Treasure London hosted it’s first Stag vs Hen Treasure Hunt on a Saturday morning not long ago.
It was awesomely competitive - both teams had an absolute desire to win. The two teams were running round the course for almost 2 hours closely tracking each other, probably the quickest race we’ve ever run.
Finishing at The Old Star pub for lunch, the girls arrived 5 minutes ahead of the boys, winning the spoils! After a short (much-needed) rest, both teams went onwards their separate ways to continue their weekend of celebrations.
All the best to Emily and Aaron for their wedding!
Cheers,
Ronald
ronald@treasurelondon.com
It’s increasingly difficult to write here as whenever I spot something interesting around London - it’s often something I want to use as a Treasure Hunt clue.
And if I stop mentioning the interesting things about London then this will swiftly become a sports blog! I will make more of an effort to publicise events around London that won’t affect the quality and secrecy of our clues!
Happy hunting,
Ronald
Heathrow are conducting public trials with volunteers to test out Terminal 5.
I have just signed my name down for a day of unpaid work.
I used to look at stuff like this and think it would be cool but damage my reputation as a sane person if I signed up as a volunteer - but now I can use my job (investigating new and interesting bits of London) as an excuse. Ha!
I found the cutest video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCNqJ3KLyKQ
Some Americans living in Paris attempt the Time Out London Treasure Hunt… they stay in a quirky hotel, they visit Ping Pong for dim sum (hey, that’s one of my favourite restaurants too!), and mill around Hyde Park and Westminster. The video is a nicely constructed story of their adventures.
Good work guys! Come book a treasure hunt with Treasure London to have your own adventures.
Catch you later,
Ronald
From news story on HR Zone and BBC
A recent Microsoft survey lists skills workplace skills that are seen as most important by UK business leaders:
1. Team working and interpersonal skills
2. Initiative
3. Analysing and problem solving
4. Verbal communication
5. Personal planning and organising
6. Flexibility
7. IT skills
I’d say as a business owner trained in computer science that I agree with the survey results - I’d place IT skills at the bottom of the table too. For my business, interpersonal skills and initiative do feature as the skills I most value. While adequate IT skills might be essential in the modern workplace, strengths in the earlier fields are far more valuable than a strength in IT.
I might be biased - cos I think a corporate treasure hunts is one of the best ways to develop and analyse business skills including: team working and interpersonal skills, initiative, analysing and problem solving, verbal communication,… but we don’t offer IT courses!
Happy treasure hunting,
Ronald - Treasure London
There are a number of reasons why Treasure London is awesome for corporate events, and here’s another one:
At the end of the company event, when everyone else is on their way to the pub or home, Treasure London still has a bit of work to do.
After the event we’ll set up a special site with additional information about the locations that we used, and upload all the photos taken during the treasure hunt. We’ll include a forum to ensure that people can talk about their shared experience of the treasure hunt, which can form part of an ongoing company team-building exercise.
We’ll set an appropriate address, e.g. example.treasurelondon.com, and password-protect it for you before sending you the details. We expect that you’ll be talking about our Treasure Hunts for a long time after the event… and we’re always interested in what you have to say.
Awesome!
Ronald - Treasure London
The average size of internet typeface and my ability to read small words are both decreasing at a significant rate. Lately I’ve had to use browser zoom functions to take a closer look at the text.
Firefox (my usual browser choice)’s zoom is often a bit rubbish as words overflow into areas where they become unreadable. Opera and IE are way ahead of the game, using a more natural zoom that magnifies the whole visible page including images, rather than just the text.
While Opera used to be my browser of choice, it is now so unstable that it crashes randomly within 30 minutes, losing whatever page I was reading. So, I grudgingly flicked my default browser over to Windows Internet Explorer last week. I’m not sure I have ever used IE as default in the past - maybe just for a couple of years in the late 90s after Netscape Navigator went out of fashion. And I actually would be really happy with IE this time around but for one annoying bug…
While I was updating the Treasure London website, I noticed that the links didn’t line up with the text. The text would appear in the right place, but you need to click slightly to the right of where you’d expect to get the appropriate link. It works fine in Opera and Firefox, but there was this weird problem only in IE. I spent 2 hours trying to fix what I thought was my problem - and I’ve discovered that it’s a bug in my copy of IE7 with Windows Vista. Setting the zoom in IE to 110%-125% (as I often do) means the text on the right of each page will no longer line up with ‘itself’. If you double click a word to highlight it, you’ll notice a small but significant offset between the text and the highlight (where the link is). I kept trying to fix it (and am still interested in a solution) but in the end I realised that the same problem appears on every website - including Microsoft’s own help pages - when magnified in IE.
I’m surprised there isn’t more information about this IE7 bug floating around on Google (though it’s similar to an earlier ‘creeping text’ bug)… although it’s not too frustrating if you remember to point your mouse a cm to the right. As a web designer, though, I want everyone to experience the website as I intended. I’ve spent time checking and fixing our website for different browsers on different machines. Yet Microsoft have designed a flaw so embedded in their browser that it’s impossible for me to correct.
As you may have guessed, I’m in the process of improving the Treasure London website. 
Nothing major, but I’ll let you know when it’s done.
Ronald
Treasure London now has it’s own Facebook Group. Hopefully we’ll use it to update you on important and exciting news
Thanks for supporting us,
Ronald - Treasure London
I have been doing some pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Facebook. Should be a good opportunity to target adult Londoners who are interested in running a treasure hunt as a team-building or social event.
I’ve read that Facebook has a particularly low click-through rate… because people are too busy concentrating on their social networking to be bothered with adverts.
Indeed, I’ve only received one click in 60,000 views so far (luckily I’m paying per click!).
I figured that advertising on Scrabulous - Facebook’s Scrabble application - would be more valuable, as it catches people who are interested in puzzles and spend a bit more time exploring each page while they try to come up with a word. I did get a higher click-through rate but I only got visitors from the US and Hong Kong. Not as highly targeted as I was hoping.
So far Treasure London is not getting through to as many people on Facebook as I’d hoped. I guess if I can’t distract people from what they’re doing on Facebook, I can make Treasure London what they’re doing on Facebook. I’ve started work on a Treasure London application, and a Facebook group will follow shortly.
See you on Facebook,
Ronald - Treasure London
