Four aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and Hotel
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-10-11 08:24:05 - Graham Ellis
Our main business is in Open Source computer training - reaching people how to program in Perl, PHP and Python, in Lua, Ruby and Tcl, and on related subjects such as the MySQL database and the Linux Operating system. You can find a full public course schedule (with links to detailed course descriptions) here, or you can find our about private courses at our training centre here and at your offices here.
So many of our delegates come a long way to our courses, and rather than have them head off in different directions to different hotels and B&Bs every night, we opened our own new hotel and training centre in 2006. It's become very popular with people who visit Melksham to see other businesses, and we do a healthy weekend / holiday trade with people visiting their relatives or touring our beautiful area. See here for our Well House Manor web site.
Until 2006, some 40% of our delegates arrived in Melksham by train, but in that year First Great Western removed all but two trains a day from the timetable ... and now it's just 4% of our delegates who arrive by train and the service is, frankly, an embarrassment. It's also rather silly that a town with a population of over 20,000 and a perfectly good railway has been slashed back in this way, forcing us onto overcrowded and slower roads which are less environmentally friendly. I started a campaign in 2005 (but AFTER the decision had been made to cancel most services) for an appropriate service, and that carries on to this day. We have moved from being considered to be a "basket case" in the early days to having a very high Benefit Cost Ratio in the latest reports for a service that runs as frequently as once an hour. See here for more details of the campaign and here for a wider area forum.
When we arrived in Melksham in 1999, we arrived quietly. Our customer base is countrywide / continent wide, and our footprint a small one, so it wasn't necessary of natural to make a big splash. However, our delegates bring business to Melksham, and we fell in love with the place. The hotel brings further natural local involvement, and the train campaign further involvement. Local politics, with the recent changes and economy, lead to a real need for Melksham's businesses to be supported and their case put and so we joined the Chamber of Commerce. And being around the town so much of the time, and happy to 'represent', I have been elected as the President of the Chamber.All four of these aspects appear on this blog - "The Horse's Mouth" and in the archives too. Regular readers will look and see what happens on a daily basis and skip over articles that are not relevant, and our newsletter provides a general update every 2 months. But what about people arriving at our blog archives when using a search engine to find out about the Chamber of Commerce. Up until (roll of drums!) this morning, they've come to a page that has appeared to Chamber of Commerce content in an illogical training wrapper ... but no longer. The four logos you see on this page are now selected as appropriate for archived articles, and the top "soundbite" and menus are also tailored. How do we do it? Find out on our PHP techniques workshop.
Examples of each logo in use:
Weekend and Christmas specials at Well House Manor
Melksham's Public Transport and especially how limited it is on a Sunday
Making your Melksham business a destination (Chamber of Commerce)
Choosing your PHP course