Spotlight Annual Conference
Every year the three teams that work on the Spotlight programmes get together to discuss life, the universe and everything. 
This year’s hot topic was the website, which we were told was receiving remarkable numbers of hits - around 20,000 a month. Thanks to the wonders of google we were also able find out a bit of who it was that was visiting the sites. The three largest blobs on our world map of site visitors were in Ecuador, Vietnam and Slovakia. This was news to many of us and showed that our web site was more than just a complemantary addition to the radio broadcasts. Our website was reaching people where our programmes aren’t even on the air. With that in mind it was good to also see the progress of our new website being worked on by our partner in Chicago, Back to God Hour Ministries International (proposed launch Sept 08).
For me the conference, which also included discussion and training in specialised English, was a great chance to meet the rest of the Spotlight team. Except for the conference, all our communication is normally done over instant messenger, which (call me quaint and old fashioned but) doesn’t quite match face to face conversations. Plus it was in Chicago. Not bad having only finished my university course a few weeks before.
As well as the meeting and discussions we also had a bit of time to eat lots of food, take a tour of chicago by boat and help redecorate a community centre.
All in all we spent a week in Chicago, as well as a day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where Words of Hope the other part of the Spotlight trinity is based. It was a great encouragement to me to here about the reach that the Specialised English programme is having, and to realise that I am coming on board at what seems a very interesting time.
Posted by stevemyerscough 
July 2008