Softball: NDCS v Leonard Cheshire

Result NDCS ( 28 ) v Leonard Cheshire ( 26 )

Yep, very tense affair and a close game!!

Probably best described by showing the score first!!

1st innings Leonard Cheshire 2, NDCS 1
2nd innings Leonard Cheshire 24 (!!!) NDCS 6

So at half time LC 26, NDCS 7 – not good

3rd innings LC 0 – NDCS 13
4th innings LC 0 – NDCS 8

I usually spend my time describing how well the team have played, luckily this week, one of the team summed up the performance… (Ta Ramzan!!)

Pippa – Must be our lucky mascot
Jenny – Awesome Catch on Backstop
Adrian – Awesome Catch on 3rd Base
Rob – Awesome pep talk about RUN JUST RUN + awesome throw to Adrian
Alan – Awesome pep talk to FIELD out wider + awesome Batting
Chris – Awesome Catch
George – Awesome Batting
Anna – Awesome on first base I think she got them all out in round 1
Ross – Awesome captain + having to endure a heart attack a minute

I think you get the picture!! (talking of pictures the top pic was kindly taken by Ramzan too)

The opposition

In the pub after they were a good bunch and a good chat about the game ensued. They were as shocked as I was with the result!!

A big thank you

The NDCS Challenges Team would like to say a big Thank You to all of you who recently took part in one of our challenges: The London Marathon, North Pole Expedition and Trek Vietnam in April; Cycle Peru, Trek the Inca Trail and the London 10k in May; and the 24 Peaks and 3 Peaks Challenges in June.

London to Paris

These events have so far raised an amazing total of £294,843, and more money is coming in! This is a fantastic amount and will go a long way to make a difference to the lives of deaf children and their families all over the UK. Thank you to all of you for taking on the challenge, and to all your supporters who helped you reach your fundraising target!

“I’m proud and exhilarated at completing this fantastic challenge. Peru is such a beautiful country and even though there are the inevitable ups (Machu Picchu, Abra la Raya pass, Lake Titicaca) and downs (Ayaviri blockade and the challenge having to end), pushing your mind and body to the limit earns the sponsorship received from all the good folks who donated. As a parent of two deaf children I cannot underestimate the value of NDCS challenges. Thanks NDCS.”
Andrew Biddiscombe, Cycle Peru participant

Tags and categories…

Just looking at my blog, noticed I categorise and not tag, what are people’s thoughts?

Our Mission onto MySpace

As part of the Digital Avenger work we have been doing we decided to look at trying to attract people to one of our UK Challenge Events, Three Peaks .

We set up a page which can be seen at http://www.MySpace.com/deafchildren

The aim was to attract friends who had an interest in walking, hiking or outdoor events.

Ultimately we would then send them to a landing page where they can then enquire about the event.

As we have been using members of staff for the project I thought it better to have them tell it how it was from their perspective, with a few prompting questions from me. Thanks to Kathy for her Co-operation…

——

Ross: Have you used MySpace before?

Kathy: No, only Facebook and Bebo

Ross: How easy was it to set up?

Kathy: With help at the beginning it was pretty easy to set up. The basic page was a bit dull so it took a bit of time to add the extras like the video and images.

Ross: So you learnt some new skills then?

Kathy: To make the pages more interesting it was useful to have some basic html, which with Madhava and Kevin’s help and some digging online I was able to do.

Ross: How many Friends do you have?

Kathy: At last count 411

Ross: That’s good! Isn’t it?

Kathy: Oh no, its now 410 (as she looks at the MySpace page!)

Ross: Will have to look into that and see how good 411 oh 410 is. How did you get those friends?

Kathy: We used a program to collect friends. It is called Stealth Friend Bomber .

Ross: What did you do?

Kathy: We would search on Google and MySpace Groups to look for people interested in walking, hiking and outdoor pursuits. Then send them a request to check out our profile and sign on as a friend.

Ross: Were there any problems?

Kathy: Yes, I would manually have to go through my ‘Friends’ and find the UK profiles before sending out event invitations, as a number of them were American or European.

Ross: What would you like to do moving forward?

Kathy: It would be great to get a few of the people who did the event this year to either join the group or perhaps give us a quote that we can use. Also I would like to have more contact with the marketing team and get information to send out to our 410 people signed up.

Ross: Thanks

—–

Success/Learning

NDCS staff have learnt to create, manage and populate an MySpace organisational profile

In less than two weeks of promotion, over 300 MySpace users have accepted friend requests from NDCS, self selecting their interest in our Challenge events.

Some interesting questions that came out of this…

Is 410 good? Please let us know…

What should we be doing to a) keep these people interested and b) look at new avenues to collect more friends from MySpace?

Softball: NDCS v IFAW

Result NDCS ( 18 ) v IFAW ( 6 )

Again as we left the building on Wednesday we had a small ( 8 ) group of merry men and women ready to step up to the plate… Luckily we were able to get Charles and Chris to give us the right number of people…

The first two innings were a fraught affair with some niggles and it took us some time to really get to grips with the game! I have to say I thought we were quite lucky in fact, the opposition were VERY understandable and I’m sure other teams would not have been so lenient. It did not help that we were all trying to tell each other how to play and not concentrating on our own game. (you know who you are ) The only point worth noting was George’s home run, the only one we scored all day…

Third innings we seemed to wake up a bit both with our batting and fielding… Big thanks to Jenny for volunteering to be back stop, sterling work, you were great at shouting when to run! Anna G took up first base and played a steady game.

Allan was as ever batting and fielding like a trooper and certainly not scared to get in there when there was any niggles in those first two innings.

We had an interesting competition with the IT team, all scoring in innings two, three and four. Thank to George, Chris and Charles.

This week’s newby was Lilli Reisner, whose working with Kevin to help with some Fundraising work over the summer. She certainly knows how to hit the ball and got a bruise on her leg for her trouble at third base.

Anna P was great at second base, ensuring we stumped a few of their runners, she also managed to deal with some wild throws aimed at head height.

My final mention has to go to Gary. During the game he produced some gem comments and probably one of the funniest moments this season with the bat. After three innings his shock to hear we were winning was priceless, “We’re Winning!” and the final ball he played, which hit his bat / hand and fell forward. He just froze and stood there while the rest of us were shouting!

The opposition

I seem to say that the opposition were good each week, this week is no different, they were deffo kind in the first few innings and I think they thought they might win this pretty comfortably after our disastrous first two innings… Some lucky pitching from me seemed to affect their better batsmen and we certainly picked up with the fielding in the last two innings. (Feel free to respond IFAW!!) We chose their MVP because it was the first time she’d ever caught anything, I think that made Gary feel a bit better, knowing his shot had made her day!

I would add the scores but they are in a bag still to be returned!!

Fundraising in your area throughout July

NDCS will be fundraising in the following areas throughout July

Northern Ireland

Claidy
Londonderry
Maydown
Foyle
Rosemount
Waterside Eglinton

England
Bristol
Nottingham
Northampton
Derby
Stoke
Carlisle

Wales

Swansea

We will also be doing door-to-door fundraising for Deaf Child Worldwide in the following areas

Navan
Tallaght, Dublin
Lucan
Swords
Louth
Dublin
Kilkenny
Offaly
Carlow
Naas
Ardfinnan Ballina Ballinderry
Thurles
Tipperary Town
Nenagh
Cashel
Carrick-on-Suir
Cahir
Clonmel
Dromineer Dundrum Fethard
Summerhill, Templemore Terryglass
Kilsheelan Newport, Roscrea
Bansha Birdhill Borrisokane
Holycross Killenaule Kilross
Clogheen Glen of Aherlow
WEXFORD:
Enniscorthy
Ferns
New Ross
Wexford Town
Rosslare
Gorey
Bunclody
Courttown Campile
Boolavogue Ballyhack
Duncannon Curracloe

Softball: NDCS v Cancer Research UK

Result NDCS (17) v Cancer Research UK (31)

We were a small but perfectly formed team this week with only seven NDCS bods. (Thanks to Adrian for getting there in time!) We were lucky enough to get two of their players too, Thanks to Jo and Becky for stepping over the line to don the Amythist!!

Star of the show without a doubt was Louise, stumping at least three of their players and batting like a real pro, I think the fact she varied the side she played helped. Not just that she played to have fun, in the right spirit and really did deserve the MVP for us.

I’ve already mentioned Adrian but he played his part with his pitching and batting limiting them to 2 runs in his innings.

Batting wise we had some great plays with Pritesh getting at least one home run! (feel free to let me know if anyone else scored a home run!) Ramzan had the honour of playing in the “glory slot” between 2nd and 3rd and certainly played his part in getting people stumped at both posts.

I always see Kathy and Rob as being steady dependable players and they continued that notching up six runs between them, Kathy stumped at least two on 1st while Rob had a go at pitching and brought about their lowest score of 2 runs in the 4th innings.

Both our “ringers” held fast stumping and catching out their own, and batting well.

Opposition

Thought this might be a toughy after we played them in a friendly. They have some really great hitters (Max I should have caught your one!!). Their pitcher was consistent and they have great team spirit. Their captain’s comment on email the day after, “it was the most fun one we’ve had”. We may not be winning but at least we’re having fun! Good luck for the rest of the season…

First Innings
NDCS 2
Cancer Research UK 7

Second Innings
NDCS 12
Cancer Research UK 16

Third Innings
NDCS 2
Cancer Research UK 6

Fourth Innings
NDCS 1
Cancer Research UK 2

Facebook Face-off!

As part of the work we have done with the Digital Avengers we looked at testing Facebook adverts V Google Adwords.

The Challenge

To see which advertising medium would produce the most number of enquiries.

How we we went about it

Over a three week period we decided to use one of our Running Events, The Royal Parks Half marathon.

The adverts used include:

Facebook

With both adverts the user went to the same landing page. From there the user was able to enquire about the event and have relevant information sent to them.

What we found out from the test

Overall Facebook beat Google for enquiries!

Results of enquiries made during the three week period

Totals
Google	6	3	2	3	14	6	34
Facebook	7	19	7	8	3	0	44

Facebook advert content

We found that the advert with the cartoon face on it had a greater response rate with over 370 people clicking on the cartoon in comparison to 5 with the sensible advert. CTR being 0.10% for the cartoon advert in comparison to 0.03% for the normal advert.

Questions

Some of the questions we now need to ask ourselves moving forward include:

Enquiries are all well and good but what really matters is who says yes to signing up to the event and wants to raise money for NDCS. How many of those who inquired went on to do the event?

Is this a valid test? Should we compare an advert on someone’s page with the targeted advertising from Google? Is the Facebook advert more of a banner or affiliate advert?

What effect would changing the wording in the landing page have with enquiries?

Further writing about the Facebook V Google phenomenon

The first is Jonathan Mendez’s blog , who looked at comparing Facebook and Google. In summary, his findings were that with the Facebook adverts, the time spent on the site was less. Ultimately he questioned the back end mechanisms and here I agree that they are light years behind Google and do have to catch up. I still wonder about the user journey with his experiment, we were clear that the journey for the user was to go to the landing page get a taste of what we were offering and then enquire for more information. Allowing the user to visit your site is great but if there is no focus then what do you expect?

Another article that seems to question Facebook’s validity for adverts is AU Interactive with it’s Facebook Ads Don’t Work. Here’s Proof. Again I think that the comments are interesting with suggestions such as “Targeting ads based on what people are searching for is safe. Sneaking a recommendation into a users news feed hoping they will share it with their friends, not so much.” is interesting when we look at this comparison.

A great suggestion from Slightly Shady SEO has them asking Facebook to lighten up a bit…

Final thoughts…

I’m not totally convinced I have an answer to the test we did, I think there are variables that need to be tested further, such as having the same advert! Looking at this from a neutral perspective, there is definately something in Facebook advertising and I look forward to reporting back on this once we have looked at testing the questions above further.

I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this and any other issues we might want to test.

A big thank you!

This weekend four teams took part in the Three Peaks Challenge , climbing the highest peaks in England, Scotland and Wales, raising money for NDCS .

We’d just like to thank them for their hard work and hope their are aching limbs are not too sore!

The teams taking part were:

Barclays Bank Plc
J Coffey Construction Ltd
Nokia
Structural Systems Uk Ltd

If you are interested in taking part in our Three Peaks Challenge, visit our website for more information.

Softball: NDCS v Breast Cancer Care

Result NDCS (20) v Breast Cancer Care (36)

Yep we were pretty much whooped this week!

Being 19 v 4 down after two innings did not help!

Postmortem in the Tattershall Arms after saw us all agree that it was just a bad day at the office with our batting, fielding and pitching on the whole being pretty poor!

Have to say though, there was a superb catch by MVP Allan T. (Mind you he does play in the glory position!! ;-0). Good catch too from Rob in out field.

Thanks to Gary for the half time oranges! By then we were looking like a right bunch of lemons though!

I thought a change of pitcher might change our luck, nope they still marched on and we just about got 4 runs! I also remember I think that Louise grazed her knee and needed some attention. (hope its ok?)

It was the last innings where we redeemed ourselves both fielding and batting! Some interesting pitching tactics from Adrian really caught them off guard and they only scored 9 in that innings! (they were not sure where the ball would come from, did he?) It saw a super catch from Anna too!! I think we have a new back stop / caller too in Emma who was keen to make sure any decisions that were ours went our way.

But it was in the batting where we really improved with 12 in that innings! Six coming from the IT team (George, Charles & Adrian) alone… Well done. Couple of others who shone with the bat were Allan and Kathy who also got two each.

A big thank you to those that were happy to sub during the four innings. People like Ramzan were able to be our eyes off the pitch.

Opposition
These are a good bunch players whose good mixture of big hitters and tactical fielders. As this is their first season they are doing pretty well! Wish them well for the season…

First Innings
NDCS 0
Breast Cancer Care 9

Second Innings
NDCS 4
Breast Cancer Care 10

Third Innings
NDCS 4
Breast Cancer Care 7

Fourth Innings
NDCS 12
Breast Cancer Care 10