*The Debatewise Blog
Happy New Year
Gyms love Januarys. It’s probable their business model is dependent upon New Year’s resolutions and the fact they’re not kept for very long. New Year’s resolutions are like that though aren’t they. They’re born from guilt and good intentions but there’s little solid to keep you going after the first flush of enthusiasm has worn off.Having made and then abandoned quite a few resolutions I’m not keen on making any more. I prefer goals. Goals aren’t promises they’re objectives. They’re not I wont do x any longer but rather I want to do y by z. There are lots of good reasons why goals are more powerful than resolutions but the one I like the most is the value of stating them publicly in the belief this makes you work harder to achieve them.
So on that basis, here are my goals for Debatewise in 2009:
- Secure £150,000 of funding by the end of the year, with at least £100,000 committed by the end of June.
- Get the Debatewise Census up and running with at least 1,000 members by the end of April.
- Establish by the end of May an internship programme where a major law firm offers placements to the best debaters on the Rapid Response Team.
- Get 1,000 visitors a day by July and 6,000 a day by the end of the year
- Have fifteen new debates a week by June and thirty by the end of the year
- Get ten positive mentions in the UK national press by December.
- For the home page to have a Google Page Rank of 6 by the end of the year (funnily enough, our page rank went up from 4 to 5 today).