a little, about whether we’d get a moment of rest ever again.

And we still, like all new parents, hold a teeny, tiny bit of our breath, wondering what the future will bring. We hope for Thirty8 Digital that the future will continue to have lots of lovely clients in it.

Our ‘who we work with’ pages have been updated with details of some of projects we’ve been doing lately. Please do have a look.

We’ve sent three sites live in the last week, and another two will go live this week (phew!). We’re enjoying working with some very talented Bath folk, namely Genevieve Tarboton (Mrs Gemsquash), Joel Mitchell (Mr Gemsquash), Lou Abercrombie and Chris Day. To carry on the parenting theme of this post, it seems that we know all of these people through our children!

So the next few weeks will see fewer websites launch as we go back to the start of the process with some new clients whose websites will mainly go live in the new year.  Mike has some training days and workshops planned in over the coming weeks – he’ll be speaking to attendees of the  Arts Council Wales Marketing Symposium later this week.

Oh, and I am busy researching a winter sun break, which I think may be required by January!

More soon,

Rach

We’ve been overwhelmed by the kind words and warm wishes from so many people and we’re even more overwhelmed by the requests from inspiring and creative folk, and organisations, who seem to want to work with us.

We’re delighted to be creating websites for two wonderful festivals which take place in our fine city of Bath – Bath Film Festival, and Illuminate Bath.

We’re also working with some clever folk at the University of Glasgow and a hugely talented Bath-based animator Chris Day on a great little digital project about the Big Society.

And this week we’ve beavering away on a new site for a Wiltshire based organisation that runs singing groups and events.

Amongst all that, Mike headed off to Newcastle a couple of weeks ago to give a day long workshop to 50 arts marketing professionals on social media at the very, very nice Tyneside Cinema. The day was organised by Audiences North East and apparently the boy went down a storm. I’ll pester him to get some slides up on Slide Share soon.

More soon,

Rachel

As you’ll see from our who we work with pages, we have been crazily busy over the last few weeks, working lots and lots of evenings to get our little business off the ground.

Tomorrow Mike and I begin our new existence as full time self employed people and can finally work with our lovely clients during daylight hours.

Tomorrow, Mike will begin some consulting work with the excellent people at Storm Consulting and he’ll also, if the sun keeps shining, be taking our eldest boy to his first twenty20 cricket match in the evening.

On Wednesday afternoon Mike will be travelling to my home turf, the north-east, where he’ll be delivering a workshop to 50 arts professionals who are keen to learn more about managing their social media presence. The day has been organised by Audiences North East, who we are delighted to be working with.

I’ll be keeping the home fires burning and working on some content for some of our clients, whose websites are starting to come together. We’ve also just won a new piece of business today for a small, local firm who are starting from scratch in the world of web. Exciting!

More soon,

Rachel