makingamark is now in a bluer place

Yesterday evening, I turned to the new kid on the block - Bluesky Social - and registered 'makingamark' for an account. 

Those currently joining Bluesky Social seem to be very much either 

• those wanting to reject the swaggering "Leon" for what he's done to date - and going to do in future. Hence the massive numbers (millions) who all joined last week. 

The platform said on Thursday evening, that an additional one million people had joined within 24 hours. BBC News

• and/or to go back to the days of "good old Twitter" (pre Leon) - which, for me, is actually what it feels like - a lot!  (I've always been one of those who has kept calling it Twitter - because we dislike Leon so very much)
• and/or those who can't cope with the pervasive and very intrusive adverts on Twitter. There are no adverts on Bluesky Social - and I assume this will continue to be the same until they've worked out how to monetise it in a way which keeps people rather than drives them away

This was the new account last night

If you want to find me, you can find me at @makingamark.bsky.social

Below is a bit more about what's involved with joining.

In the last week or so I've heard about a lot of people rushing over to BlueSky Social post election (as in millions!)  

I'm now on Bluesky Social - as makingamark

So by way of making myself visible

• I've claimed my makingamark "brand handle" - you can see it just under the account name in the pic
• I've started posting pics on there.
• plus maybe drip feeding pics I liked at the ING Discerning Eye? (see note at the end).

So, if this is a really good time to get back to your more "interest oriented" social media (I just clicked "art" as my interest) now is very definitely the time to investigate.

Plus get your handle that's the one you're known by elsewhere - BEFORE anybody else gets it.

Account Name

Warning - they don't like long names so for my second account, I could not have the name for my very popular botanical art website "botanicalartandartists" (#1 in the world)  - which is what I wanted. 

But I have got @botanicalart.bsky.social instead and that will very certainly do! :)

I'm going to have a third account for my "watching everything else I'm interested in" but this won't be one I publicise.

Interest Focused

You can have multiple accounts - and since this model of social media is emphatically interest oriented, I'd suggest considering one for your art - and another for everything else

You can post short messages, photos, and videos and send direct messages. Just like Twitter.

If your serious about your art, I'd HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you keep an account focused on just art. I know I only follow those accounts which are going to deliver to my own "defined interest" account what I want to look at.

Follow back

There's no harm having an account which is about multiple interests. However, just don't be surprised if not everybody wants to know EVERYTHING you're interested in and do NOT follow you back.

My other personal rule for following back is I only follow back:

• people I know - so makingamark will be following artists whose art I know or people I have met and know
• people who are posting (i.e. I don't follow back those who haven't yet posted) - and whose art looks interesting. Nobody has to like all the art that is out there

Overall, I'm not looking for lots of followers. I'm looking to develop a carefully curated set of posts. Of those I follow, I will be reposting stuff I like. 

I also UNFOLLOW those who are posting too much about stuff I'm really NOT interested in. (So maybe reread the last paragraph of the preceding section?)

Verification

You are verified via your email address and one of those picture puzzlegrams - which hopefully will keep many of the bots at bay - which would be very good news.

Decentralised 

The defining difference between Twitter and BlueSky Social is that the latter is constructed to be decentralised, which basically means users can host their data on servers other than those owned by the company.

Now I've not really investigated what that means - but for those owning their domains and buying their own hosts, you might want to investigate this aspect. Or maybe move over to it being decentralised in future if it takes off for you....

Get the app / FAQs

You'll need the app to use it on your phone or tablet and can otherwise access it via the website https://bsky.social

This is the Bluesky User FAQs

NOTE: My next blog post has been held up. I've been sat around since Friday waiting for my photographs of the ING Discerning Eye on my iPhone to turn up on the Facebook Interface with my Macbook so I can write about the exhibition and I'm still waiting. Looks like I'm going to have to export them. 

Does anybody know why the macOS Facebook sometimes cannot read Apple Photos? It's extremely boring when it happens.

Twitter Chaos: Is it time to close our Twitter accounts?

One of the phenomena associated with the 17 years since I started blogging has been the move of artists into social media. 

First through blogs, then Twitter and latterly via Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

However the only thing that is certain in life is that things CHANGE over time.

A lot of artists gave up blogging. Too much writing, too much effort seemed to be the reason. I had multiple blogs at one time dedicated to different art-related topics. Nevertheless I enjoy writing about art and want to keep the long form and now retain and post regularly to two blogs.

Once upon a time I always tweeted my blog post after publication - and now I post it on Facebook instead - where the comments now reside after I had to close down comments on the blog due to the ineffective control of spam by Blogger. 

(Incidentally I have thought of creating a Facebook Group for proper commenting on various topics in order to create a much better environment. At the moment I'm still having to block people on comment on my Pages)

I've grown to like Facebook - despite the many awful irritations as it keeps changing! 

I particularly like the photos and albums aspect which allows me to share more images from exhibitions I visit. It also offers a very speedy and effective resolution to spam and nasty comments and I've blocked more than a few accounts from seeing and commenting on my Pages.

Artists took to Instagram - and Facebook liked it too. Me not so much - since I can't leave links to where my words and pics are. However I do see the benefit of Instagram although I still think it's a lopsided bargain. However a lot of artists can sell via Instagram and do.

Tiktok has never appealed to me - I think it's a generational thing. I'm sure if I were 50 years younger I'd think it was great!

Twitter - challenge and change

The changes which have occurred in the last few weeks since Elon Musk bought Twitter suggest that it's time to consider closing down Twitter accounts or maybe deactivating them.

The Twitter "About" Page - it never said a truer word!

My reason for thinking like this is:

READ: The Age of Social Media is Ending

For any artist who is active on the internet and/or social media and/or thinks they ought to be, I have a recommendation for an article which I think is a "must read". 

The Age of Social Media Is Ending is by Ian Bogost and it's the first article that I've read which makes cogent sense of the last 20 years and how both the internet communication, social networks and social media have developed - and now appear to be declining. 

It may well make you pause for thought about how you might proceed in future. At any rate it provides context for the future - as well as the past.

It’s over. Facebook is in decline, Twitter in chaos. Mark Zuckerberg’s empire has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value and laid off 11,000 people, with its ad business in peril and its metaverse fantasy in irons. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has caused advertisers to pull spending and power users to shun the platform (or at least to tweet a lot about doing so). It’s never felt more plausible that the age of social media might end—and soon. 
Introduction to The Age of Social Media Is Ending is by Ian Bogost

You can find the article online in The Atlantic Magazine (which I recommend in general anyway!)

In terms of whether it's written by somebody who knows what they're talking about

Ian Bogost is an American academic and video game designer. He holds a joint professorship at Washington University as director and professor of the Film and Media Studies program in Arts & Sciences and the McKelvey School of Engineering. He previously held a joint professorship in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and in Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Chair in Media Studies  Wikipedia

Social Media: How Long is Optimal?

Length is everything - right?

Especially in social media.

So the theory goes that there is (1) an "optimal length" and (2) that this can be measured scientifically.

Which is why, if you are an artist trying to talk about and market your art via social media you will want to read:

• this BufferSocial blog post Infographic: The Optimal Length for Every Social Media Update is interesting for .
• and check out the infographic below (big version here) which is very definitely worth a look. It summarises and highlights.........

The Best Length for Social Media

• characters in 
• tweets, 
• Facebook posts, 
• URLs for domain names (excluding .com), 
• hashtags, 
• a Google+ headline, 
• an email subject line, 
• an SEO title tag - the first 55 characters are critical!
• words in a 
• blog post title / headline
• LinkedIn Post
• a blogpost
• width (in characters) of an opening paragraph (remember everybody is now reading on mobile devices), 
• length of:
• a YouTube video
• a podcast (how many podcasts start with the hosts droning on about how they are today and what they'd like to remind you about before they on to the nub of the podcast - how much time do they waste etc etc?)
• a presentation
• a slideshare
• size of a Pinterest image

To snag a PDF version of the infographic, download it here

A more printer-friendly version has also been compiled by the SumAll blog and you can download that from here

[Note this is the wierdest infographic I've ever come across - the code doesn't produce an image that fits the blog width and any effort to produce an image which does fit doesn't work. It's absolutely impossible to make it the width or length you want - which is rather ironic in the circumstances!]

Why social media matters in 2014

Ever wondered whether you ought to be doing more on social media - but didn't know where or how to apply your efforts?

Watching this video about the 10 social media facts and statistics in 2014 will help you decide. It's focused on the USA however the majority of the themes will travel - such as the very heavy gender bias on Pinterest.

You will find your jaw drops when you read some of the statistics!  You may also be surprised by the coverage of sites you've never heard of.

It is worth trying to keep up with how countries vary if you're focusing on targeting your artwork on a specific country

For example a recent report by Neilsen suggests that 80% of UK users access Twitter via their mobile

Read 
UK Twitter users are more mobile and 
80% of UK users access Twitter via their mobile

Art Marketing on social media

My take on all of this is that:

• if you are aiming to sell artwork to people under the age of 45 you have got to be social media savvy 
• PLUS your websites and blogs need to be accessible via mobile devices

If you're targeting the older art collector who likes visiting art galleries then it's probably less important to be conversant with social media - for now.

Poll Results: The Best Method of Promoting Art Sales

For some curious reason, The Making A Mark Poll for September which asked "What's the Best Method of Promotimg Art Sales" got a very low response rate.

The only reason I can think of is that people maybe didn't appreciate the distinction in marketing that I was drawing between:

• the best PLACE to sell art (covered in the August Poll); and
• the best way to PROMOTE art.

They're actually two different topics - within a model of marketing (The 5Ps of the Marketing Mix - see below) which suggests that there are a number of different considerations which need to be taken account of when marketing anything.

Below I provide the results of the poll and then go on to highlight the distinctions between where you sell your art and how you promote that sale.

Bottom line - artwork does not sell simply because it gets hung on the wall of a gallery or posted to your blog or an auction site.  First you have to get people to look at it and to find it attractive.

Results of the Poll

Only 22 responded to the September Making A Mark Poll.  The results are suggestive of good practices.

The top three methods of promoting art sales lean towards the traditional (within the context of recent developments around social media):

• via word of mouth (collectors and family/friends) used by over a third
• on the Internet via their own blog or website - again used by over a third
• around a third use cards to remind people about their art - either business cards or Christmas cards

Both Twitter and Facebook were in the bottom half of the responses - as was advertising.  

It was difficult to detect any difference between artists who sold via galleries and those who sold direct to their customers and clients.

The 5Ps of the Marketing Mix

POLL: What's the best method of promoting art sales?

The Making A Mark Poll for September looks at the best way of promoting sales of your art.  It looks at the various ways in which you promote your art to get people to look at it - which then converts to a sale.  It also provides you with an opportunity to share what works for you.

So it is:

• NOT about where you sell your art - see last month's poll 2012 Poll Results: What's the best place to sell art? (Part 1).  This poll is about how you get people to the place(s) where you sell your art.
• NOT about where you interact most with people - if none of that interaction results in sales

What this poll is about is OUTCOMES ie sales of your art.  It's trying to identify what method of communication actually generates sales (ie not what you do but it doesn't work). 

For example, having a blog which never leads to traffic to the site where you sell - and then converts to a sale - could mean either your art is not proving attractive to buyers or you're not blogging as effectively as you could do.  But this poll wants to know about is what does generate traffic which converts to sales.

In fact, in traditional marketing mix terms, it's about:

• the promotion part of the Seven Ps
• the communication part of the 4Cs

Communications can include advertising, public relations, personal selling, viral advertising, and any form of communication between the firm and the consumer.

Quote about advertising attributed to John Wanamaker

So, for example, if you're going to be selling art in an exhibition or an art fair, how do you tell people that there's an opportunity to see your art and how do you encourage them to go and look.

Or maybe you only sell your art online - how do you keep people interested in the new works you are producing and how do you get them to go to the place where they can buy your art?

I'm going to focus on the ways I know people promote their art and keep it fairly simple.

Here's a list of ways people communicate about their art with a view to promoting sales

• word of mouth (family/friends)
• word of mouth (collectors)
• business cards
• postcards
• christmas cards
• flyers / physical adverts
• online adverts
• email
• newsletters
• discount coupons
• portfolio publication / catalogue
• Twitter
• Facebook personal account
• Facebook Page
• own blog
• group blog
• own website
• art agent

The poll allows for multiple responses - so do please check all the ones that you use.

The poll can be found in the right hand column - under "Bloggers who Follow this Blog".  It closes at the end of 30th September 2012.  The results will be reported within a couple of days.

Please leave comments below indicating:

• what you find are the methods which works well with past collectors
• what does not work well.
• what important method I forgot to include!

22nd November 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

Yesterday was also the 5th anniversary of the very first Sketchcrawl - see Sketchcrawl is 5! (Plus 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl tomorrow)

Mathew Brehm (Sketchblog) who teaches architecture at the University of Idaho and is a contributor to Urban Sketchers did a rather nice title page for his sketchcrawl in Moscow, Idaho.

25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl by Matthew Brehm

This is Urban Sketcher's interview with Enrico Casarosa (Enrico's blog) - the man who started it all- Five years later, Casarosa's sketchcrawls keep us drawing

The act of drawing has a meditative quality and that's what's great about it, it forces you to slow down and really take into account what you are seeing.

Here are some posts I found of people out sketching on Urban Sketchers. It is of course totally predictable that the east is posting faster than the west!

• Sydney Sketchcrawl
• #25th Sketchcrawl around East Gate, Seoul
• SketchCrawl Singapore Style
• 25th World Wide SketchCrawl in Tokyo
• SketchCrawl - Moscow, ID

If you want to catch the next one try following Sketchcrawl on Twitter

Art Blogs

• This month, it's five years since Cindy Woods started her blog - Learning Daily . Ronda is stil posting Cin's work - and I've still got it in my blogroll. Yesterday was the first anniversary of Cin's death - see Cindy Woods - One year on and this great photo post from Wally on CrackskullBob
• Sarah Wimperis has written a hugely inspirational from the heart post on Watermarks - Bring out Your Inner Artist and Shine!
• Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up) had two interesting posts last week about Writing Text in Columns on Your Journal Page—Part 1 and Writing Text in Columns on Your Journal Page—Part 2
• Charlie Parker (Lines and Colors ) marked the 1st birthday of Urban Sketchers with Urban Sketchers turns 1
• Boarding Pass - Laura Frankstone is an interview with Laura Frankstone (Laurelines) about her trips by Anne (Prêt à Voyager) = which means 'ready to travel'.
• Paula Pertile (Drawing a Fine Line) writes about The joy of prints (she's being ironic!)

More blogging about trips to France

• More from Joan (Watercolors by Joan) - sketching in Provence

• Rural Provence Scenes
• The Charm of Provence
• Eygalieres Plus
• and by me in Normandy - Auberge du Terroir, Servon

Early evening at the Auberge du Terroir
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Art Business & Marketing

• I've been checking out the new ArtBusiness.com website and I don't think I've seen this article before - Hopeless Artist Emails and How to Make Them Better. This is how it starts - you have been warned!

I have no idea when this started or who the original perpetrators were, but I get more pointless, idiotic, ill-conceived and just plain lame single-sentence (and sometimes slightly longer) email communications like these (examples provided) from artists the world over trying to get exposure for their art-- way more than I would have ever imagined possible.

Art Collectors - and the art economy

• Lee Rosenbaum (Culturegrrl) reports thatthe Metropolitan Museum’s Red-Ink 2009 Annual Report, Now Online Total endowment funds down 26%. Museum's deficit: $8.4 million. It's not going to 'go broke' as it has assets of $2.9 billion and revenue of $213 million - however it just goes to show how the recession is affecting every part of the art economy
• She also came up with a novel approach to blogging CultureGrrl’s Pay-to-Play: No Donors, No Posts - and got 3! Not quite sure what that says..........
  
• This is a past about How Art and Stocks Trade: Relationship between Art and Equity Prices - ie if wealthy people have a lot of disposable cash then the price of art goes up - which means it's absolutely nothing to do with any intrinsic value.
  

In summary, evidence suggests that: (1) the wealth of the wealthy drives art prices; and, (2) art prices tend to evolve with, or somewhat behind, the equity market at a similar pace.

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Art school

• I think I know what I might be writing about on Tuesday! According to the BBC Saatchi says 'Don't be an artist'. This is by way of a prelude to the BBC 'X-factor' type programme School of Saatchi which starts on BBC2 on Monday 23 November (9.00-10.00pm BBC2), the synopsis being................
  

Powerful art world supremo Charles Saatchi sets six unknown artists up in their own East London studio for 10 weeks and commissions them to make a series of ambitious artworks, as he begins a search for the next generation of creatives............In today's opener, a shortlist of applicants bring their work to a London warehouse for scrutiny by the panel – artist Tracey Emin, critic and broadcaster Matthew Collings, art collector Frank Cohen and Barbican curator Kate Bush. They are confronted by an array of bizarre and wondrous work that constitutes contemporary art today

Demonstrations / guides

• Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal & Sketchblog) has a great three part demonstration on her blog of a painting she is doing for a book. It's so nice to see a LONG explanation of what she is doing and lots of photos of how the painting progresses. I hope that's how it gets treated in the book too. I've highlighted books Jana has contributed to on this blog in the past and it looks like there's another one in the pipeline - it's called “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” (Quarto Publishers, London)
  

detail of the painting of "Sunny Serenade" by Jana Bouc
watercolor, 15.5"x10.5"
copyright the artist

• Painting for the book: “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” – Part I
• Painting for the book: “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” – Part II
• Painting for the book: Part III ~ Finale

Step by Step - cats's eye demo by Gayle Mason

• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) provides an excellent Demonstration - How to Draw a Cat's Eye (there's a link to purchase it in the right column of her blog). This is the demonstration which sold out at the UKCPS stand at the Art Materials Live event at the NEC recently. You can read about this on UKCPS News - UKCPS at Art Materials Live which also provides a link to other guides produced by UKCPS members
  

Classes

• The Princes Drawing School has published its Spring Term course publication - and has also set up a dedicated website for the part of the school which operates out of the Kensington Palace Studios
  

Art Exhibitions

Exhibitions involving artist bloggers

• Belinda del Pesco (Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art Blog) is at the ArtFest of Scottsdale Nov 21 & 22

Don't forget to contact me if you want your blog post about your exhibition highlighted here.

Exhibitions elsewhere

• In New York, I'd not noticed that the Metropolitan Museum has what looks as if it's a very interesting exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915 which also had its own dedicated blog. I love the way the exhibition images change fast as you go through the links to the different sections of the exhibition. I'd really like to see an artist index with hyperlinks though.
• Two major exhibitions in London - with a competitive entry - occupied my blog posts this week
  

• Exhibition review: Toby Wiggins wins Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2009
• An Interview with Toby Wiggins RP
• Exhibition Review - ING Discerning Eye 2009
  

• Susan Angharad Williams, one of the past winners of the ING Discerning Eye Award, had an exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings (19 November- 5 December 2009) open this week at the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery. Click here to view the exhibition
  

Art Societies

• I've created a new resource - Art Societies in the UK - Resources for Artists. Do let me know if you'd like your art society listed - I've had some people write to me already with ones I didn't know about.
  

Art Supplies

• Making A Mark Reviews - Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of artist grade coloured pencil? which announces my decision to make this an annual review poll of different coloured pencil brands from January 2010 which will enable me to monitor changes in the marketplace
  

Book reviews

• This is the New York Times' Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009
• My resource site The Best Books about Drawing and Sketching was awarded a 'purple star' by Squidoo last week
• I've now got my copy of Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist by James Gurney and it's my current bedtime reading and it's has me riveted from the off!. This week however sees one of the reviews of the book which I was looking forward to reading. Charlie Parker over at Lines and Colors posted his book review of Imaginative Realism. Definitely a recommended read - my review won't be nearly as good! I loved the way his review reflects on the context for the production of art instruction books.
  

Rarest of all, there are art instruction books that are born out of the artist’s sheer enthusiasm for what they have learned and the desire to share it with any who are inclined to benefit from that knowledge. Imaginative Realism is one of those rare gems.............I also haven’t seen many art instruction books as information dense as this one. Not that the book feels visually cramped in any way, the book design is clear and elegant, but every one of its 200+ pages can be mined for nuggets of art technique gold.

• Postcard from Provence - the book is being published in Spring 2010. Julian Merrow Smith and his wife Ruth have been very busy this week advertisng and responding to a very special pre-order opportunity for his mailing list of his new book. This has raised the capital sum required for the printing costs and indicates this is going to be a pretty popular book. As many of you will know I've been following Julian since I started blogging and am a huge fan. I passed on the subscription offer but will certainly be buying the book. The standard edition is going to be available to pre-order next week in time for Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving - which is when the serious shopping for Christmas really starts. One has to admire the timing! ;) Julian's plan is to offer a stocking filler card so that people can gift a copy and offer a discount or free shipping for all books pre-ordered before a certain date. The book will have a softcover holding 160 pages and 140 full colour plates (which I'm guessing are probably going to be mainly 'life-size'). Price likely to be very affordable.
  

Opinion Polls

• Lots more people have responded to this month's opinion poll (in the right hand column). Have you answered the question yet - What makes a good art teacher?

Social Media, websites, blogging and webware

• I am really enjoying my Google search widget and now have it installed on all my blogs. It makes searching through the archives so find a past post so much faster and so much easier! I also get to search anybody I link to as well which makes it good for you too! I totally recommend it - see Widget reviews - Google Search on Blogger on Making A Mark reviews.....
  
• Tim O'Reilly (Radar Oreilly) writes that it looks like the The War For the Web is in the offing - it should make life interesting and I can't help thinking it might also create a lot of extra work in trying to keep up.
  
• Twitter premium accounts for business users due by end of the year - says the Guardian and Stone makes an interesting point.
  

"When we look at where we can grow we look to the more than four billion active mobile phone accounts in the world, opposed to the 1.65 million active web accounts."

• If it's the way to go for the BBC (see BBC bows to SEO) it's the way to go for you too when thinking of titles for blog posts!
• From ReadWriteWeb:
• Gmail Users Better-Connected, More Likely to Tweet than Members of other Webmail Services - have you ever thought about differentiating your mailing lists by what types of email they use?
  
• There's a new trend towards "giving the trolls what they deserve" and some people are even going to court - see Leaving a Vulgar Comment Online Might Cost You Your Job
• for those worried about their nerd like tendencies and the amount of time they spend in front of their computer - there's more on the notion that Social Media is Actually Social. Which nicely links back to Sarah's post at the top of the art blogs section in this post.

and finally............

I'm hoping that one of my favourite art suppliers hasn't been flooded in the "once in a millenium" rainstorms and floods in Cumbria (the Lake District) last week - 314.4mm (12.3in) of rain for a 24-hour period were recorded at Seathwaite Farm in Borrowdale.

Heaton Cooper is in Grasmere (in the next valley east of Borrowdale) and I viewed a BBC video of a car driving down the road to Grasmere into a flood caused by waterfalls coming over the top of the stone walls! The message on their website is that they hope to be back to normal after the weekend.

This is a link to photos of the floods in Cumbria

Twitter - Be careful

I've just had it confirmed that there is a nasty spate of Twitter accounts being hacked and then sending out emails suggesting moneymaking ideas

Yesterday I had a message from somebody with a great reputation who knows lots of people and who I've known for a very long time. The sort of person you trust without thinking.

You have a new direct message:
(name of twitterer): i made $300 today. this place showed me. (URL of naughty link)

I can't remember what I did now - whether I clicked the link or not. However I was suspicious but wondered because I know the person well

Having read about the number of hacked accounts sending out emails yesterday, I've played it safe:

• I've now changed my password.
• I'm going to be very wary of anybody sending me a direct message via Twitter with a link - no matter how well I know them!
  
• I'm also not going to be using Twitter for a while to send messages to anybody! If you've got a message for me this blog tells you how to get in touch with me.
  

How about you?

PS Just in case you're wondering I've written to the person whose account sent me the naughty message - so unless you got an email from me it wasn't you! ;)

PPS - UPDATE - I'm getting returned messages from the person concerned as every mailbox address I have for her is unavailable - so if it's you I think you'll already know about it!