EGi: behind the screen

A while ago we embarked on the quest to find the voice of EGi, for our online tour.  Well, I had a number of suggestions via the blog but in the end we settled on someone closer to home.  The voice of EGi, which you can hear here, is our very own Kazek Wedrychowski.  Aside from being very good at the job, he was a lot cheaper than most of your suggestions.   

The tour is designed to help potential and existing users uncover more of EGi's benefits.  Some people still think EGi is just a very fine news service, when in fact it's a lot more.  Let Kazek have a go at explaining some of the parts of EGi you might not be fully aware of...

Let me know what you think.  And if you really like the sound of Kazek, tell him yourself!

You can now put a face to the voice of some of EGi's leading lights.  Our new "Meet The Team" videos introduce you to Theresa Keogh, Anna Reed, Hannah Gardiner, Sarah Jackman and Denis Hall.  Find out what they do and how they do it.

We'd like you to meet more of the team, but they're too busy either out on the streets researching buildings and occupiers; working the phones to collate deals data or out gathering news items.  But, when we can do more, you'll find the videos here.

Please let us have your views by completing our survey.

There have been previous attempts but the technology continues to improve and bring us closer to the point where you can sit in the park and watch TV on your mobile device - with no glitches... 

  A trial was launched today by Livestation for Apple's latest toy, the iPhone.  Livestation already, legally, provides access to live streams from sources such as CNN, France 24 and Bloomberg.

Whether you'll be finding eg.tv streaming live property news direct to your phone in the near future is a matter of ongoing debate!  Tell us whether you're interested...

Well, we all know that times are tough, so to help us understand more about how you feel about the current economic downturn, and how you view the year ahead, we have created a survey to find out what effect this is having on you, and the industry as a whole.

At EGi we want to help you achieve your goals through the good times and the bad, so let us know what is most worrying or important to you, and perhaps we can help you through. 

The survey should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete and your answers will remain strictly confidential. Start the survey now

An interesting intervention today from Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive of News Corporation.  He has spoken out against those who have been too quick to forecast the death of print.

It's fair to say that in the early days of EGi, way back in 1996, we were wondering how quickly the readers of Estates Gazette would migrate online and leave behind their weekly print publication.  But, happily for those earning a living at our printers, EG's circulation has barely moved in the 12 years since EGi launched.  EG maintains a circulation of over 29,000 copies a week (19% higher than its rival) and many of those who read EG are using EGi on a daily basis as well - not instead of.

Mobile devices, allowing users to access content on the move, will provide an increasing challenge to print.  And the technology to deliver more customised content, to enable users to cut through the clutter, will be highly appealing.  An example of a pretty neat mobile solution today is Yahoo! Go.

But, for now, the multi-platform world is still out there and publishers like Murdoch as well as EGi are best to keep the focus on delivering what the user wants, how they want and in the format they want.  

EGi researchers returned from BCSC conference in Liverpool full of news, insight and the occasional rumour.  Whilst 2008 was a good year for openings, in 2009 we expect no more than seven new shopping centres to open. However, the sentiment at BCSC was by no means all doom and gloom. Sure, investment has taken a nose dive and the empty rates bills have made temporary lettings more prevalent, but leasing is still strong in primary locations. 

At the courtesy of Thornfield Properties our Retail Researcher Nicola Waterfall took to the skies to inspect Bury's regeneration project "The Rock". After the helicopter ride with representatives from some well known retailers, Nicola reported that the Primary Care Trust premises are near completion and the bowling alley construction well underway. I must emphasise that helicopter site visiting is quite unusual research method for us! 

The info gained at BCSC will be fed into the EGi's Shopping Centres and Retail & Leisure Requirements. Those new to Shopping Centres service, an example of Buchanan Galleries  gives you a flavour of the strength of this data. EGi users can access unrivalled planning and construction data for all UK and Irish retail schemes (not just shopping centres) above 50,000 sq ft. Regular news on your schemes is always welcome and your retail&leisure space requirements are published free of charge on EGi - please email these to retail@egi.co.uk.

Tuesday night saw another big step for the web in terms of changing the way we get our information and communicate.  It was, of course, 4 November and election day in the United States.

There was the usual TV coverage available in the UK, with terrestrial channels like the BBC and ITV as well as some of the digital news channels like Sky and Fox.  But, the action really was online this time.  Broadcast news organisations were so badly stung by the early and wrong calls on the 2004 Presidential elections that this time around, they waited and waited and waited before gaining the confidence to call the most interesting states. 

Online, however, blogs, Twitter feeds and web TV feeds from mainstream broadcasters were more confident and prepared to predict the winner in many of the critical electoral contests.  (At the time of writing this post, the Twitter feed is still buzzing.)

Keeping up with the choice and scale of content was the main challenge.  I had a screen with video feeds from all the major international news networks, separate blogs on the media coverage and the results themselves, together with a Twitter feed going.  Ahead of McCain's concession speech it actually became impossible to keep up - and the timing of that speech was flagged online way before the broadcasters alerted their viewers.

It was truly fascinating and totally engaging.  There is now a serious challenge to traditional TV platforms for coverage of major events like this one and lessons for all media outlets to consider when it comes to finding ways of getting the public, their users, to get involved.

Exciting news for EGi London Offices subscribers this week as we release Excel download functionality for our Occupier data. Our regular users have wanted this functionality for some time and we are delighted it has now gone live. Woohoo!

The ability to download will ensure maximum benefit from our unrivalled dataset. Our team of researchers are continuously calling the c.14,000 occupiers in our database to check and validate their details - including lease details/expiries, plans to move etc. Our dataset is unique in the market.

So, if you want a snapshot of take-up, a list of US lawyers in EC4 or lease expiries coming up in the next 2 years - this report will give you what you want. You can analyse and aggregate the information as you need.

But please - don't stop calling us for other bespoke data - we still want to hear from you!

This week sees some more upgrades to EG PropertyLink...

To enhance the appearance of the properties on the search results page,
we have added a thumbnail photo of the property to each listing:

We have also added a 'Show agent contact details' button which allows our advertisers to track how many people are clicking to access their details, making it much easier to assess the effectiveness of their EG PropertyLink listing.

These changes are going live today.

Let me know what you think...