brightfive

brightfive live at the pyramids

Katie and Martin have just returned from a week in Egypt, working on the prestigious Imagine Cup competition for Microsoft.

The event comprised of three major events – the opening ceremony at the Citadel, the competition stages at the Citystars Intercontinental and the closing ceremony which was held at an outdoor stage at the Giza Pyramids.

The event was a huge success with amazing entries from winning students. We were delighted to be involved in the project and to have the opportunity to work at such an amazing venue.

Nice day for a bright wedding

On a cold wintery day in December Simon and I invited 90 of our friends and family to join us for a beautiful wedding ceremony and reception in Poppleton, just outside York.

We had an amazing day and would like to thank our friends, colleagues and clients for all the good wishes, cards and gifts we received.

We were incredibly touched that so many people remembered and took the time to get in touch and wish us well.

Charity Update

brightfive supported two charities in 2008 – Kiva and the Cake Software Foundation.

Kiva is a not-for-profit social venture which allows businesses and individuals to lend to specific entrepreneurs in poor or developing world countries.

In 2008 brightfive lent money to two individuals, Komla Azi and Adewole Bisola. Komla lives in Togo and is a motor mechanic – the money lent to him enabled him to buy important tools for his business. Adewole lives in Nigeria and is a produces Nylon for the local community – the money lent to her enabled her to buy more raw materials and grow her business.

Both Komla and Adewole have been making their loan repayments on time, enabling us to continue to lend to other entrepreneurs.

We are currently deciding where our money will have the most impact and which business to lend to next. For more information on Kiva visit www.kiva.org.

The Cake Software Foundation is a not-for-profit software organisation behind Cake PHP, the programming language we use for the majority of our web applications.

We donated money to Cake Software Foundation to help them continue to develop CakePHP and support its users.

A bright new future at the Eco Business Centre

We’ve finally moved into our smart new offices at the York Eco Business Centre. The move was surprisingly smooth and we’re up and running in our new home.

After four moves in as many years we’re definitely ready to settle down in this spectacular building.
The building is made entirely of recycled materials from sustainable sources, uses ground-source heating, rainwater recycling and will soon have a huge wind-turbine to provide some of the building’s electrical requirements.

The centre will be home to around 60 young businesses in many different industries – creating a hub of ideas and enthusiasm which makes it a great place to work and an exciting place for us as we continue to grow.

Let us know if you’re in the area and we’ll get the kettle on!

Blarney launch new online store

With such a busy site (around 20,000 people a month!) it quickly became clear that the online retail opportunities for the Castle could be huge. Working with the chaps at Blarney we built a simple to use online store that should convert some of these visitors to income.

The store features multiple currencies, product variants, categories, stock levels, automatically generates thumbnails and integrates smoothly with PayPal for ease of use and customer reassurance. It also shows a series of featured or promoted products on the website homepage.

If you need a simple to use, simple to setup online store, please give us a shout!

Or you can buy your Exclusive Minature Musical Blarney Castle from shop.blarneycastle.ie ;-)