Posted on November 10, 2011 by Namuli Katumba
This Movember, Ultraspeed’s Talk Digital series is bringing you the wonderful duo of Charlotte Appleton, Creative Director of Cora Media and Yara Gherwati, Cora Media’s Campaign Project Director for Not-For-Profits.
In 2008 Charlotte began helping charities, first in the Caribbean and then in New York, to gain exposure and raise funds through various multimedia techniques. She combines video, editing and photography to represent and promote charitable activity in a moving, accessible way that perfectly suits modern digital delivery methods.
These experiences have led to Cora Media establishing teams in London and the UK, within non-profit communication.
Yara is a trained Jungle Survival expert and has worked on numerous projects in South-East Asia. A regular campaigner for global human rights and environmental issues, Yara also leads workshops at universities on topics such as the tar sands and deforestation. She brings a unique perspective to campaigns and a wealth of international experience to Cora Media’s not-for-profit division.
Cora Media combine media tools to creatively tell a charity’s story: its purpose, past triumphs and aims, as well as emphasising how urgently it needs further awareness and funding.
They are pioneers of digital technology for media delivery formats such as podcasts and webcasting, and using these methods their campaigns have been able to reach international audiences.
Some of Cora Media’s projects include:
*The BBC World Service Trust
*Street Games (The Co-operative)
*The Jason Roberts Foundation
*The Chris Samba Foundation
*REACH Grenada
*Reach and Teach (Midnight Madness)
*Don’t Lose the Music (RNID)
*Race for Life (Funny Women)
*The Liverpool Legends charity activity.
With more competition and – arguably – shorter attention spans, it’s essential to be heard in innovative new ways. Hearing about Charlotte and Yara’s experiences with different charities, and their advice on how best to deploy video digitally, should prove extremely helpful for a charity striving to make work that stands out.
Join us on the 22nd of November at 6:30 pm at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden. As usual the drinks and food are on Ultraspeed – just bring yourself and your questions (and your Movember Mustaches). Please RSVP as spaces are limited to our LinkedIn group.
Posted on November 3, 2011 by Ali Cochran
So I’ve been playing around with Google Page Speed performance testing tool; already I can feel your interest draining away, where’s the fast, where’s the sexy? I imagine you asking…
Well, number 1: I am a nerd, so tough it out, and number 2: speed is important and yes, some people might have sexier lives but give me a new online tool and I am officially the happiest girl in the world. So when Google released Page Speed from Google Labs and into my bumbling hands, I was very occupied with testing everything in sight for days. Much to the amusement of my web developer of course who ended up with an itemised list of need-to-haves and nice-to-haves (we’re friends, honest).
Now there are numerous development-based reasons for a website loading slowly. However, during particularly ‘load-heavy’ periods a site often slows down quite substantially. Excellent coding can create a robust site that will withstand heavy traffic surges and ensure you maximize revenue in the boom, BUT a solid infrastructure behind it is equally important.
Like Yin & Yang, having both can enable a ‘perfect’ (or close to) web experience for each web user. Working at a managed hosting company but in marketing I get to see how both contribute. Why is this important?
Continue Reading →
Posted on September 22, 2011 by David Thomas
During a recent conversation my friend told me that he thought of the Internet (capitalized because it is a place – have you noticed?) as a living, magic realist world. He is a bit complicated sometimes but I know what he meant. Beneath the riddle, what my male friend Pam was talking about was stories.
That is why Pam is my friend: because we both love stories most of all.
We read stories written in all kinds of styles but have a soft spot for sci-fi and magic realism. For imaginative stories, is how I usually put it.
Once upon a time the book was the snazziest communication technology used to tell stories, and authors crafted them on paper. They invented and deconstructed ways of writing stories, and they themselves were authors, working in the age of the book, so they were writers.
But now, means Pam, we are in the digital age – and our equivalents of those old magic realists (such as Borges – Pam’s and lots of folks’ favourite) are not necessarily writers. Nowadays they are either developers or they work with developers.
Continue Reading →
Posted on August 26, 2011 by Ali Cochran
Outsourcing can be a pain.
You can’t confidently say that this new ‘department’ will be as mindful of the company’s concerns as you are. Can they do a better job? Really? How do you monitor them effectively? What are they doing when you can’t see them?
I realise this is heading into OCD territory, but for a perfectionist like me life often goes that way. Relinquishing control of anything can be a drawn out, controversial process. Even so, there are many reasons to outsource.
Economies of scale, for example.
It’s more efficient for a dedicated team to perform a duty for multiple clients; they have a high level of expertise (hopefully) in that one area you may not have been able to develop internally. You can also offload activities that aren’t essential to your core actions, thereby, freeing you up to focus on the essentials and driving your main business forward.
So how do we reconcile these concerns with the benefits? There are numerous ways of managing outsourcing and a method that works for one firm may not suit another – I’m just going to share a few points that work for me:
Continue Reading →
Posted on August 19, 2011 by Lucy
Due to easy access, individuals spend on average a quarter of their day on the internet. With this in mind and due to the pressures of the recession, the Third Sector is increasingly moving to use online channels. Evidence of this move is shown by the release of an advisory eBook titled Survive and Thrive. With the aid of case studies, the booklet details the benefits the internet can bring to charities. For example it can cut costs, raise more money (the average online donation is £30 compared to the average offline donation of £15), build communities, increase charities’ reach and demonstrate impact.
Continue Reading →
Posted on August 11, 2011 by Ali Cochran
Hello All,
We are happy to say that today we will be moving into some shiny new offices. Not to worry, pictures will be soon to follow. However, in the meantime it will still be business as usual of course and we still have all our old phone numbers.
Our new address is:
Ultraspeed
118 Commercial Street
London
E1 6NF
As usual you are all more than welcome to visit and have a pot of tea in our new kitchen!
Marketing-in-a-Box anyone?
Phones packed? Check! Marketing? Check!
Posted on July 28, 2011 by Namuli Katumba
With the news looking glum for some high-street and traditional offline retailers, E-Commerce is reaping rewards with growing employment opportunities, the increasing consumer confidence that they will find ‘the best deals’ online and more and more developers jumping on the bandwagon to provide new and improved tools for the industry.
To that end, attention is being turned to how to ensure that E-Commerce platforms are going to be able to reach the new business goals that are now available to them, as well as consistently providing a new, unique, amazing user experience to all and sundry. I in fact, read a great article recently geared exactly towards this but warning of the pitfalls of not managing your platform expansion project without due care.
This post from Get Elastic goes through the ten most common mistakes that teams can make when trying to undertake a rapid re-platforming project before accurately identifying existing or potential problems, requirements and goals. In response to this list, I thought I would offer some nuggets of advice with regards to making sure that the E-Commerce infrastructure is also up to scratch when avoiding such mistakes:
Continue Reading →
Posted on July 21, 2011 by David Thomas
This blogpost about infographics was going to be about how modern humans cannot process pure data anymore, and must be greedier than ever for information because we glut on adverts and other entertainment media. This is not completely true. Just because we have the internet does not mean we live in more interested times.
Originally this blogpost started like this, ‘At the heart of an infographic there needs to be pure data. The rest is its fancy robes that make the data look sexy. We even need our data to be sexy these days.’
But I was wrong – data has always been sexy. Look online (or below this sentence) and you will find the Victorians, with their fetish for geology and the natural world, used many of the same methods as we do to show information.
Continue Reading →
Posted on July 13, 2011 by Ali Cochran
We love our Jack’s Place digs but unfortunately we are starting to touch elbows. So we’ve got a new place! It’s a little rough around the edges but Tina Bernstein from Colourliving is kindly sorting that out for us.
One of the new toys the office is currently playing with is Microsoft’s Photosynth – so here’s the before photo in all it’s glory…and see how many Richards you can spot? It’s our own version of Where’s Wally.
Moving date is set for early August and we’re only down the road from our original home so please do come and drop by for a cup of tea.
You can expect an ‘After’ photo this August!
Posted on June 30, 2011 by Ali Cochran
After 4 years in England I’m pretty used to conversations along the lines of “Canadian? So, um, seen any bears?” or “Do you know my cousin/friend/acquaintance named Bob/Fred/Kevin Smith in Toronto/New Brunswick/Canada-but-I-can’t-remember-the-city”, or this one VERY random moment: “what is your opinion on the pinewood beetle epidemic?”….sorry?!
The fact is that to most people I meet Canada is a wispy concept involving the scent of trees, cold, snow and the odd bear/beaver chucked in (with a sprinkling of hockey obsession of course).
So when I announced that it was going to be Canada Day on Friday – the tumbleweed that blew through the office convinced me that people needed a little guide to help them cope with the Red & White madness that will soon be occurring in Trafalgar Square.
Continue Reading →
