Category: Volume in the community

- by Chris Sykes

Changing Lives

We’ve all had them. Bubble bursting moments that bring you back to earth with an overwhelming dose of reality. One such moment was watching a short video of a girl, well young woman, who was asked if she could ever remember being happy as a child. She didn’t answer but the blank, almost expressionless look on her face said it all. Her parents were (are) addicts; hooked on heroin and alcohol. She grew up, probably loved in some way but emotionally neglected and without most of the things you’ll remember having as a child. This is the UK and not an untypical scenario. Across the country there are thousands of young people driven into homelessness – ordinary kids from seemingly ordinary families that now face the trauma of fending and fighting for themselves through no real fault of their own.

I’ve seen that video a few times since and it still gets me. Happily though, the subject has a future, a flat, a job, friends and a support network that continues to help her grow and develop as a young person. There are programmes and projects up and down the country run by the charity Action for Children. In this jubilee year, HRH the Queen is the charity’s patron. Action for Children works directly with homeless young people. There are no quick wins or fixes. Affected individuals are long term projects. Time’s a healer but the road to a better life can be a long one.

Action for Children is not about a bed for the night, a hot meal and mugs of tea, it’s helping neglected kids get back on their feet, learning the life skills that we all take for granted and their parents never taught. Action for Children gives young people the ability to be independent, to gain confidence and their self-esteem. It’s tough work but a worthy cause with many happy outcomes.

‘Byte Night’ supports Action for Children and has done for 14 years, raising millions of pounds to fund projects across the UK. It was originally about senior executives in the IT industry sleeping rough on the streets of London for just one night. The aim was to raise funds through sponsoring your Chief Exec who hopefully experienced what life’s like on the pavements and doorways of our capital city.

Today there are four annual Byte Night ‘sleep outs’, London, Reading, Cambridge and Edinburgh. This year hundreds of people will be sleeping out on 5th October and like last year, Volume will be taking part. We have lofty ambitions to raise £10K by running a number of fund raising events and initiatives – bring your dog to work day, pub quizzes, auctions and even a Chief Executive car wash day. Yes for a suitable donation, Volume staff can have their cars cleaned by the boss for one day only.

The Volume Team, Aidan, Chris, Debra, Gemma, Hannah, Joe, Katy, Laura, Lawrence, Miles, Renee and Zoe will be spending a hopefully not too cold October night under the stars in Reading’s Forbury Gardens. We hope our colleagues, business partners, clients, friends and family support our efforts and help us to help Action for Children change lives for the better.

For more information on Byte Night www.bytenight.org.uk and to donate please visit our Virgin Money Giving page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/VolumeByteNight.

- by Josie Rogers

Turn up the Volume!

Festivals are a great way to enjoy live music and with many festivals popping up all over the UK, festival organisers are always looking to raise the bar in festival quality. Technological innovations have always played a part in improving the festival experience for example, the introduction of festival radio meant that people could listen to live music from different stages, as well as hearing all the backstage gossip. More recently, silent discos have proven to be massively popular at many UK festivals such as Brownstock, Vfestival and Creamfields. Part of the popularity has come from being able to listen to what you want, wherever you are. What if you could take this a step further by listening to live music being played on another stage via your mobile? This could help you decide whether you want to go and watch it live and also ensures you don’t miss a thing. Also, wouldn’t it be great if you could also check out what the line-up is and see which of your friends are also at the festival?

This got us thinking about how we could enhance the festival experience. The result was a state of the art mobile phone app, which will bring cutting-edge technology to the Caversham Festival, an annual community festival organised by Reading-based charity, Readipop.

 

Festival Enhancing Features

  • You will be able to check the in-built festival guide to discover the band line up for each stage
  • Plan your own entertainment itinerary
  • See what food stalls have to offer and find out where on site they are
  • See what/when workshops are happening
  • Redeem special discount vouchers for money off purchases from stall holders
  • Tell your friends about what you have been doing using Facebook and other social media integration

And the best bit

Most impressively, the mobile app will enable you to ‘Turn up the Volume!’. Through your smart phone, you can listen to any of the music being played on any of the stages with its radio-like live-streaming functionality. This means you could be with friends at the main stage and quickly check out what is happening on the floating stage. Of course all of the content will be recorded as it happens and instantly uploaded to the Caversham Festival website, where you will be able to listen and even watch your favourite bands, or the ones you missed, when you get home.

Go on, take a sneak peak!

Here’s a few snaps of how the app will look, we will let you know when it’s ready to download!

At Volume we’ve created other trend-setting mobile apps and so it is great to have been able to turn this expertise to charitable use. We specialise in delivering projects totally in-house from the creative concept, design, digital execution, software development, social media management and marketing strategies through to market analysis. This made us the ideal people to deliver this gift to Readipop, as creating a mobile app includes most of these processes.

Volume’s Chief Executive Chris Sykes is thrilled to be involved with the festival:

“We were impressed with the passion and hard work Readipop puts into the Caversham Festival and the local community. The least we could do was to try and help to enhance the festival experience, whilst utilising the very latest mobile technology. We’re all looking forward to the 8th of July. It promises to be a fantastic event.”

The Readipop Caverhsam festival is in its 14th year and is a way for the local residents of Caversham and wider Reading to celebrate the place we live. The festival will feature live music, an arts trail, fairground rides, children’s workshops, good food, over 40 stalls. Most of the content of the festival is made up from local bands, groups and clubs and showcases much of the work that Readipop helps to create throughout the year.

This year’s Caversham festival will certainly be something to look forward to with the added experience from the innovative Smartphone app, hopefully see you there on the 8th July!

- by Rachel Adams

The Big Byte Night Fundraising Finale

Team Volume at Byte NightA nice warm bed, a roaring fire and a steaming cup of hot chocolate – standard fair for an autumnal evening in October. Not for Volume’s Anthony, Claire, Hayley, Lynsey, Sara and Chief Exec Chris (plus Richard, an honorary team member from The Reading Chronicle). For one night they swapped their cosy homes for a sleeping bag, an umbrella and a rather chilly night’s sleep in Reading’s Forbury Gardens.

The team were joined by 120 other sleepers for Byte Night -  the IT industry’s annual sleep out in support of UK charity Action for Children. A big sleep out requires a huge amount of fundraising. Volume troops rallied together for: Dog Day, several cake sales, a BBQ raffle, an Italian evening, Krispy Kreme Day, Pub Quiz nights at Wokingham’s Broad Street Tavern (thank you Clive and the BST Team) and a 10K run amongst other bits and bobs. You’ll find the photos on our Facebook page.

Overall the Team agreed it was a top night, despite the early morning rain and the cold. The best part? Our team smashed their fundraising target of £3,750 raising a whopping £6,430! The national total for Byte Night is expected to raise £700K.

Chris Sykes was thrilled with the efforts:

“Thank you to the Volume sleepers, it was a great bonding exercise and a lot of fun. Great effort for a great cause.”

Watch out Byte Night, we’ll be back next year!

- by Rachel Adams

Volume’s Celebrating 2012 with Reading

2012: the year of the Queen’s Jubilee and the London Olympics. It’s a Year to Celebrate!

That’s why at Volume we’ve been working with The Reading 2012 Partnership Board to create a digital hub for the Year to Celebrate (Y2C), so that people working, living or visiting Reading know where and when they can join in the celebrations.

The website, ‘Reading Year to Celebrate’ officially launched today. This ‘hub’ enables anyone to easily find events of interest in Reading, using an innovative interactive timeline to browse everything that is going on, from sports to music to comedy. But it doesn’t stop at the website. There’s a real community buzz growing around the Y2C (Year to Celebrate) Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn communities – join in to get the latest news and giveaways! Rumour has it that Reading FC vs. Birmingham tickets will be up for grabs on the Y2C Facebook page very soon!

Chris Sykes & Nicki Whiteman live on BBC Radio Berkshire

As it’s launch day, it’s all systems go here at Volume, with six members of the project team attending the official launch event at The Hilton Hotel, Reading, and an early start for some, as BBC Radio Berkshire’s Nicki Whiteman popped in this morning to chat to our CEO Chris Sykes and the rest of the team about the launch. The three interviews were broadcast live from Volume HQ between 8:45 and 9:30. If you’d like to have a listen, you can find the Andrew Peach breakfast show on BBC iPlayer (interviews at 1.47.30, 2.21.00 and 2.37.00).

So tell us, how will you be celebrating 2012? You can see the website here to find your favourite event: http://readingy2c.org/

- by Marian Hall

We’re all in the dog-house…

The location: Volume HQ, Buckhurst Court, Wokingham

The date: Thursday 22 September 2011

The scene at 8.45am: Similar to downtime at Crufts

For one day only, for a very good cause, we’ve brought our dogs in to the office. Making a donation of £10 per dog to Byte Night, we’ve collectively brought in two yellow Labradors, two collies, two golden retrievers, one English setter, one Harrier hound, one Jack Russell, one Alsatian cross and two Rottweiler crosses. This gives everyone an opportunity to see just how similar dogs are to their owners. And if their very presence weren’t enough, there are fun and games at lunchtime. We’ve got some agility equipment to have a go and there’ll be a photo shoot. With all that exercise, if anyone gets peckish we’ve got home-made dog biscuits available for our furry guests.

Volume dogs with their owners

Sometimes it's easier to get the dogs to pose than their owners!

Byte Night

Byte Night - Logo

Each year hundreds of people from across the IT and business community spend a night exposed to the elements (the Byte Night sleep-out) in a bid to raise sponsorship and awareness of Action for Children’s work helping the most vulnerable and neglected children.

Volume is taking an active role in the Thames Valley Byte Night; we’re putting two teams onto the streets on Friday 7th October and Chris Sykes is on the organising committee. Today is just one of a number of events we’ve put on to help raise sponsorship, including quiz nights, cake sales and evening dinners. So far we’ve raised over £4,000.

If you want give a little too, you can sponsor our team at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/volume. Or alternatively, if you just want to look at pictures of dogs, head over to Flickr or Facebook.