Showing posts with label scotland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scotland. Show all posts

Sunday 18 August 2013

Big Bang and Balls

Assisting Dumfries Rugby Club with their transition to a new website so that the secretary and club members charged with keeping the information up to date have a more streamlined system (wordpress, typically) to make things easier. The nature of sport clubs means there are considerations on how scheduled future information is managed ('fixtures') but it also has to be easy for ordinary users to enter and update the information as required.



One of the longer term time-savers is the built in wordpress media library which removes multi-stage media upload processes from earlier content management systems.

Incidentally, what's the latest on the webmaker movement as it is happening in Scotland (North West) as per https://webmaker.org/events/202

Saturday 29 October 2011

Don't Milk Dead Cows (Cashing In On Scottish Culture)

This project is NOT being part-financed by the Scottish government, the European Community, Dumfries and Galloway Leader programme, Dumfries and Galloway Council, Scottish Natural Heritage, etc.



The last thing visitors should see in Dumfries and Galloway is a herd of dying white elephants roaming around the region. If these "cultural" projects were children, Dumfries and Galloway agencies would be guilty of neglect and for failing to give their offspring the tools and skills required for long-term survival and independence.

Knee-jerk reactionaries chasing the magical mystery funding train in order to stave off the inevitable end of a delusion should not be continually rewarded. Sometimes the harder path is to actually produce something through organised work, and to try and maintain those things for the benefit of the many. Even if it means taking a punch on the nose when it goes wrong. Scotland has a reputation for creative musicians, artists and wordsmiths (and people who punch people on the nose). It also has a recent history of manufacturing and production. What is being added to this today?

There seems to be a new Scottish culture set to stifle the progress of the Scottish person: talking shops, big boards, planning committees and partnership agencies, funding vehicles, quangos, and channels for laundering tax-payers' money to trickle it back down to the public after the Directors' cut.

But only for those who can convince the purse-string holders they can bring visitors to Scotland that will line private pockets. The amount of time, energy, talk and money spent on encouraging people who don't already live here to come here and spend money, or start businesses, is in direct contrast to the growing droves of young people who need to leave to find a life opportunity and whose paths are beset on all sides.

How does this serve the long-term future of the people of Scotland and tomorrow's legacy? Concentrate on building an ongoing legacy today. You don't get good milk from a dead cow.

O to live the lives of others
Hands that quickly seize the day
The greatest clearly move in circles
Oblivious they hurtle
Move out of their way

(M. Campbell, circa 1999)

Thursday 17 December 2009

Sleigh bells ringing

Looking forward to the new year at Callisti - a number of new projects to get stuck into and we're pleased to say our customers have been enjoying a good year. We have a new ecommerce site about to launch but the news of the day is surely the performance of Sledges, the Aviemore based retailer, since we organised professional DotNetNuke hosting and updated the site to a more stable version.

Traffic and sales are escalating wildly, even just the mention of snow on a UK weather forecast has an impact on visitors to the site, and this month online sales have hit a record high in the website's history. The month's not over yet but there may be a tail-off as the last order cut-off for Christmas 2009 delivery approaches.

Historically the sales and visitors rise again in the new year as demand for sledges is very much winter weather dependent and Scotland won't be short of that in the coming months.

Friday 15 May 2009

All things Burns

The arts festival in Dumfries and Galloway kicks off on the 22nd May with a group of events celebrating the life and work of Robert Burns who died (and is buried) in Dumfries.

A lot of the press releases from the Arts Festival are picking up on the (debatable) VisitScotland 'Homecoming Scotland' tourism strategy which celebrates the 250th birthday of the Bard.

Tickets for the events can now be bought online at the festival website who recently advertised on the local ITV television channel...

Monday 23 March 2009

Holiday Cottages in Galloway

Another loverly self catering holiday cottage provider in Galloway joined the Callisti group recently and will enjoy a speedier and helpful website service that they weren't getting from their last provider.

The restored Victorian cottages on the Galloway estate feature enclosed gardens and stable courtyards. You can check availability online and use the booking enquiry system to contact the estate for a holiday in the South West of Scotland.

A domain transfer that could have taken minutes was stretched out over about 5 weeks as mysterious invoices suddenly appeared, confusing hosting charges were quoted, and a general poor response to support requests was noted. Not to worry - karma and all that...

Monday 5 January 2009

Arts Festival publicity

Homecoming year for Scotland based on Robert Burns and the number 250 means that publicity for events in Dumfries and Galloway region will be tied into this initiative to some extent.

I guess the pound is weak so Scotland is as attractive a place as any for non-UK visitors, especially ex-pat Scots looking for a reason to return to the homeland.

That aside, the site has had some updates and now validates properly. The big Christmas pagerank bonus also saw the dgartsfestival blog site get a cheeky 2.

Thursday 13 November 2008

Bat Surveys

This is a whole new world of activity for a desk jockey like me.

Stuart Spray Wildlife consultancy have recently launched their new website informing of their bat surveys, tree surveys and habitat surveys - all part of the range of wildlife consultancy services they offer.

They cover the UK but most of their work is in Southern Scotland (Dumfries and Galloway) and the North of England (Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria)

Friday 31 October 2008

Crichton developments

Callisti has recently been active in Chamber of Commerce events and has met with the Crichton Development Company as a spin off to this.

There are a lot of events and initiatives planned for 2009 in Scotland with the Homecoming experience. This should attract media promotion at a national and international level and encourage many Scots to return to their homeland for a time.

Naturally this will have spin-off opportunities for businesses and services all over Scotland.

Saturday 4 October 2008

Mountain biking

2009 will herald the World Mountain Bike Conference in Dumfries and Galloway so there will be a strong influence on the activities and visitors to the region in the coming year. This is the first time the event has been held outwith USA so it has significance.

We were in contact with Trailbrakes, a mountain biking holiday provider in the region who are now extending the range of their biking trips to Morocco as well as within the region (and of course the famous 7 stanes course at various points in Southern Scotland.)

I'm sure mountain biking awareness will increase tenfold and we welcome this positive influx to Scotland.

Thursday 4 September 2008

SEO on many levels

I spent some of this afternoon thinking about sheep. Not because I'm surrounded by Scotland. The latest client has a number of web sites and the latest online presence is for pedigree Suffolk sheep.

There are some interesting facts to be found when researching for writing web-copy, and it wasn't something I could have predicted last week. Still, trawling through the DEFRA website for information on MV and Scrapie had it's neuronal pleasures...

Some kind of rural filmscape theme was trying to tie itself together in my head since the morning phone call from a travelling developer, wandering wild in hills near Keswick.