Archive for the ‘Charity’ Category

Byte Night a great success

October 6, 2008

This years Byte Night was certainly the biggest and early indications are that it will be the most successful yet raising even more than last year’s £400K total. It was also the coldest I can remember with the temperature down to 2 degrees so everyone earned their sponsorship money although it did stay dry for the night.

Once the photographs start coming through I’ll be posting proof that we were all there, in the meantime, here’s what early morning in central London looks like to Byte Nighters.

It’s not too late to donate even though the event is over so if you’re still interested in boosting the total further then simply click through to the Compound Media justgiving page.

Posted in Byte Night, Charity, Compound Media | Leave a Comment »

Byte Night 2008, bigger and better than ever

September 19, 2008

It’s that time of year again and October 3rd will see over 500 people sleeping out in locations around the country in aid of Byte Night. The largest event will be in London where we’ll once again be camping on the Mayor’s lawn on the banks of the Thames. This year, the Byte Night Local concept has spread to Reading, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester where local teams will also be braving the elements.

It’s the IT industry coming together to help combat youth homelessness and we’re once again proud to be the largest single fundraising event for Action for Children who recently re-branded from NCH.

It’s still not too late to join us if you want to take part in a great evening, alternatively, you could just sponsor me to be cold and wet for one night of the year.

Posted in Byte Night, Charity, Compound Media | Leave a Comment »

Your family site wins first award

July 9, 2008

APA logo

Well, how surprised were we last night when at the APA Creative Awards, the new Your family site beat the likes of Tesco and BA to the “Best landing page” award?

Very! that;s how…

Only a few weeks after launching the site, we’ve already won our first award which is great news and bodes well for the future.

The Redwood team were all very excited and much champagne was consumed with the added bonus that the NSPCC team were in attendance too to see the victory. The party went on until late and it’s fair to say that the office is quite subdued today although everyone is admiring the nice shiny trophy.

Posted in Charity, Compound Media | Leave a Comment »

New “Your Family” site live

July 3, 2008

Today we signed off the final bugs on our biggest project to date, launching a new parenting advice site for the NSPCC to supplement their “Your Family” magazine. It’s been a labour of love for sure (see my silicon.com column) and over a year in gestation but it’s live and working and looking great.

It’s a really clever mix of “Heat” styling but full of very high quality parenting advice all backed up by a team of experts at NSPCC. It’s a crowded market but the high level of trust endowed by the NSPCC brand should see us carve out a niche in the sector. We’ve got articles, videos, product reviews and loads of suggestions for family days out now that the summer is here.

Needless to say there are a large number of people to say thanks to for making my fist major site build a success. All the editorial and account management team at Redwood who write the content, NSPCC for the opportunity to do the project and the guys at Squiz who built the site on their open source MySource Matrix CMS.

In building the site we’ve invested heavily in the platform and hosting so that now we’re able to provide a fully hosted, enterprise level CMS. This is ideal for smaller publishers who want to get on-line without the expense of software licensing and hardware purchase. Look out for a further announcement about the launch of the “Compound Enterprise Platform” soon.

In the meantime, if your kids won’t eat their tea tonight or go to bed on time without a tantrum, take a look at www.yourfamily.org.uk and see where you’re going wrong…

Posted in Charity, Compound Media, Content management | Leave a Comment »

Byte Night update

December 4, 2007

Byte Night Board 2007Now all the beans have been counted and totals added up, the great news is that we broke the £400,000 barrier for monies raised by the participants of this year’s Byte Night event.

The most amazing thing of all is that with the dedication of the board, sponsors and NCH, the costs of staging the event worked out at less than 10% of the total.

Byte Night Local contributed around £40,000 with satellite events in Reading and Essex and we’ll be pushing hard to expand on this next year.

A big thanks to all the teams involved and we’re already looking forward to next year’s event so be sure to put the 3rd October in your diary now

Posted in Byte Night, Charity | Leave a Comment »

Byte Night breaks all records

October 15, 2007

Byte Night 2007This year’s Byte Night was the most successful yet with over £340,000 pounds raised by around 270 people from the IT industry sleeping out for the charity NCH.

We were in good company with Martin Linton, MP for Battersea, Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes, actresses Lindsey Coulson and Jenny Agutter, Trinny Woodall critiqued our pyjamas and Sian Lloyd provided a weather report on the evening.

As predicted by Sian, the weather was kind to us with no rain and a pretty mild night for October and the Compound Media team managed to raise more than £4,000 with a last minute surge in donations meaning we beat our target.

I want to say a big thank you to the team and to all our sponsors who gave so generously, we’re already planning how to raise even more next year…

Posted in Byte Night, Charity, Compound Media | Leave a Comment »

Compound Media sponsors top award

September 26, 2007

CNET Awards presentationOn monday night I was at the CNET Networks UK Business Technology Awards at the Hilton in Park Lane to present the award for the IT Services Technology Project of the Year. It was a close run thing between the top names in the banking sector with the eventual winners being ABN Amro for their London message hub project.

It was a very enjoyable evening hosted by John Simpson, the BBC foreign affairs correspondent who shared several “interesting” anecdotes from his times with such differing personalities as George Bush and Colonel Gadaffi who apparently always conducted interviews from a distance in fear of being assassinated (surely not by the BBC?).

It was the first time Compound Media has sponsored anything like this and it was great to see such a big turnout with over 600 guests at the event. We also raised over £4000 for Byte Night during the evening.

Posted in Byte Night, Charity, Compound Media, Events | Leave a Comment »

Byte Night Local on the radio

September 18, 2007

Jenny AgutterLast Friday I spent an enjoyable few hours locked in a small room with actress Jenny Agutter. Women of a certain age will remember her as the eldest daughter in “The Railway Children” but men of a similar age will remember her for the seminal film “Walkabout”. I clearly remember being taken to the local cinema on a school bus to see it when aged about 12. It was the first “Serious” film I ever saw and as such will always be clearly imprinted on my mind. Jenny is a long time supporter of NCH, the charity that that works to combat youth homelessness.

So imagine my excitement at being asked to represent the Byte Night Board at the recent “Radio Day” where Jenny and I were interviewed by 16 radio stations. We had a great time and had plenty of opportunity to plug not just the upcoming event in London but also a new initiative this year that lets people join in wherever they are based.

Mike BarrettByte Night Local means anybody can now participate in a great event. We’ve got a mini-Byte Night happening out in the UK Silicon Valley (OK, Reading!) and people sleeping in their gardens up and down the country.

If you want to join us, it’s not too late to sign up and spend a night under the stars on the 5th October. If that sounds like it might be too cold and wet for you then you could sponsor me, or, if you’re a man of a certain age then you might even like to sponsor Jenny.

Updated – Listen to an excerpt from the interviews here (3Mb)

Posted in Audio, Byte Night, Charity | 2 Comments »

Byte Night Local Launches

June 8, 2007

Byte Night LocalToday we launched the Byte Night and Byte Night Local campaigns with a press announcement about the events. We’ve been building the “Local” site for a few weeks now and it’s been an interesting project to say the least! We’ve had fantastic support from a whole range of very dedicated people who have provided their time and expertise for free.

Trying to manage the specification, design, HTML, coding, video production and hosting with people who are trying to do their day jobs in parallel has been extremely challenging. The problem is not with enthusiasm, knowledge or commitment, that was abundant, the challenge was coordinating the various components to fit in with everyone’s busy schedules. Unlike a project where all the resources are under your control, on this one, none of them were!

The finished site looks great, we’ve mashed up the best of Flickr, You Tube, Google Maps and powered the whole thing with the CNET Networks community platform to allow registration and blogging, this is Charity 2.0!

I’ve slept out for Byte Night for the last four years and it’s an amazing event that has raised over £1.5M for NCH, the children’s charity that helps homeless young people. As well as the London event, this year we’re launching “Byte Night Local” with the aim of recruiting 250 people to sleep out locally, in their gardens or company premises so that the experience isn’t restricted to the people who can make it into London. I’d encourage you to sign up and support a really good cause and experience a little of what the people we are trying to help have to endure every night of the year.

A big thanks must go to Rod for the original idea, Michael, Jess, Belinda and the team at Banner who created the original designs and much of the copy. At CNET, to David for the HTML coding, Piete for the tech work, Tim and Simon for the hosting set-up and Chris for the video production.

Finally, Suzie at CNET for supporting the project, Sam and Louisa at NCH and Kath at Lewis PR for testing, copy and moral support through the whole process. It’s been a great experience and a true team effort. Everyone gave generously of their time which ultimately means that even more of the money we raise goes directly to the people who need it most.

Thank you to everyone, sorry if I missed anybody. See you on the 5th October, let’s hope it doesn’t rain!

Posted in Blogging, Byte Night, Charity, Social Media, Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment »