Your Zone Friday: Playing with our food
Things we’ve done and things we like this week
This week, Zone has been feeling peckish. Both in the metaphorical sense of our appetite for producing top-notch digital content, and also in the vast quantities of toast and peanut butter being ploughed through in the kitchen. Here's our hearty, well-seasoned round-up of the week's news…
Three things we've done
Given Bupa a thorough physical
Ever keen to help the nation stay healthy, this week Zone breathed new life into Bupa.com, launching the healthcare provider's shiny new site on Monday. Fighting fit and full of beans, the site is going to be toning up even further, with new functionality to come in early September.
Tucked into fish and quips
Inspired by the amazing progress of Hugh's Fish Fight (and partly by the scent of the Eversholt Street fish and chip shop wafting through the office window), on Monday the Channel 4 Food team embarked on a Twitter hashtag extravaganza. The theme: #fishsongs. Examples: 'I Have A Bream', 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow Trout' and 'I Lost My Heart To A Starfish Grouper'. Results: over a million tweet impressions, hundreds of stellar responses and some very tired typing fingers. Pun power!
Gone surfin' UK
While our Relentless team have been riding the waves for real (see below), Zone's BT team has brought the joys of surfing to us desk-bound citybods by building a new Facebook game, Speedy Surfer, to celebrate BT's summer deals campaign. Saving money on your broadband has never been this much fun, dude.
Beardstrokable infogram
This week’s data makeover
After a sudden bout of concern for the company's physical wellbeing, guilty snack-enablers the 4Food team decided to analyse the calorific content of Zone staff lunch choices. Here are the results:
Zone hero of the week
All back-pats, high-fives and small, neon-lit shrines need to be made in honour of BT Life's a Pitch editor Dan Willis this week, for basically being the Lionel Messi of the football website world. In the four months since Zone took over production, Dan has increased monthly site visits by a whopping 2000 percent. That's him in the bear.
Tea or coffee? Neither. Dan drinks the sweat of his footballing heroes, distilled into a fortifying tonic.
Geek of the Week speaks
Our tech team are on a mission to shed their nerdy reputation. We chart their progress…
Congratulations are in order, because developer Neil Cumpstey is about to become a dad! The tech team are excited about this for two reasons – firstly, because they can now pour all their talents into producing CAD baby booties in their spare time, and secondly because, as senior developer Dom put it, "it's proof that we can pull girls." Neil added, "I did have to marry her first."
‘I made this’
Zone staff share their creative moments
This week: We've got a lovely bunch of coconuts! When managing director Jon Davie won himself five coconuts in a competition (don't ask him about it, he's a little shy) he tasked Zone's Channel 4Food team with putting them to good use, which they naturally did, with a few suggestions from their Twitter followers.
One little coconut became a cocktail.
One little coconut got turned into pancakes.
One little coconut became a curry.
One little coconut was halved and used to simulate the sound of horses' hooves in a low budget re-enactment of Ben Hur.
…and one little coconut was taken to Paris on a romantic mini-break with editorial assistant Sarah Boning.
NEWSFLASH!
Our Relentless team have been hanging ten, putting away a pasty or two and having a totally bodacious time down in Newquay this week, at Relentless Energy Drink Boardmasters 2011. For all the latest from the surfing showdown, follow their tweets at @thisistheorder.
Three things we like
The blog
When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong. This one combines our love for sugary baked goods with our devout respect for accurate punctuation, spelling and grammar.
The app
When the kitchen Hovis supply has been exhausted again, this wonderfully pointless app fulfils all our toasty needs. Make virtual toast, choose your virtual toppings, and virtually eat it. What do you mean you're still hungry?
The tweeter
Think baking bloggers are all mums in BHS cardies? Think again. Miss Cakehead (whose head, we're sad to report, is made from all the normal materials) caused a stir in the food world last month by hosting Cakey Perry, a charity high tea with a saucy menu entirely inspired by the works of the colourful popstress. Her next project is entitled 'edible autopsy' – not for the weak of stomach.
