Welcome! This issue is a big one for us because it marks the 10 year anniversary of sportEX. Eleven years ago, as 27 year old with 6 years of training in physiotherapy and sport and exercise science, and three years training as a medical journalist, I made the dubious decision to launch my own magazine. Six months later, in July 1999, sportEX medicine was born. The mission was simple, to offer practical, hands-on information relating to sport and exercise medicine for people working with the active population. That mission is exactly the same today. We followed the usual pattern of growth, employing staff, expanding the business by running courses and conferences, taking on office premises and employing more staff, until I realised I was spending more time managing the business and less time concentrating on my core passion, the magazines. Luckily a couple of key employees made important decisions like having babies and it gave me an ideal opportunity to wind down the non-core areas, and refocus on our real strengths – the magazines.
That remains true today. We are a small but very focused team, putting 150% effort into producing publications designed to keep you up to date with the latest evidence base, and providing you with practical tools to help you to do your job as effectively as possible. This July 2009 issue I hope epitomises that mission, with the online versions of both sportEX medicine and sportEX dynamics featuring some customcreated animations, and video-based rehabilitation leaflets. While we have always provided all our articles in PDF format through our website, this issue will be the first time that we have used a proper online magazine delivery tool to provide the whole issue as it would appear in the printed version, but with these interactive elements embedded. For more information, read the story over the page. Thank you as ever for continuing to support sportEX through your subscription/s and I look forward to sharing the next 10 years with you! With best wishes Tor Davies, founder and publisher
Use customized versions of advice leaflets on your website What if you could give your patients and clients access to our advice leaflets through your website? They could then print them off whenever they wanted. Even better, you can include either a link, or a mini page-rotating widget onto your website just by pasting a piece of html code onto the page you want the widget to appear. It’s that easy. You provide us with your address details and your logo and we’ll create a booklet of the leaflets you choose with your logo and contact details on both the front cover as well as a map on how to get to your clinic, on the back cover. Each leaflet costs £5 per year. For an extra £1.50 per leaflet, we’ll customise not only the cover of the full booklet, but each individual leaflet within the booklet with your logo and contact details also. If you move venue, don’t worry, any changes are included within the annual subscription cost. You can add as many or as few leaflets to the set as you want and you can add additional leaflets at a later date if desired. Add the widget to a page on your site – anywhere you choose, and/or add the link to your business card or follow-up appointment card. You can choose the print the leaflet out for the patient/client – or they can do it when they get home.
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For more information visit www.sportex.net or call us on +44 (0)845 652 1906
SPORTEX ON THE WEB I’m in the process of updating most of our website but I’m short of good web developers so if you are one, or can recommend any – please email me. In the meantime I am using several web-based tools like the sportEX Facebook page to provide updates. Below is a short list of the key sites I’m using and what you can find on them. Flickr – www.flickr.com/sportex - we upload most images as well as tables/boxes that have appeared in all the magazines into our Flickr photostream. The idea is that you can then use these images in your own work for example lecturers could use them in their presentations, students within their coursework and practitioners can use them with patients. We can also within reason, develop images for you if you have a special request as long as we feel it will be useful to our wider audience. To make a suggestion just email me (tor@sportex.net). YouTube – www.youtube.com/isportex - on the sportEX channel I generally always do a screen tour around the online version of the issues, introducing the articles and pointing out the interactive elements of the issue. I have also uploaded videos used in the rehab leaflets and created playlists (a sequence of links to several videos on a topic) of videos that support articles we’ve published. I have also subscribed to other YouTube channels which complement the sportEX content. Twitter – www.twitter.com/sportextor (follow me @sportextor) - I’m using Twitter to post bits of news and research I come across that I think will be useful. I also post offers on products or jobs that come through to us.
Blog – http://sportextor.wordpress.com - this is the source of most of the news that appears in the esportEX newsletter. I blog about two main things – information that’s relevant to the sportEX audience which requires a bit more explanation than I can make on Twitter and secondly I’ve started blogging about how to use social media tools to grow your practice/business. I’ve taken the dummies guide approach – assuming you’re starting with no experience with these tools. For people with more experience, you can jump to the advanced part. Facebook – www.facebook.co www.facebook.com - search for sportEX and you’ll find a logo looking like the one here. That’s us! I post all sorts of information on there, including newsletters and updates on events. My blog, YouTube and Flickr accounts all link to this page – but sometimes they take a bit of time to update. In addition I’ll post any announcements relevant to the magazine, like dates of when the issues will be posted. There are also three magazine-specific groups under which we will eventually discuss things around the articles published.
SPORTEX GOES INTERACTIVE AND NEEDS YOUR FEEDBACK As previously mentioned, online access to each publication, provides our subscribers with every single article published in that magazine, ever! All you need to access this is an online subscription (which costs just £15 to add if you already have a print subscription). Call us if you want to add this to your subscription. This issue we’re using a new platform (access is through the same route as normal) which allows us to embed media such as videos and animations into our articles to visually demonstrate what the authors are describing. In addition we’re linking to other useful internet resources like YouTube videos playlists. This is a whole new dimension to the practical approach. There is a lot more we can do but to some extent this
requires authors with a vision for the opportunities the internet provides. But equally importantly you are the ones doing the job – and are even better placed to tell me how I can enhance the articles using this interactivity. I’m keen and willing but want to make sure I’m adding value for you, and not just doing things for the sake of it, so your feedback is particularly crucial at this time. Please don’t assume that your feedback will disappear into the ether be taken no notice off - quite the contrary. Although the products may make us look like a big company, we’re just a small family in reality! Please send all ideas, suggestions and feedback directly to me (tor@sportex.net) – I will reply to you and ensure action is taken wherever appropriate.
CONTACT SPORTEX Email us: ■ Subscription queries - subs@sportex.net ■ Ideas/suggestions/feedback – tor@sportex.net
Call us: ■ Telephone: +44(0)845 652 1906 ■ Skype: sportex.subs