Is it just me? But this New Year, decade even, seems to have gotten off to a flying start. January can be a bit of a quiet month but not this one. Our first conference of the year was in San Diego and it seems like a long time ago now - the sunny weather certainly does anyway. We were producing Historians TV with the American Historical Association which is both fun and quite a challenge. How do you sum up Barack Obama’s political ideology and legacy in a minute and a half!

We’re busy now making programmes on the green economy in Washington DC and next week working on the Local Government Association’s Climate Change conference in Liverpool.  Interesting stuff and certainly makes you think and I think I can spot a theme there!

In between we’re developing a couple of new formats. One in particular is grabbing our attention at the moment. We’ve just started filming the Local Government Leadership Challenge. In short it pitches two teams of aspirant chief executives together to work on challenges to find our leaders of the future. The first of these programmes will be on the Local Government Channel website next week and I’m really looking forward to see how they do.

So we’ve certainly hit the ground running. And as I pause for breath I can’t help thinking about how this translates into the wider economy. Certainly there’s a degree of optimism going around - a new bounce into people’s step. But whilst the pace is frenetic it isn’t guaranteed to continue. Everything seems very short term. It’s as if we know there are clouds on the horizon and we’re stopping ourselves from getting too excited. Let’s just hope someone got his weather forecast wrong as well!

What a night for television audiences. I think some 20 million people tuned in to watch the final of this year’s X Factor and what a finale it was with the favourite Joe McElderry taking the honours.

Right now the Local Government Channel is involved in its own talent search. We’ve teamed up with the Local Government Association to run the Local Government Leadership Challenge.

Based very loosely on the concept of the Apprentice, ok I’ve got my shows a little mixed up here, the idea is to set two teams of individuals from councils throughout the country a number of challenges to revitalise their communities. There are various of these ranging from promoting local libraries and other services to giving a boost to the local high street.

And we’ve got off to a flying start. The contestants have been chosen, the challenges set and everything kicks off in January. We’re going to be filming every one of them and posting the results on our web site. So be sure to tune in to see how the candidates are getting on.

A little light hearted but with a very serious message. Our attention is often drawn to high profile talents on a national and international stage. But very often there’s some excellent work being done on our own doorsteps and it is high time we recognised it!