An Edinburgh student who launched World Whisky Day last year to celebrate Scotland’s most famous export is raising his glass to Scottish cloud computing company iomart Group plc for providing the technology to ensure the event’s website stays online this year.
23 year old Blair Bowman, who lives in Trinity and is studying at Aberdeen University, launched World Whisky Day last year after realising there was no designated day to celebrate whisky. He set up a website and asked people to post their events and messages but it crashed after thousands of supporters across the globe tried to access it.
Blair said:- “Last year’s launch was absolutely fantastic – we got media coverage worldwide and even trended on Twitter – but the interest was so big that the server hosting our website couldn’t cope. It crashed and we ended up missing the chance to connect with so many more people than we could have done, which was a real shame.”
Blair turned to UK cloud company iomart, and a deal to host his website was the result.
Phil Worms, marketing director for iomart, added:- “Blair came to us and explained what happened last year so we’ve made absolutely sure it won’t happen again by putting the website onto a cloud platform that can cope with any amount of online traffic. We’re delighted to be able to help him out and make this year’s World Whisky Day an even greater success.”
This year’s second World Whisky Day takes place this Saturday 18 May 2013. Events are being planned all over the world while in Edinburgh it is being supported by amongst others, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society which will be inviting the public to whisky tastings at The Vaults in Queen Street.
Blair continued: “It has really taken off thanks to a lot of support and encouragement from the Scottish Government, Visit Scotland and Event Scotland. In fact it’s been such a success that I’m now hoping to turn it into a full time job and a proper commercial business once I graduate in the summer.”
Blair is currently in talks with various whisky brands and marketing companies. However he’s also trying to fit in important exam revision. He sits the first of the final exams for his degree in Hispanic Studies at 9am on the Monday morning after World Whisky Day!
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