dontjustblogthere

This month we’re contacting as many clubs and associations as we can and inviting them to post their events and fixtures for free, so that your diaries can bulge and lives become fuller.

It’s going down incredibly well, and we’re on target to gain well over 1500 new account users, across the board from archery to yoga classes.

Next month it’s the turn of the amateur drama and theatre groups, so if you know someone who’s a bit of a lovie . . . tip them the wink for us!!

With your help, DJST is set to become the first port of call when you’re stuck for something to do anywhere in the UK.

Thanks to the enthusiastic spreading of the word by our longstanding posters in the RH (and surrounding) post code area to their ‘nearest (furthest) and dearest’ we’re reaching the 4 corners of the country already.

Barely 4 months since launch, we have posters using our facility as far north as the Orkney Museum in Kirkwell, Scotland and in the far south-west at The Minack theatre in Cornwall.

A staggering 1000 venues have appeared on our site across the UK in the past month.

Don’t be the last to jump on the DJST train . . . its moving faster all the time.

Well 2 months in and things are really taking off.

The DJST crew have been in evidence at local fairs and shows over the past few weekends, spreading the word according to Couchy, and everyone from our most senior citizens to those just toddling all love him. We’ll be at the Redhill Carnival 2nd and 3rd June, where you can play our now infamous ‘mash the potato’ game, or buy exclusive Couchy belgian chocolate lollipops and donate to Charity in the process.

With over 150 accounts set up by events posters, our database is already bubbling with stuff to do, but we’d like to see it brimming over (which would take some doing with our baby!!!)

Just put in a search for the year ahead and including regular events you’ll see there are already 5930 events to choose from.

Don’t Just Sit There – Get posting!

Tonight the DJST team will be dining in style at a well-earned inaugural dinner at the Lannis Restaurant in the Bridge House Hotel, Reigate Hill! All the team will be there - Collette, Dave G the programmer and designer, the office girls and members of friends and family - and special guest of honour will be Couchy himself in cuddly form!

This marks the end of one era and the beginning of another. With so much sweat, so much blood and so many tears invested in our new baby, dontjustsitthere.co.uk, the future is looking bright indeed!

The winner of the £100 in our ‘design a couchy’ competition from the Reigate School of Media and Design is Mark Peters, and we can shortly expect life to be breathed into our little hero by his friend, budding animation artist James Sell.

The friendly event engine is growing! We are about to invite a number of theatres spread throughout the country to use our site to publish their up and coming events - and we will begin to invite other events organisations to do the same!

Want to get involved? Get in touch!

On the visual front, we challenged the graphic design students of a local college to provide our graphics and icons and are two days away from choosing the winner, so the look and feel side of things is also about to take a dramatic turn!

Things are hotting up in the DJST universe! The previous, paper-based incarnation of ‘The Event’ a local publication which will soon be supplanted by its online cousin, is now being printed directly from our database and the local posters are really becoming comfortable with managing their events online - and it seems theatrical organisations are fastest on the uptake, with the majority of our current events coming from local theatres and conference centres.

Don’t just sit there! Come and join the party!

This is the first post for the blog! This is the companion blog to dontjustsitthere.co.uk, the national events directory. Over the next few months, DJST will grow from an events and services directory used by the good people of the Reigate and Redhill area to a national portal where you can find any kind of event you can imagine - car boot sales, evening classes, classical concerts, gigs, walking groups, computer fairs, you name it - we can help you find it.

DJST is the brainchild of Collette Barber, who has been advising small businesses and running events publications for over ten years, and David Goodchild, a programmer, web designer and MD of web development agency web buddha.

Along with Couchy the resident couch potato, we look forward to an exciting year of event posting, event searching and, of course, not just sitting there!

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