For more than 30 years WordZone has made words work for business – but there have been many different flavours along the way! A quick history is in order: Phase One: WordZone was created in 1989 to provide copywriting services to advertising agencies. It was lucrative work, but soon became rather boring. Company founder Dave Sumner Smith became increasingly drawn back into his original work as a motoring journalist. Phase Two: The opportunity became apparent to publish a monthly motoring magazine to serve the growing demand for personally imported cars. Car Import Guide was created and ran successfully for several years before evolving into Car Buyer magazine. Phase Three: Dave Sumner Smith was approached by The Sunday Times newspaper to write some company case studies for the Business section. He went on to lead the development of the Enterprise Network sponsored editorial programme, with WordZone providing all the content, managing the sponsors and running events. The magazine publishing business was sold. Phase Four: The Daily Telegraph set up a rival multimedia Business Club programme and invited WordZone to take responsibility for running it. After 8 years, WordZone ‘jumped ship’ and ran the Telegraph Business Club for another five until market conditions changed and sponsorship revenues dried up. Phase Five: Knowing WordZone’s skills in running business communities, Oracle invited the company to manage a new LinkedIn group. The performance of the group exceeded expectations, and over the years that followed, WordZone became Oracle’s ‘global preferred supplier’ of LinkedIn groups and ran other LinkedIn groups in fields as diverse as HR and finance. Current Phase: Dave Sumner Smith remains the owner (at least for now) of many of the LinkedIn groups. His focus has reverted back into sponsored editorial, with a sponsored multimedia community programme under development.