I woke up this morning in Colchester, where I was stranded in the deep Essex snowfall after visiting a school yesterday. Luckily local friends put me up for the night and my challenge this morning was to battle 25 miles in the snow to get to the Cleveratom Christmas Feast, I made it, and it was great!
Being stranded last night got me thinking about December 2006 and the start of Cleveratom. Three years ago today I sent an email to everyone I knew about the end of an era, and the start of a new company I was helping to form.
That company is called Cleveratom.
Most people know the story of why Cleveratom was formed, but needless to say it was a scary moment in life, the founders of Cleveratom were suddenly at the helm of a new business with no projects, no clients, no income and no security. We knew that the work we had previously done together for a decade under our previous flag (an Ultra cool place!) was too important to stop, and we formed the company to carry on that work.
I got thinking about that cheeky moment where on January the 2nd 2007 we walked into the Essex Technology & Innovation Centre in Ongar and said "We don't have any money, or any projects, but we do have some great ideas, and we know that we need to sit together in order to make them happen." A guy called David gave us the break we needed, and the following week (after a week working from Starbucks!) we had a business advisor, a brand new business incubation office (free for a month!) which was surrounded by other creative businesses. We set to work on finding cool learning, technology and creativity projects which would make learning more inclusive, engaging and enabling for young people.
Within five months we'd moved out of the incubation offices in Ongar and moved into our current home 'Clever Towers' in Chelmsford. We've been here ever since and we've grown our team and are really proud of everything we've done together. Our work has ranged from designing learning environments including schools, consulting on ICT in education matters, special education needs, delivering professional development and change management and recently we've been building social networking software to help professionals share best practice and engage together online. We've been developing personalised learning tools, parental engagement tools, audience participation tools, peer assessment and evaluation tools, right through to learning platform software that young people relate to and want to use (because they designed and help build it!). We've involved learners in everything we've done, and had great fun building Cleveratom....
On the last day in my old job in December 2006 I sent an email announcing the end of one era, and the start of another with the launch of Cleveratom, I got some lovely replies including one from a Headteacher I'd previously worked with on a very cool project in New Zealand who said...
"Change is good for us but we don't usually like the thought. Remember the old sayin.....When the winds of change blow, some build walls while others build windmills." I can just see those windmills springing up everywhere."
...and they did...
To all our project partners, clients, and former colleagues... as ever, thank you for working with us, believing in us, even taking a risk on us, and, as ever, we all wish you a happy and healthy festive season, and a happy and healty 2010.
Ohhhh, one last thing...
We WONT be at our usual place for BETT 2010, our big blue stand is in storage ready to make its 2010 appearance at a brand new conference we're running in conjunction with Professor Stephen Heppell called 'Building Better Learning, Learning Better Building' in April 2010. Sharon, our newest team member is organising it with the brilliant Lys from Heppell.net. Email if you would be interested in booking a place, and please forward this paragraph on to those that might be interested.
Merry Mincepies,
Matt and all the team at Cleveratom, follow me/us on Twitter I'm @mjeaves and we're @cleveratom
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Matthew Eaves
Director of Creativity, Cleveratom Ltd
+44 (0) 845 868 9020
Cleveratom Limited,
Fenchurch House,
93 Springfield Road,
Chelmsford,
Essex, CM2 6JL.
_____________________________________
Cleveratom Limited is a company registered
in England and Wales with company
number 6008130. Registered address is
Shalford Court, 95 Springfield Road
Chelmsford, Essex, CM2 6JL.
