A day in the life...

Scary stuff this morning.  The whole company had a fire safety and terrorism briefing, andwhen someone outlines the number of conferences they've been asked to, and the specific threat to Ministry of Sound, suddenly it all feels a little closer to home.

On a more positive note, I'm pleased to be working in an environment where one of the design team feels sufficiently comfortable to be able to come to work in her nightie... 

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.

Casuals forever!

Wednesday night saw the inaugural session of the Chiswick Casuals Cinema Club, aka some of the Saturday 5-a-side boys going to see films that our wives won't want to see with us (no, not that type of film - we saw The Damned United).

I haven't written very much about Chiswick Casuals on this blog, but playing 5-a-side in Chiswick every Saturday is a huge part of my life, and I think it's the same for most of us. The Casuals started over 25 years ago, and a surprising number of the original members are still playing - I played my first game in 1982 or 1983.

It started off as a chance for a game of footie each weekend, and reached a new level when we went to Boulogne for our first tour in 1999, which set the benchmark for all future trips. Anyway, the millenium tour* was the first of many; the Casuals have since graced Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Tavistock, Ibiza (twice), Cornwall and Limerick (twice) with our presence.

Then there's Abergavenny; home of the biggest mouth in Wales outside of Charlotte Church. The almost annual trip down to the town of 'Mountains, Markets and More' (I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at that pitch) is something that we all look forward to and always enjoy thanks to the wonderful hospitality of Pete and his friends - well most of them anyway. I do remember receiving a particularly warm welcome (ie a good kicking) from Sean in our first game there.

Anyway, the point is that the Casuals is now much more than a weekly game of footie. It's now a group of close friends that are able to rely on football to keep us together. But as we get older, the injuries happen more often, and take longer to get over when they do. As I write this I'm sitting with ice packs on my thigh and calf from yesterday's game. And although it's difficult to contemplate, there will be a day - many years from now - when we might not play.

So the non-football activities are becoming more important.

There are annual awards dinners of course. There have been a few games of golf. We've managed a couple of ski trips. And we do just meet socially from time to time. But I think the cinema club is the way to go - on Wednesday we talked about other things we could do including wine tasting and walking - I'm sure someone mentioned flower arranging but maybe I misheard. Why not a political society? I'm sure most of us would rally around a 'Parker for Parliament' campaign. Or a zonal marking masterclass hosted by Barry Stanton.

The point is - like traditional media, advertising and the music industries - The Casuals have to evolve to survive. I'm more confident of our survival than theirs, but that's another story.

*PS: They say what happens on tour stays on tour, and of course it should, but the words 'Soapy' and 'Judas' will forever be interchangeable...

Spain

Wenge and I went to Madrid for a long weekend to celebrate her birthday. It's one of the places that's been on our list for a while and in the end it was a choice between there and Seville with the lure of the capital proving too strong.

I won't bore you with the details, but highlights were a couple of excellent meals in the Teatro and Latina areas, some glorious weather for Thursday and Friday at least, and the chance to see Picasso's amazing Guernica, created in response to the Nazi bombing of the town in support of Franco. It's made me want to read up on the Spanish civil war.

A walk in the Retiro park was also a treat.

In truth, both Wendy and I were a little disappointed in Madrid. We had a good time, and enjoyed it, but not as much as either Barcelona or Bilbao (sorry Ana). Maybe it's just the scale that means everything is spread out; maybe it's because it's a big, working city; maybe it's just too far from the coast...

Anyway, it's back to work now with a vengeance. We're in UAT for the relaunch of the ministry of sound site next week, and although things have been going pretty well so far, a major panic is only ever just over the hill. For a number of reasons it's critical that I get the site successfully launched next week.

A new acquisition marketing person has joined the ecommerce team, which has unfortunately meant I've had to move to a new desk space away from the team. Shame but I decided to hot-desk up in the dev area today, coinciding with another casting session just below me once again, the glass filleth...

Faintly ridiculous

I'm often intrigued - well, amused might be a better description - by both people and organisations who are up themselves. I was at a launch party tonight for a new digital media recruitment company at Milk and Honey, a private members' club in Poland Street. An unusual name, although there's nothing wrong with that. 

What is wrong is that the toilets don't have the normal, some might think quaint, signposts that help visitors to find the right facility for their gender. No, this place has to have its uber-trendy lavs labelled either milk or honey. No, I don't get it either. All I know is that I was readying my excuses in milk, or honey, whichever I used.

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...

Words

Went up to Borough Market at lunchtime on Friday with a crew (or was it a gang?) from MoS.

So we're enjoying some amazing steak sandwiches, with mustard that has been known to produce a nosebleed, and someone talks about meeting later - at the normal place. "The Normington?", asked another who hadn't quite heard. And there you have it: how words come about and language evolves. From this point on, The Normington will be a euphemism for 'the normal meeting place', wherever that might be. I urge you to use it in your own daily lives, and to report back on your success.  In fact, if we all make a real effort we can cement its place in the English language.

It's not the first time I've been involved in the birth of a new word, although the previous time the circumstances were very different. I was dreaming that I was in Brent Cross shopping centre, and (to cut a long story short) became embroiled in an argument with Billy Connolly who was shouting down at me from a first floor balcony.

As the argument continued, BC left his balcony and opened a door on the ground floor. He looked me in the eye and said, "why don't you just daepissit?" if you don't believe that's a word, I have a copy of an Elvis Love Songs album released by Pickwick when I was in charge of marketing there. On the back of the sleeve, is clearly, if too subtly for anyone checking it to notice, written the word daepissit. Does that constitute common usage? I'm not sure. It meant I had to pay out my bet with the Art Director though.

I think my explanation of how someone can be comfortable with their own mustarduality will have to wait for another time...