This is my desk I would describe it as the Wightbay creative thinking space!

It's been one of those days. Everything started going wrong from the moment I woke up. I got into the office this morning only to find that I can't receive incoming emails. All day I have been firing out emails and not having any replies. The office IT guys are looking into the problem...

Everyone has gone home, tumble weed across the office floor, the IT guys are no where to be seen and I am still not receiving any emails.

I managed to design the car sticker….

On Bank Holiday Monday I woke up to stormy winds and torrential rains. I had second thoughts about taking part in the village fun run. The thought of the organisers and marshals standing in the rain spurred me on to dust off my running shoes. I turned up on the day and to my jaw dropping surprise I finished the run in 4th position over all and 1st lady.

So I was reading the Isle of Wight County Press this morning there was a 3 page spread on 'Walk the Wight' 26.5 miles. I also read that some crazy people ran the hilly course.

Today village fun run, next year the, Width of the Wight.

People Behind Wightbay

I wanted to introduce the WightBay Team. We only have three people actively working on Wightbay…

Firstly we have the Moderator, the man on the island. Tony (Chris to his friends) is the person behind the user name 'Admin'. He has lived on the island for 10 years and always been involved in local business. Tony has the job of monitoring your ads. He has the taxing job of removing duplicate adverts, cleaning up your accounts and deleting closed and sold ads. He has also been actively answering your questions in the forums. He has many ideas on how to improve the usability for the Wightbay users. His aim is to make Wightbay the best site for the islanders.

Secondly we have Paul our Sales Executive. He has been answering all questions regarding banner sales on Wightbay. He also approaches businesses who he thinks will benefit from the brand awareness that Wightbay offers. He then manages all the Isle of Wight business accounts and insures they get the maximum exposure and relevant placement for their company.

Finally there’s me, Jodie! I have the job of raising awareness for the site, improving its usability and orchestrating new developments & ideas. My aim is to make Wightbay an essential part of the Island community. I also advice our customer service team on answering all your questions, ideas and complaints.

Hot topic - Car Adverts

I understand your frustration of seeing car ad after car ad in the latest ads. I have thought of a solution for this problem. We could carry across the filter functionality we have on every other category (see below). It will allow users to filter 'Trade' or 'Private' ads in the Latest Ads.

Please leave your ideas and comments.

After my comments yesterday regarding FREECYCLE etc. I noticed this post on another blog, it's extracted from a conversation about freecycle.org...

It is pretty depressing going to the tip and seeing what is being thrown away to landfill. I think that the idea behind Freecycle is excellent. It’s just the way that they force you to get a Yahoo email address and mess you about that’s wrong.Recently I rediscovered “Wightbay” and bought an excellent child seat for the car and sold a washing machine within a few hours. That really is recycling! http://wighteye.wordpress.com/2007/06/08/goingpalegreen/

Count Down to the Big Green Picnic - 24th -25th May

Taking place over the weekend of 24/25 May, the Big Green Picnic aims to inspire the Island’s population to embrace the idea of sustainable living in order to reduce our carbon emissions and help save the planet, man....http://ventnorblog.com/big-green-picnic

Save the landfill - One man's trash is another man's treasure.Take part...Place an advert in the Wightbay FREECYCLE section.
http://www.wightbay.com/XCClassifieds/CPViewInCat.asp?ID=440

Good News 75% of voters would wear the Wightbay T-shirt. Thank you for all your comments votes and ideas.

Monday…start of another hopefully productive week.

Today I wrote my reports, stats, etc. Whilst analysing Wightbay I came to the conclusion that we just don’t have enough jobs on the site. We have lots of people looking for jobs but not enough jobs advertised. Wightbay would be the perfect place for employers to get response for the vacancies. I have been brainstorming ways in which I can build this section. Any ideas would be much appreciated?

T-shirt Design

I have been attempting the not so easy task of designing a Wightbay Promotional t-shirt. I want to design a t-shirt that the average Islander would wear. Above is my final design. Your feed back and comments would be greatly appreciated…

Exploring the Island

Yesterday I took a trip around the island. I had a nice lunch in Newport, met the Wightbay Moderator Tony and had a mint choc-chip icecream on Sandown beach. On my travels i had a brainwave of starting a fundraising exbidition round the island armed with only a tent and a sleeping bag. I would aim to walk the circumferance of the island in one week for a local charity.

I had an idea to start a blog… I want you (the average Wightbay user) to know the goings on behind the site...

Todays Task – Create a blog

This task sounded very easy and straight forward. However as you will begin to learn nothing is easy and straight forward when I am involved. I was horrified when I finally got onto blog spot and realised the complexity of the idea. The trouble with me is I don’t have patience to read instructions so I went at it like a bull in a china shop. A few smashes and crashes but we got there in the end.

News of the Day – Radio Appearance

I had a phone call today from a lovely lady wanting me to speak on the radio about Wightbay. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! I HATE PUBLIC SPEAKING. I looked around the office for someone I could get to stand in my shoes. Nobody stepped forward in fact I received a lot of giggles and points of the finger. Tune in around 6:00pm - 6:20 tomorrow...