Phia Damsma
Phia and an ibis - the inspiration for the new game Ibis Buster.
I graduated in 1987 with an honours MA degree (Linguistics) from the University of Amsterdam in my native country The Netherlands. Soon after I became a certified Public Relations, Communication and Information professional. After a few years working as free-lance PR consultant I took on the role of Director PR and Marketing of Hajé Restaurants and Hotels. It soon turned out that my favourite group of clients were the young ones! After two years of setting up children’s events, creative afternoons and festive family dinners I decided to go and start my own business: KinderVisie, specializing in Kids Public Relations consultancy. This lead to a variety of communication projects for as diverse clients as travel organisations, restaurants, provincial boards and public broadcasting companies.
As a journalist I wrote weekly columns for Dutch newspapers about trips and dining out with young children.
With the rise of the internet I soon started writing for that medium too. I produced the content of an online children's-magazine for an Internet Provider, wrote and published my very own Internet Newspaper for children and managed and moderated several internet projects for kennisnet.nl - the educational webportal set-up by the Dutch Ministery of Education.
Twice I coached a team of children entering the ThinkQuestJunior web-contest. In both cases the kids won a well-deserved prize. The second team, including two blind girls, made a huge effort and created a wonderful website which is fully accessible for blind and vision impaired children. This triggered my interest in web-accessiblity.
The Internet can be a perfect medium for all - as long as accessibility for all is always taken into account. Which should be only natural!
Finally everything came together and John and I started working together and officially founded Sonokids in 2001. The team has successfully grown since then and I am very happy with the successful projects we have completed and especially proud of the positive response we get from our users. I currently hold the position of Creative Director.
Since 2005 I live and work in Queensland, Australia where I have set up Sonokids Australia.
I am a member of SPEVI, the South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment.
Phia (right) pictured with Channel Nine's TV presenter Eva Milic in the studio for the recording of the RadaR audioplay.
Books
In Holland I published a successfull series of travelguides for children and their (grand)parents called Op stap met de Kids in Nederland en Vlaanderen (published by Kosmos publishers) and I also wrote a book about childrens’ birthday parties which was published by De Toorts.
My first English children's book was published in December 2008 by Zeus Publications. The book is called Padam and the Mystery of the Missing Jewels.
I realize it yet again combines my interest for communication with children and the use of music to reach them. There is no sound in the book, but its main character is Monsieur Padam, a guitarist and singer. His website can be found at www.mrpadam.com
