I must be getting soft in my middle age – but am loving the spring feeling all around me. Baby birds feeding outside the kitchen window. Bumble bees trundling into the conservatory like cuddly airborne slightly confused old gents. The garden a wash of yellow as the Daffs explode into colour. Please god the economy takes similar heart and hope from such simple pleasures.

Anyway – hope this goes some way to explain the particularly cutesy seasonal skin to the site. I think our designer has done a cracking job with the animation (he never fails to delight me with his concepts and then amaze me with how he brings it to life), hope you agree. See the full effect on the homepage - but otherwise happy spring to you. May prospects and hope blossom for us all.

Just incase you’ve not seen one of the funniest videos the UK recruitmemnt industry has produced in quite some time (maybe ever) – then you have to go check out the Tribal resourcing Star Trek Spoof. My money says this is a pure internal effort that the Senior Management didn’t realise they would never be able to keep a hold of, however (and I guess you can’t really blame them) in an ri5.co.uk article they’re trying to spin it as a master stroke in viral marketing.

Trot over to DigitalRecruiting.co.uk and have a look see for yourself. Tribal Resourcing boldly viral marketing where others fear to tread or more a case of the person who concepted & executed the whole thing needing the vulcan death grip? Either way – it’ll certainly raise a smile (after you’ve uncurled your toes perhaps).

If you live in the North Essex area and are into

• supporting local business
• plant/gardening/outdoor type things
• beautiful rustic home decorations and inspiration (so my wife tells me – I do know it looks very nice though)
• fresh seasonal home grown produce (augmented with your usual imported fruit & veg)
• fresh delicatessen type fare (cheese, olives, fresh bread, cakes etc etc)
• locally sourced fresh meat & frozen fish

then can I make a strong recommendation – make an effort and check out Growing Together.

I did wonder about whether using this “professional” blog to raise this was appropriate, but what the hell – this place and the people are fantastic and well worth whatever modest plug I can give them. They have just opened (actually re-opened – having decided they could do a better job than people they’d leased the shop area to originally) the most incredible Farm Shop to complement their great Plant Nursery.

Lovelier people you couldn’t hope to meet either – so if you’re in the North Essex / South of Colchester area then do look them up and I assure you that you won’t be disappointed (unless you turn up on a Monday when they’re closed that is).

Growing Together
Layer Marney Nurseries
Smythes Green
Layer Marney
Colchester CO5 9XW
Tel: 01206 330695

You’ll find a map here

At 3D MarComms we’ve been up and running now for just over 9 months. Lot’s of it has been what I would term “hand to mouth” existence, working as contractors for others requirements, but these days nothing work wise is to be sniffed at and we’ve learnt some good lessons on the way. However we’ve always had a bigger plan than that. A plan that we’re now giving ourselves the time to bring to life – and that’s why the timing sort of worked beautifully when we got a TradeMark certificate through the door last week.

If you’re not aware we’re building a new kind of ATS. And it’s name is HARBOUR. Well, now I can officially say it’s name is HARBOUR (TM).

You’ll read/hear more about HARBOUR (TM) over the coming months (we’re currently Alpha testing) – but whilst that little sheet of A4 probably doesn’t mean a whole lot in the big picture (certainly not right now, other than costing £300), it’s a nice little mental boost that  if nothing else demonstrates our intent.

HARBOUR TradeMark certfication