I am still here, honest

I am still here, honest

I’d like to apologise for the lack of posts over the past month and a half.

I’ve not had the time to write on the blog anything like as often as I’d wished to – although hopefully now things will ease up a little to allow me to get back on track.

Since June I’ve been studying for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Diploma – and the first assessed work is due in tomorrow. It’s called the Critical Reasoning Test (CRT) and comprises two 3,000 word essays from a choice of four questions.

You have a four-week period during which to complete this work – which seems like a long time. However it’s almost ten years since I last wrote an academic essay (back at Nottingham University in 1998). I found it a real challenge, both in terms of switching from my normal writing style into a much more academic style, and in terms of the time it takes to research, construct and edit an academic piece of writing. So the four weeks has whizzed by, and now I feel a real sense of relief having submitted the essays this evening.

Alongside the CRT, I’ve just launched a new website for a freelance client, the British Marine Electronics Association, at www.bmea.org. The site and all its features run using open source content management system WordPress (just like this blog). It’s been a four month project and I’m really pleased how it’s looking. There are still a few minor bugs and content issues to sort out over the coming weeks. More about this project in the next week or so, as I’ll put together a blog post on how versatile WordPress can be as a content management system for websites that aren’t traditional blogs.

Finally there are some interesting times ahead for my employer as it faces a difficult budget for next financial year. There will certainly be some really meaty communications challenges for the team in 2008 given this situation.

That said, I’m really looking forward to getting back into the blogging groove. I’ve caught up on my 2000+ RSS feeds and can’t wait to get stuck back in to reading, commenting and writing once again.

[tags]blogging, Simon+Wakeman, CIPR, CIPR+Diploma, BMEA, British+Marine+Electronics+Association[/tags]

About SIMON

I work with technology-centric businesses as an interim Chief Operating Officer (COO), consultant and advisor. I created the B3 framework® for scaling technology businesses and I write a newsletter called Build for leaders who are building brilliant companies.