It is always satisfying to see a local business do well - particularly one that is run by friends. Online marketing and web development company, Digital Consortium, of Sowerby Bridge near Halifax, has done very well as you can see from its portfolio and awards. I have known its founder, Liz Robinson, through Bmedia and other connections for years and have collaborated with her on several projects.
Last Friday afternoon the company threw a party. They called it an "English Tea Party" and invited guests to enter a cake competition. This photo shows that there was no shortage of entrants. As one of the few guests who didn't quite get round to baking a cake - though I like to think it may have been because of my skills as an arbitrator - I was asked to judge the cake competition together with Liz and a young gentleman called Scott who is about to gain some work experience with DC.
We judged the cakes for both taste and appearance on a scale 1 to 10. One being "utter rot" and I am afraid I can't remember the superlative for 10 but it seemed to me to be nigh on unobtainable. In fact, I gave several entries top marks and I don't think anyone got less than 6 from any of the judges. The standard was very, very, very high indeed.
The overall winner was Sarah who baked some delicious cup cakes with the DC branding. But it was a very close win. Another of my favourites was a "Google cake" baked by a father and
daughter team. It was iced to resemble the Google landing page. There were other two lovely cup cakes, two lemon drizzle cakes, yummy chocolate cakes and many others.
But Sarah was a worthy winner and the look on her face was a picture. If only I had the presence of mind to record her facial expressions and squeals of delight.
The photo doesn't really do justice to Sarah's dress which was lovely. A full skirt with lots of frothy petticoats. As delicious as a morning cappuccino on the shores of Lake Maggiore. And Sarah wasn't the only lady to look terrific. Rosy also wore a lovely dress as did Liz herself and all her colleagues.
The party was a great opportunity for me to meet not only DC's staff and customers but also the animators, developers and other contractors who have contributed to the company's success. There is a small but growing cluster of creative businesses in Sowerby Bridge and it will be interesting to follow their progress. We wish Digital Consortium and its community the best of luck.
PS. Liz Robinson writes:
I will send over links to the proper photographs when I get sight of them.
Thank you again for coming, and for your kind words in your blog piece. Sarah will be overjoyed with your appreciation of her dress - she's been waxing lyrical about it for a while."
That's true, Liz. Thanks for the reminder and the photo. I had a long chat with Karen. Also an interesting discussion with her husband about elasticity of demand for superfast broadband. That will be the topic for another post. Congratulations Karen. If Sarah's dress was as delicious as Cappuccino your cake was as pleasing to the eye as Paladian architecture. And it was good to taste too.
PPS. I've just seen the photo. Karen is the lady receiving the cup from me. Liz is the lady with her palms outstretched just between us. See what I mean about her lovely dress. And you should have seen her shoes.
Dr. Kin F Kam has quite remarkable scientific credentials. Excluding his undergraduate study, he has spent 12 years in advanced physics including 5 years of nuclear fusion research at Culham. He now has his own company known as Inclusive Innovations Ltd. based at the University of York which promotes his inventions.