Archive for the ‘Firetail News’ Category

NCVO Approved Consultant

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

Firetail can now be described as an “NCVO Approved Consultant 2008”. The NCVO is the umbrella body for the voluntary sector in England and approval from them means that we get to use this lovely blue logo for the rest of the year.

NCVO approved!

The application process gave a small text box that forced you to describe your services in a couple of sentences. It was a good test. This was my attempt at an ‘elevator pitch’:

Firetail aims to bring the rigour of commercial strategy consulting to clients working on charitable and social responsibility issues. Our work with charities and non-profit groups includes long-term strategy, fundraising and marketing strategies, supporter insight, business planning and financial modelling. We also work with organisations engaged in public participation (such as social marketing, advocacy and e-democracy) on strategy development and evaluation.

We also had to demonstrate quality against the following five standards:

    Operational standards
    Contract capability
    Delivery process
    Delivery and output evaluation
    Continuous improvement

And thanks to our client work with some of the best known organisations in the not-for-profit sector Firetail passed the test.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

Waking up the blog

Thursday, September 13th, 2007

Inspired by David’s funny and acerbic little posts, I’ve decided to try and post more regularly again. It’s better than wasting time playing Desktop Tower Defense which is so addictive, people are posting their solutions on Youtube. At least, I’m not that bad. Yet.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

Blockhunting

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

We’ve moved the Blockhunter related blogging over to Blockhunting, where we’ll be listing our press, thoughts about developing the site and tips on how to use it better. Though when the site gets a review describing it as a “particularly elegant” website that’s “impressively fast and simple to use”, I’ll probably mention it here as well.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

More Blockhunter coverage

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Last weekend, we had a full page article in the Sunday Herald on Blockhunter titled “Online companies out to revolutionise property deals”.

Technology-watchers call sites such as Blockhunter part of the growing movement of “Intention 2.0″ companies, which de-mystifies the market by allowing consumers to tell the world what they intend to buy.

As well as getting coverage, we’ve continued to improve the site. Based on feedback from users, we’ve limited the size of the area you can search, we show the size of the search block and now you can search for placenames (like Oxford) as well as postcodes (like OX4). It’s amazing what you can do with the Google API.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

Spring Cleaning

Tuesday, April 10th, 2007

The Firetail site has had a spring clean. There’s a new front page, content and revamped blog now hosted at www.firetail.co.uk/blog. All much less busy than before.

The RSS feed hosted by Feedburner should still work and I’ve put my various pages on other sites in the sidebar.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

Blockhunter - now with renting

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

We’ve just released the new Blockhunter - with a bunch of new features:

- RENTING - If you’re a tenant looking for a place, or a landlord with a place to let, you can now use our unique, free matching service.
- BUYER PROFILES - Let people find out a bit more about you
- ENHANCED ACCOUNT FUNCTIONS - Better managed preferences

That’s all in addition to the existing buyer and seller matching.

And it’s all still free.

We’ve had some really nice feedback on the first version.

What do you think?

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »

New Year’s Resolution

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

Apparently, I’m about to quoted in a new handbook on community participation. I say that one of the keys to successful blogging is regularity. Which is true, but not something I’ve managed on this site. Therefore my new year’s resolution is to take my own advice and blog more.

I’m also going into the New Year wearing the first piece of official Firetail merchandise, which I got as a Christmas present.

Firetail T-Shirt

Order yours now!

Posted in Firetail News | Comments Off

Blockhunter

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

blockhunter

We’ve just finished and launched Blockhunter.

It’s a totally new way of househunting.

Rather than sellers advertising their property and buyers searching, it works the other way round.

Potential buyers create a search (using a world class google maps hack) which is saved in the system.

Then homeowners can register their property and see who wants to buy it, their budget and any comments.

There’s no spam, because all the messages take place in the system.

Now we’ve got to spread the word! If you can help us, by mentioning on your blog, or del.icio.us or digg that would make a big difference.

Posted in Firetail News | 1 Comment »

Web Projects: Independent Escapes

Monday, November 27th, 2006

Independent Escapes is now live!

Firetail does a lot of consulting work about how people can use the web to improve the way their organisation works. But a successful online project really comes down to the execution. So for us, it makes a lot of sense to have something that can be a showcase, as well as a lab for us to try out some of the things we believe.

Independent Escapes is a site for managing holiday property. We’re launching with nearly 400 properties across the world, with lots in the US, France and Spain. You can show calendars, take payments via paypal and use detailed reporting tools. Inevitably, there is a blog , forum and a tour.

I’ll be posting more on some of its features over the next couple of weeks, as well as some of experiences trying to promote it. For now, go and check it out!

Posted in Firetail News | Comments Off

Make Poverty History: Campaign Evaluation

Friday, March 31st, 2006

We’ve just completed the evaluation report for the MakePovertyHistory campaign in the UK in 2005.

We conducted over 70 interviews with politicians, special advisors, local campaigners, activists, campaign managers, journalists and academics. We asked them what made a difference and why. We also looked at other research that has been done on the campaign.

The message for future coalitions is the size of the coalition, the coherence of the message and the portfolio of things they did were the most important factors.

This portfolio of popular communications, activism and advocacy was unprecedented in its size, ambition and reach. It was also largely complementary.

We found that popular things like the brand, the wristbands and the TV ads energised a new group of supporters and because of their reach, had real influence with policymakers. Importantly, those communciations had credibility because they were underpinned by serious policy research.

However, there’s far more in the report that can be covered in a short post, so I’d encourage you to download the report, leave feedback and get in touch.

Posted in Firetail News | No Comments »