Monday 05 July
Getting from A to B is taking twice as long as usual, since I carelessly broke my toe tripping over the furniture at the weekend. So I hobble to Hertford station and spend the journey reading the fantasy novel Best Served Cold on my iPad. When I finally arrive at Dennis' offices on Cleveland Street, the first meeting of the day is with Simon Berg from Fresh Media Group, which owns the digital magazine platform Ceros, which our magazines are distributed on. We talk about how we will deploy our digital magazines on the iPad. Waitrose is keen to get its customer magazine on there, and we plan to get iGizmo and Monkey on the iPad by October. We want to replicate everything we do on the PC but in an Apple-approved format, so there will be no nudity and Monkey's lewd viral videos will have to be toned down.
Next I join Tim Farthing, the commercial director of our customer magazine division Dennis Communications, for lunch with his client Ryan Howsam from StaySure at an Italian restaurant called Latium. Ryan is keen to extend the reach of the print magazine to digital platforms, and we also discuss upping the frequency from quarterly to monthly. After lunch, it is time for my monthly, two-hour mentoring session with one of our magazine editors – this is part of Dennis’ coaching programme for the brightest talent at all levels, led by senior management. We have nine ongoing one-to-one sessions, which will each run for about six months. In the evening, our UK managing director of The Week Kerin O’Connor and I go out to dinner at Bocca di Lupo with our US president Steven Kotok, who is in town for The Week's conference on Friday. By this time my toe is starting to throb, despite the wine, so I decide to take a taxi home – luckily, I have an excellent arrangement with the local cab firm.
Tuesday 06 July
We are in the process of reviewing our forecasts for the rest of the year. Over this month, all our brands are giving hour-long presentations on their trading results, and this morning it is the turn of Monkey, iGizmo and Health & Fitness. Dennis had an excellent first quarter and we are exceeding our expectations for the forecast we set in April, thanks to extremely good performances from a number of our brands and strong web traffic figures. Then it's off to a great sushi restaurant called Soho Japan for lunch with Matt Sullivan-Pond, who relocated to New York to represent Knowyourcell.com, which launched last November as the US version of Knowyourmobile.com. We catch up on the commercial campaigns on the site and traffic figures, and he tells me all about life in New York.
I then call our chairman Felix Dennis to discuss the agenda for The Week’s conference on Friday, as well as some potential acquisitions in both print and digital. I also have a telephone conference with BBC Magazine’s managing director Peter Phippen, who is on the board of the PPA, to discuss how we can audit the digital editions of our brands. It strikes me the PPA's chief executive Barry McIlheney is doing an excellent job restoring focus and energy to the trade body. Finish the day by hobbling home to give my two-month-old son William his late-night feed. My toe has turned a disturbing purple colour.
Wednesday 07 July
Dennis used to hold "inductions" for new starters, but that sounded too much like a maternity ward so we rebranded the scheme as "Welcome to Dennis". I attend every monthly session to talk about what Dennis expects from its staff and what they can expect from us. This month we have seven new joiners, ranging from a receptionist to a journalist on Monkey. Late morning, I take MD of advertising Julian Lloyd-Evans to see Paul Temple and Sarah Greer at HSBC's beautiful offices in St James.
Briefly wonder what it would be like to be a private banking client of HSBC before discussing advertising and sponsorship in The Week. In the afternoon, I set next week's Main Board agenda before a debrief from Richard Downey, who has returned from running our JV with Media Transasia in Delhi to become publishing director of Men's Fitness. He reports our monthly magazine Sports Illustrated is doing very well and updates me on our websites Knowyourmobile.in and the soon-to-be-launched ITpro.in. Finish the day by finishing the preparations for The Week's conference, which is looming large.
Thursday 08 July
Pack for the conference and do a lot of swearing as I drag my suitcase to the station, before starting the day with my monthly meeting with Tracy O’Sullivan, the managing director of Seymour Distribution, our JV with Frontline. Although the collapse of independent distributor MMC was bad for the industry it has been good news for Seymour, which has won a good amount of new business.
Work through lunch to put the final touches to our conference notes with my PA Sandra Harris, before five of us squeeze into a car to drive to Ettington Park hotel in Warwickshire, near Felix Dennis' home in Dorsington. Ian Leggett, group chief financial officer for all Felix’s businesses, is our driver, and we are joined by Steven Kotok; Kevin Morgan, the financial controller of our US businesses; and Sara O’Connor, the circulation director for the US. Sara has never been outside London before, so she particularly enjoys our dinner in a picturesque pub in Shakespeare country called The Bell. My toe has gone from purple to yellow now and aches far less.
Friday 09 July
I give the opening address at The Week’s conference, which is attended by 10 senior executives from the different parts of the business across the UK, the US and Australia. We then move into break-out sessions on advertising, subscriptions, digital editions, and the Australian business, which launched in October 2008. Although the territories are very different, it is good to see the teams are working really well together.
Felix Dennis joins us for lunch before we reconvene for the group sessions in the afternoon. He is very pleased with The Week's progress – particularly TheWeek.com and our subscriptions performance – and raises the issue of where in the world The Week might expand to next. After drinks on the terrace, Felix invites us back to his Highfield barn where we play air hockey, pool and football and drink fine wines from his cellar. It is an extremely enjoyable end to the conference and nobody makes it back to the hotel before 3am.
Weekend
Get home to my family after lunch, where I spend time with my three children aged five (just), three and two months, before dusting off my light sabre and robes to dress up as a Sith for a fancy-dress fortieth birthday. I hadn't got round to sorting out a costume so being from "a galaxy far, far away" is my liberal interpretation of the theme "Ancient Civilisations". Spend Sunday at Legoland for my daughter’s fifth birthday but am home in time for the World Cup final – I drew Spain in the office sweepstake, so I end the week £30 better off.
As told to Harriet Dennys
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