Third PR company lucky?
In the past few months the charity project has been through more PR agencies than I've had hot dinners. Well, OK, three to be exact - and I like salad.
The first agency kept coming up with crazy ideas that were totally ridiculous. I think our charity concept is pretty unique and will sell itself, but these first guys were treating it like a car that needed to be launched with gimmicks. After several attempts they were ditched.
The second guys we approached responded to our request with a cautionary "we wont deal with you unless you spend xxxx". What a lovely intro - no thanks.
So, during a hectic day in London yesterday I met our latest agency, and I was very glad I took the time to meet them myself. We had a great chat (despite my poor throat still suffering after loosing my voice mid week) and I feel very confident that they understand what I am trying to do. Fingers crossed it's third time lucky!
Retail on the rise, corporate remains sluggish
I've noticed a slight upward trend in retail business over the past few weeks, and my GOD I hope it continues. Unfortunately this has been somewhat countered by a very sluggish Corporate environment.
April (and May for that matter) has always been a quiet month on the catering side - don't know why. We've done all the usual things - ie. phone clients to check for problems, but it just seems that meetings are pretty scarce this time of year.
A juggling act
I’ve had a really tough time over the past week. The first problem is that my little daughter seems to be a fly strip for any illness that’s going round at the nursery, and has a nice little trick of passing them directly to me. I’ve been sick, had a fever, been unable to move my neck, and have lost my voice all in 7 days.
Second, I’ve had some serious restaurant problems to resolve. At the moment I’m in fundraising mode, cashing in and redirecting funds left, right and centre. This is a true business skill – and one that any prospective businesses owner better get used to! Sales have remained lacklustre at our retail based shop – reflecting the trend of the past year. Leicester has become one big building site over the past few weeks because of a huge extension to the Shires shopping centre. Unfortunately the works have literally knocked down a couple of our major sources of customers, and has blocked access for others.
On the charity front I’m busier than ever gearing up for the launch. There’s still so much to do, but I actually feel like we’re slowly getting there. Version 1 of the application that will deliver the project is almost ready for testing, and is starting to look really good. The biggest areas of focus at the minute are sorting out our banking, and hooking up the donation systems. Internet merchant accounts are SO complicated. I also need to sort out the proper site hosting. A few companies I have been talking to have gone quiet which is making me uneasy.
Uneasy. That probably sums up my life.
A quiet Easter for Corporate Catering
I've seen the first quiet period for a long time in the corporate catering world. March was our strongest ever month, but the Easter Bunny effect has taken a bit out of the April figures. It remains to be seen whether the last week of the month will see a pickup.
Tag:
corporate catering
Recognising dyscalculia
Since my first post about dyscalulia I have seen a pretty big spike in traffic. My general perception is that there are a whole load of people that are just hearing about the condition and something is ringing true with them. Most of the posts on dyscalculiaforum are from people that have just heard the word for the first time and are delighted to hear that they are not alone.
So anyway, the result is that lots of people are searching for information about the disorder (let's not call it a disease people!). When I was diagnosed back in 2000ish there wasn't a mention of it on the internet. Even just a year ago all we had were the the official dyscalculia sites, those boring looking websites that are as inhuman as they get.
Today we have a few really good sites that should start tell the human stories behind the problem - he kind of information that is so readily available for dyslexia today. My hope is that this swell in public interest (demonstrated by my increase in website traffic) will make its way into schools - which is where a difference can really be made.
Tag:
dyscalculia
Mmm, Google Calendar
Crap. I've just started using Outlook again because I needed to impose more structure on my life. I'm becoming so busy that I've even started to schedule telephone calls in advance, so I've blown the dust off the Outlook calendar and have spent a week in blissful organisation. My PDA and Outlook have been working in perfect harmony, working with Gmail in the background as a perfect online email filter and storage device - perfect. But then Google Calendar is launched, and by all accounts it's excellent. Now I'm going to have to rethink my system! I know what you're thinking - don't fix what aint broke - but new Google toys are such fun! Damn Google.
http://www.google.com/calendar/
Living with dyscalculia
I was talking to a friend yesterday about dyscalculia, and how there are very few personal accounts of the problem available on the internet. They asked me whether I had written about it on my blog, and I realised I hadn’t.
As a quick intro, dyscalculia is a learning difficulty that affects mathematical ability. I’m no expert, so that might be slightly wrong, but I do know what it’s like to live with it.
In every other way I am a quick learner. I have good reading and writing ability, I am artistic and very creative. I’m a great problem solver, and don’t easily let thinks hold me back. But very early on in my life a contrast emerged. While I found other areas of learning quite easy, I had profound number blindness.
I have a total inability to mentally calculate. I have difficulty remembering numbers and, strangely, telling the time. Anyone who knows me will be familiar of my own particular brand of time telling (which I’ll elaborate on in a future post)!
I had just put it down to being bad at maths, but as I got older I started to wonder why it was that I couldn’t improve my mathematical ability. I’m the kind of person that loves self improvement. If I think I have a weakness I like to challenge it, but with numbers there’s a brick wall. Why was I the only person I knew that couldn’t remember a single telephone number?
Then, in a psychology seminar at university a lecturer mentioned dyscalculia. I immediately recognised the symptoms and contacted dyscalculia.org. I was very surprised to find out that I had an almost perfect case of the disorder.
Zero ability to mentally manipulate numbers (I can’t add 4 and 7 without fingers :)
Difficulty with time and schedules
Inability to retain abstract mathematical concepts
Poor name/face retrieval
Switching numbers
Like suffers of all learning difficulties I’ve learnt coping strategies. I always carry a calculator, have mastered the use of excel, and have a wonderful system for telling the time. I’m just lucky that I haven’t attached shame to the condition, like so many people do.
If you’re looking for more on the condition, start with
http://www.dyscalculia.org/. I’ll also be posting some more links as I find them, as well as going into some more detail about my daily confrontations with the problem.
Tag:
dyscalculia
Launch in sight
The reason for my two month absence has been the growing demands of the charity project and the huge impact it has been having on my life! There simply aren’t enough hours in the day…
Sorry to anyone that’s emailed me recently and is still awaiting a reply. Over the past couple of months there have been times when I’ve felt that this project was falling apart, and times when it has raced ahead. Now I can safely say that we are well on the way to the official launch on June 1st. Some of the support I have received has been extraordinary, so thank you to everyone who has rallied behind us.
We’re at an interesting point right now. More and more people are becoming aware of the project, whether it be through potential sponsors or the charities. The test website is receiving greater and greater levels of traffic which is a bit worrying as we have almost two months to go before official launch, and I’m getting increasingly nervous of a leak.
The main aims now are to get some of the funding in to the bank so that we can building up to the launch. Anyone who’s started a business or social project will know that turning theoretical funding into hard cash is one of the most difficult jobs of all!
