Future Plans

Getting Somewhere

Eventually Incredible Ladies is crystalising out of a nest of ideas and the dream is gaining shape. This was the best year in my life and I'm looking forward to an even more exciting future!

			The Website
			Local IL - Networks
			Charity
			IL-Identity

The Website

It becomes more and more clear now that the website only can be the front end of a network of IL-Activities. It is rather hard to grow a website out of nothing without going commercial - or saucy. If we were a place for dating we might be there already. However, I want the IL website to be a place where the language may not be - well, boring - but where teenagers can go without stumbling across offensive stuff.

Local IL-Networks and Charity

Another part is the Ipswich Ladies mischief bit. That sounds a bit like old fashion style cake tasting competition - we might want to try that one day, Ladies - however we are not a club and there is no membership. You are not 'in or out' - This thing works true to the IL motto: Pull your own strings!

We gather ideas, we organise it and you either join in or leave it till the next time. No commitment! We all have better things to do than to bother about group pressure. And as this part is non commercial as well we don't need legal stuff and somebody keeping the money and so on. Easy-peasy...

Although we have a lot of dinners and afternoon teas, we are exploring a lot of options. Ever tried boxing, or belly dancing or Flamenco? Ever went to the Tate Modern? Ever climbed trees or jumped out of an airplane?

Don't we all tend to do only the things we either feel comfortable with, or which are right in front of our nose? IL aims to get us out of the comfort zone just that little bit to not be scared by bringing everything needed together and to hold it right under the very nose. Sniff the challenge and the fun and join in!

The aim for the future is to have more loosely interconnected local IL-networks which are using the website as their common ground.

A further part of IL is charity/social work. This year we are already engaging in Race for Life as a team and we are growing. Other charities could be local like the St. Elizabeth Hospice or nationwide like Pudsey in November.

Local charities/social work could give us the opportunity to bring the mischief activities and the work for a good cause together. Ipswich Ladies is still a young network and this path of action will have to explored further.

UK wide charity events are a great opportunity to bring local networks closer together, like Race for Life teams visiting each other and giving their support.

IL - Identity

There are no two ways about it:

If we want to grow and to be sustainable, IL has to be run like a corporate enterprise. We need an identity, we need to advertise, we need to show our face.

Well, 'showing the face' - that's a snag!

IL started as a website basically featuring: Rika!

The initial plan was to sneak 'Rika' out by making her story fade into the background. In publishing more stories of others 'Rika' was supposed to become detached from IL. As it turns out: That won't work! At least not yet. The network is still to small to be a big enough resource to achieve that.

For the time being the internet resources of advertising are exhausted, at least under the constraint of staying non-commercial and - as some think: Staying boring; without blogs, forums and flashy things.

Now that IL evolves more and more into a real life enterprise a 'face' seems to be needed more than ever. Thus for now 'Rika' as front face will stay in! Well, all the big enterprises have their front face, right? And approaching the 50th, one needs to create ones one space anyway to get that job! Am I lucky or what?

Cutting a long story short: IL has a flyer now! And we have a boutique where we can place them ... and this boutique will place them at their fashion show as well. A big 'Thank You' to Nicky and Sue for their support!

Regarding our charity events I'm enquiring regarding banner, balloons, buttons, t-shirts, caps at the moment, and I'm keeping eyes and ears open for other opportunities. Any ideas and contacts are very welcome! Send me a P.I.F!

And there we have another snag: At the moment the 'Networking Principle' of causing ripples is working brilliantly and no financial support was needed so far. However, we might reach a point where we need money to be sustainable.

I'm not keen in changing IL into a membership based community. I'm not a 'club person' myself, and I wouldn't want to join my own, if it were one.

I'm not keen on commercialising the website either. I want this to be our playground - our virtual home - so to say.

So I'm exploring options on where there might be other strands of IL which can be commercialised in order to feed and promote the other parts.

Will keep you posted!