Mission possible?

Who on earth thought it made sense to stage one of the biggest events in the Post’s history and launch our completely new web service on the same day?

Of course it makes sense: on February 29 in the Great Hall of Birmingham University, we’re celebrating the Post’s 150th anniversary at the kind of gala event that can only be described as ‘glittering’. There’ll be 500 people there – each one of them epitomising our target audience (please shoot me if I use the word ‘demographic’). Politicians, businessess people, celebs, lawyers, cultural leaders . . . all read, write for, are featured in or advertise with the Post – and sometimes all four. If we can persuade them that The Post can be just as relevant and valuable online as it is in print, then we’re on our way.

So amongst the back-slapping and nostalgia, we’ll be spreading the message of what the new site has to offer to the ‘wealth creators and policy makers’ of 21st century Birmingham. This is some of it:

• Finely targeted content for the main business and industrial sectors of the region – with email alerts, RSS feeds and bloggers for each sector
• An online business events calendar (thanks Google Calendar) to bring together all the region’s main conferences, speeches, seminars and networking events in one place
• ‘Pagesuite’ versions of our main supplements and business publications
• A roster of more than 30 bloggers – including the cream of Brum’s ‘blogerati’ (thanks chaps – you know who you are)
• A smattering of video (that will – I hope – be the opposite of what Paul Bradshaw unearthed at the Reading Post http://tinyurl.com/24amvm)
• Neat, easily navigable arts, culture and leisure pages
• Some clever use of tagging to bring relevant material together from our extensive database

We have a snag list as long as your arm, and a list of wild and wacky ideas to tackle in the future – plus some that might actually make sense (such as Birmingham Post-nurtured online communities on Facebook and Linkedin for some of the business sectors…)

All credit to Steve Nicholls and Joanna Geary for putting in all the hard work – all I do is send them lists of more things to do.