A Hed of the game

We finally launched the all-new www.hedkandi.com on Thursday.  Just as with the Ministry of Sound relaunch in April, this was a race against time, and it was a relief to get it launched with no significant problems.

I remember when I used to work in live events, there was so much adrenaline involved that when each event was finally over we used to need a period of cooling down before we moved on to the next project.

That's what it's been since Thursday - a bit flat. Not helped, of course, by an epic celebration with the team on Thursday night which ended with me falling asleep on the Piccadilly Line and ending up in Southate at around 1.00 am.  Friday was a day of recovery.

The weekend was pretty sh#t.  I had an injury that prevented me playing football on Saturday, so after a double session with my osteopath, Wenge and I drove out to Abingdon.  Not much there, although we did see Helena Bonham Carter shopping.  Yesterday was just a day of doing nothing, and getting frustrated by not doing what I had planned to do.  One highlight, though, was watching 'The Butterfly Effect' on Friday night.  A very clever film - the first time I've seen Ashton Kutcher acting - that keeps you on edge right to the end.  And I finished Season 3 of The Wire.

This week I have a couple of meetings with recruiters, and a proper interview, so along with planning a development schedule for Ministry of Sound I should be pretty busy. My challenge, though, is to break the in-early, leave-late cycle that I've fallen into while working on Hed Kandi. 

Oh, and it would be nice to see some sun again...

Here comes the weekend...

With the launch of hedkandi.com just a week away, it's good to have Lee beside me at Ministry of Sound for the week to manage testing. After recent events, the last thing I need is to launch a site with any undiscovered bugs (although, I suppose if they went undiscovered until September it wouldn't hurt that much... only joking - I'm a pro, remember?)

And Lee provided the good news story of the week. A call on Wednesday afternoon, interview on Thursday morning and starts work next Thursday at the world's most famous department store. They're going to become even more famous when Lee gets his teeth into the website.

A sunny weekend is forecast so that means plenty of barbie action.  I'm picking James up at the end of his first year at Uni on Saturday, and if I'm very lucky will get to meet his hot new girlfriend.  

And of course it's Rangers v Falkirk in the Scottish Cup Final.  Football's truly coming home...

Mission accomplished (part 1)

I'm so glad it's a long Easter weekend, because I need to relax and reboot after an intense week.

When I joined Ministry of Sound the main part of the brief was to create a new website for Hed Kandi. I started talking to everyone and writing a requirements document that I was going to use to manage Trinity Street, Ministry's ecommerce partner.

On Friday February 13 (funny that) Trinity Street went into administration and the main Ministry of Sound website disappeared with them. That changed the focus somewhat.

Rudy, nothing if not bold, moved quickly to hire the development team from Trinity Street that had worked on Ministry, and they started here on February 23. The team and I were given until this week to build an ecommerce platform and resurrect the website - oh, and there were a few additional requirements too, like a new blogging area.

You do the math. Seven weeks to build a new ecommerce platform and launch a website with full transactional capability including physical products, tickets and downloads.

But we did it, thanks to an amazing development team that not only really know their stuff but are a great bunch of guys to work with - open, communicative and responsive (compare and contrast...).

The site is obviously not as sophisticated as the zavvi site, but it looks great, it works (give or take a few snagging issues) and I'm going to reward myself with a work-free weekend - before starting on phase 2 next week.

Opinions

I've just come out of a meeting with a design agency, going through the design brief for the new Hed Kandi site. Imagine the agency team's reaction when Rudy said:

Opinions are like arseholes. We're paying for your arseholes and we're going to use them.

It moved the meeting along, I can tell you...

Kandi girls

Part of my role here is redesigning and relaunching a website for Hed Kandi. Among the creative ideas that have been expressed is the use of Hed Kandi's iconic Kandi girls as virtual guides to the new site.

Sadly, it seems that the Kandi girls have already found work elsewhere...