Ray of Sunshine on a Monday Morning....

It's Monday morning. I've been out all weekend and despite a fairly decent night's sleep I feel as rough as ever. I get to work and I have 30 new emails, most of them needing a response in the next hour. I also have briefs to write and forums to moderate. It's typical, but without having at least 4 cups of tea first, it's a bloody nightmare.

Just as I'm getting in a tizz about what to do first I see a Google alert in my inbox picking up this boy's blog:
http://calvinsmodels.blogspot.com/2008/07/calvin-wins-shaun-sheep-prize.html and I realise what I great job I have.

W&G and Shaun are some of the few sites that have a fully-automated art gallery to encourage kids to be creative and get their work on the web. We're also their first point of contact with [enter popular animation company name here] and receiving a certificate, prize, or even just a message on the forums can be a huge confidence-booster. It also inadvertently helps them become more computer-savvy - it's funny to watch some of the kids in the forums learning basic html to make their posts bold, italic and underlined using tags, completely unaware that they're learning as they go along. lol.


It's been great to see the same members come back to our sites over and over, often on a daily basis to chat to their friends, post their art and get constructive and encouraging feedback. At the moment community features are booming, and I hope that this trend will continue a long way into the future.