Dear All,

The first "all-office ice-cream run" of the year has taken place, summer is officially here, and so here's a newsletter for the new season.

Firstly, we're the Best Web Design Agency in Yorkshire, 2008. We have a shiny piece of glass with that engraved on it, which makes it a fact. What's more we didn't even do the engraving ourselves; Insider Magazine and Yorkshire Forward gave us this accolade at their glitzy award ceremony last week. Hooray for us.

Secondly, if you'd made it to Internet World earlier in the month, you would have cowered before our enormous (four, count them, four metre tall) stand.

If you didn't make it, then below are some photos of our grinning team accosting passers-by. The stand will be getting further use at future exhibitions, and is also available if you would like us to put on a personal appearance in your garden over the summer months.

Thirdly, we're regional finalists in the National Business Awards, so at the moment I'm struggling to compress all the things I'd like to say about our company into a 15 minute presentation to the judges. You'd think I'd be quite good at this sort of thing, given that the Credit Suisse Entrepreneur of the Year awards singled me out for "special praise" last month with my "Highly Commended" certificate, but I suppose that maybe the fact I'm struggling shows that I just wasn't worthy of any higher praise than I got. Sigh.

Until next time,

We might have a pretty unconventional "We won an award" dance, but these guys!

Is it a bird!? Is it a plane!? No, it's a nutter with rockets strapped to his back!

Seize the Remnant

If my career in IT hadn't taken off, I remain convinced that I would have set up a rug shop called Carpet Diem. I'm a big fan of shops with quirky names (Curl Up and Dye, Tanz-in-'ere, and a second hand clothes shop in New Zealand I once saw called Frock of Ages).

While quirky is good for shop names, over-statement is bad - you know the sort - Tile Kingdom, World of Fish, Internet World(!) and the like. It strikes me, and others at Sense, that the web is full of such overstatement, none more so than WEBTWOPOINTZERO: "Church puts faith in Web 2.0", "Web 2.0 is present tense, not future", "Web 2.0 ate my hamster". OK, I made that last one up, but it's only a matter of time...

A wise man (our MD) once said "Getting excited about Web 2.0 means you weren't paying enough attention the first time round", which pretty much makes my point for me. Our recent award proves that we know what we're doing, without needing to re-brand ourselves Sense 2.0 and spray-paint ourselves blue. We use modern web techniques where appropriate, where it adds to the user experience, without compromising usability, security, accessibility or cost of development. Our stand at this year's Internet World said a lot of things about our company, but I still feel it all comes back to our basic strap line we've had since the halcyon days of Web 1.0 - creative thinking, proven technology.

Socks continue to fly off our feet as we work them off on various 'soon to go live' projects! For now our lips must remain sealed but rest assured beans can be spilt in the coming newsletters :)

For now though...

Internet World - Earls Court May 2008

Within a sea of exhibition stands belonging to a profusion of internet enthusiasts and businesses, 'The Stand of Sense' towered like a green and white monolith for all to behold.

As well as meeting some lovely people and being able to talk to our hearts' content about the internet and how we love it, we managed to give away an astounding amount of our little books.

A big thanks to everyone who made it and to all who spoke with us. We hope our Little Book of Sense lasts longer than the free sweets did!

CTO Ben speaks Slovak don't you know?! A handy phrase for a hot day in Slovakia:

Translation:

(panic over)