STOP
PRESS
Media Matters
Bringing Internet Marketing to Local Businesses
Local PR and communications experts, Media Matters will be running a series of internet
marketing training sessions from September 2010 until March next year, demonstrating
how businesses in Peterborough can use the web to their advantage.
The Media Matters team will explain in clear, basic terms, how internet marketing
and social media can benefit local business, what works well and what to avoid,
as well as giving practical tips and advice on how to make the most of the web.
The courses will begin on 27th September, kicking off with Blogging for Business,
which will look at the advantages of blogging and how it’s an ideal marketing tool
for raising the profile of a business. This session will explore the best software
to use for a blog, writing tips, how to optimise and examples of those who got it
right and those who failed to make the grade.
LinkedIn will be the topic up for discussion at the second workshop on 18th October,
looking at why you should have a LinkedIn account, how to join groups and how the
networking site can help you win business and find partnerships and suppliers.
Following on from this, there will be a further three workshops; Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO) in November, Internet Marketing—An Overview in January and Successful Email
Marketing in March. All sessions will run from 2pm to 5pm and will be held at the
Media Matters training studio in Lynchwood.
Media Matters is one of the regions only bespoke workshop providers, delivering
relevant, up-to-date and cost effective marketing knowledge to benefit your business.
To book your place on a workshop please email
angie@mediamatters-pr.co.uk or for detailed information on each session please click here
Internet Marketing Training
- Blogging for Business Monday 27th September 2010 2pm-5pm
- How to Use LinkedIn Monday 18th October 2010 2pm-5pm
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Monday 22nd November 2010 2pm-5pm
- Internet Marketing—An Overview Monday 24th January 2011 2pm-5pm
- Successful Email Marketing Monday 7th March 2011 2pm-5pm
Sustainable city
model connects with Peterborough communities
Creators of the Peterborough Model recently met with community bodies for a collaboration
workshop to discuss how communities can become more involved in the project.
Representatives from Peterborough City Council’s neighbourhoods’ team, PECT, Innova
Trust, Citizen Power and Peterborough Council for Voluntary Service, attended the
workshop to discuss how the Peterborough Model could better connect communities
to decision makers, and how they could use and inform the model to encourage more
sustainable lifestyles to help tackle climate change.
The pioneering model - which supports Peterborough’s aspirations to become the UK’s
Environment Capital - was developed through the collaboration of Opportunity Peterborough,
Green Ventures, Royal Haskoning, IBM and Peterborough City Council. It is a web
based platform using satellite imagery, aerial photography and 3D geographical maps
to create an image of Peterborough’s current environmental performance and possible
future issues, through gathering existing data on energy, water, transport, waste
and our natural surroundings.
Residents will have access to the platform and will be able to use the information
provided to improve home water and energy usage. The platform will enable the city
council and utility companies (such as Anglian Water and EDF Energy) to work more
effectively together to plan the long term energy and water infrastructure that
is needed for a sustainable future.
Commenting on the project, Trevor Gibson, Director of Environment Capital, said
“Technological advances allow cities to collate data and interpret it in ways not
achieved before and Peterborough is going to be at the forefront of this new intelligence.
Peterborough is using recognised expertise that will enable us to meet the sustainability
challenges and achieve Peterborough’s aspirations as environment capital”.
Phil Newby, Director at Green Ventures said: “We wanted to create a tool that works
for the individual, the community and the city, something that could quickly visualise
the city’s environmental information and connect residents to decision makers, helping
people to collaborate and drive change.”
Phil added; “Even a small city like Peterborough is a very complex place. If you
can visualise a problem it becomes easier to understand, and more pressing to fix.
Most importantly, if the data is shared, it makes collaboration easier, which in
turn will speed the pace of change”.
Opinions from the workshop will be used to take the development of the model to
the next stage; focusing on how the model will be used by schools, community bodies
and individuals, and identifying the benefits it will bring to them.
For further information please contact:
Laura Brewis
Marketing and Communications Manager,
Opportunity Peterborough,
Stuart House,
St John’s Street,
Peterborough,
PE1 5DD,
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1733 317491
Mob: +44 (0) 7920 160070
Email: laura.brewis@opportunitypeterborough.co.uk
Opportunity Peterborough
launches city bondholder scheme
A new programme to engage and support Peterborough businesses has been launched
by economic development company, Opportunity Peterborough. The Peterborough bondholder
scheme is free of charge and open to all local companies.
In addition to an established, successful networking calendar, Bondholders will
have access to a range of benefits from programme partners including reduced subscription
to PECT's 'Investors in the Environment' initiative, free membership to UK CEED's
'EnviroCluster' and free attendance to Supply Peterborough's business development
workshops. In return, Opportunity Peterborough is inviting Bondholders to use the
city brand in their own marketing, to help promote Peterborough to a wider external
audience.
Neil Darwin, director of economic development at Opportunity Peterborough said:
"The new Bondholder scheme replaces our Business Partner programme and is set to
be bigger and better than before. We're encouraging businesses across all sectors
to register to enjoy a variety of existing benefits that will be added to over the
coming months."
Click
here to register your company
New proposals
to East Coast Main Line need to support Peterborough’s economic ambitions
Opportunity Peterborough has been talking to rail service provider, East Coast
Main Line about future services to the city following initial plans to reduce services,
which would have had a significant impact on the number of trains stopping in Peterborough.
The original consultation suggested a number of alterations to the service which
were due to take effect in May 2011 which would have seen the number of trains running
between London and Peterborough reduced from four to three.
Following discussions with East Coast Main Line it is clear that Peterborough’s
importance on the rail network is now being recognised. Commenting on the discussions,
Neil Darwin, Director of Economic Development at Opportunity Peterborough said:
“We’re delighted to be in communication with East Coast Main Line regarding the
proposals. We understand that the company have advanced new proposals which maintain
the current service, but importantly offer greater capacity for passengers.
Opportunity Peterborough feels strongly that any proposals implemented should not
adversely affect local businesses. We will be working with East Coast Main Line
and other local stakeholders over the coming weeks to ensure that the city will
not be disadvantaged.”
We recognise that any changes in service would cause difficulties for businesses
that have members of staff relying on the services to commute to and from the city
or attend meetings, as well as posing future investment issues through creating
the perception that Peterborough is difficult to access.
If the alterations do deter outside investment into the city, local residents could
be affected by problems such as lowered income and a reduction in job opportunities,
which would counteract all the hard work that is going into lifting Peterborough
out of recession. This could also tarnish Peterborough’s status of UK Environment
Capital, if overcrowded trains force residents to commute by car.
Opportunity Peterborough plans to work to ensure that rail services support local
businesses needs and serve to attract new investment to the city. Neil continues:
“Peterborough station is a key rail gateway and transport hub for the city and wider
region— we need to ensure that the city stays on East Coast Main Line’s radar to
make sure we benefit from any changes rather than lose out to competing cities.”
If you would like to voice your thoughts over the proposals please download a template
lobbying
letter here.
Ormiston Bushfield
Academy Hopes to Increase Intake to 950
Students with a new £20 million School Building
Ormiston Bushfield Academy has revealed a future £20 million building program which
will allow them to increase their student intake. The construction firm Kier have
developed plans to build new premises for the academy on their original site, which
will accommodate an additional 250 pupils.
Plans for the extension on a nearby Greenfield site will be checked by planning
officers before being handed over to the councils Planning and Environmental Protection
Committee for consideration. The building program will begin in autumn, if the plans
are given the go-ahead and the developments are expected to take up to three years.
Councillor John Holdich, cabinet member for education, skills and university, said:
“This is an exciting milestone for the future of secondary education and for the
regeneration in the south of Peterborough.”
Ormiston Bushfield Academy, located in Ortongate, has a specialist status in Maths,
Sports and Performing Arts and has proved so popular in the city that it has been
oversubscribed for the past three years.
For more information on the proposed developments, please contact the academy on
01733 233014 or email mailbox@bushfield.co.uk
OP Business Partner,
DSM helped PCC Avoid Major System Failure
Peterborough City Council recently suffered a catastrophic failure of a system running
a key application, which could have resulted in disaster, had it not been for DSM
Ltd, supplier of business continuity and hosting services.
The failure could have seriously affected their ability to service the community,
however due to the far sightedness of their Emergency Planning Team and their resilience
programme; there was virtually no impact whatsoever. As part of their resilience
programme the council has installed a number of servers at the DSM Data and Recovery
Centre located at Sibson, near Peterborough. Critical applications and data are
replicated to these servers from the Town Hall data centre using a dedicated communications
infrastructure.
After identifying that this server was not recoverable, PCC switched to the replicated
machine based at DSM. The replicated server at DSM was used as the “live” system
for several weeks until replacement hardware for the original server could be procured
and the system fully rebuilt and tested.
Stuart Hamilton, Resilience Services Manager, said: “It is a tribute to our team
and the service from DSM that a potentially disastrous situation was dealt with
in such a controlled and professional way that our users suffered minimal disruption
and were not even aware that we were running their applications from our recovery
site for a prolonged period of time”
For more information on DSM and the services on offer to local businesses visit
www.dsm-gb.co.uk or call Amanda
Johnson on 01480 446480, e: Amanda@dsm-gb.co.uk.
Shield Technologies
Launches New Service
Locally based IT support company and Opportunity Peterborough business partner,
Shield Technologies is launching their new service, Email Guardian,
designed to help businesses reduce the risk of infections through emails, unwanted
email traffic, and the loss of mail through server downtime.
The service pushes emails directly to your server, after initially scanning for
viruses and spam, helping to reduce infection risks and unwanted traffic to your
server, allowing you to receive your emails instantaneously.
Email Guardian is especially suitable for businesses whose systems are affected
by longer periods of downtime, in which case, the email is redirected to another
mailbox.
Shield Technologies have designed Email Guardian as a cost effective insurance for
businesses, as it safeguards companies against losing messages, orders, customers
and in the long-run, loss of productivity.
For more information on Email Guardian and Shield Technologies visit www.shieldtechnologies.co.uk/index.php/interceptor-email-guardian
or telephone 0845 8384309
Peterborough Launches
Smarter City Project to Transform City Systems and Drive Economic Growth
Peterborough’s Smarter City project was officially launched on 16th March, which
will see Opportunity Peterborough, Peterborough City Council, IBM, Royal Haskoning
and Green Ventures in collaboration to transform Peterborough into the leading sustainable
city in the UK.
The project has outlined plans to launch a Sustainable City Visualisation project
which will initially focus on building a new online platform to monitor and analyse
data on Peterborough's energy, water, transport and waste systems. This data will
be used to produce a real-time, integrated view of the city's environmental performance.
Residents and city officials will be able to log on to the web portal and easily
access the necessary information to make more informed decisions about resource
usage. This will allow the city to make suggestions to improve home water and energy
usage, while being able to work more effectively with the utilities to plan the
long term energy and water infrastructure that is needed for a sustainable future.
The first phase of the project will focus on energy and water data and work is already
underway to move transport and waste related data onto the platform with other environmental
data set to follow. These changes aim to cement Peterborough's place as a leading
environmental city and directly impact the quality of life for people living and
working in Peterborough for future generations.
For more information on Smarter Cities please visit: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/uk/en/sustainable_cities/ideas/index.html?re=spl
Businesses aspiring
to grow but being held back by the recession can get up to £10,000 grant funding
to help create jobs.
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Growth Fund is a pot of £200,000 to be
used over the next two years to help companies with good business concepts realise
their ambitions.
Jointly operated by Opportunity Peterborough and the Greater Cambridge Partnership,
the fund is administered via Business Link East and is aimed at small and medium
sized businesses and social enterprises across the county who are being adversely
affected by the changing market conditions.
To enquire or make an application, firms must have completed an action plan with
Business Link East outlining their growth ambition and how they will achieve it
in the next 12 months. For more information contact Business Link East on 08457
171615.