Newsletter - Latest Edition

Dear Fetchies,

With the princely sum of just four Weekly Newsletters under my belt so far this year, I present to you what critics are already referring to as 'the fifth one'. I enjoy writing them ever so much - I think I've got a bit of Angela Lansbury in me - but a combination of limited time, and not always feeling like I've got something worthy to say, have conspired against me.

Judging by some of the emails I get, not everyone is aware that there isn't a big team of people working on Fetch. I don't know whether it's blowing my own trumpet to say that I do pretty much everything you can see on the site (coding, design, writing, testing (ha!) - everything except the ads, although quite often I even get roped in to Photoshop them), or whether it's a humble admission that the site isn't as big or corporate as you might have imagined. So this week (or this month, depending on your confidence in the term 'Weekly Newsletter'), I thought I'd give you a little insight into the World of Fetch (and if you're interested in how it came about, try this one). Normal running stats will be back next time.

I am mostly in Bedford with my wife, sometimes in Nottinghamshire with my son - but nearly always working at home. It's usually very peaceful, although the dog needs to be let out every hour now due to what I will euphemistically refer to as his 'needs'. These days I try to confine myself to 9-5, but you'll often see me cropping up in the evenings, because quite honestly, I have trouble letting go, particularly when something's not working right - and there's always something in that category. I see the folks from Runner's World about once every six months, but I'm in weekly contact with a lady there called Andreia, who sells the ads that appear on the site. Other than that, it's just me really - which is great on one hand, because I can do what I like with the site, but also sometimes hard, because I'd like some important people to shout about it.

On yet another hand, it's pretty nice to see the site grow through word-of-mouth, rather than through the power of shiny corporate cash - I've started asking newly registered users where they heard about the site, and more than half come through word of mouth, links on club websites, and through seeing people wearing Fetch kit. So YOU are the important people - better than any advert - even if some of you are not suitable for viewing before the 9pm watershed, but nevertheless, you're out there, being Fetchies, and you're amazing.

The site travels light, even if rarely at the speed of it. Somewhere in the world there's a big shiny box with laser beams mounted on top that we lease from a company called Positive Internet - they've been our provider for five years now. I won't joke about this bit - they do a great job at keeping the server running, and the database safely backed up. I've never seen it or them - I just have a laptop (currently missing the left shift key), and the ability to smell Wifi. Fetch shirts, vests, buffs and Fetch-branded underwear (strictly limited supply, visit the Fetch shop after 11pm and use the password 'funhammock') all live in a cupboard at the top of the stairs, and get taken to the post office semi-regularly by my wife (or on occasion, a cash-strapped teenager).

So I sit here, and I fiddle with stuff, and I look at data, and I respond to your feedback messages (of which there are currently 740 in my inbox), and think about things that might keep you all entertained, or things that I'd like to understand about my own running, and then I try to code them, and fit it all together. It's a huge body of eight years of code, a bit like a map of the inside of my head. Some days I go scything through it like a drunken archaeologist, tearing down the old stuff, and rearranging the furniture until it all feels right again. And some days, none of it fits together, and all those years of layer upon layer of functionality are like a hoarder's front room, and I sit and click, and go round in circles, and try to remember exactly what it was I needed it for.

I don't know how to wrap up this newsletter, and that's a perfect mirror for the site really - there are at least a hundred things that need improving, and I never want it to be finished. Classic corporate marketing strategy would suggest I close with a 'Call To Action' that coerces you into doing my bidding, but I will stick with my original idea. With 6,999,950,000 potential Fetchies still out there, I have just one request. Fetch Everyone.

Happy Running,
Fetch

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