New hires, new site, new location

Exciting times for LobsterPot – Martin & Heidi joining the team, a new website (lobsterpot.com.au), and a Melbourne presence!

In March, Martin Cairney joined the team. Martin is a long-time member of the local Adelaide SQL Server community, and has been a friend of mine for some years now. He has spoken at the Adelaide SQL user group before, and when 2007 saw him move to the UK for a while, I wished him all the best. Martin went on to speak at the first SQLBits event, and became a regular at those conferences until he came back to Adelaide last year. He also spoke at SQL community events around the UK, establishing a good profile there. It was definitely good to get him on board a couple of months ago.

This month, Heidi Hasting brings the number of people in the company to seven. Heidi has worked with some of our staff before, and I see her having a massive future with the company.

You can see the new website for yourself! It’s clearly much better than the old site, which was little more than a placeholder. The new one has the attention of a proper web designer (instead of just being a bit of HTML thrown together by me), runs on the WordPress platform, and features a picture of Glenelg jetty, taken by my lovely wife. Most Adelaide beaches are just amazing, and it’s nice to be able to show one off on the website.

But perhaps the biggest news – we have a Melbourne presence now!

Martin has moved to Melbourne, and we’re picking up clients there. I imagine I’ll make some trips over there myself in coming weeks/months, hopefully speak at the odd user group, visit clients, and maybe see some friends and family as well.

Expanding out of Adelaide has been on my mind for some time. While Adelaide is a great place to do business, and everyone should consider moving here, it’s small compared to many places (only the fifth largest city in Australia). Establishing LobsterPot in other places makes good sense. Melbourne is a great city – I used to live there, and my brothers and their families still do. We’ve had the occasional Melbourne-based client before, but never enough to consider having a consultant based there. We do have a consultant there now, and we are well-and-truly open for Melbourne business.