We wanted to send out ‘Thank you!’ to the people who helped us cover the council election results a couple of weeks back.
First up the Media team at the Isle of Wight council, in particular Simon Butler, who was both responsive and helpful, demonstrating the attributes every good press team should have.
West Wight Audio
Many thanks to Kelvin Currie of West Wight Audio who really helped us out by carrying out PAT inspections all of our electrical equipment that we took to the Count. PAT wasn’t something that had really entered our lives before (It stands for Portable Appliance Testing, BTW), but as it was a council event, held on council premises, the proverbial I(s) and T(s) had to be crossed.
As we’d Tweeted at the time, Kelvin is a man who not only knows his beans, but he carries out the work with a smile, making the whole process much more enjoyable.
Last, but certainly not least, Ventnor Community Cafe.
Ventnor Community Cafe
We caused quite a stir when we first started taking laptops to cover Full council meetings at County Hall. They didn’t know quite what to do with us, and certainly the idea of providing electrical power to the Press table was something alien.
We moved on to mobile devices – originally Blackberries, now Android devices – over three years ago, but we knew that the limitations of mobiles wouldn’t cut it at the high-pressure, fast-moving Count, where the results are often coming so thick-and-fast, they’re almost on top of each other.
Full-sized keyboards would be required.
Back at base we use desktop computers, so we’re lacking in laptops these days. Happily the lovely people at Ventnor Community Cafe were happy to help us out, providing two laptops that allowed us to turn around the results in real-time just as they were being announced.
Without them we couldn’t have done the job.
