Abubilla Music

Hello from new COO…

Written by Steph

I have a confession to make. My name is Steph, the new COO for Abubilla, (that’s chief operating officer, not chief pigeon) and I have never, ever written a blog before.

It’s even taken me around 4 days to get over my chronic first-time-blogger’s nerves, and get on here to introduce myself and say hello to you all. It’s not that I dislike writing, far from it; I love getting the chance to lend some semblance of order to thought through words. My reluctance is because in the past, when talking to friends who were a bit more”new media” than I was, the conversation has gone a little like this:

Me: “New media pal*! It’s been ages. What’s new with you?”

Them: *indignant look of surprise* “What do you mean, what’s new with me? Haven’t you been reading my blog?!”

At which I laughed. And then realised that they weren’t joking. Awkward.

So off I went, to check their blog, with all the fervour  and urgency of someone who felt as though a friendship was ON THE LINE because I hadn’t been keeping myself up-to-date with the details of their life, and had a feeling of guilt in my gut for not paying it enough attention…and then I’d find it, and skim my eyes over their blog…

“Today, I am wearing a hat. I don’t usually wear them, especially with the weather being so humid lately, but Helen at work told me that I have the right chin for it so that’s why I decided to give it a try…”

And so it went on. I have to admit that despite my friend’s indignation, I didn’t investigate much further (well, would you?!) leaving me with a funny idea about blogging, and the temptation to get a bit self-indulgent when writing them (“…I’m also wearing a hat that’s blue to match my eyes…”)

Fast-forward now to just a few months ago, when curiosity got the better of me and I dipped a tentative toe into the blogging pool once again thanks to the recommendations of friends who wrote both interesting and informative blogs on music, politics, other current-affairy things that were less like very public diaries and more the observations and musings of people who had something to say. Hmm, I thought, hmm. I’m enjoying a blog. How unlike me.

Then, more recently, I was introduced by my friend Soph (you know, the SMCC cellist) to the wonderful world of Abubilla (more on that later), and through sheer curiosity began to read the blogs written on this site – and REALLY enjoyed myself. They were fun. And funny, but more than that, there were useful blogs too. Louise and Jimmy’s How To blogs….Hannah’s Top 5 blogs…they all got me thinking. There was a really good balance of the funny and the insightful, without any of the drivel. I realised that before, I had fallen into the trap of blaming the pen rather than the pensmith…a blog is only as good as its blogger. (Pretend-wisdom will be a recurring feature of my own blogs, no doubt.)

So on the occasion of my first blog (am on third draft), I’d like to promise anyone that reads them that I will try at every opportunity to keep this stuff interesting and fun, and I ask a favour: if things ever start to become a bit drivelly and New Media Pal-ly, then would you please let me know?!

So, just a little more about my first week with Abubilla. It has been BRILLIANT. Mad, brilliant, and exciting. In one week I have moved from mundane job in an unnamed sales company, to having what may just be (to me, anyway) the Best Job Ever.

I began on Monday, having moved house the night before (ugh – we all love doing that, don’t we) and waking up early on Monday morning, thinking, “where on EARTH do I start?!” There were a number of minor setbacks to getting started at the beginning of the week, including but not limited to: no internet in my new house, my geriatric laptop that will go at its own pace, thank you very much, a slew of important emails containing task lists that had been intended for me to read over the weekend that I couldn’t pick up due to forementioned absence of internet, a lovely boss on the other side of the world…I must admit, there was a little bit of colourful language on Monday.

The rest of the week has been much better. I had the first of a couple of handover sessions with the Lovely Louise, who was wonderful at sitting me down and talking me through everything that I will need to know to get myself up and running in this role. We talked through using WordPress, discussed the website, how it’s run, and production of the new CD (!! exciting!!). Her help has been invaluable so BIG UPS to Louise for being so patient with me!

Thanks must also go to Martyn, who gave me a much-needed lesson on how to raise visibility of the website through clever manipulation of site content and how I will need to make the site “hold hands with itself”to make it more attractive to the Google wizards, and make sure that there are plenty of hits to our website. There will be a blog on this later, so stay tuned.

In amongst this, there has been list-making, note-taking, LOTS of reading (“Start an Independent Record Label” by JS Rudsenske) to redress my enthusiasm/experience imbalance…so far, it’s proving pretty useful at helping understand the business side of Abubilla, and how to run it efficiently.

All in all, I have had a very fun and exciting week. I feel chuffed to bits to be able to do this (gush gush) and will be pouring all of my energy and enthusiasm into this.

I’ll leave you now with this – both as a wee afternoon treat, and also a way for me to check whether or not I actually know how to embed videos into blogs…fingers crossed!

A fantastic instrumental funk track by Marvin Gaye from the soundtrack to the film of the same name “Trouble Man” (1972)…

Oh look at that! I think it worked! Hope you enjoy this, it’s one of my all-time favourites.

*Names have been changed to protect the boring