Hoxton Half, THE glass half full event

John Thew presenting Hoxton Half Winner's Certificate to Stewart O'Brien of Experian

with John Horsley, Founder of Digital Doughnut

Hoxton Half, like so many good things, started as an idea in a pub.

We were looking for a team-building theme and decided that a treasure hunt round 13 Hoxton pubs, having a half in each - not necessarily alcoholic - would be an interesting twist on Half Marathons. And so The Hoxton Half Marathon (no running required!) was born. We then decided it would be even more fun to open the challenge to other companies and raise money for a worthy cause in the process.

As THE specialises in strategy and content creation for digital marketing, creative storytelling is very important to us. Hence our interest in supporting the fantastic work of Ministry of Stories and, to spread the word across the digital world, it was an obvious choice to ask our friends at Digital Doughnut, the leading digital marketing community, to co-host and promote.

Thirteen teams, mainly from Hoxton and Shoreditch digital marketing companies, took part in the inaugural Hoxton Half on Thursday 29 September and we’d like to thank them all. In fact, the event proved so popular with the teams we're going to “run” it again in the Spring, so look out for Hoxton Half 2017. Until then, congratulations again to Stewart O'Brien of Experian who won the coveted, engraved Hoxton Half Pint Trophy and huge thanks to everyone else who helped make Hoxton Half such a great success. Especially Cognifide, Altaire, Major Digital, C3UK, Raring2go! and what&why who all made fantastic company donations.

I’d also like to thank Jason Holland, my friend and co-founder of THE, who designed the event graphics, team T-shirts, winner's certificate and award and my daughter Maddie Thew who did a superb job tracking the teams' activities on social media during the event. Thanks too to Monster Supplies and the 13 Hoxton pubs for welcoming the teams in and putting up with their behaviour.

Hoxton Half has already raised over £1,500 for Ministry of Stories and we're REALLY looking forward to doing it again in Spring 2017. Please get in touch if you want to reserve a team place for 2017 or would like to become an event sponsor.