Mike Fleetham, www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk

Mike Fleetham is an educational consultant and author. He works with individuals and organisations to help make learning more effective and enjoyable. Last year Mike's website, www.thinkingclassroom.co.uk won the Microsoft Award for Growth through IT

"When I moved on from my job as an assistant head teacher in a Portsmouth school, to become an educational consultant, I set myself a life goal and business objective: To enrich the life experience of 1,000,004 people every year.  I’ve always believed that setting very high expectations of yourself and others is the route to success and 1,000,004 is certainly shooting for the moon.

"Because I don’t measure my success in pounds but in the number of people I’ve been able to work with, it’s very important to be able to offer my ideas in as many ways as possible.  My core business is training in schools and although I can directly support the teachers, and through them the pupils, that’s only several hundred people at a time.

"In my first few years I probably got to work directly with a few thousand people. I then began to work in different parts of the country, published several books, and the number increased.  Next, I spent time developing a website which attracted visitors from around the world - using a free monthly e-newsletter and teaching resource.  Last year I estimated that I was able to work directly or indirectly with about 50,000 people.  Still a few short.

"So when I was nominated for the Microsoft Hantsweb award I really felt that the universe was conspiring to help me meet my goal.  When I won the award I was sure!

"Working with Microsoft has taken my work to a different level.  I am now privileged to have access to some of the best technical and business advice along with software and consultation which my small business would never have been able to afford.  My target now seems much closer.

"I’m currently working with web designers to enrich my site in a unique way.  After signing in, users will get information customised to their needs and learning style.  I’ve selected four different types of user: Teacher, Child, Parent and Business.  Each user will get resources and ideas to help their specific needs.  There will also be a selection of video, audio and text to suit different preferences.

"It’s testament to the innovative originators of the Hantsweb awards and to Microsoft’s community spirit that opportunities like this are given to small players like me.  If you have a unique idea, an inspiring business aim and a website with great potential then you must enter for this year’s awards!"

Derek Hasted, www.hago.org.uk

The HAGO website, www.hago.org.uk won the Special Interest category last time.  We interviewed Derek about his experiences.

HAGO stands for the Hampshire Area Guitar Orchestra. Could you tell us a little more about yourselves?

We started in 1999, when our Musical Director Derek Hasted split a large guitar ensemble he ran into two smaller ensembles - HAGO and his Guitar Workshop.  The Workshop (established 1988) still runs, and it's made up mainly of adults from his guitar evening classes.  HAGO has expanded to include players from Sussex, Surrey and north Hampshire, as well as many of the Havant-based founder players.

What makes us unique is that we play 4 size sizes of classical guitar - the tiny alto, the normal guitar, the bass and the large contrabass.  It gives us a sound that people have described as harp-like, and it opens the door for us to play music that doesn't normally suit guitar.  And we do - we play music from TV and film, dixieland jazz and music extending from medieval to Katie Melua.

In 2003 we were delighted to win the 6th Guitar Orchestra Competition of Great Britain, against opposition that included one of Germany's largest youth orchestras.  We play concerts - many of them in aid of local charities - in Hampshire and further afield.

Your website, much like your music, is both attractive and accessible.  Did you get much publicity from winning the Special Interest category?

Thank you!  We had an enormous jump in traffic to the website at the time of the competition, but unlike a shop, which builds up a customer base, most of our concert audiences are new people each time - we wouldn't expect the same people to come to every concert.  That means that we're interested in increasing our traffic permanently.

The Award has seen a few more sites link to us, and that too has helped increase traffic.  We also got publicity from our local press.  What surprises people is that our website only costs us £35 a year all in, but that economy is very important to us.  When we're fund-raising for charities, we can't afford expensive adverts and posters - our website is a really economical way to reach out, and we certainly get visits from - well, from the website logs, we can see visits from over 80 countries a month.

Thanks to the Internet, it's a lot easier to expose yourself to different types of music. What do you think the future holds for music in general and classical guitar in particular?

Music is becoming increasingly a passive event, and one which is undertaken at home, probably isolated from the world with earphones.  That's a great shame, because just like cinema is massively more moving than TV, live music is emotionally much more charged than pre-recorded music, which is invariably honed to artificial perfection and often quite sterile and formulaic as a result.  We'll keep on doing concerts because the guitar remains the one instrument that's affordable, portable, versatile and capable of being played solo or in ensemble.  Here in HAGO our music-making is as much a social gathering as a rehearsal sometimes, and we love showing people that music-making is about teamwork, companionship and fun as well as about making notes and firing them off into the audience!

Finally, what's your favourite piece of classical guitar music?

Now that's a difficult question!  In many respects, the slow movement of Rodrigo's Guitar Concerto de Aranjuez, which was written as he struggled with the death of his daughter, is the most powerful piece and one which has brought the guitar to many new listeners.  Many guitarists feel that the solo guitar repertoire is a bit hackneyed and small, but HAGO plays outside that repertoire - quite deliberately.

In terms of a guitar orchestra piece, well, that's a different ball game, and our audiences really like our arrangement of Karl Jenkins's Palladio suite, which is famous, among other reasons, for its connection with De Beers diamond advertisements.

I can't close without an advertisement of our own - our concerts are always advertised on www.hago.org.uk

James Suddaby, www.ilikemusic.com

www.ilikemusic.com has won the Best Young Person's Website for the past two years and received a special mention in 2003.

How did you feel to be nominated again for a Hantsweb Award?

It’s always a bit crazy when you’re wrapped up in mountains of day-to-day work, and suddenly someone is recognizing your hard work and actually patting you on the back for it.  It’s amazing really!  It gives us a chance to sit back and realise it too.  It’s not until you step away from working ‘in’ the business, and look at working ‘on’ the business that it all sinks in.  We’re doing good!  A bit like coming up for air really.

How has winning the best young peoples website award, two years in a row benefited you and your business?

Well it’s given us an extra boost of confidence ever since we had ‘a special mention’ at the 2003 award finals.  But, to then return in 2004 AND 2005 and win both years was brilliant for both the business and the people involved with running and building it.  We are now ‘the Award Winning I Like Music’ and this will always be included in press releases and any promotions we run.  It’s high impact to be award winning, a real USP (Unique Selling Point).  Plus we won some really handy prizes.  In 2004 we won a laser printer for our office, which is still used today, and this year for the 2005 awards we won a Dell Laptop!  WOW!  This is one of our main office tools, I’m writing this interview on it right now!

How has your site grown in the past few years?

Hugely!  Since 2003 the reach of I Like Music has grown ten fold, though we still have a very small team.  Realising in the very beginning, rather than launching the site online and waiting for people to find it, we had to take it to them, so we launched at Music Live Exibition, NEC Birmingham in 2001.  This paid off as we had 120 users and 48 subscribers in our first day!  Small numbers now as the site, stand alone, self generates millions of hits per month from music consumers all around the world.  The first few years were so tough, launching with no money up against sites with literally millions of dollars VC (Venture Capital), I Like Music went against the grain.  We didn’t go for any VC, the founder and still 100% owner James Suddaby funded the whole project.

2003 to 2006 has been a period of distinct commercial growth and recognition.  Amongst talking with many artists, musicians and pop stars; I Like Music has covered The Grammy’s LIVE ON AIR for CNN International, featured on BBC Click with glowing results and scored a 9/10 on ITV’s The Web Review, has been included as Site Of The Week in ‘Internet’ and Won a Silver Award in ‘WebUser’ magazines.  We are a recognized part of the music industry now; it took years of hard work and persistence, but people take us seriously now.

Despite being surrounded by large brands and famous individuals name dropping is something we try to avoid.  However in terms of some recent business, we have just signed a partnership deal with Ministry Of Sound, served advertising for Coca Cola and are running an ad campaign for Apple iTunes in August.  Also there’s a new partnership with a company in San Francisco, which I can’t really talk about just yet, though I can tell you it’s a world first.  Watch this space!

Would you recommend the Hantsweb Awards to others?

Oh for sure!  As I said earlier, it’s a really good confidence booster.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought ‘Is this all worth it?’, ‘Am I flogging a dead donkey’.  It’s not until a complete stranger says to you, “Well done, what you have achieved is amazing, here’s an award!” that it all sinks in, and you feel great about it again.  Just like in the very beginning, I was so excited about launching, it’s like revisiting that frame of mind again.  It really helped me out with belief in my business and all importantly my self belief, trusting my own ability to make business decisions and continue to deliver my vision.  If you run a website in Hampshire, get your site submitted to Hantsweb, even if like I Like Music in 2003 you don’t win, you still get a great day out and get to meet lots of other people running websites in Hampshire, across all kinds of areas of interest and business.  Sharing experiences with like-minded people is a real breath of fresh air when you realise you are not the only person in the world working hard to keep a dream alive online.

Who was your favourite artist to interview?

I think our biggest and one of the coolest interviews has to be with US rapper and G-Unit chief 50 Cent, it’s just so hard to narrow it down.  We have great chats with hundreds of pop stars and artists.  I really enjoy talking to DJs from the dance music community, as I have a personal interest in DJing.  The nicest person we have interviewed is probably KT Tunstall, she was amazing.  Our Editor’s favourite was Huey Morgan, front man for New York band The Fun Lovin’ Criminals, although I think great looks and the smooth talking New York accent back stage at various gigs played a big part!!  They are all really nice, we treat them with respect and we don’t ask personal questions at all, they are very busy people in business like us, so it’s all about the music.

What's your favourite part of your site?

Now this IS a tough one.  There are so many things that come together to make I Like Music a great site, it’s hard to pin one down.  However, one of my personal favourite parts of I Like Music, apart from the overall graphic design, is the face of the brand - our logo.  It means an incredible amount to me as I think it’s a real important part of I Like Music as a whole.  It’s a bit like getting a gorgeous model to show off a new makeup product or swimsuit.  I have taken the logo to the web, seen it printed in magazines, even seen it shown in advert format on Sky Digital music channel ‘Channel U’.  That was something else I can tell you.

I have big plans for the logo and brand, it’s something that we should all get used to, because I Like Music is a strong brand representing the digital music revolution, and we are here to stay.

Colin Harvey, www.twyford-organ.com

Colin is the designer of the Twyford Organ website and was runner up in the Accessibility AND Special Interest categories last year.

Your website was devoted to the preservation of a Victorian organ.  What was the initial spur for you to set up a website devoted to the Twyford Organ?

We realised that the organ was very worthy of preservation and we had to do something to keep it working.  It was built by one of the best organ builders of the period, J.W.Walker and encased in an organ case designed by Alfred Waterhouse, architect of the Natural History Museum.  Many organs are being dismantled these days because churches are either closing down or replacing their organs with electronic simulations of pipe organs (which are never as good and don't really save any money in the long term).  So real pipe organs are becoming scarcer and scarcer these days and there is a growing need to preserve those we have.  In order to save our organ, we needed to raise £260,000 and the website was designed to support the fundraising campaign.  Nearly all the money came from donations in the community - it has really been a local community effort to raise the money.

How did winning the awards help you in your fund-raising efforts?

Well, it certainly gave us a welcome morale boost that we were doing a good job and being a finalist in the awards gave us an opportunity for further publicity, which probably helped to get in a few further donations.  We auctioned off some of the prizes to raise further money for the fund raising.  But really, it gave us a lot of pride that what we were doing had got recognition and that certainly gave us a spring in our step as we set about raising the outstanding funds.

I understand that the organ is now completed and that it is the first organ of it's type to be refurbished in over forty years.  What do you think about using modern technology to preserve the treasures of the past?

Yes, this is effectively the first new organ in a parish church in the Winchester area for 40 years, so it's really quite a musical milestone.  With this project, we have tried to recapture the style and spirit of a Victorian pipe organ so it is built using very traditional materials and methods - it is entirely made by hand by highly skilled craftsmen in exactly the way they were building organs before the industrial revolution.  The organ is entirely mechanical, using components and designs which haven't changed much for about 6-700 years.

However, modern technology has been used in a number of places - the organ was designed using CAD (computer aided design), which has allowed us to get a much neater layout which is more carefully thought out layout than many earlier organs - there are over 1,000 pipes in the organ ranging in size from 16 feet long to pipes the size of a pencil - and each pipe needs a space in the organ, with enough wind and space to sound properly.  In the past, fitting them in has tended to be a slightly empirical exercise, squeezing them in where you can - here, we've been able to design it so they all fit in properly and have proper provision in the organ.  We've also used modelling to calculate gearings and ratios in the internal mechanisms so the keys and pedals work properly and are not too heavy to use - a frequent problem with old organs!

Also, communication is much better these days, with email simply ideal for transmitting and sharing ideas and pictures.  In previous days there was never much discussion about the organ between the church and the organbuilder, except that the church was getting one.  Nowadays, every part of the design and construction of the organ is discussed through very carefully using email, with consultants, organ builders and organists all able to give their contributions.  It means communication is much freer and more open and there is much more of it, sharing ideas and discussing approaches, which has given real benefits and improvements to the way organs are built.

The sharing of ideas and working practices has really helped bring this project to a successful conclusion - for example, one of the organbuilders was on secondment from Germany and was able to share his experiences of restoring an organ in Naumberg which J.S.Bach had been heavily involved with in 1746.  One of our consultants had visited this organ in Germany to see the final result and we were able to adapt working practices used on the Naumberg Bach organ for this project.  This situation would have been almost unthinkable even 25 years ago.

Finally, what is your favourite piece of organ music?

Very difficult question ….  It depends on so many things - the time of day, which organ it's played on, who's playing it and what mood I'm in!!  On the new Twyford organ, the piece that I enjoy playing most is the chorale prelude on Herzlich tut mir verlangen by Johannes Brahms.  Although it is one of the least conspicuous pieces Brahms wrote, it was one of the last pieces he wrote before he died. Brahms entertained ambitions of becoming an organ virtuoso when he was young and played the organ all his life but wrote extremely little for it - it is rather poignant that he wrote his final pieces for the organ.  His organ music is heavily influenced by J.S.Bach, a composer Brahms had enormous regard for, and this piece has great emotional and expressive depths.  The organ at Twyford has a wonderfully rich, warm and lyrical sound which suits this music perfectly.  There's something quite addictive about playing this rather restrained and thoughtful music which has such profound depths on this organ, which is already gaining a national reputation as an exceptionally fine musical instrument.

Leukaemia Busters, www.leukaemiabusters.org.uk

In researching this piece we spoke to Leukaemia Busters, a Southampton based charity, who fund research into finding cures for children's leukaemia.  Like many of our correspondents they value the recognition and exposure of the Hantsweb Awards.  Winners in 2003 and 2005, the charity finds an online presence invaluable.  Chief amongst the benefits of running a charitable website is the ability to link to other sites of related interests.  Through the site the Busters were able to have their volunteers link to www.justgiving.com which has greatly assisted their fund-raising efforts.

Bill Brown, Armorica Cookshop, www.armorica.co.uk

Armorica Cookshop, www.armorica.co.uk, won the Best Small Business category last time.  Bill told us a little about the importance of a website for a small business.

Your website is devoted to cookware.  Have you always had a passion for food and the kitchen?

Yes, we have always had a passion for cooking and food, and have been involved in operating catering and restaurant businesses.

Your website has The Hantsweb Awards logo is produly displayed on your home page and one of the factors that our judges were impressed by was your testimonial page.  Do you think that positive feedback is crucial to your operation?

Websites are crucial to running an independent retail business.  [With] our testimonials page, feedback is essential if one is to focus on marketing to one's customers in the real world.

One final question.  What's the oddest order that you have sold through your website?

The oddest order was for a bulk purchase of baking tins: the customer wanted to use them in her soap manufacturing business!!

Edwina Cooke, Mayor of Southampton (2005-2006)

Thank you for the opportunity to attend the Hantsweb Awards and see the excellent web sites developed by various winners.  They were most impressive and covered so many different subjects.  The main attraction for me was the clarity and ease of reading the information which would keep me interested rather than some existing sites which completely confuse me.