June 2023 – What We’ve Been Up To

Wayne

Taking a bite out of the Big Apple.

It’s been a little while since our last monthly update, but we’re back now with plenty to update you with and new people to hear from!

There’s only one place to start and that has to be with the growth of the team since our last update. We’ve added three new people to our team, each bringing their own character and experience. Our website development team has been bolstered considerably, adding a combined 15 years’ of experience. With that, we’ve seen fresh ideas and new approaches which have really increased productivity.

Over the past 18 months, I’ve worked hard on the structure of the company which is getting closer to my goal. I’m sure fellow business owners will join me in saying that recruitment is one of the most difficult challenges of running a business. It can be a long and frustrating process, but it sure is rewarding when new recruits buy into the company’s vision and instantly get more out of existing employees.

We’ve had a few trips out to help build relationships away from the studio. The highlight was enjoying the little bit of summer we’ve had so far, with a walk through Valley Gardens and some pizza, who doesn’t like pizza right?

Speaking of pizza, the wife & I visited New York for the first time last month. As a foodie I made the most of the options, starting off with a pizza, meatballs, and chicken wings as my first meal, what a way to start! It took just a couple of days to realise that New York is the junk food capital of the world, and as someone who is fairly careful with what I eat, I quickly missed the Mediterranean food I love so much on holidays. (Roll on September for tapas and paella…)

We enjoyed all of the big tourist attractions including the 9/11 guided tour, Top Of The Rock, Brooklyn Bridge, watching baseball, as well as geeking out at the Nintendo shop, Lego shop, and the Ghostbusters building. China Town and Little Italy were also good to explore. We had amazing weather for six days, but then on the seventh day just 30 minutes before we were due to go up the Empire State, the blue skies turned grey and filled with lightning, so we’ll save that for next time.

Away from the tourist traps, our actual favourite thing to do was walk around the quitter districts such as Chelsea and DUMBO, which we did very early due to the time difference. The real highlight was the MJ musical; the performance and the atmosphere were incredible, and a special shout out to ‘Frankie Legs’, a great little guy who took us on an informative and hilarious trip around Central Park.

A trip to New York was sandwiched between a few days in Brussels for my brother’s stag do, and the wedding which was a great day of celebrating him and his lovely wife, and my now sister-in-law.

There’s been so much more happening since the last monthly update but that’s a wrap for now. I’m terrible for taking pictures because I prefer to walk around with my phone in my pocket, so I’ll leave you with just a few from our trip to New York…

Andrew

Avast me hearties!

My friends and I finally got down to London where we went down the markets and I did some wine tasting. Most importantly, we saw the HMS Belfast. This was better than I expected. My first thoughts were that we would spend half an hour on the ship because most of it will be closed for safety. Instead, nothing was off limits, and we spent over two hours looking around this ship, getting lost below deck and stopping by the café for a well needed break.

Admittedly, we did also spend a long time nerding out over the engine and all the different guns.

I have had fantastic opportunities this month to gain experience in server management and diagnosing issues. With this being a field I have little experience in, I’ve learned a lot when it comes to properly configuring servers and Apache to meet the needs of the websites being hosted. This knowledge is invaluable for keeping performance high and reducing downtime.

Additionally, I have been doing work with product feeds and Google Shopping feeds in addition to helping the production of new OpenCart sites as well as Laravel applications.

A busy month.