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thesteveyates · 4 years

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‘F’ is for Uffa Fox

‘F’ is for Fairey Atalanta.

Blog time : well, it’s mid April and just going into week 4 of this strange life. As far as my own boat and sailing life are concerned the boss is keeping a good eye on WABI”’ and has had the hatches open to air the boat out for me. Obviously i’m not out on the water and not writing any new material based on my own boat. In blog life all i’m working on are the new posts for this series as all of the posts that i was working on in the spring are now out there. My own life is probably about to change radically if things work out as i expect they will ; that’s because i’m now back on the temporary/emergency register and it looks as though i might get deployed to the emergency Nightingale hospital in London…that’s obviously going to be the ‘hot’ zone. If that works out well then i’ll be working on my own next boating project while i’m away and i can take more time over the next designer in this series.

In this post for the design series i’m really just looking at one design from one prolific designer, sailor and all-round total English eccentric ; Uffa Fox. The boat is the highly unusual and funky looking Fairey Atalanta designed by the late Uffa Fox in 1955 alongside Alan Vines ; an executive of Fairey Marine. The boat was then mass produced using some radically new building techniques between 1956 and 1968. Many Atalanta’s still exist today, many have been restored and there is an active owners association.

Right at the start of this post i have to point out that all of the photographs i have used come from other sources and not my own files ; most of them appear on the Atalanta owners association website or found during a general image search. The title photograph also, is of a very modified deck/coachroof version which i think looks great and very different.

Uffa Fox…..Yachtsman and designer.

I regard the late Uffa Fox as the most important and influential small boat designer ever, at least from the narrow perspective of British designers : i place him above other brilliant designers of small sailing craft like Maurice Griffiths and William Fife for example because he took the design and construction of small craft in completely new directions. Later on in the design series i hope to be able to show how later designers like David Thomas and Jack Laurent Giles, and then modern designers like Keith Callaghan all owe a lot to Uffa Fox’s radical new designs.

As i re-read biographies of Uffa Fox he comes across as a brilliantly eccentric man who managed to be both at the centre of a very conservative and traditional yachting community based around Cowes on the IOW , at a time when it was an important ‘Royal’ yachting venue and centre of the English yachting world, and at the same time being a maverick and radical designer. He was for example closely connected to the British royal family at play, regularly sailing with or crewing for HRH Prince Philip and the young Royals , often in his or their Dragon class racing yachts.

In 1938 Uffa Fox designed the first of several International 14 racing dinghy’s, the most famous of which was ‘Thunder and Lightning’, the radical feature of the new designs being their ability to plane rather than just being displacement hulls. The International 14 class was then, as it is now, a development class and that same boat not only planed downwind in a breeze but could generate a lot more power upwind because of another new device….the trapeze…..instantly banned as being ‘unsporting’ until a few years later. Now of course the International 14 is a double trapeze boat and still very quick even when compared with more modern dinghy designs.

Fairey Marine and the Atalanta.

Fairey Marine Ltd, was a boat building company based on the River Hamble near to Southampton on the Uk’s south coast.. The company was created in the late 1940s by Sir Charles Richard Fairey and Fairey Aviation‘s managing director, Mr. Chichester-Smith. Both were avid sailing enthusiasts along with Chichester-Smith’s good friend and former Olympic yachtsman, Charles Currey. Fairey Aviation of course was the company responsible for designing and building wartime aircraft such as the Fairey Swordfish, which, even as an ‘obsolete’ carrier based biplane managed to stick a torpedo up the backside of the Bismark which led to that ship’s eventual sinking only 8 days into her one and only wartime mission !

As the war drew to a close Fairey and Chichester-Smith both decided that they should produce sailing dinghies utilising techniques that had been employed in the construction of aircraft. Charles Currey was recruited to help run the company when he came out of the Royal Navy. The world air speed record holder Peter Twiss joined Fairey Marine Ltd from Fairey Aviation in 1960 and was responsible for development and sales of day-cruisers. In 1969, commanding the Huntsman 707 Fordsport, he took part in the Round Britain Powerboat Race, and included among his crew members, Rally champion Roger Clark. Boats were primarily designed by Alan Burnard.

In the early years, thousands of dinghies were produced by Fairey Marine including the Firefly, Albacore, Falcon (dinghy), Swordfish (dinghy), Jollyboat, Flying Fifteen, 505 and International 14‘s along with the much smaller Dinky and Duckling. Later on in the 1950s they produced the larger sailing cruisers, the Atalanta (named after Sir Richard’s wife), Titania, Fulmar and the 27-foot (8.2 m) Fisherman motor sailer (based on the Fairey Lifeboat hull) along with the 15′ Cinderella (outboard runabout)/ Carefree (inboard runabout), and the 16’6″ Faun (outboard powered family cruiser).

By way of a side-line here, Fairey were using very similar techniques to the ones developed by the De Havilland company which used the extraordinary (for then) concept of building wooden framed and skinned aircraft…and that resulted in the fastest wartime fighter/bomber cum recconaisance plane ; the famous Mosquito.

Fairey Swordfish.

Personal interest.

Many readers will be aware that while i really like my little Hunter Liberty i could really do with a bit more waterline length, more space (volume) , more sailing ‘power’ and while keeping the Liberty’s ability to sail shallow rivers and dry out level at the end of the day. Some readers will also know, because i wrote several posts, that i did a serious search for a slightly larger and more capable boat and that one group of boats that i found were the post IOR designs of around 25 feet with lifting keels : the Dehler 25, Evolution 25 and Super-Seal 26.

Both of us went to see the Dehler and both almost instantly didn’t like the boat, the Evolution 25 that i had in mind disappeared off the market and i couldn’t afford the larger Parker Super Seal although i think it might have made a good boat. The boat that really might have worked for me was the again slightly larger Kelt that i photographed in Wareham :

There was however one complete outsider in the mix and that was the much older Fairey Atalanta and one did come up on Ebay at about the same time ; i don’t remember now why i didn’t go and see it because it was only ‘just down the road’…ie about a hundred miles away !. Going way back, at least 25 years, when i first started thinking about owning my own boat in my post Whitbread race era i was talking to a yacht designer about what i was looking for in a boat and he told me about an Atalanta sitting in the yard somewhere behind Proctor spars place in the Hamble.

I was greatly intrigued so i went and saw the boat and yes, it had a lot of what i wanted and it was just about inside my budget except that it was in poor condition and it smelled very nasty inside…..i’m pretty sure there was some unhealthy wood in that one. I spent some time working up a budget for the potential rebuild and what i came up against straight away is the huge base cost of having a boat like that in a shed anywhere in the Hamble where covered space seems to be charged out by the square inch !. On top of that i did some research about repairs to an Atalanta hull and it does seem to be a more specialist job than a ‘normal’ ie carvel, wooden boat. The reason for that being that the whole hull is hot-glue laminated from Agba veneers in a large oven !.

I liked the basic concept and the actual boat though so i always kept it in mind for ‘maybe one day’ : today i still greatly admire the Atalanta and iv’e since seen some very nicely refitted ones. The size would still be about right, i could live with the layout , especially by converting the aft cabin to a large double + berth and i still love the funky looking 50’s shape. Given that these boats were first built in the 1950’s iv’e always fancied having one that was ‘born’ in the same year as me (1958)…..not the most intelligent or logical reason to own a boat but hey ….it’s me we are talking about !

The Atalanta file.

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Here’s one for sale via the Atalanta owners website .

https://atalantaowners.org/f14-noggin-sale-2/

Funky, Foxy, Fairey. 'F' is for Uffa Fox 'F' is for Fairey Atalanta. Blog time : well, it's mid April and just going into week 4 of this strange life.

#Fairey Atalanta #Fairey Swordfish #fairey titania #International 14 #Uffa Fox

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buttercream-imagines · 7 years

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I watched Joe’s live stream so you don’t have to (play by play reactions)

- announcement is a 24 hour livestream on ThatcherJoeVlogs on Friday starting at 6:00pm UK time (1:00pm EST) ft guests and Joe signing a lot of Username:Uprising

- I wish I had friends I could have a sleepover with and watch the livestream dude that would be so fun

- throwback to #1Dday I couldn’t even last seven hours with One Direction how the hell am I gonna do 24 hours with YouTubers

- just kidding I’m about to be dedicated as fuck

- Jack and Joe from 12:00-3:00 am

- #unpopularopinion I like Joe’s mustache

- my poor baby and his infected gums he was so ill he almost passed out whenever he ate cuz the pain as so bad fuck I want to hug him

- Joe speaking foreign languages is my aesthetic (and it reminds me that I really need to brush up on my spanish)

- “I’m trying to set up other things for the future cuz, you know, you never know how long this whole YouTube thing is gonna last before I’m back on the ol’ roof”

- “it’s getting to the point where I really do want a girlfriend”

- well I’ve always been at the point where I want to be your girlfriend so I don’t understand why this is such a predicament for you when I’m always available so quit complaining and hit me up

- no but really I want him to be happy and I think he would be so happy in a relationship so he’s just gotta get someone awesome

- (like I wasn’t mad when Caspar got with Maddie cuz she’s great so Joe needs someone great)

- main channel might become a lower priority in the future

- “And I’ll see you in the future with a Sugg Sunday Special. Who knows when it’ll be. I don’t wanna say that there’s gonna be an end to Sugg Sunday but... I don’t know. I’m not as fussed about that channel as much, which is a shame cuz that’s my main channel. I don’t know it’s been so nice to have a week [...] where I haven’t thought about that kind of stuff”

- obviously the idea of irregular Sugg Sunday Specials is sad but the idea of Joe putting out things because he feels obligated to and not because he enjoys them is even more sad

- “Wow that was deep whoa I went off! That’s what happens when Harry Styles starts playing music I start talking about proper stuff that I don’t normally speak about”

- yes, Harry Styles’ album was playing in the background throughout the entire livestream

- Kiwi is his favorite song (I shit you not that’s my favorite too it’s such a bop)

- serious Joe makes my heart feel warm

- he wants to raise a family in the countryside omg raising kids in the countryside he’s a country boy at heart

- “No iPads, no YouTube, no YouTube until you’re 12″

- “The dream is be able to have a lake and my dad can live in a little cave in the garden and look after the lake”

- honestly I love Joe wow

- HE DOESN’T LIKE THE WORD BUTTERCREAM GANG OR BUTTERCREAM SQUAD

- “We started it as like a little internal thing that we called ourselves and it spread and people call us the buttercream squad and I’m just like ugh it makes me like cringe out a bit whenever I hear it even though it’s what we call ourselves I guess. I don’t really call it that anymore”

- he starts the story of how they started to call themselves that at 28:38 of the video I’m not even going to try and summarize it ya’ll should just watch that bit

- okay but him, Conor, Caspar, and Mikey were the original four and that is so fucking random to me

- for some reason I just got really bummed out that he doesn’t like that name like okay Joe I literally have a blog dedicated to it so what the fuck am I supposed to do now

- he said none of them expected anyone else to start calling it that

- literally you’re all Internet sensations you should’ve known it was gonna get blown up when you gave yourself a name so honestly you brought this upon yourself lmao

- wOW MY HEART ACTUALLY IS BUMMED THAT HE DOESN’T LIKE IT

- also Byron is a member of their squad and literally none of us even talk about him/know him

- (side not Byron is hot as hell)

- I’m dead at how we all cling to whatever they say like the SECOND they tagged #buttercream on a photo we all went off

- I’m have an existential crisis wow

- “I just miss Jaspoli. That was my favorite, back in those days”

- I LEGIT THOUGHT I WAS GONNA CRY JUST NOW WOW MY HEART I MISS THOSE DAYS TOO JOE FUCK BRING IT BACK

- GO ON A JASPOLI TRIP PLS

- he wants a pet pig ??

- he’s gonna hang out with Brit soon !

- I ship him and Brit I have since the Jaspoli Coachella days (#unpopularopinion ??)

- literally the second I typed that he made a comment about it oh sorry sorry didn’t know that was a touchy subject

- reminder once again that I am single and available

- okay but they FaceTime every week for hours and that’s goals ???

- my jaw dropped at this bit he said he wants to stop going on nights out and start going to dinner parties and such, that he’s done with the night scene

- I thought he was joking but he was dead ass serious oh my god he’s growing up that felt weird to hear him say that

- “when the time’s right and it’s the right person” he’s a romantic person

- 52:58 through 53:05 is a joy

- “I’m a giver, not a receiver, take that as you will”

- he keeps getting shaky and he thinks it’s because he hasn’t eaten all day and it really worries me

- he’d like to live with both Oli and Josh (separately) and says that they’re both very mature

- his favorite YouTubers are the Sidemen and Caspar

- someone told him to collab with Kian and JC and he completely ignored it lmao

- HE SEES OLI AS A LITTLE BROTHER

- “I feel like I’ve watched him grow from like a little baby seed to like an oak tree. To see him do so well for himself now and he’s in a position where he’s just loving it and I’m so proud of him. I feel like a proud older brother and he’s said he sees me as like an older brother. We’ve had a lot of heart to hearts and stuff and he’s so good for advice. Even though he’s like my younger brother I go to him for advice a lot of the time cuz he’s been doing YouTube longer than I have and he’s just very knowledgeable about everything and he’s very sincere he cares about people a lot he puts others before him a lot of the time and he’s a genuine friend for life”

- THAT HAD ME SO FUCKING EMO

- it takes him a long time to open up to people, he’s usually quite shy when he meets people for the first time unless there’s that instant “chemical spark”

- he talked about being nice to people and compared life to climbing up a tree and how you should be nice to everyone you pass on your way up because if you’re not and then you start to drop, the people you pass won’t be there to grab your hand and stop you from falling

- in girls he looks for someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, not too obsessed about themselves

- obviously first attraction is important but ultimately it’s about the personality (said every guy ever tbh) and then mentioned how if looks are that important to you it means you probably care more about how other people perceive you and your girlfriend than how you feel about your girlfriend herself

- “I want to find someone who can only add something to my life. Someone who improves my life and makes me a happier person. At the moment I’m a really happy person so anyone who has that affect to make it better is the one for me”

- reminder once again that I am single

- like I’m not drop dead gorgeous but I’ve got some stuff to offer I have nice eyes and good hair and my personality is great aside from the occasional down periods due to mental illness but you know we all have our flaws

- he talked seriously quite a bit in the stream and I’m really digging it I like serious Joe

- someone asked for advice on having a crush on your ex and he talked about moving on because it’s probably not good for you but then he said “unless you think they were the one”

- one of the best relationships he’s ever been in has been with someone older than him

- “Maybe I need to go for a cougar. Any 40 year old ladies?”

- *awkward laugh* “I’ve just admitted to a live stream that I’m after a mum. No I’m only joking. Imagine that I could end up being your dad”

- Poop Scoop with Brit on Friday

- he’s in no rush to have children

- “I’m fortunate enough to act like an immature child and get away with it a lot of the time”

- he doesn’t really want to settle down/get married anytime soon because he meets new people everyday and the idea of getting really settled down scares him because he never knows who he’s going to meet the next day

- “that’s why I’ve never- well not that you know of- had any public relationships”

- what the hell does that mean Joseph

- “I’m very good at keeping it all under wraps”

- WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN JOSEPH

- he’s literally so hungry he’s shaking Josh hurry up he needs food

- “I hope Caspar’s there cuz I haven’t seen him in bloody ages and I miss the ol’ boy. I miss the bloody weirdo”

- he loves livestreams because it’s the closest we can get to all sitting in a room together and “having a good ol’ standard chit chat”

- reminder of the 24 hour live stream on ThatcherJoeVlogs starting at 6:00pm UK time (1:00pm EST)

- “New vlog soon. New gaming video soon. I’m back. Don’t worry I’m not going anywhere. I’m still loving life. And more importantly, you’re all bloody legends.”

---

that was a lot there you go (or you could just watch the live stream idk)

also I wish I knew people who lived near me 😭 I would so fucking love to have a sleepover and make good friends and watch Joe

#thatcherjoe #joe sugg #joe sugg livestream #thatcherjoe livestream #mine #non imagine #livestream

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creativitytoexplore · 4 years

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Coronavirus & SEO: Its Impact and the actions to Take as an SEO Specialist – #CrawlingMondays 25th Episode

Learn about the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the organic search traffic across many industries and countries, what you can do as an SEO specialist, and the good and bad we’ve seen in company reactions, in this conversation with Nitin Machanda, Global Head of SEO at Omio; David Iwanow, Global Search & Traffic Manager at Danone; Gianluca Fiorelli, International SEO Consultant:

1:40 What’s the impact of Coronavirus for SEO

9:29 What are the positive and negative actions that companies have taken

22:31 What can we expect in the future & last tips for SEO businesses

Watch it here:

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You can also watch this video and leave a comment over YouTube. To follow more updates on Crawling Mondays, subscribe to the YouTube channel and follow to @CrawlingMondays in Twitter.

Video Transcription

Aleyda: Welcome to another special edition of Crawling Mondays. In today’s edition, I wanted to take the opportunity that I am talking lately with, meeting with Gianluca, with David. And we are all, whether in-house or consultants, working across different sectors as SEOs. So I wanted to start this conversation with them about what we are seeing about the impact of coronavirus across our different types of companies that we work with, and on the other hand, how we are handling, how we are focusing our work in order to keep the clients, in order to work if we see a negative situation or a negative trend. So, hopefully, this can also be helpful for many of you.

Aleyda: But before that, I wanted to introduce, in case you don’t know them somehow, Gianluca Fiorelli, who is an international SEO consultant, who has tons of experience in the travel market, especially in Italy. He’s based in Spain, but has a lot of clients in Italy.

Aleyda: Then David Iwanow, he works at Danone as an in-house SEO, and also has tons of experience as an in-house SEO across many international classifieds, marketplaces as well websites. And Nitin Machanda who is in Berlin, he has worked a lot also in the travel industry in the past, in the eCommerce industry, and now is working at all Omio as an in-house SEO. So hello everybody. How are you?

Aleyda: We have already been in lockdown in many countries for two weeks, and since the start of Coronavirus lock downs and restrictions started already two weeks and a half ago. So, it’s true that at the beginning the very obvious negative effects started to happen with the travel sector, travel industry, people canceling the plans. I have a client website, the one travel client that I had that saw huge spark traffic, not in rankings, but in traffic. This was people canceling, that went down after a few days. And now even if the rankings are still the same, realistically, the traffic has never been, unfortunately, so low. What are the impact that you are seeing directly in the industries that you work? If you can share more about it, what you are seeing in general?

Nitin Machanda: Absolutely. I think I can start because we are talking about travel, and I work in that industry only. And for us it started happening after the third week of February, more or less. And in the beginning we were seeing 20, 25% week-over-week drop, and now the business is down 95%. So this is a huge dent, and I think travel is one of the most affected industries due to this corona situation.

Aleyda: In your case, you provided the option that the users went ahead and directly canceled their bookings, or how did you manage that?

Nitin Machanda: Yes, absolutely. For us, customer is very important. Every user we want to, just, when we get a user, we want to keep this user forever. So for that, we wanted to basically solve [inaudible 00:02:43] issues they experience, even in this situation. So we have a landing page where we have all the providers so you can speak with them for cancellations, and if they don’t provide cancellation, they don’t help you, then we help you there, so that’s what we do.

Nitin Machanda: And then, in fact, interestingly here in our company, a lot of different teams are now helping customer support, even from SEO team, the people who are joining customer support for helping with emails and other stuff, there they can help, where everyone is now customer support and helping users with good user experience, even in this situation, so that when demand is back again, they come back to Omio because of this lovely experience. And then they stay with us forever.

Aleyda: In your case, Gianluca, you have the clients also in Italy.

Gianluca Fiorelli: I have two clients. One is still active, one put me on hold because of the situation. One of these clients is a small OTA, let’s say, they specialize on a specific region, very touristic region of Italy like Sardinia, like Puglia. The impact was terrifying in the sense that in Italy they start really in February, all of the negative impact of COVID.

Gianluca Fiorelli: If we look at the traffic over here, a percentage of decrease, especially in [inaudible 00:03:58] profit is, essentially, the same percentage [inaudible 00:04:03]. It’s around between 80, 90% of traffic, which is terrifying because, as you were saying too, their ranking never were so wonderful. In a normal structure this would have been a really nice start of summer season.

Gianluca Fiorelli: However, not get too much depressed looking at the year-over-year statistics, I started to look more on week-over-week statistics in order to see search behavior changes. And in this sense, I started to see something positive, especially week-over-week.

Aleyda: Seems that it’s reached a bottom already, and is starting to increase little-by-little.

Gianluca Fiorelli: Exactly. This is the case of this OTA which is substantially selling vacation. And finally another client in the insurance sector, and they are still growing year-over-year and still growing week-over-week.

David Iwanow: I guess I’m in a different position because we actually manufacture products, so we obviously do see an increase in people looking for our products, typically because people are shifting to more online commerce. But, again, it’s not consistent across all markets, and usually it comes down to how advanced they are in e-commerce. Some markets see reasonable uplifts, and others seem moderate. So it’s not a sort of perfect thing where everyone sees the same type of uplift.

David Iwanow: The one of the things which I am seeing, and I’ve got a couple of travel websites which are probably a bit shitty when it comes to it. I’ve managed to get some optimization around coronavirus content, and a lot of it was around people just needing information.

Aleyda: It’s interesting what you mentioned regarding you’ve seen still a good trend in your sector, and it makes sense because you work with a food and first necessity type of product. We all still need to keep eating, and this is what I saw, it was sure, and it’s completely reasonable. It starts with a negative trend of those sectors that were more connected with us coming together, the events, for example, websites like Meetups or ever Everbright or this type of websites, not only the travel ones, but the concerts. We can all expect to see a decrease in traffic because, realistically, we cannot go anywhere together, unfortunately.

Aleyda: But now beyond those more [inaudible 00:06:26] sectors is about we are stuck at home, we are working, so we start consuming, and we see data that has been shared from some [inaudible 00:06:35] from similar web about peak in traffic, online communication software, collaboration software, project management software that is cloud-based, of course, because we need to work online. And many companies have been pushed to work completely from home to keep going.

Aleyda: But then, on the other hand, we are also seeing those sectors that are not a first necessity that have had also a negative impact because, of course, if a lot of people have been laid off, a lot of people have [inaudible 00:07:03]. They don’t know what is going to happen to their jobs in the midterm. They are not continually consuming. So, for example, eCommerce websites that I have access to, a luxury type of brand or places, we can see that the traffic is not as down as many in the travel sector, indeed. But we can see that people have stopped consuming as much. They are not thinking right now on buying new dishes.

David Iwanow: It does depend on the vertical. So I know we saw like the demand for toilet paper massively spike through the roof.

Aleyda: Of course, first necessity, though.

David Iwanow: But even things such as like home gyms. So I know in the UK with a lot of people seeing two-to-three months delivery timeframes now.

Aleyda: Sure, indeed.

David Iwanow: In the Netherlands we’re seeing one week, two weeks, but now a lot of the gym equipment in Netherlands is now sold out because people are building home gyms.

Aleyda: Also in electronics, for example, the game system, the switches or-

David Iwanow: Webcam.

Aleyda: Yeah, indeed. In electronics, it did. It depends on the vertical of the eCommerce, what they sell. But in, general, if it is not first necessity and those systems that will keep us entertained, also streaming services, those that will allow us to keep entertained. So, for example, in my case, what I was referring more was like, for example, for clothing or backpacks or shoes. I think that nobody’s thinking right now of buy clothes to go to parties, for example.

David Iwanow: So here’s a fun thing, and I had a bit of a rant on Twitter about this. So I bought a pair of sunglasses from Vision Express in the UK, and I’ve got a warranty on them, but I need to visit their store physically in London in order to do my warranty. I can’t do anything online. Versus I went to one of the retailers in the U.S., Glasses USA, they managed to manufacture and ship them to my house in under six days.

David Iwanow: I think it’s the fact that there’s obviously going to be a shift in demand, but I think a lot of the times if the retailers don’t have the ability to adapt and don’t have the content such as, “Do we still do delivery?” So I think the problem is some of these retailers that could survive, and again, I’m moving to tactics, but if you’re already are locking up those channels and refusing to deal with consumers and saying, “Look, sorry, it’s a bit too busy. We’re just not answering any social media questions anymore,” you’re basically cutting your throat. So I think there are businesses that will choose to adapt.

Aleyda: Let’s talk about that. What are the goods and bad’s, but the ones that we are seeing that are being dealt in a positive and a negative way? Nitin, how would you are trying to work around this?

Nitin Machanda: The good thing for us is SEO is a channel which can also survive in this kind of situation because it’s a midterm to longterm solution, and here you’re not talking about only low-hanging fruits. So for us it was a strategy change. And whenever we plan our quarters, we plan a good mix of shot-term events, medium-term and longterm events.

Nitin Machanda: And here in this case what we did was, so we removed most of the low-hanging fruits for now. So we are focusing more on mid-term and then longterm solutions. For example, site speed, it’s a very good topic. So we’re working on that, and then internal linking. So we are fixing the entire internal linking system that we have and similar initiatives. That’s one thing on a strategic side.

Nitin Machanda: And then we’re also planning to save some cash because this is a situation where we don’t want to burn all the cash. And we keep some budget for testing tools all the time. So we have stopped all those initiatives. We are not testing new tools anymore. And we also plan to have some upgrades, tool upgrades. We have stopped that as well because right now I think we can survive it with whatever we have. So we do not need upgrades, so we are not doing that.

Nitin Machanda: And then we were also doing some really expensive outreach campaigns for generating some high-quality back links organically. So we have stopped all those campaigns as well. For example, viewer content only, it’s not happening, so we save a lot of money there. And there are other initiatives we are working on, so we have solved all those initiatives and saved a lot of money.

Nitin Machanda: And then we were also working with some freelancers or consultants on some fancy-to-have things, not like basics, fancy-to-have things. So, basics, we are definitely working in-house, and all these fancy-to-have things are kind of on hold for now.

Aleyda: It makes sense.

Nitin Machanda: So that’s how we are saving some money and focusing on a long-term initiative. [crosstalk 00:11:14].

Aleyda: So you have gone back to the fundamental, the structural, evergreen type of areas that you know that were there the whole time, and now you have a little bit of more resources to focus on those.

Nitin Machanda: If I generalize all this, I would say SEO is a marathon. It’s not a sprint, and you should think about it as one bad phase of your marathon. So just save your energy, run a bit slow, and then use the synergy in the next phases, and then win, essentially.

Aleyda: Makes sense.

Nitin Machanda: So that’s what we are focusing on at the moment.

Aleyda: I love that metaphor, SEO is actually a marathon, and it should be like this. Actually, we are very lucky in SEO because, yes, of course we have been hurt, but I can’t imagine the professionals that are consultants or agency focusing only on paid search because, realistically, what I have seen with a couple of clients of mine is that, of course, they have stopped all of their paid search initiative because they won’t to pay for clicks that are coming to their site to cancel their bookings.

Nitin Machanda: Exactly.

Aleyda: And often instead of doing that, they are putting a little bit more efforts to invest, for example, the FAQ area, the support section or content that was there, was informational, and sometimes was not given the weight that it deserved. But now with all of the queries or the searches about canceling, rebooking, changing dates, reputational type of queries regarding their brand plus cancellation support, et cetera, they want to run for those in order to fulfill those needs to address the question of the users and be able to, hopefully, regain the user, keep the user providing alternatives.

Aleyda: So that is what, for example, in my case I had been working with a client that I have in the travel sector to identify those queries, coming and Google trends that are not found in the typical keyword tools that are basis, but need to be identified by using Google trends to see what are the actual queries that are starting to be asked right now regarding their [crosstalk 00:13:04]-

Nitin Machanda: A rising one.

Aleyda: … their service. Indeed, the rising ones in general, not only the branded ones, for example, when are cruises are working again? When are we expecting this industry to come back normal? When I can travel back to this location? Gianluca, what are you doing and what you have seen good and bad?

Gianluca Fiorelli: My situation is a little bit different because it is not such a big client, they are smaller. All the cost contention that Nitin was saying, this client totally quit all their PPC spend. They reduce the number of [inaudible 00:13:34]. They had some people internally, so internal developers, internal writers that they tried to reduce, people like me who are external consultant asking me to directly go home [inaudible 00:13:50]. But it’s understandable.

Gianluca Fiorelli: What I have seen and for them, maybe they were quite smart to react very soon. So offering every kind of facility to the clients, [inaudible 00:14:03] if they wanted to cancel. They especially used the Facebook channel for this. Really using a lot of their homepage on Facebook in order to do answer all these kind of questions. And what do we did was substantially recollecting all these questions and creating a specific FAQ page for answering all of these question in order to be totally transparent and be able to offer the client to receive his answer.

Gianluca Fiorelli: And we did it also with really presenting this page from the homepage banner where we were putting a wonderful image of a Sardinia beach, there was now this banner of, “For every question click here.” Also, we have a tone of voice which is more empathetic with the clients, not just selling it. So doing so, we are starting to see an increase, obviously, not year-over-year, but an increase in week-over-week.

Aleyda: That is interesting because what I have seen, like the good practices you were referring before, like terrible reactions of companies, like disabling their websites completely. Even Google had to publish a few days ago their best practices when closing your website to conversions to clients temporarily without actually hurting your rankings in the long term because we were seeing cases of websites completely shutting down [inaudible 00:15:31], things like that. Like, “No, don’t do that.” We know how to handle this by whether disabling the shopping cart, explaining the situation giving an option to the user to register, to be alerted when the service comes back to normal. Indeed, as you mentioned, Gianluca, to do synergy in this case to be able to give a good customer support [crosstalk 00:15:50].

Gianluca Fiorelli: I have another thing on the commercial side, the uncertainty is what is hitting the brain of the people. Obviously, they cannot do last minute [inaudible 00:15:58]. They can’t go out of their home. But they cannot eventually think, “Okay, when we’ll be able to travel again?”

Gianluca Fiorelli: So what do we are pushing and, especially, always kind of offer, which is reserve now for September with all the guarantees. Filling reservation in the long period in order to have it, hopefully, this restoration transform in real bookings. Then eventually driving leads and conversions of these longterm reservation because it is the only really commercial things that can eventually some fresh money, in this case, in terms of commission from the leads for the clients.

Aleyda: In deed, for the future, that targets the more informational queries that are arising, identified them on time to tackle them in a good way like, “When I can start consuming again this product?” And even if right now you don’t have an answer to that, you explain what is the current situation, what are the concern and, again, you tell the user to please reduce [inaudible 00:17:10] so you can be alert when we are back to normal.

Gianluca Fiorelli: Exactly.

Aleyda: And also I think that is a really good opportunity to show the vision and the mission and how the brand and the company and the organization is committed with the community. I think that these times are the ones that show the actual character, not only of people, but organizations.

David Iwanow: I think it’s the case that a lot of people put their head in the sand, and then when things return in three to six months they’re going to struggle because I think if you’re shutting the world down, you’re not responding to any questions on social media. These people, you’ve built a relationship and a brand with them, now you’ve kind of them out.

David Iwanow: I know Facebook said traffic to their apps is up 70%, so thinking outside of SEO, what can you do on social media? So while you may not be able to travel to these particular spots in Italy, why don’t you do a daily broadcast, what’s happening? Do cooking recipes, start creating content, which is very specific to your region or your town and your brand. So I think it’s a fact that you probably need to look at doubling-down on social because that’s where a lot of people are spending their time.

David Iwanow: While I think SEO is important, and I said it’s the basics, I’m still running SEO audits in all my markets because I want them to fix their stuff. And, again, because I work with 50 markets around the world, what’s happening in Europe is different, what’s happening in America, what’s happening in Asia, or what’s happening in South America.

David Iwanow: So I think you very much need to make sure there’s business as usual. Stop the bells and whistles. You maybe don’t need that progressive web app for now. You maybe need to make sure the website is stable and loads quickly on mobile devices. But I think in Italy they’re actually starting to see a spike in desktop traffic as more people are working from home and they’ve stopped using their mobile, and they’re actually using their desktop now.

David Iwanow: So I think it’s very much about going to where your consumers are, making sure you have some type of social content strategy. And if you’re doing any, I guess, automated emails, please just stop them. I got an email from a real estate agent last night saying, “It’s a great time to buy a house.” Dude, no not cool. You need to look at some of your automation that you’ve got that you’re sending out to your customers, and make sure it’s done tactfully.

David Iwanow: If you’re doing any paid media, rein it back, focus purely on stuff which is driving revenue for business. While it might be great to buy traffic for the ultimate packing guide or 10 walking trips in Italy, if you don’t actually make money on that particular task, stop all that activity. So focus on the basics, fix the site issues, make it fast on mobile, have some activation on social.

David Iwanow: Don’t buy coronavirus keywords, please, just don’t, unless you’re a government body, or, as Gianluca says, you’re in the telecommunication space saying, “If you need more bandwidth,” but be very, very tactful about this, and just dial everything back. Have some compassion because if you’re having markets like in Italy where, currently, it’s almost 12% mortality rate. Consider a lot of those people may have lost several family members by the end of this crisis, so dial the stuff down, show some empathy.

Aleyda: Empathy, I think, is very important word in this case.

David Iwanow: If you’re working with suppliers and you have the cashflow now, please pay them. Don’t drag things out for 90-to-120 days. If you can, work with your internal teams. If you have the finances, pay your suppliers because you might be the difference between keeping the business open or not.

David Iwanow: If you have projects planned, and you have the budget still available, push ahead with those projects because again, there’s going to be people which are going to depend on this for their livelihood. But it can be the situation you can negotiate some of these suppliers.

Gianluca Fiorelli: I think what I’m learning from these crises is that is, if you are an SEO consultant, it’s fundamental for you to diversify your client portfolio because in the last years we started seeing SEO specializing in a specific niche, automotive, travel, finance and the home. Let’s imagine our colleagues, SEO freelancer or consultant or whatever, were specialized only on travel, well, now they are screwed.

Gianluca Fiorelli: So I was lucky enough to build a diverse portfolio client so I can allow myself to plan a capital event, the travel ones, for instance, put them on hole in order to maintain the relationship and hoping to start to restart a paid relationship, hopefully, in the next future. But, thanks to this diversified portfolio, I can have these, for instance, B-to-B, investor, essentially, industry companies that are still working, they still need me.

David Iwanow: So to finish a little bit today’s Crawling Monday, I want you to leave a final message regarding the current situation, the scenario, what we can expect, you think, to see in the future, and one last message to help us to come up stronger as SEOs, whether in-house or consultants.

Nitin Machanda: So I would think about only the positive sides of it because there are things, for example, traffic is going down continuously. Demand is completely crashed. So these are things that you cannot control. So thinking about the things which you can control, which is utilizing this time. So think about learning from a different source too. There a lot of sources which are available now and offering their courses for free. So just sign up and then start learning.

Nitin Machanda: And then on strategic side, for example, if you see the pattern, China has started domestic travel again in some states there, and then that’s happening. So Gianluca also mentioned about traffic going up week-over-week in Italy as well. So this shows that local trend is starting to pick up again, and then, gradually, maybe in future three, four months you will see a lot of people traveling again, but domestic, most of them, so with domestic travel.

Nitin Machanda: So think about this, if you’re in travel, maybe you can strategize around these learnings, and then focus more on your domestic routes. For example, for Omio, and maybe not put that much focus on international routes for now because the market is moving there.

Nitin Machanda: So I’m based in Berlin, Germany, and the summer is the peak period for us for travel. So we are just a couple of months away from that, so if we expect domestic travel only the summer, then why not focus on that, and pause our international routes it’s for now? So that would be my suggestion for travel experts here or people who are in travel and doing SEO right now.

Nitin Machanda: But, in general, for everyone I would say use this time for learning to learn. So there are a lot of things that you can learn, so that should be your number one priority. And there are a lot of projects that you might have in your list, which you always wanted to work on, but you never had time for that. I think now’s the time.

Nitin Machanda: So, for example, we were also working on content generation using different tools, but now they have started working using a very open core and open source solution. So people from my team who never coded in their life, they are also coding, so they’re learning that. So, of course, I’m giving them time so that they can learn and then practice this more and then learn something. They can be proud of this moment that during this crisis time they learned something that’s just helping them throughout their life.

David Iwanow: Focus on learning, self-improvement, and cut the fancy things that don’t make a business impact.

Gianluca Fiorelli: The company that will have success, and even a bigger a success after the crisis, will be the brands that are able now to show empathy, transparency, authenticity, closeness to the clients.

Aleyda: So besides all of those great suggestions and recommendations, I will say that if somehow you are struggling also to be able to work from home, I know that is not the usual for many of you, can check out a few recommendations and tips that I have shared myself and also other people in Remoters, that is a website that, little disclosure, I also co-founded. It was Eagle who yesterday, he published how to handle three kids when working from home. That’s a lot, and he’s able to do that.

Aleyda: Also, I have said that the score group that is for the work from home SEOs and marketers, the Remoters watercolor where we are all sharing tips, jobs also that we see. So you can go and join for free, of course.

Aleyda: So there is this very fun Zoom call going on every day, the corona arms that you can join a 6:00 PM GMT, where many of us go enter and chat for a bit while having a beer together or [inaudible 00:26:25]. So I think it’s great also seeing the more human side of us and the community coming together to support each other in different ways.

Aleyda: Also, there is this Google Sheets that was shared by Mike Keen where you can include yourself if you are looking for a job, whether as an employee or as a consultant. Many SEOs have also included themselves there who have lost their jobs. So thank you very much for all of your-

David Iwanow: Thank you.

Gianluca Fiorelli: Thank you.

Nitin Machanda: Thank you.

Aleyda: Thank you very much for your time. And until the next time in Crawling Monday.

Gianluca Fiorelli: Chao, chao.

Aleyda: Bye, bye. Hopefully and in a better situation also already.

Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes.

Nitin Machanda: Yes, for sure.

La entrada Coronavirus & SEO: Its Impact and the actions to Take as an SEO Specialist – #CrawlingMondays 25th Episode aparece primero en International SEO Consultant, Author & Speaker | Aleyda Solis.

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eacci · 7 years

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Library of Things – a space where you can come to borrow useful items and learn how to use them @The Wasted City book

The Wasted City book is a collection of work that combines compelling insights on circularity by external professionals, experts and thinkers with a case-based approach. The latter is pursued by various specialised individuals working directly with CITIES’ international team, casting light on inspiring initiatives that are breaking the linear mould. In total, 16 cases are explored; spanning scales, from the hyper-local to the regional, sectors including food, energy and material waste while focusing on sharing, commodity brokerage and empowerment. As there is no ‘one-size’ solution to make a city circular, the presented cases demonstrate the heterogeneity of approaches, all of which are critical to further the development of circular cities. Let us introduce you one of them - the Library of Things – an innovative space for sharing in London. Alex Thibadoux, our independent researcher went to the Library to get to know them closer, read their story below.

CITIES Foundation: Can you tell what you do at Library of Things?

Sophia Wyatt: There are three of us that run Library of Things as a core team, and then we have a team of librarians to help bring it to life. My role at Library of Things is more along the design and tech. I lead on those things. It was quite a busy period going into launch. So it was design, everything from what is the service design, what is the experience when people come into a Library of Things to what does our brand look like and our space look like? And then we have built with a developer based in Bristol, UK a platform that works as an asset management system and a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system called Lend Engine. I also host the space, more or less every week to keep understanding how people are using it, what people like, don’t like, that kind of thing.

How did it all start?

A couple of years ago, my colleagues, Emma Shaw, Rebecca Trevalyan and there was also a third person involved called James. The idea kind of came from Leila in Berlin and the Toronto Tool Library in Toronto. There was a desire to make it work in the UK, which is a very different market with very different preconceptions about what it might mean to borrow something. It had to kind of almost be designed from scratch. There wasn’t a template to do this. We did a pilot in the same area that we are in now, and because the property market in London is so crazy, it took us about 18 months to then find a permanent spot. But none of us do this full-time yet. In that 18 months, it was a side project that we would do in the evenings and the weekends. The first step was to register as a company, as a nonprofit, and then the next step was to raise money. It wasn’t 18 months of sitting around, it was 18 months of doing a crowd funding campaign, and working out where it was possible – we needed a space that was little to no rent in order to prove our concept in a more solid way. In the end we decided, let’s just do this, let’s get some shipping containers and build exactly what we want. We wanted to be able to try out ideas, and when you are squatting in someone else’s space, it is quite hard to really have that control. We wanted to be able to test things out properly. We then launched in July of this year, so we have been running and operating for about four months or so

Do you have any partners right now or any collaborators that you are working with?

In what sense? Do you mean financially? We don’t operate in isolation at all, we have quite a few organizations that we are connected to. I think that is a key learning from our experience – when you have a social enterprise on a small scale and you want to grow, you ultimately have to find someone, whether that be an organization or a benevolent person who is able to give you the space and time to do that. And on this site that we are on, the car park that we have got our shipping containers on, it is attached to something called Community Shop. Community Shop is a social supermarket, they get surplus food from big supermarkets. And they sell it at a 70% discount rate to people who receive some form of government support. And they also provide workshops and mentor schemes to those people that are members of their shop. So there is that, and next door to us is the recycling center for Lambeth, one of the main recycling centers for Lambeth. So there is a little ecosystem, which makes sense to people, because we are not on a high street right now. It needs to not be a random place. And then there is another organization that we are connected with called Civic, which is, the way describe it. . . have you heard of the Impact Hub Network? There are 88 of them around the world, and they are essentially little community hubs for social entrepreneurs. Civic is trying to create hubs of social enterprises. So its dream would be to see a Library of Things working in a similar space to another social enterprise, so that there can be shared energy. You can be a greater draw for people to come. You can share resources. That kind of stuff. One of the main guys behind Civic was the founder of the Impact Hub Network. His name is Jonathan Robinson. We are connected in a larger framework with those two, and we were given a grant from the RSA at the beginning of this year, which has been amazing. I don’t know if you know what the RSA – it is the Royal Society of Arts. It is an organization in the UK. . . it is looking at solutions to modern day challenges basically. It is interested in the progression of society. They are the main three organizational partners. We also work with big brands for our stock, so far we’ve had items from big brands, like B&Q and Patagonia. I don’t know if you know B&Q. It is a DIY and gardening chain of shops.

Do you know what your financial structure and funding will be moving forward?

It’s early days, but we realize that we are not going to get all of our money from one source. We have to be pretty diverse about how we remain financially viable. We will be developing our business model in the coming months, but borrowing does generate the majority of our income for now. We will be still looking for grants. It is quite normal in the first year to be looking at grants. We will be doing that, but like I say, we are going to be looking at quite a few ways to remain as financially sustainable as possible. The ultimate aim is for us to be a community owned business, with a share offer for the community.

As you are developing as an organization, how do you all meet to decide what to do and make self-assessments for moving forward?

At the moment, like I said before, there is a core team of three of us, so it is quite easy to make decisions. But like I say, we would like to become a community owned business and be involving the community as much as possible in decisions. We are 4 months old, really it has just been the three of us up until now.

How many members do you have in the library.

At four months in, we have nearly 500 people signed up wanting to be a member, and we have about 300 who have actually come in and verified their membership. As a community project, we want to meet people that are part of Library of Things. The aim is for this not to be an anonymous thing, and as we test out exactly how people interact with us, we ask people to come in. It is part of signing up basically, coming into the space.

What will you have in your catalogue? How do you decide what will be available?

The things fit broadly into six categories. I often talk about it as we have things for making and mending, we have things for exploring and experimenting and we have things for events. So the idea is that we have items that are practically useful, and we have to try out and see if it is for you. For example it might be sports gear, it might musical instruments, it might even be camping. And then the practically useful things are the drills, the sewing machines, the wheelbarrows. Events stuff include projectors, big speakers, etc.

What sectors of the economy do you think that you will influence the most with your library?

Retail hopefully. That is the biggest one. Our whole kind of reason for being is to make borrowing a better experience than buying. That is what we want to do. Retail is the most obvious. I don’t know, there might be something around travel. How we belong in spaces and belong in areas, but yeah, retail is the most obvious.

Are you looking to expand across the UK and beyond eventually?

Yes. We had a lot of interest when we first opening up. It works two ways: we have had a lot of interest and we also think it would be an amazing thing to spread. But we are very aware that it can’t be us going out and setting these up. Logistically it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work on a community level. It has got to come from the community and they have to want it. What we have put together is a toolkit, and we are holding a boot camp so that people can come partner up. We can build a network basically. It will be more of a cooperative than a franchise. We just want people to be able to essentially borrow anything, anywhere. That is part of the world we want to see.

Has there been anything that has prevented your growth so far? Any specific challenges?

Not yet, I think it is too early days to say what is really limited us. If we had a massive amount of money invested you know, but you can have that kind of thing too early. No, nothing really yet. We are at such an early stage that it is really a lot about learning.

Do you think there is anything that can help you become more mainstream with the idea of borrowing in general?

Hmm, that is a good question. No, I think any idea like ours, like the concept that you need to spread, it has to take a bit of time. I don’t think these things can just be accelerated. They can’t just suddenly become popular. One of the main reasons we have a physical place, rather than it just be a digital thing, is that we believe that people have to experience something tangibly in order to be able to understand what it can do for them. It is a really interesting phenomenon, digital companies like Amazon and Google are inhabiting physical spaces now. If you really want to reach as many people as possible, it has to really be a physical space as well as digital. We want to be as successful as possible, and that means reaching people who would normally be very afraid or be very suspicious of novelty and like to stay in their safe zone. It takes a bit of time and be done in a physical space.

How do you get most of the items in your library? Are they donated by individuals or purchased?

I would say it is about 80% donations. We have had donations from big brands who are supportive of what we do to individuals. We try to be quite strict about what we can have donated, because we need the Things to be in as good of condition as possible so that people want to borrow it. It has to be a better experience than buying. So it has to be something that either people don’t mind. . . like a hammer, people don’t really mind if it is a £100 pound hammer or a £20 hammer. Price is the most important indicator of that, but you kind of get my point, there are some things it really matters with. And we do buy certain key items if we haven’t been able to source them from donations. I think we ended up buying a really great PA system.

Can you tell me how you see Library of Things in the future?

Well we would like to imagine Library of Things in all kinds of different contexts in different kinds of communities. In libraries, in post offices, in community centers, in all kinds of places like that. The ultimate vision for it is that anyone can borrow anything, almost anywhere. Library of Things is about more than just the things themselves. It is about the experiences and skills that people can have with these things. Not only do you get to borrow a drill, but we also give you the knowledge to use it as well if you have never used it before. That might enable you, or give you the confidence to go and do a bit of DIY, like put up some shelves, that you have never done before. It is those kind of things that we are looking to grow and to connect more members within communities together, so that they can help each other more. That is where we see ourselves.

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