Well we are almost there!  As part of ‘populating’ the new Jewellery Quarter site for the ‘soft’ launch I have been asked to do a blog.  Thanks to the chaps at 383, (who are doing a great job on setting up the site), I am increasing my language of ‘geek speak’ – not bad for somebody who doesn’t have a computer on his desk.

My excuse for this is that as a Birmingham City Council outpost, our computers can be a bit temperamental and anyway as Operations Director I am not paid good money to type one or two fingered because, at that rate I’d never get anything done!  So whilst I have a Hotmail account at home, at work I let somebody else access my e-mails.  I then write my emails and reports long handed or using a Dictaphone for my team to send!  Somebody once told me that Bill Gates never had a computer on his desk and maybe that’s a myth but it will certainly do for me!

In terms of a ‘blog’, as I understand it, it is a geeky term for a virtual diary so once every couple of weeks I intend to give an insight into both the Jewellery Quarter and the work of my team- interesting, challenging and often frustrating but ultimately very worth while.

We are determined to make our Jewellery Quarter site state of the art and informative- already I think we must have compiled over 100 separate pieces of text with more to come.  For years the only information on the internet has been a half baked section on the Quarter on the City Council website (and that’s my fault).  Alternatively a few commercial ‘get rich quick’ merchants have tried to do sites with fairly uninspiring generic tourism material and information on a few shops, which they have cajoled into joining.  Hopefully we will now have a site that befits this unique Quarter and acts as a catalyst to encourage more visitors.  I feel that a comprehensive site is so vital to the area’s economy that I intend to allocate a day a week for one member of my team to ensure that it’s up to date.  Contact is Claire Hill on 0121 464 7016. 

Incidentally, the funding of this site is through the support of Marketing Birmingham’s European Funding and thanks must go to them for making the resources available backed up by ‘match’ from both the local businesses through the Jewellery Quarter Marketing Initiative and the City Council through our Regeneration Team.

Any comments on the site will be gratefully received before our formal launch at the end of September and these should be addressed to myself at andy_munro@birmingham.gov.uk or Claire Hill at claire.hill@birmingham.gov.uk. 

And in case you are wondering, this blog was written longhand!