Perfect Sandwiches
Mid-year review 2014
After almost 4 years in operation, this is the first official review of Perfect Sandwiches. It was decided that now is as good a time as any to start formally addressing possible issues, setting new targets and also celebrating success, which is precisely what we did at the final summer board meeting on Tuesday 22nd July.
We begin this review with great news of progress over the past few years. This is clearly demonstrated not only in the dramatic increase of page-views, as shown below in fig. 1, but also the continuous expansion into promising and exciting new fields of today and tomorrow.
Currently, Perfect Sandwiches is made up of a highly skilled team bearing extensive talents in a wide range of areas. The members of this fantastic team are our greatest assets, motivating and stimulating each other. It is mainly down to this attitude and high level of response that has fuelled our expansion from the main Gerry the Gerbil blog to the Book Blog in February of 2013 and, most recently, the launch of the Podcaast series in December of 2013.
I must confess that the first half of this year has been tough but necessary for all of us here at Perfect Sandwiches. After a gruelling training course, we returned on Monday 30th June with 'The Revival', which was very well-received by all. This included much improved punctuality of posting, especially for our popular section, 'Weekly News Round-Up'. Along with this, there was also the addition of new banners that reflect the latest issue of WNR, illustrated by the one and only Simon Wicks, our Head of Graphic Design. Due to 'The Revival' being incredibly recent still, we have only had a few weeks to trial this new system of posting WNR, however it has definitely proven that the operation is logistically manageable. The feedback received has been most positive and I think it would be fair to say that we could not have hoped for a better audience reaction.
Asie from WNR, our on-going Quote Weeks are still much-loved by readers, with some requesting for them to be even more frequent. We are flattered by this response, however, after much consideration, the decision was made to put aside this suggestion for now as it can often be difficult to accumulate resources for this fundamentally people-driven feature. For those who may be disappointed by this news, we hope you understand the current situation. After all, this topic could still be subject to change in the future.
Whilst the main blog has been active over the past few years, the Book Blog has made a promising start, however is currently lying dormant. This will be changing very soon as our plan is to transform this site into an all-round media blog, which will feature many upcoming projects, such as ConscienceSarah's as-yet-untitled Shtory, along with plenty of reviews and discussions. Our aim is to reboot this media space by September this year.
In conjunction with the blogs, we have succesfully set up our official YouTube channel, which has seen the first episodes of our Podcaast series. This has been a fantastic and thrilling opportunity for all of us as we are able to release content in a completely different way compared to our original platform. It has become apparent that viewers very much enjoy the content from this division of our organisation. Unfortunately, our Podcaasts were also put on hiatus during the training period, however is all set to return, reborn as 'Podcaasting 2.0'. We would like to consider this new initiative as somewhat revolutionary as it improves on many of the issues encountered in what now seems to have been the trial period of this project. Upgrades include better organisation of content, through different sub-series, and overall leading to a broader range of discussion points and topics.
From the board meeting, we have agreed that our primary goal for the second half of this year is to increase involvement of currently passive Sandwich Crew members. They are already vital support pillars, however there are many more areas where we can fully utilise their skills. I have full faith that they will respond positively to their new responsibilities as each of them are motivated by the hope that our organisation will continue to thrive, as well as the sheer joy of being involved in this team. As a result of this, we will be able to comfortable fuel the new media blog as well as generate Podcaast content. The active involvement of team members is essential to the success of these ventures.
Along with maintaining the quality and consistency of posts, we are confident that Perfect Sandwiches is well on its way to an even more glorious future. The prospect of further growth and improvement is exhilarating and most definitely worth striving for. This is what we will aim towards.
 |
| Fig. 1: All time page-views. Click to enlarge. |
No comments:
Post a Comment