It’s all happening…!
How’s autumn shaping up where you are? Here in Suffolk it’s been a bumper year for conkers, and there seem to be more sloes in the hedgerows than last year. I’ve seen the first fieldfares, which come here to overwinter from places further north: they’re plump birds with a grey head and streaky, yellow-orange chest and they love fruit and berries, though if the ground isn’t frozen they’ll make short work of snails and slugs as well. Redwings have been arriving, too – another member of the thrush family. They tend to come in after dark, sometimes in quite large flocks, so listen out for their high-pitched, reedy contact calls on cold, clear nights. I used to hear them every autumn when I lived in central London, so do listen out wherever you are.
The last few months have been incredibly busy, incredibly stressful and incredibly rewarding. Building the Encounter app with our lovely Polish developers has been a very steep learning curve for me, but supported by our brilliant product manager, Martha, I’ve had the great privilege of watching a team of people work together whose brains function in a totally different way to mine. The prototype on my iPhone keeps growing in functionality, day by day, and whenever I’m asked to test another feature I feel an enormous glow of pride at how far we’ve come.
Our goal is still a soft launch in November, to you, our supporters, followers, and friends and family, and then a full media launch in spring, when people are going outdoors a bit more and engaging with the natural world. That’s when we’ll ask for your support to trumpet the app from the rooftops and help build our user base, which is what will help us attract partners and thus, keep the show on the road. In order for the app to keep doing good, we have to raise enough from partners to cover its running costs as it grows.
To prepare for our soft launch we’ll need some volunteer user-testers. If you’d be willing to have a play around with the Encounter prototype and give us your feedback, please fill in the form below. Unlike our earlier rounds of testing this will be a small group, so we won’t get back to everyone – but we do need a good range of people (and phones!) so if you’d be willing to help, please let me know.
Finally, I’m excited to say that we have opened a new SEIS investment round. If you missed out the first time, but would like to invest a sum over £5,000 and help Encounter succeed, please email us at hello@encounter-nature.com.
If you’d like to read more from me, my book HOMECOMING is out in a few days’ time. It’s a fully illustrated nature journal designed to be a year-long course in connecting to nature, and I’ve written it for young and old, country and city-dwellers, nature newbies and experts alike.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading, and for all your lovely messages and support.
Sending you all good wishes for autumn,
Mel
