In bloom
We did it! Encounter was officially launched on April 16th at the Barbican Wildlife Garden in Central London. The rain held off, there were tadpoles in the ponds and blossom on the trees, and more birds singing than the Square Mile deserves – few of which would be there without the hard work of the brilliant garden volunteers. Here’s a short clip of my speech (a brisk wind and some extremely vigorous scooter riders drowned out the rest). Thank you to Kate Bradbury for the video, and to Martha Henson, Jane Adams and Peter Rogers for all their help and support on the day.
Encounter has been in the media, too. A few days after launch I appeared live on the Today Programme on Radio 4 (you can listen back here; it’s about 1hr 22m in). We were featured in the Financial Times (archived here) and I was interviewed for the Country Life podcast here. There’s more to come, including in the Guardian, Positive News and Wicked Leeks. We’ll keep the Press page of the Encounter website updated with links and news.
We’ve just rolled out an update which includes our most user-requested feature, the ability to delete journal entries, as well as some essential maintenance work. We’ve been adding user-suggested species and natural phenomena to the database of tags, too, and it’s great to be able to be so responsive to what people are seeing and hearing. There are lots more improvements on our wish-list, including support for video and audio clips. Thank you for coming with us as we develop the app.
If you haven’t reviewed Encounter yet we’d be so grateful if you took a moment to do so, as it helps other people find the app (and know that they can trust it). You can review it in the UK App Store, the Irish App Store or the Google Play Store. Thank you so much.
As we zoom towards 5,000 users (!) Encounter is still looking for a sponsor to partner with us and help us grow. This company would be doing a really good thing for people and planet: could it be the firm you work for? What about your partner’s employer, or that of one of your kids? Please do have a think and drop us a line with any ideas, leads, contacts or proposals.
Thank you so much for reading, and for all your lovely messages and encouragement. And do make sure you enjoy the coming weeks: now until the end of June is an utterly magical times to notice nature, whether you live in town or countryside. There’s just so much life going on, and so much hope and energy. Make sure you don’t miss a single day of it.
