Craig Hanna's Blog

I’m excited to be back in New York next month and while I’m hoping to find some time to pop to the shops, we’re mostly there to find out more about digital marketing in the US and meet new people who work in the industry.

Last week saw the first residential part of E-consultancy's Graduate Academy at Reading University and I can honestly say that it was both a pleasure and to some degree, a surprise.

We had three days of intensive teaching lined up for our successful 28 delegates with the aim of making sure they have a sound grounding in all things digital. Eight trainers, three client speakers and 30 hours of teaching later and we hope the process is well under way.

Chinwag's Digital Skills Survey at the end of 2007 proved yet again what we all know, that our industry is struggling to find and retain the best candidates which is leading to spiralling wage inflation in our sector, undermining growth and restricting profits. The figures, afterall, speak for themselves:

• 97% of respondents find it either difficult or impossible to attract the right digital staff for their businesses
• 57% of respondents reported that the digital skills shortage impeded the growth of their business in 2007
• 75% of businesses are planning to increase the salaries of digital staff

So much was covered that it would take a week to explore all the issues raised, but I thought I'd just note some of the key thoughts from the event...

I spent an interesting evening last night at the Chinwag Web TV Takeover event listening to an excellent panel discuss the future of IPTV.

The problem this morning is I'm still no clearer on what it means or when it's going to matter.

On the back of numerous requests from our users we are launching a new 'Fast Track Digital Marketing' course this month. If you (or a colleague) want to boost your digital skills quickly this two day course will do the job.

As promised at our recent Blogging For Business conference, here is my first E-consultancy blog post. I’ve been set up as a blogger on our system for three months, so why haven’t I blogged before?

Well when I looked at Debbie Weil's list of reasons people give not to blog I had used nearly every one. No time, nothing to say etc. The real reason it simple – it’s just harder than it sounds. You can't make someone blog who doesn't want to.