3 minute read
Digital
RRS Sir David Attenborough Live Event
and Guided Tour Video
North West Creative Company, Hi-impact L&D, joined the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Greenwich, as the RRS Sir David Attenborough sailed in from Harwich to make its final stop ahead of its first mission to the Antarctic. The occasion was celebrated with a 3 day Ice Worlds Festival, focusing on the Royal Maritime Museum and the Cutty Sark as venues, with inspiring talks and exhibitions available to the general public.
Liverpool Chamber member, hi-impact, was selected to be the company to share this auspicious occasion and very private vessel to the world through livestreaming and virtual tour technology. Hi-impact has built an interactive virtual tour of the ship, which was launched at the festival. Simon Sloan, Innovation Manager at hi-impact explained:
“We were lucky enough to create some early virtual tours of a few areas of the ship whilst it was at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead during the build process. Those tours received a lot of interest and the British Antarctic Survey soon began speaking with us about how to capture the vessel as a whole. A full tour wasn’t ever going to be possible with this technology and the ship’s layout, so we proposed a bespoke interactive platform based on a cross-section model of the ship with hotspots linking to 360 images, educational information and new virtual tours captured more recently.” Secondly, during the festival hi-impact filmed and streamed key events, managing these into looping content that was displayed on the internet as well as on huge video walls on the quayside for the public. This content featured videos from the build of the vessel, interviews with Sir David Attenborough and other notable people, and advertisements for the new virtual SDA resource mentioned above.
The footage of this special event is now available on the hi-impact L&D website and on their social media platforms. The link to the site is https:// hi-impact-ld.co.uk/sda/. If you have any questions about these media services or any other that hi-impact offer, email dionnethomas@hi-impact.co.uk.
Work less, live more
The pandemic has had a huge impact on how we do business. Two years down the line from the first lockdown, we have finally emerged from the rubble of the ‘old ways’ into something new - and effective.
Necessity forced us to innovate, to accelerate and take brave, bold steps that we wouldn’t even have considered a couple of years ago. While it’s been frequently terrifying, now the dust has settled we can see that many of those bold moves have paid off.
In the middle of a pandemic, our bold move was to let 18 clients go, take our streamlined workforce completely remote and implement a four-day week.
We know it looked like madness to many, with little new work coming in and the ‘great resignation’ seeing staff leaving companies in their droves. But we looked at the work we were doing, reviewed what made money and - importantly - what made our staff excited.
We’re software development consultants, so leading projects, scoping and building products is where our hearts, brains and skills are at. Yet we still had some web design on the go, taking our time, energy and sapping enthusiasm.
They were great clients but after 10 years, we’d evolved. It was time to pass them on to other excellent city region tech businesses, who we knew would do an amazing job.
With our focus clear, we turned our attention to our staff, implementing regular virtual meetings and socials to keep us connected and supported. We saw existing consultancy projects extend and more new ones come in. We got excited, we innovated and we won more work.
Our four-day working week, while a huge change, wasn’t something we formally announced. In fact, our clients didn’t even notice because the team was delivering with even greater efficiency than before.
All these changes have improved our performance and mental wellbeing. A threeday weekend has provided the space in our brains to solve problems more effectively. We deliver the same outputs in less time, because we are well rested and more focused. We work less, live more and our business is thriving because of it.
