The Fetch Blog

Curated reads and events for professionals

Tag: newsletter

Product update: Introducing The Fetch’s new design and newsletter — September 16, 2015

Product update: Introducing The Fetch’s new design and newsletter

/Kate Kendall

We can’t believe believe that so much time has passed since we successfully funded our re-launch on Kickstarter, helping us bring The Fetch to you lovely folks everywhere. Today, we’re excited to share our progress so far – along with a first look at what’s coming next!

A refreshing, new look

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We kicked off efforts by updating our existing style guide and re-designing The Fetch’s homepage. Designed to make submitting and finding events easy, we focused on simplifying the site to surface information Fetchers will need. You’ll see simple, clean pages in our signature, city colors – a fun, streamlined experience. If you want to secure your username aka vanity URL – make sure you head along to register now!

More focused media

In the new and improved version of The Fetch, we’ve separated local events and media. Dedicated to doing both things well, we’ve created a global reading list in addition to the regular, local event-based email (coming soon). The weekly global reading list will give you much of what you loved in former The Fetch emails: top stories, inspirational professional profiles, and all of the can’t-miss things that caught our team’s attention during the week. Haven’t subscribed to the new reading list yet? Join us here!

An incredible, updated curator community

Just as before, our curators remain an important part of The Fetch community. We’re grateful for amazing representation in the first of our five re-launch cities: Sydney, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, and Berlin. We’re still taking applications, and would love to hear from you if you know what’s on and think your city needs The Fetch!

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What’s next

Now that we’ve made it possible to submit events on site, we’re heads down on the next few major milestones:

  • Local events digest: We’re so close to bringing back the local events digest for our first five cities, which will feature the best happenings from the new platform neatly rolled into a weekly email and sent to Fetchers who live there. Our curators will begin testing this week, so expect to see local events in your inbox soon!
  • Individual event pages: Tell or learn more about an event with a description, image, and tags. Each page will have space for an image, along with social sharing functionality and calendar integration. Get a sneak peek here.
  • Event search functionality: From community breakfasts to programming workshops, you will be able to find events by type, category, or skill level.

Our goal is to help you crush your work-life with the best events and great reads with each email, so please continue to share your feedback as we move along. Thanks for your continued enthusiasm – we love hearing from you!

Three years of The Fetch: a look back with feedback from the community — April 27, 2014

Three years of The Fetch: a look back with feedback from the community

/Kate Kendall/5 Comments

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We recently passed three years since the first humble email digest was sent in Melbourne. The Fetch was just a teeny tiny side-project then with the goal of making it easier to discover all the events happening that the rest of the event and city guides didn’t cover. Since then, we’ve been on a journey, delivering curated goodness to the community week after week – in cities all around the world. Countless hours have been put in by our community of tireless curators, including dedicating our Sundays to prepare so that we could kick off your work week with your local issue of The Fetch. We’re now starting to think about our future. It’s exciting… and scary!

Over the coming weeks, you’ll start to notice many updates to The Fetch – including a new logo, a new email design, the transition to one global newsletter of the ‘Link-love, must-reads’ section, and the launch of a new responsive landing page. From here, you’ll be able to sign-up to reserve a username for the next generation of The Fetch – an app that does a way better job of delivering you events (customized for you, less noise, and more relevancy with social and calendar integration). Most importantly, this platform will allow us to have a better foundation to sustain our activities from – we will be able to spend less time creating and editing The Fetch emails manually – and more time on quality and breadth of content.

We’ve decided that there’s no point in building this app if we don’t have the support of the community we love to serve. After all, if you don’t find it useful or actually want/need it, then perhaps it shouldn’t exist! A good way to understand this support is via crowdsourcing funds so we’ll be launching a Kickstarter campaign over the coming weeks. We hope you back us!

The map above shows a few of the 70-plus requests we’ve had to take The Fetch to more cities. The grey dots are where we’d expand to with the new platform.

In order to get a better sense of what is is about The Fetch that our community values, we’ve asked members from all walks their thoughts:

Avid reader

“I regularly recommend The Fetch to people looking to get involved in their local startup scenes — it’s quick, informative and brilliant. As a weekly reader, I’m a huge fan.”

~ Kathryn Minshew, founder & CEO, The Muse

Curator

“Since becoming the Melbourne Curator, my life has changed dramatically in a very positive way. It’s provided me with the opportunity to meet an exciting network of people across the digital/tech/ creative industries who are eager to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge. The sense of community that can be found amongst the Fetchers is unique and one that has developed in such a natural and organic way – it’s been amazing to be a part of its growth.”

~ Kat Loughrey, curator of The Fetch Melbourne

Event organizer

“The Fetch has helped me grow my community, Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne, from 300 to 850 women in one year. Most recently, we advertised Australia’s first all-female hackathon, She Hacks. An increase in traffic to our website resulted, but there were also many people who I bumped into on the street that said they saw She Hacks in The Fetch. I recommend The Fetch as the best place to find out about events for professionals.”

~ Tammy Butow, senior digital strategist, National Australia Bank

City ambassador

“The Fetch has allowed me to invest in my own growth. I have been able to forge new friendships, develop skills and pursue unexpected interests because of what it’s put in my path. As a result of the things I am aware of in my community, I have become better equipped at guiding other people towards the resources they need to fuel their own aspirations and endeavours.”

~ Jackie Antig, city ambassador for The Fetch

No. 1 fan

“The Fetch has opened my horizons both professionally and personally in Sydney and in places I travel to, such as Melbourne, London, and New York. It’s brilliant for making connections and putting me in the know of what’s happening in the digital and creative scene. I recommend The Fetch to nearly everyone I meet, and they love it. Since the very first issue came out, I have been a fan, the No.1 Fetch Fan in fact. It has changed and enriched my life.”

~ Mark Woodrow, founder, The Galaxy and now at Yammer

No. 1 sharer of The Fetch’s content

“I feel a bit lost when my week doesn’t start with The Fetch. I’m always on the lookout for fresh job opportunities and local events where I can learn and network, and The Fetch’s weekly email is my first port of call to find them. Even on the weeks where the jobs and events don’t suit my needs, I always know there’ll be at least a handful of fascinating articles to read and learn from. I love it.”

~ Neil Fahey, freelance writer, blogger and online comms guy

Email format lover and partner

“To feel the pulse of a city’s tech scene, I recommend subscribing to The Fetch. Regardless of whether you’re making in-roads into creative communities, or wanting to attend a web metrics meetup, each issue will have you both scrambling for your calendar and reading up on new and interesting projects. A hat tip to their team for creating such a valuable newsletter!”

~ Rosanne de Vries, Community Manager, Campaign Monitor

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If you’d like to pass on any feedback about where we’re going and where we’ve come from – or to chat about sponsoring or adding to our list of Kickstarter prizes, please email me kate@thefetch.com.

Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on our changes over the coming months. 🙂

Kate Kendall

Interview: London Local, Lauren Maffeo — February 19, 2013

Interview: London Local, Lauren Maffeo

/The Fetch community

This week, The Fetch London’s Community Ambassador, Alexandra Leslie spoke with Lauren Maffeo, Product Manager at AppBeat, a weekly web series designed to keep people up to date with the mobile industry. She spoke about how AppBeat is keeping up with the ever-changing world of technology, what to expect next and her favourite ways to stay connected with the world.

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So let’s get to know each other! Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourself?

Sure! My name is Lauren Maffeo, and I work as a contributor to the blog The Next Web as well as Product Manager for AppBeat. AppBeat is a weekly web series that interviews c-level executives on mobile innovation as part of a larger discussion on the role of mobile in London. I establish and oversee media partnerships, content creation/distribution of our blog, newsletter and video interviews, guest bookings, topic research and more. It’s a job that spans marketing, PR, journalism and business development; I’m learning a lot in a very short time!

How did you come to be involved with AppBeat?

I didn’t find AppBeat-it found me. I had just submitted my dissertation for my MSc at The London School of Economics in September of 2012 and was fulfilling a one-month contract as a community management assistant at Enternships, Rajeeb Dey’s startup that connects aspiring entrepreneurs with roles in small businesses. One of my bosses, Alethea Lindsay, contacted Enternships asking to place an ad for someone to oversee AppBeat (which had always been a side project) full-time, and Dave, Enternships’ sales director, said, “We have someone here who’d be perfect for that.” I submitted my CV, met Alethea for coffee in Notting Hill, and the rest is history!

What sorts of things do you feature in your newsletter?

We’re in the midst of a major expansion/re-branding process for AppBeat that has involved conversations about how we should engage with and build our audience. AppBeat’s interviews are relevant to any mobile market, but we’re aiming to keep our newsletter London-centred. That means we begin each newsletter with a curation of mobile news and upcoming events that those in the London mobile scene should be reading/attending. Then, alongside each new episode, we also offer original blog content on topics ranging from London mobile retail to how consumer loyalty will drive mobile wallets.

We’re starting to host more guest blogs from previous guests as well as those within the London mobile scene—Steve Rothwell, CEO of Eagle Eye Solutions, has written a three part blog series for us on his industry predictions for 2013, and we have much more exciting content in the works. I also wrote my first industry guest blog recently, which was exciting!

AppBeat is a 90 second weekly video series. How do you keep viewers engaged with such a short amount of time?

AppBeat was created to be a peer-to-peer conversation about the evolving role of mobile at large, the idea being that viewers get bullet points about specific topics in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. These topics have ranged from BYOD and apps as mobile strategy (FYI: they’re not) to companion apps and augmented reality.

What’s most exciting at AppBeat is seeing these industry predictions come to life months later. Adam Levene, CSO of Grapple Mobile, predicted early last year that the new BlackBerry operating system would make waves, and companion apps played a huge role in this year’s SuperBowl months after David Pinke, head of mobile product development and strategy at Condé Nast, explained them to us. Mobile will revolutionise our world in years to come, and speaking with leaders at its forefront is a great privilege.

With the rising numbers of people worldwide who have mobiles, is the constantly changing world of technology hard to keep up with?

It can be—there’s an endless amount being written about mobile across the globe, from China leading the smartphone market to the evolution of African telecomm. It’s an exciting space to be in, but that’s also why we aim to keep AppBeat’s newsletter focused on the London mobile market. As one of the world’s premier business hubs, there are so many global companies here, and there’s more than enough news/innovation to cover, especially with Tech City, Digi Greenwich, etc. My goal is to build an audience that appreciates how London is innovating the global mobile market, from enterprise to corporate.

What’s next in the world of technology, according to AppBeat?

There’s a lot of speculation about mobile payments, specifically the potential for them to be conducted solely on mobile without need for a credit card. We’ll be in Barcelona the week of 25 Feb.,  covering Heroes of the Mobile Fringe, which is happening alongside Mobile World Congress, and the big theme I’m hearing in advance is that there will be discussion of how companies like Visa will innovate the “mobile wallet” space.

What do you think would happen today in 2013 if it were a universal law to have a smart phone?

My hope is that people would use smart phones to stay connected. Despite covering all things mobile, I have very few apps on my Galaxy SIII. The top ones I use are Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and Gmail, with Spotify, Skype and Shazam the runners up. I hope that indicates what matters to me—connecting with loved ones and discovering new music. Living as an American living abroad could potentially be isolating, yet I’m able to text friends in Vancouver and DC through WhatsApp as if we’re in the same room. And I can see my kitchen at home each week when I Skype with my parents. Your mobile is your most personal device; use it to nurture your most personal connections.

What’s your favourite technology as of this year?

I love how high fashion is using tech innovation to connect with customers, specifically amongst UK brands. Topshop’s live stream presence at London Fashion Week last year allowed 200 million iPhone users to browse colour options for items, place advance orders, etc., and for February 2013 they’ve partnered with Google_+ to ultimately “create a narrative” that’s letting customers connect, from “Be the Model” photo booths in their Oxford Street store to Google Hangouts with the design team.

And with their in-store technology taken directly from their website, Burberry does an amazing job of creating an experience for customers that uses cutting edge technology to facilitate its heritage brand. This ensures that whether in London or China, you get the “Burberry experience” that Christopher Bailey has worked so hard to create—and their showing at London Fashion Week this week reflects that. Fashion’s my guilty pleasure, so I love how brands are becoming more interactive and can’t wait to see how these ideas evolve.

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Written by Alexandra Leslie, The Fetch London Community Ambassador. Video blogger for Newspepper.com and TechFluff.TV. American student in London, finding her way around the city one iPhone app at a time. Follow her on Twitter at @AlexandraLeslie. 

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