aweekisalongtime

Next time...

2010-03-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Next time I experience a power cut all I ask is the following:

• The power cut does not set off the house alarm...
• ...in the middle of the night...
• ...when I have forgotten where I wrote down the alarm code...
• ...and I don’t have a torch to find it...
• ...unless I look in a cupboard...
• ...that is the other side of the dish washing machine...
• ...that I have left the door open to...
• ...in the dark...

Ouch

A mobile election?

2010-03-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

Election fever is hotting up in the UK with the announcement of a pre-election budget today from The Chancellor of the Exchequer. The smart money has already been placed on a May 6th General Election in the UK, for what will surely be the closest contested election for some time, with the real prospect of a hung parliament.

Plenty has already been written about both the impacts for digital in the UK, and the use of digital technologies as campaigning tools (much of it by Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC whose excellent blog is covering the subject in depth.)

I am most curious as to how the parties will use mobile to communicate their message. The three major parties all have iPhone apps available to download, suggesting that they feel the election will be less about Motorway Man and more about iPhone fan. This could be a significant miscalculation. For all of the success of the iPhone to date in the UK, the one certain thing is that there are still vastly more people without the device than with it. Still, the iPhone app is today’s “must have” resource for any brand or political party and once one party has one, I guess they all have to.

I am confident that whatever else happens during the campaign there will be numerous ‘Flashmobs’ generated by the parties, perhaps even replacing the old media tactic of the big poster unveil, which seems to have more risk attached to it in the Internet age than simply being defaced.

A more effective application of mobile might be through more traditional methods: text reminders to get people to vote; registration of interest in particular topics through mobile; quick and easy text opinions on policy announcements and initiatives.

Text messaging is often overlooked in the age of mobile data and millions of apps. Yet it still has huge appeal: it is quick, intimate, easy to use and well understood. Most importantly it is universal – it works on every device. In Westminster it may seem like everyone has an iPhone, but across the UK text could prove a far more effective tool for political engagement.

More than big numbers...

2009-07-17T03:04:00.000-07:00

The news from Apple this week that one and a half billion applications had been downloaded from the Apple app store in its first year of business (the press release is here) is just another one of those mind boggling statistics about the mobile industry that is hard to get your hear around.

So here are some more. By the end of the year, 4 billion people will be using mobile phones world-wide. That’s conservatively more than half of the world’s population. To put it into another context, about 200 million people are members of Facebook. So for every member of Facebook, there are twenty mobile users. And this does not recognise the fact that many Facebook users will be passive (I now use it about once a month). Can you imagine checking your mobile once a month?

This is why I doubt we have even seen half of the impact that mobile will have yet. Whilst doing some research into mobile payments and ticketing I can across some interesting data. Apparently we check the whereabouts of our mobile phone far more regularly than we do for our wallet. My personal experience would also suggest this is the case. This presents a strong argument that using the phone as a “virtual wallet” might, in fact, be more secure than using a real wallet.

Mobile has always been challenged by competing systems and software and a tendency to over hype new services to the consumer. The tendency was to think, “I know mobile’s day will come but it’s confusing, it’s over hyped, and I will worry about it later”.

Perhaps most interesting will be the impact on society that a fully mobile literate population will have. As part of my job I get to see some of the content that young people are creating and sharing through mobile. It is extraordinary.

As a fully mobile literate generation grows up, the role of educating, training and entertaining them will fall to those of us that have not immersed ourselves in mobile technology to the same extent – and this will mean revisiting so many of the things we take for granted: like how we teach, how we learn, how we communicate, how we pay.

The impact of mobile will be so much more than the big numbers.

You're hired...

2009-06-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight the UK sees the culmination of TV series The Apprentice. The Apprentice claims to take some of the most talented young business people in the UK and pit them against each other to find a winner. The winner gets a £100,000 per year job with business genius and professional grump Sir Alan Sugar.

The Apprentice is the acceptable face of reality TV. It is the (not so) secret pleasure of the chattering classes. People who would never watch Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent or any one of the other 100 reality TV shows, happily converge around the water cooler to argue the merits of different candidates as they try to one up on each other on a weekly basis.

The final comes hot on the heels of one of the more memorable events of the series: the interviews (link only works in UK). In this the remaining candidates are interviewed by top UK business people to find chinks in their armour and lies on their CV. It is compelling stuff because you just know that, at some point, someone is going to be caught out in a spectacular fashion.

Job interviews are something I really do not miss. If I never have to conduct one again, I could not be happier and if I ever get down about running my own business, the thought of interviewing or being interviewed is enough to put me back on the straight and narrow.

I was never much good at interviewing people, but by far my strangest experiences have been being interviewed for jobs. I went for an interview with Enron at one point and was promised an exciting future. Not sure they could have predicted how exciting, but fortunately it came to nothing.

I was once interviewed by a huge company (one of the largest in the world) for a role. We spoke for two hours. I was very honest in saying that I was not sure if I wanted to be considered for the role but wanted to know more. It was a good, honest and motivating conversation. What followed was, well….nothing. No further communication whatsoever. No “thanks but no thanks”, no “see us again”, no feedback, positive or negative. Maybe I was that awful that I did not ever warrant a letter or the price of a stamp. All the same, basic courtesy states that some form of response would have been helpful.

I was interviewed four times by another company for a role. This involved several trips to London and a Sunday morning “coffee and croissant” bonding session with one of the people I would be working with. After the fourth interview, radio silence began for a week. I thought nothing more of it. A week later a pretty angry HR person rang me. The company was annoyed with the fact I had not responded to their offer. I had not had an offer. When the checked it out, they admitted that they had forgotten to make one. At that point I decided to rule myself out. If they did not know if they had made me an offer or not, I was worried they would forget to pay me.

Most bizarre of all was another interview with a well known company. Having been asked to take various psychometric tests in advance of the interview, I was invited in to get feedback on the results. They were (much to my surprise) positive. Apparently I had all the qualities to fulfil the role. Next came an HR interview. All good so far. Finally I was due to meet someone who I would be working closely with. Only nobody could find her. In the end the slightly harassed (and very embarrassed) HR Manager gave up his search and advised that this part of the interview process would not be possible today and would have to be conducted in the future.

I bid my farewells and walked to the car. As I reached the car the HR guy chased up to me. Great news! He had found the person for the interview and it could now go ahead.

Of course by this point I was mentally elsewhere. I had checked out of interview mode and was very much in pub mode. It was not the best preparation for an interview. What followed was a polite but stilted ten minute interview but I had already decided not to pursue this one further.

All this makes me think that the production team of The Apprentice have got it right. Job interviews are a pretty poor way to find out if someone is suitable for your organisation. But watching someone else get interviewed can make for great entertainment for the rest of us.

Unexpectedly good service...

2009-04-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

I often write about frustrations with customer services, particularly when the delivery is so much poorer than the expectation and most notably with large companies.

Last week I experienced the opposite: fantastic customer service from an unexpected source. My car was due an MOT. For those outside of the UK, this is an annual, government approved, inspection of the car for anything that would deem that it was not road worthy.

Most people dread the annual MOT test. If you know little about cars, it always seems like an opportunity for a garage to point out all of the things that are wrong with your car, and tell you how much it will cost to fix. Last year I got my MOT done close to home and the company that did it sent me a postcard to remind me that the inspection was due again.

I called up to arrange to get the test done. I was dealt with promptly and with courtesy. The test would take an hour and when I dropped the car off I was welcomed by name and asked if I wanted to wait. If not, I would have been offered a lift to anywhere locally.

I know nothing about cars, other than how to drive one, but during the test the staff provided some feedback on what was taking place from the waiting room, where there was also a digital read out in plain English of the tests that were taking place. The staff explained what would happen if the car failed and what I would need to do. There was complimentary coffee and tea available as well as a quiet zone in which I could work. The test was completed on time and the car even passed.

MOT test centres have had a bad reputation for being unfriendly, non-transparent and poorly staffed. Nothing could have been less true of this place. Someone had gone to the trouble of thinking about all the little things that would add up to making this a good customer experience.

It came as little surprise to find out the company was expanding in the area. Good luck to them. I could go to any one of a dozen places to get this done but the effort put in by the people, along with the consideration to their customers will guarantee that I return.

Been writing...

2009-04-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

Most of the writing I do is for clients, but recently I have been asked to write a couple of pieces for online newsletters.

The first was for Major Events International, a site that provides a single international focus for global events. The title of the piece is 'Mobile Rings Changes' and if you wish to read it, you can search for this on the site. The site is a registration site, but it is free to register.

The second article was for Marek Pawlowski, the Editorial Director of MEX, the consultancy, blog and event that is dedicated to improving customer experience within mobile. If you would like to read this article it is available here. Marek's vision of improving the customer experience in mobile has been gaining momentum for many years and since it is something I also feel passionately about, it was great that he was able to publish this piece.

It is always enjoyable to be able to write something for publications like these. Most of the client writing we do is to a fairly tight brief (which is a relief) but it is great to start with a blank piece of paper every so often, such as in these cases.

Four letters...

2009-03-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

A fairly mundane communication with the call centre of a company that installed double glazing in our house proved to have an unsatisfactory outcome. I was basically told on the phone that no one could help me with my enquiry. I asked to speak to a manager and was told that I could not. I asked what help could be provided and the answer was none. Nothing at all.

I do not give up easily so I wrote to the Managing Director of the company. This provoked an immediate response. Four letters were dispatched to me on the same day. This would have been a fantastic response had it not been for the conflicting advice given within the letters.

One letter told me that the company was investigating the matter. Another told me there was nothing that the company could do: my windows were out of warranty. A further letter told me that the units were covered with a fifteen year warranty that was still in force. A final letter told me the warranty was for ten years, that it had expired and that the issue was irrelevant anyway because the problem that I had was my own fault.

Talk about a confusing message. I can appreciate large companies might have several people dealing with customer services but three of these letters came from the same person. Perhaps the objective is to confuse me to the point that I give up (and to an extent it has worked).

I often wonder if we get the customer service we deserve. An article I read recently suggested that in a downturn the most effective action is to focus completely on the customer. Call centres seem a particularly ill equipped way to do this. I wonder if one effect of the current recession will be to force companies into better ways to deliver service to people.

Fighting talk...

2009-03-16T02:51:00.001-07:00

It has been an interesting week in terms of the reactions of the public to the Armed Forces. First an army parade in Luton was the scene of protests by those opposed to the war in Iraq. The led to a very emotional debate on free speech and the right to protest across many radio stations and newspapers.

The pragmatic approach appeared to be along the lines of “by all means protest at the government for their decision to take us to war in Iraq but do not direct protests at the troops that are carrying out decisions made by others.” It is an approach I have a lot of sympathy for.

With great timing, the BBC is currently looking at people’s views on the military in light of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The debate is taking place on Radio 5 Live and online. One of the interesting aspects of the debate is the views of people who live in military towns. It is easy to forget how many people live close to military sites.

We do. Our village has a large military area, which seems to intrigue those who live nearby. There are plenty of rumours of various different activities taking place on the site. I have no idea what is true and what is not.

Generally, it is rare to see military personnel in the village. You may get stuck behind a convoy of vehicles or meet a few people in the local shop. But it is not a daily occurrence. You do hear gunfire a lot when exercises are taking place and we have a disproportionate number of Chinook helicopters that fly over the village. There is no obvious impact of having a large military base nearby.

Or at least there was not until Sunday morning, when at 7am a number of huge explosions took place that shook our house. I am not sure what the purpose of the exercise was, but I hope it was a success. Because the whole village was awake and I would hate that to be for no reason.

If not now, then when?

2009-03-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

A long time has passed since I last wrote. Why? Partly because I was busy, partly because I was tired and partly because I started having Sunday Roast dinners and therefore felt too full to write on a Sunday evening.

Had I run out of things to say? Nope. But I got out of the habit of sitting down once a week and writing in a structured fashion.

I thought long and hard about simply just leaving this to die a death but I like writing and want to share thoughts. And my enthusiasm is back. So it may not be once a week but this will now get updated.

I wish it could be updated every time I learn something new but I know this is not possible: I know too little not to learn every day.

What are they trying to find out...

2008-11-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

My bank just rang me. They were conducting a survey of people’s views on their business account.

They wanted to know what I thought of my business manager. Was I extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied with him?

I did not know how to describe someone you have had almost no contact with. After all, extremely satisfied or extremely dissatisfied are (by definition) extremes and I am not sure I feel either. The one time I had reason to speak to my business manager, he took a long time to get back to me, but that hardly puts him in either bracket does it?

Next they wanted to know my views about my branch. Which one? The one I use most or the one that holds my account? They were not sure. Anyway it would make little difference because I do not use the branch. I do my banking online.

So was I extremely dissatisfied or extremely satisfied with my branch? Well neither really, since I do not use it. Still they probed. Still I was unable to answer.

Finally the killer question. What could the bank improve?

Where do I start? They could get back to me within an hour of me calling; they could provide fresh coffee and donuts when I call in; they could stop charging me money to pay money into my account when I get paid by cheque; they could offer me a higher rate of interest; they could come over once a year and take me out to lunch.

They could do all of these things but they will not, and there is probably a good reason. So I responded by saying they could get back to me quicker, which is really the only issue I have had with them so far.

It was a stilted conversation. I did not get the impression that the person at the other end was able to engage, nor deviate from a script. The questions did not seem appropriate to me or to provide any sort of basis for someone to improve service. It appeared to be an exercise in gaining feedback for the sake of it.

Now I know this is a touchy area. If organisations ask for feedback they are criticised. If they do not they are uncaring. But it does seem to me that unless you know what you want to get out of such a survey it is a monumental waste of time. And if that is the case the one thing I would improve about my Bank is not wasting their or my time without having thought through what they want to know.

Getting something for nothing...

2008-11-09T07:59:00.000-08:00

I was intrigued by a story I saw in the newspapers last month regarding a couple who paid for their honeymoon by searching the streets for rubbish, depositing said rubbish at a local Tesco store’s recycling unit and gaining loyalty points in so doing. They saved up enough points to pay for a business class flight from Atlanta to London with the proceeds.

The story was widely reported but this link takes you to their local paper, who I suspect were the first to break the story.

This is a great story showing what people can do when they put their mind to it, but some aspects of it really amused me.

First of all, the couple collected rubbish every night for three months and took this to a Tesco store that was around fourteen miles away. I am not sure what the carbon footprint of a 28 mile round trip per day for 90 odd days is, but I guess at least some of the recycling benefit will have been reduced by it. What I do know is that motoring organisations reckon that the real cost of a mile in the car (when you consider depreciation, insurance, car tax, petrol etc) is around 40p. On the basis of this figure I would estimate that, by not making these trips they could have saved themselves just over £1000. Probably not enough for two upgrades to Business Class from the US to the UK, but a considerable sum none the less.

Next I wondered what the carbon footprint of those flights from Atlanta to the UK would be? According to The Carbon Neutral Company the footprint one way for two people would be around 1.6 tonnes of CO2. Still, this could be offset by a gift of around £20, which is not such a bad compromise for two business class trips from the US.

Of course the purpose of the couple collecting the rubbish was not to save the environment. It was to get a free flight. But this did get me thinking about how and why we recycle.

There is little doubt that more recycling needs to take place. There is also little doubt that, given the choice of a carrot or stick method of making this happen, the carrot method would work best. We might all consider ridding the streets of rubbish if it is worth a flight to the US every three months.

The real question is what makes for the best use of resources. If I drive to the recycling centre in my car, is my recycling doing more or less good than if I just throw my recyclable rubbish away? Many of these questions remain unaddressed and depend on so many different variables that they always will be. Which is a shame, because I think everyone now recognises the benefits of living a greener life, and many who want to do the right thing may just be inadvertently contributing to the problem rather than solving it.

Gone West…

2008-10-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

Last Christmas my wife bought me an evening of culinary indulgence at River Cottage for Christmas. Shamefully it has taken us until now to cash that in, but this weekend we finally managed it.

Why has it taken so long? It has been a challenge juggling work commitments, family commitments and baby sitters to combine on one date. That’s a pretty poor excuse for a 10 month delay, granted, but it is an honest one none the less.

As we pulled into a dark car park in Dorset we did not know what to expect. What we got was an exquisite meal, thoughtfully served with outstanding attention to service as well as a short education on where each ingredient had come from. There was no patronising, no preaching and plenty of wine. Pretty much a perfect evening then. Every one of the 60 odd people there seemed to have a good time.

So how was a small event in the West of the UK able to deliver such a good evening? In reality they had certain advantages.

When you go to the average restaurant you do not pay at least a month in advance (or in the case of my wife, more than 11 months in advance). Yet everyone at this event (and do the maths for a moment, £80 times 60 people, at least twice a week) would have paid for the food they were eating at least 30 days before they ate it. I am guessing most restaurants would love that kind of credit line!

Most restaurants would also probably enjoy only serving one fixed menu per night – the food was excellent, don’t get me wrong. But it is surely easier to deliver one excellent meal in an evening than a choice.

This is not me being picky. The food was great. The staff: excellent. Hell, the experience was fantastic. It exceeded by some distance the expectation and that is all you can ask from any product or service.

But it is a lesson in sticking to what you are good at. River Cottage delivered an experience. The evening event was not hosted in five star surroundings (but a former milking parlour), there was no string quartet playing or maitre d’ on hand. It promised a rustic ambiance and delivered exceptional food – it was not surprising to find some people had been there many times before. It was not just about what the evening delivered. It was how that related to the promise too.

I learnt a few things about food at River Cottage, but the important lesson I will remember is the importance of delivering more than you have promised, and doing what you are good at really well.

Another customer service experience...

2008-10-12T11:48:00.000-07:00

My wife’s car was broken into this week.

I will save her blushes as to how it happened, but it occurred doing something that all of us could have easily done. I know I have.

Like always these things are a shock, but it could have been worse. Apart from cancelling lots of credit and debit cards, a mobile phone and getting a window repaired, nothing seriously bad has happened – an inconvenience rather than a disaster.

Of course, it meant spending lots of time on the phone to call centres – not my favourite activity. Most were pretty helpful and cancelled cards right away. But most took at least five minutes to connect me to the right person. Some took more than 10.

You do not need that when you are in this situation. An irrational but nagging fear is that someone has started using the cards right away and that you will be stuck with the consequences. In the cold light of day, this seems as illogical as it sounds but, at the time, you just want to do your bit in getting things sorted out.

We have a couple of credit cards that are in joint names and I was very surprised that in every case, bar one, it was impossible to cancel my wife’s card without also cancelling mine. After the first card I got wise to this and specifically asked if this would happen. The result was assurances that it would not that were quite wrong.

The next day I tried to use my card and it was obvious that it had been cancelled too. This is not much help when you need to get to London and do not have the means to pay for the train ticket.

To me this is a classic case of the marketing promise not delivering. If there is a valid reason to cancel my card as well as my wife’s then fair enough. What is not acceptable is to tell me my card will still work and then find out it does not.

With the world on the cusp of financial meltdown, my personal credit card issues are trivial. But the point is not. My trust in several brands is now diminished: they promised that they would only stop my wife’s card but instead stopped mine as well. I can live with the inconvenience of my card being stopped as well as my wife’s. I cannot live with being told something incorrect.

Almost everyone I talk to experiences this from customer services centres now. From “your call is important to us” to incorrect information, to long waits on hold: it all boils down to an increasing lack of respect for the customer. I wonder whether the current global financial crisis will lead to reassessment of the importance of customer service. Because I suspect the first company to place this front and centre of their business model will benefit significantly.

Playing with an iPhone...

2008-09-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

This week I got my hands on an iPhone to play with. This was not the “have a quick look” that you might get when someone else has one, but a proper play with the “must have gadget of the year (2007 to 2120)”TM.

My interest was partly driven by curiosity, partly to build up some sort of picture of competitive intelligence from a work perspective. I decided to go through the whole experience: purchase, take home, set up…the lot.

Most people have taken polar views on the iPhone: one group is “this is the best phone ever and Nokia and Sony Ericsson and everyone else might as well give up now.” The other camp tends to think along the lines of “For that price I can a Nokia N95, a Wii and a few nights out down the pub – so why would I want to spend money on that.”

I have generally ignored the plaudits amongst my Apple friends, assuming that their loyalty to all things Mac was clouding their judgement. Without wanting to stick a fence post where the sun don’t shine, my experience has been neither fervently pro or radically anti iPhone.

First off it is eye wateringly expensive. £349.99 for a phone on prepay is a lot of money, even in a world where the iPod Touch costs £160. The premium of £190 for the phone is a big price to pay.

But hang on, it does come with a year’s worth of wifi access and free data usage, which sugars the pill significantly. I spend a lot more than £200 a year on public wifi and mobile data and to get this included is a significant advantage.

One issue I have experienced is the phone can be slow to download emails and other data. I waited an age the other day to collect some emails and ended up rebooting the phone to get what I wanted. At other times the flow of data seems almost unreal, smooth and efficient. I suspect a lot depends on the state of the network, although the worst experience I have had was in central London where I would have expected a decent service.

Where the device comes into its own is making data simple to digest within mobile. For some time I have believed that you only really want access to a few things from the internet on your mobile phone, and browsing is not that way to get them. I want football scores and news about my team, news about traffic jams, train times and news headlines. That is pretty much it. And that (though a few free downloads) is what I can get on the iPhone (other than the train times, but surely that is only a matter of time?). In this respect, the product is a winner.

Overall my experience has been positive but not revolutionary. The one thing that impresses me most is the level of attention to detail Apple has invested in the product. The importance of user experience in mobile has not been a priority for some companies. Up to now it has not needed to be. As the industry matures, this will matter more and more. The iPhone sets a new level in this respect. I cannot wait to see how the rest of the industry responds.

Catching up...

2008-09-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

One way or the other, the events of the past two weeks have conspired against me posting my weekly update. It is kind of several people to contact me to see if all is well. It is thanks!

Last Sunday I lost my mobile phone. This may not seem like a huge deal but for me there are only two pieces of equipment that are critical to me: the phone and the laptop. I am also extremely careful not to lose things, almost to the point of paranoia. What I had not factored in was the effects that riding the spinning tea cups at a fun fair would have. The phone spun out of my pocket.

As luck would have it, my phone was found by a very honest young man, who handed it to his (equally honest) father. They called the number in my phone called “home” and left a message. More than this they contacted some of my last dialled numbers and eventually worked out (probably from the number and content of text messages) my wife’s number and called her. The result was a late evening trip to Heathrow to pick up the phone but in comparison to having lost it altogether, that is low level hassle.

I was struck by two things. First of all that I should delete text messages more often in case I lose my phone. Secondly, I was really reassured by the efforts made to reunite me and my phone. The people who found it said they had lost a phone once, remembered the hassle it caused and would have hated to have that happen to someone else.

Amongst the continual stories of negativity around mobile – from the rise in mobile related crime to accidents caused by driver using phones in cars – it is reassuring to know that people are prepared to go to such lengths to help someone get their phone back.

Back to reality...

2008-09-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

You know what it is like when you return home after a holiday. You can pretty much guarantee something is not working. So it was with some trepidation that we got home last Saturday. However, the house had not been robbed, the car started first time and the antiquarian central heating system had survived.

The only small fly in the ointment was the lack of a working phone line. Apparently someone had opened a manhole cover and made off with more than 200 metres of copper wiring.

It has been said many times before but it is no less true that you judge a company, not when things go right but when they go wrong. On this basis the judgement on BT in this case was pretty damning. Not because they did not fix the fault quickly (impressively they were working day and night for three days) but because they failed to communicate with their customers during the process.

Surprisingly for a company in their line of business, BT does not have a very advanced call centre. It was almost nostalgic to work your way through several automated menus before speaking to anyone, until you remember that the reason why these automated menu systems died a death was because everybody hated them.

Ironically, the company continued to advise me to check on my fault online, apparently totally oblivious to the fact that, if I have a fault on my phone line, checking online might be a bit of an issue. When I did make it to a public Wifi connection and checked online as to the status of my fault, I was advised the problem had been solved. A quick call to my home phone line confirmed this was not the case, as did a text message from BT a short while later. Confused? I was.

Perhaps I was unlucky. Yet a colleague of mine who moved house this week experienced similar issues, both in terms of the company not doing what it had promised to do and then with the company failing to take his complaint seriously when he called. Between us this week we have spent eight hours on the phone to the company. I wonder if I can invoice them for the time?

As I sit here eight days after the fault was reported, I have no working phone line but I do have a working internet connection. No one has called or sent a text to check the fault is resolved and I have yet to pluck up the courage to take on the automated phone line again.

The examples change, but the lessons remain the same: solving the problem in itself is not enough, unless it is accompanied by good, clear communications. What could have been a positive brand experience of the company (obvious signs of people working on the problem + problem fixed quickly = company taking the issue seriously) has become a poor one (lack of communication + confusion = company does not care). Shame really because BT did the difficult thing and fixed the problem. The company just forgot to communicate along the way.

Off on holiday...

2008-08-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

We are currently in France, near La Rochelle, on holiday. It is an absolutely beautiful part of the world and the quality of life is fantastic.

Of course, it is always typical at this time of year, when you are outside of the day to day, to think “wouldn’t it be wonderful to be here all the time” and you have to remind yourself that one of the reasons why it is so perfect is precisely because it is not a day to day experience.

We have holidayed in this area before and returned time and time again. Why? Simple. There is a lot to do, whether the weather is good or bad. The food is fresh and the wine is ageing. It is silent at night. And without waxing too much lyrical, the sight of the stars, so bright, in the evenings, against an ink black sly, is breathtaking.

I am sure there are lots of places like this on earth. Perhaps you know of one? But when you find one, I find that returning rather than discovering something new, is rewarding. The simple fact is we know what we are getting from a holiday in this area. And we like it.

This time last year I was less than 100 days into running a business. This year I have the incredible luxury of the help of a colleague back in the UK to keep an eye on things. It helps. Whilst there have been certain things that I have wanted to deal with directly whilst I am away, I am half way through a two week break that has mostly seen us able to enjoy a break without many distractions.

Running a business is a learning process and I have learned to take the opportunities when I can to take a break. Ideally these need to coincide with school holidays because I want to holiday with my family.

At Christmas, whether intentionally or otherwise, life seems to slow down from late December until early January. We always try to take the time to have a break then. In the summer, August is also quieter, so we try to take some time then too. Outside of these times, life always seems busy so planning becomes much more important. There are serious benefits in taking a week off with a Bank Holiday in it. One less day when everyone else is working!

More than ever now I appreciate time spent away. I do believe that with a self run business you never really switch off but, the time spent away is well spent. The value of time thinking is much underrated in large organisations. Which is a shame. Because it is probably the most productive time of all.

Pop Will Eat Itself...

2008-08-03T10:23:00.001-07:00

Is there any such thing as copyright in the internet age?

Several years ago, I attended the MIDEM (www.midem.com) event in Cannes. I was working for a company that was interested in mobile music, very much in its infancy at the time.

On the way back to my hotel one evening I read an extraordinary article. For the first time I read an opinion that Digital Rights Management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management) was a total waste of time, doomed to failure. Sadly I do not remember the author’s name.

I have never forgotten the premise though: computers are basically digital photocopiers. Whether by intent or accident the fact people own PCs means they can copy files simply. Like it or not, any digital protection models can surely only be short term fixes. The conclusion was as follows: get real and find some new business models because DRM is not going to work – anything published will be free to distribute, so find a new way to make money.

Five or more years later, this view is probably seen as just as radical now as it was then.

Despite the best efforts of the Internet Service Providers and the government (http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/news/20080726_filesharing.shtml) the problem of protecting copyright in an internet age is a massive issue that is not being resolved by DRM. Simply put, the debate has not moved on.

For the record, apparently more than 95% of music downloads are illegal. In my middle class, middle aged (almost) world, lots of people download legally. Seemingly they are less the minority, more a soon to be extinct species.

Maybe this is tough on new music artists, who now need to rely on other methods to gain fame and fortune (http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/news/finance-and-banking/5340691/dragon-peter-jones-backs-indie-band.thtml). On the other hand, new artists are mostly from the internet generation so maybe they are more suited to understanding how to maximise their revenue in the digital age.

Film, music, television. People love this stuff – it brings meaning and pleasure to their lives. It cannot be impossible to find an equitable way for the creators of this content to make a living in the internet world, can it?

If all the effort that has gone into creating and managing new methods of DRM had been put into finding new business models more suited to the digital age, I wonder if we would already be there?

Politics...

2008-07-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

British politics is really interesting at the moment (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7525592.stm).

Not for most people in the UK, granted. The general public opinion appears to be represented by this song (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Who_Could_Care_Less_%28song%29).

A phone in programme I listened to on a national radio station this week was full of people wanting Gordon Brown to resign and David Cameron not to take over. Strange really because these will be the two choices the British public will face for their Prime Minister after the next election. Forget about leadership challenges. They will not materialise.

Why? I cannot see a successful challenge to current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, before the next election. Why? Because if there was a successful challenge before the next General Election (which does not have to happen until 5th May 2010) the Labour government in the UK would have imposed two Prime Ministers on the British electorate without offering them the chance to vote on either.

The public do not like anyone other than themselves deciding who is Prime Minister. And the Labour Party in the UK does not want an election at the moment because the fear they would lose it. And the Conservative Party will not change their leader whilst he is ahead in the opinion polls. And he is (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/polls).

I fully accept I will probably be wrong about this. The statement that “A week is a long time in politics” is only nonsense because in reality, a day is a long time in politics.

British politics does not fascinate me because of leadership struggles. It fascinates me because of personalities. Or the lack of them…

1. Gordon Brown came to power with a huge level of support. The fact he has lost that support is not about circumstances but personality. People like their politicians to be characters and most people in the country do not know what sort Gordon is. So despite the continuing bad news that surrounds the Prime Minister, he could and should be able to do better than he is at the moment. The problem is no one seems to know who he is or what he stands for.
2. David Cameron has a similar problem. In the battle to secure centre ground politics, both leaders appear to have forgotten to tell people who they are. Why is this causing a problem? Because we are prepared to disagree with (and forgive) pretty much anything that anyone does, but we hate not knowing who people are. In the age of celebrity, being aloof is not a positive.
3. I do wonder if Gordon Brown’s problem is that he wanted to be Prime Minister so much that doing the job is not as rewarding as wanting the job. The guy spent ten years as number two, wishing, wanting and desiring the top job. Perhaps intellectually he felt he was more worthy. Whatever, I wonder if he now believes the reality is as good as the desire.
4. Whatever else, this I know is true. Unless British politicians start engaging with the public in new ways, a whole generation of them are in deep trouble. The public are becoming more and more disillusioned with politics. At the last election there was a 61% turn out. The Labour Government was elected with a large majority, despite the fact that only 22% of the population voting for them. If things do not change, reality TV shows are going to have more voters than general elections. This not only threatens the credibility of a government, but threatens the credibility of democracy.

They say nature abhors a vacuum. I wonder which politician or party will be the first to fill the void left by disillusioned voters and bring them back to the ballot box.

A trip to outer space....

2008-07-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

The ongoing search to watch every single kids movie continued for me this week with a trip to see Wall-E. This followed swiftly on from last week’s effort: Kung Fu Panda.

I am not what you would describe as a regular film goer. The last movie I saw in a cinema (that was not a kid’s movie) was Cast Away (I just had to look that up, it was so memorable). That came out in 2000. Anything good been on since?

The whole concept of going to the movies is one I have always preferred as a solo activity rather than with anyone. One of my favourite films is still Peter’s Friends (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105130/). I watched it in a cinema completely alone and loved it. If I am ever really rich I would definitely want to build a cinema in my house with only one seat.

I just don’t get the whole concept of visiting the cinema being a social activity. A film generally lasts all evening, it takes place in the dark, you are frowned upon if you talk, you have no idea whether the person or people you are with are enjoying it at all. Once it is over, the pubs are all calling last orders so you have no chance to even really find out what other people think then. I am sure there must be people whose whole relationships have been formed from visiting the cinema and who still know nothing about each other – not even what films they like.

I notice from the IMDB (www.imdb.com) that Wall-E is currently 22nd in the all time list of the greatest movies. This may seem a bit odd for such a recent movie but more than 40,000 people have voted for it. In comparison The Godfather (currently second) has received less than 300,000 votes. The Godfather was released in 1972. OK the Internet did not exist then but even so, Wall-E has a significant fan club.

For the record, Kung Fu Panda had more laughs. Wall-E had more meaning. However for one six year old at least, the story line was a bit confusing (something Kung Fu Panda could never be accused of!)

Whether Wall-E will still be so well regarded in 2044 when it has been released for as long as The Godfather is a matter of conjecture. I must make a note to check when I am 75.

There are lies, damned lies and there are statistics…

2008-07-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ever felt like quitting your job? Course you have, hasn’t everyone?

Well probably, but if you or I do want to quit it is not national news. Not so the armed forces. This week a survey of 9,000 troops revealed almost half regularly consider quitting (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498904.stm).

On the face of it this looks significant. If the troops are not happy, they will not perform. And boy are they being asked to perform. Certainly the BBC ran big with it all day – it dominated their news agenda with phone ins and interviews.

But it is amazing what you can prove with statistics. If you read the article closely above you will discover that 44-47% of the armed forces “regularly” think about quitting. Sadly, no one has defined “regularly”.

The other way to look at this is as follows. 53 to 56% of troops are blissfully happy in their job…they only rarely consider leaving.

And this is amongst a group of people who are very poorly paid, have to work whatever hours they are told to, cannot strike or take days off, they have to sign up for 20 odd years, they work weekends, Bank Holiday and Christmas. Oh and did I mention that they also might get shot?

When you look at the overall picture, it is less of a surprise that some people consider quitting on a regular basis than it is that anyone joins in the first place. All credit to the dedicated, hard working people who do this job, despite the rubbish money and risks attached. The only obvious perk of the job is to have an occasional moan in a survey…

Anyway, pretty much anything can be proved or disproved in a survey, which is why in my profession they are used so regularly as a way of creating news stories. This classic clip from UK sitcom Yes Minister succinctly sums it up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yhN1IDLQjo).

It’s not what you ask but how…

2008-07-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

My wife and I managed to get away to Exeter this weekend. We had a great time, despite the fact that it rained all weekend. We also went away last year, a bit earlier in the year and it rained then too. The lesson seems to be do not expect too much from the weather whatever time of year in England.

Last night we ate at Michael Caines restaurant in Exeter, Abode (http://www.abodehotels.co.uk/exeter/mc-dining). The food was as good as any I have eaten before. Certainly the best meal I have had outside of London and I was totally overwhelmed to have such great service, which was attentive yet not over the top.

The only odd thing that happened the whole evening was the arrival (with the bill) of a comments card. To ask for feedback is not, I guess, unusual. Just about every single hotel does this. Whenever I have been to a conference or exhibition you are constantly asked what you think too. It was a bit of a first in my experience at a restaurant of any kind, least of all one that is so well regarded.

Perhaps most interesting was not being asked your opinion, but what they were asking. We were asked to comment on anything about the meal, no specifics, just an open question asking for feedback on the experience.

I am no fan of endless questionnaires, asking me to rate out of 5 (very bad to very good) hundreds of different aspects of an experience (think “how was your journey here?” “How would you rate the décor?”) but I was a bit taken aback by simply being asked to comment on anything, especially as everything was so good. Maybe it is a good idea to get feedback from punters at the end of a meal, a few glasses of wine down. I cannot help but think that the most likely responses would be twofold. First, “Everything was fine till I saw the bill a moment ago and realised I have spent the best part of a month’s salary” and “Everything was fine but I would have loved to have met the proprietor in person”. Celebrity chefs are, after all, a big deal.

Timpson’s, a traditional family business in the UK, is one of the companies that places most focus on customer service. It asks its customers one question (read more about this here: http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/columnists/timpo/4879766/its-simple-hire-people-with-personality.thtml).

So for the record, the meal would be ten out of ten, the service also. And yes it would be very likely that I would whole heartedly recommend the restaurant to anyone. My only comment would be that the best time to ask people for feedback on the meal (and get an honest answer) is probably not when they have a few glasses of wine down them and have just seen the bill.

Three things...

2008-06-29T11:26:00.001-07:00

Three things

Three clichés that have proved true this week.

1 Poor planning equals poor success: I had a big meeting this week that I was concerned about. I simply was not sure how it would go. I spent a good deal of time working on making it a success. I spent time thinking about what might happen and how it could prove a positive outcome. It seemed to work. The meeting went well and everyone there was pleased with the outcome. It reminded me again that the more you put in, the more you seem to get out.
2 More haste less speed: I spent a day this week running round trying to do everything. Guess what? Nothing of note was achieved. I spent the next day setting my agenda not reacting to it. Guess what? I got loads done. Success is measured in output not input. It reminded me again that not everything needs to be done now. Setting the expectation is as important as the end result.
3 You never know what to expect: An hour ago my son was choking outside. I mean really choking. Scary, upsetting, unpleasant. God only knows how he felt. Moments earlier I had been pontificating about the importance of knowing what the consequences of your actions are. The irony. Earlier today I got an unsolicited message from someone I know that could mean a truck load more business. Or it might not. It was totally (and I mean totally) unexpected. It reminded me again that you never know what is round the corner.

Only last night I laughed when someone said a cliché is only a cliché because it is true. As my father would say “That will learn you”.

Decisions decisions

2008-06-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

I came across this great story on the BBC site today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7467857.stm

I love the idea of this guy ebay-ing his whole life, walking off and trying something new.

It reminded me of an idea that occurred to be a while back. Imagine if you had to get rid of everything you own, except for 10 items in each area. So you can keep 10 books, 10 DVDs, 10 items of clothing, 10 CDs – the rest has to go. Its a kind of real life version of Desert Island Discs, played out on ebay.

First off I wonder what someone’s wordly good are worth. I imagine very little. The guy in the story above seems to have clocked up more than £300,000 so far for his whole life. But that includes a house and job. Not much chance that a few biographies, some series’ of The West Wing and a load of 80s CDs would be worth a lot.

More importantly what to keep? I have many books that adorn the shelves around the house unread and gathering dust. I am certain one day I want to read Bill Clinton’s book, but not today. Or tomorrow.

The choices would be complex but, I would imagine, rewarding. After all 10 of everything is still quite a choice. Tem CDs might not fill much of an iPod but it is still half a day’s music.

Thinking about this made me consider two things. First, it is amazing how we clutter our life with ‘stuff’, and I do wonder whether we should adopt an annual day like the Dutch do on Queen’s Day, where everyone sells stuff in a giant street market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninginnedag). It took some time for my former Dutch colleagues to convince me that this was real and not some elaborate wind up.

Secondly, choices are surely easier if they require us to come to a definite goal. If we have the choice of throwing something away or not, chances are we won’t bother. We prefer to do nothing than something. If decisions are forced on us, we have no choice but to make them. Perhaps the key to good decision making is to try to turn every decision into one we are forced to make – that way nothing gets put off or delayed and we have to face up to everything like it or not. I might try it for a few weeks and see how it goes…

The mentality of the herd...

2008-06-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

The UK is currently gripped in a bout of petrol fever. Shell tanker drivers have gone on strike, leading to a small risk of shortages.

You know how it is. A small risk of shortages leads to a large number of people making a small, but significant, change to their usual patterns. So, instead of filling up with £25, lots of people fill up with as much petrol as they can and then the poor people who are either too stupid to see this coming, or travel thousands of miles per week and therefore need to regularly fill up, cannot find a filling station with fuel for love nor money. Meanwhile millions of people who perhaps have to fill up with petrol once a fortnight or once a month are sat at home with a full tank of fuel – going nowhere. However, should the end of the world take place today, they would have enough petrol to get them from one end of the country to the other.

These issues come along once in a while and we are all reassured that, if only we would not change our buying habits at all, everything will be fine. And of course all the rational people believe this advice, but pay no attention to it at all. After all, he who snoozes loses! Who would want to be left with anything less than a full tank of petrol at a time when there is a less than 10% chance of localised petrol shortages?

This got me thinking about the mentality of the herd. We all know that something makes sense – if we only rationally follow the advice, but we do not want to be the one caught out.

An example was the concern in the UK about the MMR inoculation injection given to youngsters in the UK. You can find a report on this here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/archive/science_nature/mmr5.shtml. There were a few reports that the injection caused Autism in kids. As a parent you could choose to give you children the jab – and avoid getting three very nasty illnesses, or you could go without, safe in the knowledge that, as long as 10% or less of the country did the same, the chances are your child was ok.

Unfortunately in certain parts of the UK less than 90% of the herd went with the option of having the injection – leading to the local re-emergence of child illnesses that were thought to have been beaten forever.

And this week at my son’s sports day I saw a more trivial, yet no less real example. We all know that sewing your kids name into their school uniform is a good idea – however as long as everyone else does this you do not need to! After all, the only uniform with no one’s name in is yours. So how come at the sports day there were more than 10 school jumpers without names in left at the end of the event?

We do not always do the rational thing. So whilst I am confident that the supply of petrol in the UK will not be affected by the current problems, I might top up just a little tomorrow…

Satisfaction and delight

2008-06-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

The last week has been a massively busy one, even by the usual standards. It started with a bout of food poisoning/gastric flu last Sunday that frankly threw me sideways. I had to spend most of the day in bed, which was unlike me but necessary at the time.

By Monday I was recovered only for my son to then start suffering with an abscess on his tooth. By Tuesday we were chasing emergency appointments at the dentist as well as looking at a six year old with a very swollen cheek.

I think it is an absolute truth that when you find a good dentist you stick with them. For the best part of ten years as a student and afterwards I avoided dentists altogether. It was the familiar story of not actually having anything wrong with my teeth, so why go? Finally I decided that this could not go on and visited a friend’s father in Exeter. He patched up a few fillings and sent me on my way. It was a huge relief to know that my laziness and irrational fears of “The Chair” had not led to anything more serious.

When I moved to the South East of England I visited a dentist who I am still with today. He is a caring and pragmatic guy, who works six days a week from 7am to early evening.

Taking my son to visit is always difficult and I suspect that all parents will understand that feeling when you would much rather have something wrong with yourself than your kids. It was a pretty unpleasant experience for Oliver, as the abscess was drained, and he was quite shaken and tearful about the whole thing. Inevitably less than thirty minutes later he was fine again.

The big surprise came later that evening. At around 9pm my dentist called to find out how Oliver was doing and to suggest we arrange a further visit to check on progress. This surprised and delighted me and, most importantly, reminded me again how important communication is to customer service.

I was delighted that the dentist saw us at short notice, very happy with what he did for Oliver and the fantastic chair-side manner he showed with a youngster – so I was a satisfied customer when I left. To call and check on his progress that evening was incredibly welcome and touching – I am no longer a satisfied customer, I am a delighted customer.

The difference is a subtle but important one, especially in an era where adding additional value is so important. And it reminded me again to strive to do better than “satisfied” for my clients and drive for “delighted”. Much of this is about attention, service and, most importantly, communication. This incident did not teach me anything I did not know, but it reminded me of an important lesson about going the extra mile – and how much this is appreciated.

Holidays and Heroes

2008-05-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday in the UK. This rather archaic term is used for public holidays – the idea presumably being that these were the only days of the year when Banks closed. Actually, in my childhood Banks seemed to close to the public around 3.30pm every day so they could check the amount of cash they had and balance the books on a daily basis.

There is a long running feeling in the UK that we do not get enough Bank Holidays, compared to everywhere else in the world. I would imagine this is partly due to the fact that the nation never had a revolution/Independence Day – which seems to be an excuse for much of the rest of the world to celebrate.

At first glance we do seem to have less public holidays than most countries. The UK has eight days per year. Two at Christmas, two at Easter, two in May, one in August and one on New Year’s Day. Apparently the average in Europe is almost 11 days.

This article (http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/21/labor-market-workforce-lead-citizen-cx_po_0521countries_slide_2.html) suggests that the UK is not amongst the top ten hardest working counties in the world, but only one of these countries (Turkey) has less public holidays.

I am not sure what the additional public holidays could commemorate. There has been a campaign for some time to make St George’s Day a public holiday in England. It has also been noted that we are the only country not to have a public holiday between the summer and Christmas, with proposals for a November holiday to recognise community heroes.

Perhaps the problem is not a lack of holidays but a lack of heroes. Perhaps we Brits are rubbish at celebrating our heroes. The likes of Shakespeare, Darwin, Dickens, Nelson and Newton are all probably worthy of a day in their own right.

Perhaps the best idea would be to let the public choose the birthday of the greatest ever Englishman as a public holiday. It would be tempting to go for Guy Fawkes, as the only person to ever entry Parliament with honourable intentions, but I suspect we might end up with another Bank Holiday in May. The second to be precise: the birthday of Lord David of Beckham.

Getting the balance right...

2008-05-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

In one week’s time we are off to Center Parcs in France for the half term week. This will prove once again to be one of those times when work and family collide more obviously than they normally do.

I try to keep a healthy perspective on work. When I started working for myself, I knew there would be times when it would be difficult, where compromise would have to be made. However, I would never drop everything for work. Too many things are too important.

I know people who do drop everything for work. But to me it is a false sense of reality. If work takes precedence over everything else, people get used to the fact that you are always available. Then they rely on this and sooner or later, you lose control.

An old boss of mine used to work a simple policy: once something was in the diary, it was cast in stone. So, if I had a meeting scheduled with him, and his boss wanted to meet at the same time, he would not change our meeting.

Of course this made me feel good but I suspect the effect it had on my boss was even more important – he felt in control of what he was doing. He had a simple rule. It worked. Everyone knew it. He stuck to it.

Of course life is not always that simple. You are never really off duty when you are working in a service industry but I like to try to take a break once in a while. So far I have found that it is good to take two weeks in the Summer (because everyone else does) and two weeks at Christmas (ditto). Last Autumn we also went away, this time less successfully. I spent a lot of my time working.

This time, I expect to do a bit, but hopefully not so much that it impacts on the holiday. If I follow the "diary" rule, this holiday has been in my diary for some time, so it takes Priority.

It ain't what you do...

2008-05-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

No one would argue it makes sense to find out what your customers’ experiences have been like. I read a very interesting article recently regarding the focus on customer services by UK high street retail chain Timpson. You can read it here if you like

http://www.realbusiness.co.uk/search_tags/4879766/its-simple-hire-people-with-personality.thtml

Timpson’s has an incredibly simple process by which it monitors customer feedback. They ask one simple question based on how likely the customer is to recommend the company to others. It is an incredibly simple but effective tool and one which I plan to use myself.

In contrast, some companies seem to obsess on getting tons of feedback on the most obscure issues. It happened to me this week.

A couple of week’s ago I wrote about my fruitless search for a laptop.

http://aweekisalongtime.blogspot.com/2008/04/ill-show-you-money-you-show-me-goods.html

As part of the process of returning a faulty laptop, I was asked to call the manufacturer and ask them for a log number. Apparently this would mean that the retailer could return the product to the manufacturer more easily (and therefore refund my money quicker). This seemed odd, but not a significant issue so I did so. I called the manufacturer, asked for the code and it was provided. No more than a minute in total on the phone.

Two weeks later, I got a call from the manufacturer asking me if I had two minutes to answer some questions about the call I had made. Was the person at the end of the line helpful? Did he resolve my problem? How long did it take? On a scale of 1-5 how would you rate the usefulness of the person at the other end of the phone? How would you rate the information he provided? Was the information useful to you?

Trouble was I could not really help because I could not even remember the call. It was short and insignificant. As these questions were being thrown at me, so I racked my brains to think when I had called and what it had been about. I suspect that I answered half the questions based on what I remembered of a call with another company last week.

I imagine there is someone analysing these results and making decisions based around what I and probably several other people have randomly made up on the phone to someone with a script in front of them. It is possible that these decisions may be based on flawed information.

If you wait two weeks to ask me the question, chances are the answer is not going to be much use to you.

A year is a long time

2008-04-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

Twelve months ago today was my last day of a weekend that started with me bidding farewell to Motorola and ended with me taking my son to school and then sitting down to my first day working for my own company. It was weird and scary.

Pretty much every Sunday or Monday since, I have thought to myself "what am I doing". Funnily enough by the end of the week I never feel nervous or cautious, just exhausted!

My first ever job was as President of Exeter University’s Student Union, or The Guild of Students as it was quaintly called in Devon. This is an elected post that any student can stand for. If you are elected you get paid (not much) to run the Student Union for a year, along with other students and a talented team of staff.

I stood for election, probably for the reasons that most people do: to change things; to be idealistic; because I had a big ego. I won and was happy for a number of reasons - mostly because it fed my ego and I wanted to change things, and a tiny little bit because I was able to remain a student for another year.

What I never knew was the sheer amount I would learn and how incredibly hard I would work. I thought I would be on a few committees arguing for students’ rights. I ended up realising that the job was also about managing seven trading areas (shops, bars, restaurants), more than 80 people and a budget of more than a million pounds. I loved it.

I feel the same way about this job. It is, in some ways, more challenging, because it involves more in the way of self motivation. As always, it is the things that you do not think about or realise that provide the challenges. It has been a reminder of something I know but never tire of remembering: the more difficult something is to achieve, the more achievement you get from succeeding.

I have been blessed in my first year in business. There have been challenges and difficult days but overall it has been an incredibly positive experience.

And whilst I do not wish this to become an Oscar speech, I have to thank two groups of people: first my clients, that took the leap of faith and trust in me; second my family, who have been supportive of the late nights and weekends spent working.

I am looking forward to the next twelve months with just as much excitement and only a little less trepidation. If a week is a long time, a year is a bloody long time. Amazing it has passed so quickly.

I'll show you the money. You show me the goods...

2008-04-20T11:17:00.000-07:00

I mentioned last week that my car had broken down on its third birthday…exactly (and I mean exactly) three years and eight hours after it was registered. And therefore, exactly eight hours after its warranty ran out.

I wonder how hard it is to set some sort of electronic bug to take place three years after a car is registered for the first time. My car can tell the time and date, so presumably it is possible?

On a similar theme, this week we ordered a new laptop. It was advertised as working out of the box. It did not. In fact it did not work at all.

In fact it was broken out of the box. We got it collected, got the money back, all the usual good stuff you expect...well I do (actually I have to wait until Tuesday to see if my money is refunded).

There was no offer of a replacement, no opportunity to swap it for another (working) laptop exactly the same. Just the refund and goodbye.

To me this is an opportunity missed. I chose that laptop. I do not believe that just because I got a crappy one that they are all like that. I want my laptop. So send me a replacement to be delivered when the other one is collected. How hard can it be?

Instead, today, fed up with waiting for the refund, we went online to a retail outlet and did a “reserve and collect from store”. The website told me it was in stock. The phone call from the store an hour later told me that they knew it was there somewhere. But they could not find it. So they could not sell it to me.

Becoming increasingly frustrated, we went into an out of town store to buy one off the shelf. No luck. The products displayed in the store were not in stock (not one, not two, but three).

I have some money. I want to spend it on a laptop. I now know where not to spend it.

People do not buy products. We are all suckers for an experience. I just need to find somewhere that offers one.

Not what I was expecting at all

2008-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Have you heard the one about the bloke whose car broke down on the day that it ran out of warranty?

I have. Because this week that bloke was me.

Hard though it is to believe, at 12 midnight on 7th April, my car clearly decided to celebrate its third birthday with a massive party.

Like many of us the next morning, it started perky (you know the feeling… “Wow, I feel better than I have any right to feel…I might have got away with this …no hangover…!”)

Of course the cold reality hits you around 30 minutes later. Usually you have showered, had a coffee and are half way to work when the real consequences of over indulgence kick in. That headache that felt ok from the comfort of the bedroom at 7.30am develops into a monster by 8.30am. That perky feeling is replaced by a sight sense of nausea.

Worst of all, you are not sure what to do for the best:

“Lets try getting some fresh air”

Five minutes later every bone in your body is aching, you have a streaming nose and your red face has turned crimson. You seem to take on the characteristics of the weather. If it is hot, you sweat like mad. If it is cold, every sinew freezes.

“Lets try having a bath”

You run a bath and feel sick. You get in and feel sicker. You lie back in the bath and feel like you need to sit up. You sit up and you feel cold and sweaty at the same time. You get out of the bath.

“Lets try going back to bed”

The ultimate solution! Go back to bed and sleep it off. Nope. Sleep comes slowly to the hangover victim. The room (which seemed perfectly fine eight hours ago when it was spinning around you) is too light, or dark, or hot, or cold. Somehow nothing is right. And your head hurts.

So what is the solution? Grin and suffer. Take on board lots of water, whether you feel like it or not. Only take onboard the food you really want (you know how it is with a hangover: chicken soup, Big Mac Meal, sushi, donuts, bananas, raw eggs. Neither rhyme not reason). And wait. After all, it took you the best part of six or more hours to get the hangover. Why should you expect it to take less than that to get rid of it?

Once you have accepted you have no control, that it is your fault and you have to stick it out, you get the worst symptoms of all…recovery and relapse.

One moment you feel fine, the next you feel crap again. One moment you truly believe that the worst is over. The next you are sweating and having a “little lie down”.

And again. And again. Every time you feel better, you get a thundering charge of misery, just to remind you what you did. False dawn after false dawn, until finally. The last, most beautiful recovery last and lasts. You assume that relapse will come again but it does not. You are over the worst. At least until next time.

Just to remind you of how you got in that state in the first place, read or listen here:

http://larrymillerhumor.com/media/index.php

And having got so engrossed in hangover etiquette, I will need to leave my theories about how cars break down immediately after the warranty runs out for another time.

Brewing up a storm

2008-04-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Along with most of Britain we go the snow this weekend. It is hard to explain just how rare this is. In the last six years, I can only recall one significant fall of snow before today.

And this was proper snow. Not the type that does not settle, nor the snow followed by long periods of cold where it freezes and refreezes, turning slowly more and more grey until it finally disappears. This was a good four inch fall, totally unspoilt at 6.30am this morning when the unexpected brightness led me to the window.

Twelve hours later as I write this, it has almost all disappeared. The remnants of a snowman melt but the road outside, so deep and crisp and even this morning, is totally dry. It was perfect snowfall: picture postcard first thing to remind you how beautiful it can look; snowmen and snowballs in the morning; a day of sunshine meaning the roads were usable by midday and almost totally gone by evening. I doubt this happens more than once a century.

Most of me is delighted – the chance to enjoy the unusual weather without a moment’s disruption. A little bit of me, however, was hoping it might last and give me an excuse not to go to London tomorrow.

Typically I am in London at least one day per week. It is generally fine. We have a good rail connection to both Waterloo and Paddington from where I am, with both accessible within an hour. However, first thing Monday morning (actually first thing any day) is not my favourite time to make the journey. The battle is not so much for the seat on the train as for a space on the train itself. Or the tube. Or the bus.

No amount of money could persuade me to make that journey every day, and when I look around me at the people who either choose to or have to, I wonder how long you can carry on without losing your sanity.

Concerted efforts are taking place by London Transport amongst others to get people to be polite to each other on buses and tubes. You now see a pile of adverts advising you to be polite to others. I don't know why they bother. I cannot help but think that if the system itself, with the long queues, poor communication and hopeless under provision at peak times, had been better, people would be less likely to want to kill each other for that extra inch of space.

Recently I got on a rush hour train with a coffee that had been sold to me with milk added to it - something of a problem for someone like me with a milk allergy. I offered it around the carriage. Most people looked like I was mad - "my god, there is someone over there talking to people he does not know. Run, run, run."

Maybe there is an illness associated with rush hour that turns normal human beings into robots on a commute. Transport for London can put up a thousand adverts telling people to be nice to each other, but you cannot expect people to be humane to each other if they are being transported in a less than humane way. Its common sense.

Terminal Chaos

2008-03-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

Away from the blamestorming going on around the launch of Heathrow Terminal 5 this week, a few obvious points appear to have been missed. To mention them seems folly but, you know what, the older I get the more I am astonished by people’s ability to miss the obvious and the more grateful I am when people point out the obvious to me.

So here goes. Simple things that BA or BAA might have thought about before turning the keys in the door of Terminal 5 and inviting everyone in.

Stuff never works how it is supposed to: Despite everyone’s best efforts it was really daft to think there were not going to be teething problems at the launch of such a project. Seriously, how many times have you moved house/job/office without something totally unexpected going wrong.

Any project that runs to time will probably have a big problem at launch: Have you ever known a building project that has run to time? The only one I can remember was a Conservatory that a friend had built and that still leaks. The only consolation when you hear projects are overdue is the thought that they will probably not be a train wreck when they launch (the “Wembley Stadium rule of construction).

Never under estimate the ability of small issues to stuff things up: In his book “Winning” Sir Clive Woodward talks about the “critical non essentials” that help to create success. These are usually things you do not think about – like fresh towels in your room twice a day in a hotel or enough water to let everyone have a hot shower after training. In the case of Terminal 5, little things like the lack of parking for staff and the additional time taken for people to go through security check (staff, incidentally not passengers) seemed to cause many of the problems.

Almost anything can be improved with more communication: Staff not knowing where to go? Passengers complaining about signage? When things go wrong the temptation is to hide. However, at the point where things are going wrong communication is the key. People do not like their flight being delayed, but it gets a lot worse if they are not told why or for how long. The more you engage with people, the better. For all the criticisms that can be levelled at BA, to me, this is the only one that sticks. They could not know how things were going to go, but they could have helped people understand what was going on more by having more people on the ground.

I said at the start that I am grateful when people point out the obvious to me. Last year, on our way back from holiday, we arrived into Poole on a ferry at the same time as two other ferries, causing massive traffic congestion. I was fuming, complaining about how stupid it was that three ferries were arriving at the same time when it was pointed out to me that the timing of the tides probably had an effect on when ferries could come and go. Good point, well made. And one I had not even considered.

Busy busy

2008-03-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

So here we are on Easter Monday. For those of us in the UK, the single best break of the year is over.

Why the single best break? First off we get two bank holidays in succession, one on Good Friday and one on Easter Monday (today). This, of course, means that two weeks of work are also shorter. Not only is there an extra day's holiday, but this is further supplemented by the fact that the working week is shorter too! Bonus! And yes, I know this comes down to the same thing, but I still feel chuffed every time I think of it!

This also happens at Christmas of course, but Christmas does not always happen at a weekend (and Easter of course does)...and there is more visiting family that takes place at Christmas...and there is all the cooking and eating and drinking and arguing....and something really shocking happened last Boxing Day about which I will never speak! Well not yet anyway.

So all hail to Easter. Yes the weather in the UK has been rubbish, but Easter is about as early as it can possibly be this year so what do you expect. Also, do not believe the hype! Having visited Newcastle for the weekend we managed to fight our way back through the terrible snow and high winds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7309343.stm) on Sunday morning in four hours (at an average of exactly 70 miles per hour!). Yes there was a bit of snow in North Yorkshire but I am certain there was at least four times the amount of hype as there was snow.

A mobile youth

2008-03-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Quite what the impact of technology will be on the generation growing up now, no one can fully tell but you do not need a crystal ball to realise it will be revolutionary.

Most of those growing up today will be more familiar with the mouse than the pen. They will expect information to be available all the time, wherever they are, and I cannot help but think that this will be a more significant revolution than the development of railways or the industrial revolution.

It will change everything. When I was growing up we were not allowed to use calculators in exams because this was considered "cheating". Now, calculators are allowed because their availability is so ubiquitous as to render the need to know how to make those calculations irrelevant. The genie is out of the lamp and there is no way it is going back. We have to learn how to teach a generation of young people that knows technology intimately, that believes the truth is available from Wikipedia and that has had a mobile from around 10 years old.

A few weeks ago I saw some material that had been lifted from low cost, prepay mobile phones used by young people. The depth and richness of the content was unbelieveable. It showed me that young people are not only using phones for voice and text but for a host of other incredibly complex tasks, from creating their own pictures, attaching sound and sending to people, to downloading and editing content from PCs. One youngster had even recorded Eastenders by holding the phone in from of the TV and pressing "record". It may not be the "Mobile TV" that mobile network operators want you to use, but it is mobile TV none the less.

With so many initiatives in mobile - from mobile TV to mobile internet to picture messaging - deemed as failures, it is exciting to see people using the capability of their phones to the max. They may not be using the services created for them but there is a wealth of talented and tech savvy youngsters out there, using their skills to fulfil their ambitions! When I was a kid only the geeks knew how to make things happen on a computer. Times have changed.

Customer service hell…part two

2008-03-09T13:29:00.000-07:00

Today I joined a queue. We British love to queue right?

Wrong. No one loves to queue. Queuing is crap. But we are polite. Every other country gets round queuing by barging in. But we do not.

Also we are rubbish at queuing. Twice today people who had joined the queue after me got served before me. That is not fair. But for some reason deep in my psyche, I would rather ignore that than take action. And I am normally very rude. But not when I am in a queue it would seem…

I joined the queue to order some food and drinks. This was in an empty restaurant. I would figure that less than 10% of the seats were occupied. Imagine what queuing would be like if it was full?

When I got to the front of the queue there was one person serving. My heart reached out for this one person because it was obviously her first day.

And she was sorry. For almost everything! She was (in order) sorry I had to wait, sorry that they did not have more staff, sorry that she could not understand my order of “orange juice” and sorry that she needed help from someone else.

How rude to put her in that position. How uncaring to both the customer and to the staff member.

We all rallied round in that British way. The queue taught her to pour a pint properly, to interpret what people were asking for and to work the coffee machine. People saw the situation, that she wanted to help but could not. People saw that this person, who had the skills and passion to do a good job, had been left to fend for herself. Shame on the company. And shame on their training.

We muddled through. It was fun. I hope somewhere tonight there is an employee looking forward to the next challenge rather than ready to give up.

If so it is in spite of, rather than because of the employer.

The demise of Facebook

2008-03-02T10:18:00.000-08:00

So, it is official. Numbers are falling on Facebook. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7257073.stm

The BBC is reporting the opinion that the core demographic is leaving Facebook.

In Rory Cellan-Jones' blog (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/02/facebook_back_to_the_kids.html), he feels that it is the youngesters that are still loyal and the oldies that are leaving the site.

My feeling is this. People discovered Facebook. People invited others. Our natural reaction is to tell our friends: "Wow, look I am the first person to discover this new thing..." And of course once that runs out, the impetus is lost.

The next problem is finding people. Facebook rightly has some privacy settings, enabling people to protect themselves from prying. And most people take these up. So when you search for the name of a friend, chances are you will be faced with dozens of names, no pictures (hidden to protect privacy) and no idea which Anton Stradhoughton is the one you know - and in case you think this is a little OTT, try searching for Chris Bignell (hardly the most popular of names) in Facebook and you get eight responses. Even I can't tell which one is me!

Finally, and probably most annoyingly, once you are signed up to Facebook there is nothing to do there. Find a few people you used to know...send a drink to someone..."poke" someone (ooh how risque)...take part in a quiz...oh hang on every friend I have has invited me to take part in the same quiz...

When you do find something new, you have to install a new application, which you probably cannot be bothered to do. In the last month I have been asked to compare myself to people, to throw snowballs at someone, and to compete in 17 movie quizzes. Bearing in mind I last went to the Cinema eight years ago, I am sure you can imagine my enthusiasm.

So it comes as no surprise that numbers are falling. I think it is inevitable that Facebook and the likes will enjoy an initial flurry of activity and then generally flounder. I remember the same thing happening with another site, that had a lot more going for it than Facebook. Where is Friends Reunited now?

The truth is that any relationship based only in cyberspace is probably a waste of time. We keep in touch with people we want to keep in touch with and those we do not fall by the wayside. It is a shame but there you go.

For a while, going to Facebook was like being in the pub but online. Seems like now people are going back to the real pub.

In search of thrills

2008-02-24T10:19:00.001-08:00

So I failed to blog last week. I put this down to a combination of factors which included:

- I got back from Barcelona and contracted a horrible sickness
- We then decided to go to Alton Towers for a couple of days last Sunday/Monday.

I had an almost mythical view of Alton Towers... The last time I went was 15 years ago at the age of 21 or so. So a lot of water has passed under the bridge. I am older, wiser, wider (!) and more worldly. And frankly, Alton Towers (aged 38) compared to Alton Towers (aged 21) is a pretty underwhelming experience.

Do not get me wrong. Some of the rides were great. However, I always feel that part of the point of Theme Parks is queueing. It ratchets up the level of expectation, it means you have time to chat. Crucially it ensuers that you are unable to "do" the whole theme park in an hour.

In February half term there were no queues. It make for a slightly eerie experience. You realise how much of a theme park is just created for queueing. As you stride towards a ride, you realise that it takes ten minutes to get there, a zig zag journey toward the destination, normally taken at 1 mile an hour. You realise that, with noone else there, you could actually get round the whole place in a few hours. You realise how much the owners rely on people queueing to make the whole experience a day out.

Many of the rides were closed for winter maintenance, but it is a weird experience none the less. The place feels a little empty without people...and after a week in Barcelona with thousands of others, it felt strange.

Of course on the positive side, it was great to have the place pretty much to ourselves and the hotel had a fantastic water park which was included in the visit. And for the children...wow. You would have thought that this was heaven on earth!

Off to Barcelona

2008-02-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

Normally I write this blog from home. Today it is from South Terminal of Gatwick Airport.

I am off to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (www.mobileworldcongress.com). It will be an unbelievable week of madness and in many respects I am lucky to have had most of my weekend before going out there. Some of my clients headed off last week.

Mostly my experiences of this event are positive, ranging from a fantastic year with Toshiba when we rented a yacht (http://www.yacht-charter-marine.com/30to50/lady_anna.htm) to last year when I caught up with a lot of old friends.

My worst experience of a show like this was almost ten years ago at CeBIT, a big technology show in Germany. I arrived at midnight due to late running planes and went to the showground as my client was still getting things ready for the kick off the next day.

At around 2am we left to find our accommodation. We found it but there was someone else asleep in it. Standing in the rain in a suburban Hannover street with nowhere to stay and hotels everywhere full, due to the world's biggest technology trade fair taking place, is not an experience I am keen to repeat.

Eventually we did find a hotel. But that experience taught me a few lessons and when it was my turn to manage a company's presence at CeBIT a few years later, I was determined that nobody would be tinkering with the stand at 2am.

Hopefully Barcelona in February will be brighter, warmer and dryer than Hannover in March. And hopefully I will have a hotel room!

How to sell

2008-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2007. A lesson I will not forget in selling.

Probably for the first time (I cetainly cannot remember a previous occasion, although I would not rule it out) I bought something because it was sold to me.

I am not usually a sucker for a deal. If you come to my door with something to sell, chances are I do not want to buy it. I do suffer, however from the odd emotional purchase. The perfectly rational me will be rushing through Waterloo Station at 7pm on a Friday night and it suddenly occurs to me to buy flowers for Sharon. Call it romance...call it guilt at being late. Whatever, it exists.

The Christmas 2007 experience started with a visit to my Niece's house. We all had a chat and a drink and the kids played on their Nintendo Wii. They had a great time and we started discussing at home if we should get one.

I was against. All the usual reasons: we already have a PC, it is bad for kids, they will squabble, what is the point. On and on it went. I was accused of being a spoil sport (not a problem for me, I wear that like a badge of honour!)

A week later I was in Sainsburys. Quick visit: couple of tins of soup, bottle of wine and a loaf of bread. Whilst there the tannoy announced that there were a small number of nine Wii's currently in store and the first nine customers to the electricals desk could claim one.

As you know, Wii's were rare as rocking horse poo before Christmas (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/7095237.stm). I did not want one, I did not need one. But the fact they were both extremely rare yet also available to me right now, was enough to send me on my way. I was off to the counter and handing over my money.

Afterwards I felt guilty. Someone, somewhere really wanted one of these for Christmas and they would not get one now, whereas if it had not been mentioned to me, I would never have bought one. The guilt did not last long. And the excitement caused by the Wii on Christmas Day was amazing. It caused fun, pitch battles, epic victories. After a couple of hours we even let the kids have a go.

I guess this taught me two things. The first was sometimes people buy stuff they do not need. Its been a good lesson. I have had a couple of bits of work where clients think they need the work but they do not. It is hard to say no, but I am glad I did.

The second lesson is this. Opportunity and good timing are critical to sales. It is something I try to remember when I go to networking events, or new business meetings. I am not naturally good at these, but you never, ever know when you will bump into your next client, or associate, or mentor.

Mr 125

2008-01-27T11:21:00.000-08:00

Success and satusfaction of sorts today in the five mile run. 125th out of 140 in my running group might not sound that good but I am almost 40. And at 40 you get to join the over 40s group. In other words today I was competing against everyone from 18 to my age. Put into that context, I was pleased.

My time was 44 minutes and 57 seconds. It was spot on the time I did last year which I am dead chuffed with because I am a year older and put in consderably less work this year than last. It also meant I did 9 minute miles all the way. If (and it is a big ask) I could keep that up for another mile (and it bloody felt like I couldn't today) it would mean a 56 minute 10k. That might not mean much to you but it does to me. It is fair to say I am no Haile Gabri Selassie.

The running has been a nice distraction from the business because it has been incredibly busy recently. It has been beyond crazy and I am taking measures to mitigate this in the future by getting more support. It is always kind of like this in the run up to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona but this year more than ever.

Is this a good or bad thing? It is a very good thing. Business is coming in thick and fast and that makes life rewarding, of course financially, but much more importantly in terms of job satisfaction. Yes there are a few (more than a few recently) evenings taken up by work, but there is also an immense sense of satisfaction in being able to work with a number of companies, to help them achieve their goals and, as a consequence achieve some of yours. I am not complaining. Well I am but only privately. And for me that is a major improvement!

Back on the treadmill

2008-01-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

Next Sunday I have another run. I tend to do a couple of organised runs a year. One is usually driven by post-holiday guilt and the other by post-Christmas guilt.

My last run was in September when I did a 10k in Reading. I aimed to complete the course without walking, and in less than 1 hour. I managed to achieve this - just - 59 minutes 36 seconds.

The next one is the Romsey 5 mile race. You can find details of it here: http://www.conceptsport.co.uk/events.php?pid=1061. Not quite as long but it was a good one for me last year. I started near the back and trundled along gently before picking up the pace and finishing in 45 minutes. It was probably the most comfortable I have felt in a race so I am looking forward to it this year.

I like running. Closer to the trust is that it is the form of exercise I hate least. I get up in the morning, go for a run, then feel like the exercise is done and I can get on with eating too much for the rest of the day. It does not involve having to travel, I do not need to be around people who are exercising more than me, and I manage to avoid all the helpful people in the gym telling you that you are doing things wrong.

So until the find a way to exercise in your sleep, running remains the only way in which I am able to counter the fact that my job involes sitting down most of the time hunched over a PC. I will let you know next Sunday how the 5 miles go, but my guess is "more slowly than last year".

How things work out

2008-01-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

I am constantly astonished about how things work out.

I am currently sat in a house that my family and I have lived in for more than five years now. We love it and at this stage have no desire to move. I can still vividly recall coming to look at the place for the first time. At the time we were desperate for somewhere, having had several houses fall through for a number of reasons.

I was not even sure I would be able to make the viewing so suggested to Sharon that if she liked it, just offer the asking price and secure the place on the spot. In the end we both made it but barely 10 minutes into the viewing we offered the full asking price. As you can imagine, people queue up to play poker against us.

Cars, homes, jobs. These are all things that we spend large parts of our lives with. Yet our decisions on these subjects are made incredibly quickly, usually mostly on gut instinct and invariably on the premise that "things work out for the best".

This makes me believe that people are very good at making the best of things. It may not always seem that way but we must be incredibly good at adapting. More than ever people are moving in and out of jobs, homes, relationships. And more than ever many of the decisions people are making seem to be based on an unswerving belief that it is both the right thing and it will work out for the best!

I was a long time deciding to set up my company. I thought and thought, pondered, did nothing, thought some more and then some more. And so far so good. One of the best benefits of running my company is the ability to do stuff you find fun and work with people that you like. I was reading something Richard Branson wrote this week and he emphasised the importance of working hard and having fun. And that exactly describes my experiences so far.

Back to reality

2008-01-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

Right then. Christmas over, new year done.

Tomorrow will mark the first day back at work for millions of people in the UK. Because of the timing of the holidays this year, many many people took and got a long break. Many finished on 21st December and will be returning tomorrow. With a considerate boss, a fair wind and a bit of holiday left over it was possible to get around 17 consecutive days.

Working for yourself might be considered a great option at this time of year. And, to be fair, it is one of the two opportunities in the year to take a bit of a break - the other is in August when so many people are away that it becomes easier to take some holiday.

Last year I tried to take some time in October as well, but that was less successful. Inevitably the time you take off always seems to co-incide with when you are most busy and, on that occasion I spent quite a lot of the time working.

The reality is you are never really on holiday when you work for yourself. This is not driven by other people but by myself. I think a combination of awareness that you are encouraging yourself, combined with a fair dose of guilt about not doing anything, means you tend to always be at the least aware of what is going on and usually half working whatever the circumstances.

Not that I am complaining. It occurs to me that more and more people are chained to their work wherever they are now, and the benefits of working for myself so far have been considerably more than the inconveniences.

It being January, time to think of the next break - August is, after all, not far away.

Getting ready...

2007-12-23T11:56:00.000-08:00

Logs collected from log-selling place (what are they called)....stupidly priced wine ordered because Jamie Oliver said it was good with Turkey...

Christmas cards sent...and received...and sent to people who have sent but did not make the original list...

Loft raided...tree found...decorations found...thirty years of football magazines found...ebay next time...

Lights up...bulbs gone...trip to shops...no compatible bulbs...£30...lights down...new lights up...

Presents purchased...what the hell to get...that looks good...will she like it...

Wrapping paper...and more...and more...

Dining room no longer an office...now a dining room...shock and shame that after 12 months still have not put that picture up...never mind will definately do it next year...crackers purchased...table cloth dusted off...spare room prepared...dust removed...acceptable for human life once again...

House clean, or at least dirty parts hidden...car washed (Santa won't stop if you car is dirty)...stupid amounts of cheese in fridge...

Logs on fire...wine in hand...wrapping paper being put to good use...what else? Blog

The best to you and yours...enjoy!

Stick to what you are good at

2007-12-16T12:19:00.001-08:00

It is always a mistake to do DIY. Not just for me, but I believe, for anyone.

Either be good enough to get paid to fix stuff, in which case you will never ever get round to doing anything to your own home (the old theory that whatever you do for a living is the last thing you do at home), or pay someone who is good enough to do it.

The golden rule of DIY? Everything takes twice as long as your longest estimate.

Anyway, I am of the school of thought that says DDIY (Don’t do it yourself) instead PSTDI (pay someone to do it) so last week we had some new floors fitted in the house and all was fine.

However, there are certain jobs that are too simple even for me to allow someone else to do. You know the scenario…there is a bloke in you house fixing something and he mentions that you will need to just readjust a tap or reconnect the water, like this is the simplest thing in the world.

But it isn’t. God help me if we had a water leak. I would not have a clue where the master switch (or whatever it is called) is. I once spent a week in darkness because I did not know where the fuse box was, only to call out an electrician who flicked one bloody switch and charged me £65 whilst smirking at me. Git.

Today’s example was putting together a bathroom cabinet. Of course we got it from Argos so of course it came flat packed. Of course the instructions were rubbish but of course I ignored them anyway. I mean how hard can it be.

I invented seven new swear words whilst “constructing” it. I used superglue, which was not required. It is standing right now but I am not hopeful…

Horses for courses never felt more true than today. And it is a lesson for my business too. Some things I am good at and some things I am not. Stick to what I am, because however lucrative the rest looks, it is more trouble than it is worth.

Not very well

2007-12-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

My boy is not very well. He has been sick twice today and, for a while, seemed really low. I know it is almost certainly nothing serious - just some sort of bug or other that they pick up, but being a parent is not about being rational or anything...

It is a tough job being a parent and by god if you realised that as a child there is no way on earth you would be how you are to your parents!

When my wife was pregnant with Oliver, someone told me that being a parent was the most rewarding, but frustrating and most happy and annoying experience in the world. I guess I know that myself now. You only finally get it when you experience it.

Press one for more torture...part one

2007-12-02T10:33:00.000-08:00

"Welcome to the automated telephone service for" (INSERT ANY BRAND HERE). "You call is important to us" (so important you are not preapred to actually answer it).

"First please key your telephone number into the keypad. Thank you. Please now key in your date of birth. Thank you."

"Please listen carefully" (Why? You will be repeating them ad nauseam between now and when I hang up) "to the following options."

"Press one to be connected to a whole new set of options that will bring you no nearer to what you want to achieve."

"Press two for your current balance." (Like I want to know that..if it was a trivial piece of information like that do you think I would have already spent five minutes on the phone? Nope, I would have give up already.)

"Press three to be connected to an advisor." (YES - that's the one! Getting somewhere now!). BLEEP.

"You call is important to us" (yeah I know...you told me already) "but all of our advisors are busy. Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (OK, I mean I deliberately called at 10am on a Tuesday to avoid the rush but hey, maybe everyone else was thinking the same as me.)

"Your call is important to us but all our advisors are busy. Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (Maybe people are off sick...you know there has been a lot of flu around these parts recently.)

"Your call is important to us but all our advisors are busy" (or maybe plain lazy...). "Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (Do you think it is like this in heaven? Do you think that when something goes wrong there, and you call the angel hotline, this is how it goes? If so, I prefer hell where a plumber never arrives.)

"Your call is important to us but all our advisors are busy. Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (How much is this costing me? Hang on, how much is an 0870 number anyway? National rate? Local rate?)

"Your call is important to us but all our advisors are busy. Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (Right that is IT. Enough. Hang on though, I will have to do all this again if I hang up now. Who is to say that next time there will be less of a queue...?)

"Your call is important to us but all our advisors are busy. Please hold and we will connect you to the first available advisor." (Last chance saloon. One more time and we are talking letter to CEO..like they would care.)

"Your call is" (go on I dare you) "important to us but all our" (morons) "advisors are busy" (nearly there...come on, come on). "Please hold" (not for much longer...) "and we will...."

"Hello (INSERT ANY BRAND HERE) customer services. Karen speaking. Please can you give me your phone number and date of birth..."

Its not the disappointment, its the hope

2007-11-25T10:06:00.000-08:00

In my job, apart from the issue of getting paid on time (or even within the realms of vaguely on time) probably the biggest issue is managing expectations. What I sell is time, but what people buy is results.

So I know something of the challenge of managing expectations, and indeed how hard that can be.

Since my favourite sport is football (soccer to those Stateside), this week has put into sharp focus the concept of managing expectations. Well at least it has for England.

Ten days ago, England looked dead and buried in their quest to qualify for the 2008 European Championships. To put this in context, everyone in England that likes football believes that, since we invented the game, we should be the best at it. Disappointment is rife, mostly because expectation is so high.

Through a mixture of fortune, England went into their last qualifying game needing to draw or better in order to qualify. After 15 minutes they were losing by two goals. With ten or so minutes to go they had levelled to 2-2. Then their opponents Croatia scored a goal and England did not qualify.

Cue several days of madness. Recriminations, sackings, speculation and mass disappointment.

I feel duty bound to offer some perspective.

First, inventing something does not give anyone the god given right to be the best. If it did, Heinz would be prowling the aisles of the supermarkets cursing the baked beans offered by other manufacturers. How dare they! Do they not know Heinz invented baked beans. How could they be improved?

Second, if you go into the last game of a 12 game tournament needing to get something from the game to qualify, then you have left it far too late. The risk is, perhaps even the likelyhood is, that something will go wrong because, up to then, not enough has gone right to stop this exact situation. Leave something to chance and, chances are, it will not come off.

But that is not what football is about. It is about hope over expectation. Yesterday, Everton beat Sunderland by seven goals to one in the Premier League. The last time Everton won by that score, my team was on the losing end and I was at the game. It was over as a contest after 35 minutes, as five goals were scored at one end and none at the other. Still the fans sang "we're going to win 6-5". Some hope...

And some hope, however small, is enough. Something to cling on to, something to believe in. Unlike anything else, a little bit of hope can overcome a lot of disappointment.

There is nothing like football for not managing expectations. Everyone wants to win, yet only a few can. Everyone wants to do better, yet this is only achieveable at the expense of others (who also want to do better). Even in the worst of circumstances, hope overcomes disappointment. So maybe next time will be different for England. We can hope.

The Queen is dead ...

2007-11-18T10:34:00.000-08:00

Shocking news huh? And the only story to push the launch of the iPhone down the news agenda.

The whole country has gone iPhone mad. Actually the country hasn't, but the media has.

On 9th November the iPhone went on sale in the UK. This in itself is not really a massive deal is it? By my reckoning around 10 new phones are released each month, and the addition of a further manufacturer is not in itself news.

However, this is Apple and somehow everything Apple does gains more attention than anyone else. I am undecided as to whether it is the tight control of information out of the company, the use of Steve Jobs as a mouthpiece or the loyalty of Apple devotees that makes everything Apple does such as momentous event. It is certainly a case of the media leading the public, however. I am not sure how many Nokia, Sony Ericsson or Motorola users amongst the country's population know or care that Apple is now making a phone. I have led the marketing for the launch for two brands into the mobile market in Europe. And, I take my hat off to Apple. I never came close to the level of interest they have generated.

The closest was with Toshiba when we had what we thought was incredible interest at the time. We conducted literally hundreds of media interviews over a week of intense interest. But that was nowhere near the interest in Apple and the iPhone.

Turning interest into sales may be a tougher call.

I went into a Carphone Warehouse store in the UK yesterday. Inside was a beautiful table with several working iPhones on it. It looked like a mini Apple store within the bigger store, only no-one was helping customers and the only people playing with the merchandise were several young kids surfing the internet and trying to make hoax calls on the working samples. There was no staff to assist - they had either come to the conclusion that the kids were not in the market for a £270 phone on an 18 month £35 per month contract, or (and this is my guess) they were busy serving other customers that wanted to buy a phone at a normal price on pay as you go or a normal tariff.

So my guess is you can have a impressive product (and there is much about the iPhone to be impressed by) but that does not necessarily change a market for ever. Keep an eye out before Christmas for those iPhone price cuts....after a few of them you might just nab a bargain.

Too much to read ...

2007-11-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

I have a pile of magazines to catch up with right now that is growing on a daily basis. I have lads mags, womens' mags, techies ones, trade publications and the regular issues of Stuff and T3 that I pick up every month.

On average, I am posted around 30 mags a month - at least one a day. I buy one if not two papers a day in addition. Because of my job I try to read them all but from time to time I get swamped.

A lot of journalists complain that PRs pitch them with stories totally irrelevant to their publications. Many say "have they actually read the mag?". It is a fair point, but it is also worth considering the number of publications the average PR needs to read and be up to date with. Add to that the national media, the local press, the TV, the radio, the 24 hours a day news feeds and you can see how challenging it can be to keep up with everything all at once.

I remember when I first started working in radio I found myself analysing the radio I listened to much more than I had done before. I started listening to how people linked records together, how they went into ad breaks, etc. It was a real learning process and it helped me a lot. The downside was I could not listen to and enjoy radio in the way I had before. I was listening on a technical level, not just enjoying it for the sake of it.

Sometimes I feel the same now about magazines. I skip through, looking for bits and bobs that might be relevant, journalists who are writing about certain issues and opportunities that might be relevant to my clients.

But sometimes I think instinct should take over. The best ideas are not about rehashing old ideas but creating new ones. Sometimes it is easy to forget that a good idea will stand up on its own, it does not need to be a rework of something else. So it is not necessary to have read everything, seen everything and heard everything.

At least that is what I tell myself as I look at that pile of unread magazines.

Great customer experience

2007-11-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

Anyone who knows me will have heard at least one of my many stories about poor customer experience. Over the last 12 months I have battled with (to name but a few) British Airways, BT, The RAC and Cornhill Insurance. Mostly it has been a bruising experience from both sides. My family hate hearing me lose it on the phone to these companies - and that makes me feel bad for creating an atmosphere. I imagine the people at the other end of the line hate it too. No one goes into a job wanting to be argued with. And boy these people must get it all day. Finally I hate getting into a right old state, raising my blood pressure, getting irate, arguing with people.

So why bother? Because I have a simple belief that it is the duty of an organisation to deliver on what they promise, whatever that may be.

I accept that, in a constant bid to cut costs, companies are also cutting corners and that by doing so the 5% of customers for whom something goes wrong, will suffer. However, I know from personal experience that simply by making an effort to solve someone's problem, a company can turn a customer around. And we all know that it costs more to get a new customer than keep the one you have happy. So I get a warm glow whenever I experience top notch customer service - especially when it comes from an unlikely source.

Step forward Halfords.

Halfords is a UK retailer of car parts, bicycles and, increasingly, SAT NAV solutions. It is the first port of call for a Brit looking for engine oil, screen wash or a chamois (look it up!). It is also the place my wife decided to visit to replace a broken rear light on her car.

Halfords replace such items at a fraction of the cost of a car dealership. But having unsuccessfully tried to fit the bulb in her Renault Megane for 10 minutes, the assistant went off to find a Manager, who returned to say that the company does not fit replacement parts to Renaults. Apparently Renault makes it too difficult to replace parts, hoping you will have to go to the dealer direct.

Halfords offered a refund on the cost of the bulb (£2) and off Sharon went to the Renault dealership, where she was told that the unit housing the light had been damaged and would need to be replaced (parts plus labour to the tune of £72.72).

More in hope than anything else we wrote to Halfords. Surely they must understand that the damage to my wife's car had been done by them. Would they care to make a contribution to the cost of repairing their handywork?

To their immense credit, we received a repsonse a week later and a cheque for the full amount shortly after. Best of all we had no battles, no arguements, no raised blood pressure, no phone calls to the call centre. Everything was dealt with courteously.

I am not sure whether I am surprised because Halfords did the right thing or because I am conditioned now to expect companies not to do so. It is easy to get things right but hard to put things right when they go wrong. Halfords has gone a small way to restoring my belief that companies do care about their customers...

Too narrowband for me

2007-10-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

It always astonishes me the speed at which we get used to certain things. Be it mobile phones, PCs, email, web access, whatever. As soon as we have it we cannot do without it.

I had a job from 1990 to 1995 that gave me access to what was to become the Internet. At the time we were emailing with Eudora and web browsing with Mosaic. There were no corporate web sites, a few fan sites for different things and no real search engines. Whenever you did find a search engine, it always directed you to something you did not want.

When I joined a PR company in 1996, there was one computer with internet access. It was really slow and noone really knew how to use it. When we had to pitch to a company we either rang them up to find out about them or got a copy of their annual report sent to us.

Not now. Open access to the internet changed all that. I can find out anything now, in a matter of seconds. Google, Wikipedia et al mean I am no longer on my own. My first home PC had a 56K modem. At the time this seemed great.

Last week I was reduced to 56K again, and boy did it hurt. That which, not more than five years ago seemed the norm, last week had me screaming with frustration. My USB Modem could find the SFR network where we were in France but that was it - no 3G, no Wifi. How was I to cope?

Badly, as it turned out. Emails sauntered in, web pages loaded at their own pace and all the time the useage figure clocked up and up. For £25 a month I get all I can eat data in the UK. This is a no brainer as at least three or four times a month I access a Wifi hotspot at between £5 and £10 a pop. However, travel outside the UK and the price rises sharply - to the tune of £4.25 a megabyte.

Whilst my family made the most of the beautiful tranquility of Center Parcs in France, I cursed it - preferring to be somewhere less remote and less far from a Wifi connection.

Of course this is not really the story. The week was fantastic and, outside of the times I was working, we all had a great time.

We chose Center Parcs in France because it is so much better value than Center Parcs in the UK. Next time I will factor in the phone charges before making the comparison.

Imitation is the most insincere form of flattery

2007-10-14T11:07:00.001-07:00

I am writing this on a Sunday evening having just got back from the busiest cinema I have ever seen. I am sure that Ratatouille is worth it - how? Becuae I have now seen it! But I was astonished by the milling throng in the cinema.

I have mentioned before that the last time my wife, Sharon and I went to the cinema on our own was to see Castaway. It is an old gag but true, so let me use it again - that in itself should be enough to put me off for the rest of my life.

Since then, the only visits have been for kids films. Some are good (Flushed Away, Chicken Little), some are bad (Happy Feet, Robots, Stuart Little, The Huffalump Movie, The Tigger Movie, Over The Hedge, The Wild, you get the idea).

Basically most of them are rubbish, and mostly they are a bad rip off of the few good ones that exist. Take Madagascar for example. That was one of the good ones - a load of animals escape from a zoo and have some escapades. Original at the time. What follows? The Wild - an animal is disconnected from a zoo and has some escapades.

Whilst all is fair in love, war and films (clearly), it does make you wonder whether there is an industry dedicated to reaping not the rewards of a great idea, but the much more inferior rewards of "seond movie advantage".

And this is the nub. I remember reading the story of Chris Donald, the creator of Viz, an incredibly successful adult cartoon magazine that was at one time had the third largest circulation of any publication in the UK (http://qpyn.com/go/?3cvrn). His one real anger within the book was towards the other publishers that saw his success, tried to create something similar and just created something second best in every way. You only have to look at the celebrity magazine market, the reality TV programme market or the theme pub market to see how far this drives into society.

Of course it is bound to happen and good luck to the creators of imitation. Of course that time could have been spent creating something original instead.

And Ratatouille is magnificent. I plan to buy the DVD when it is released. Not only because I wat to see it again and am already interested in seeing all the bit I missed the first time. But also so that next February, when Ratataptap (the new hilarious movie about a rat that decides to take up a career as a tap dancer and makes the final of Strictly Come Dancing) reaches UK cinemas, I have something better to watch.

Playing Politics

2007-10-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

A week is a long time in politics so they say...

I am pretty sure (after all every political commentator I have read or listened to this week has told me the same thing) that in the UK, Gordon Brown was ready to call an election this time last week.

This morning, he confirmed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7031749.stm) that there will not be an election this year, and also probably not one next. So what happened between last week and this to make him change his mind?

One of the main reasons given has been "spin". Gordon Brown visited Iraq this week, announced that more troops would be coming home for Christmas, and then got a lot of negative publicity as it appeared that the withdrawl of troops announced was, in fact, one that had already been announced. This, combined with David Cameron's good showing in the Tory Party Conference (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7024919.stm) was believed to have moved the polls against the Labour Party, forcing Gordon Brown to shelve plans for an Autumn election.

Both political leaders are desperate to be seen as genuine. Take David Cameron's opening line from his party conference speech ("I haven't got an autocue and I haven't got a script, I've just got a few notes so it might be a bit messy; but it will be me.) Take Gordon Brown on becoming PM ("I will try my utmost. This is my promise to all of the people of Britain. And now let the work of change begin.") The two leaders will contest the next election using as much spin as ever. But they will use it to communicate their personality, their trustworthiness and their ability to govern.

Spin has existed as long as politics. Its recent bad press has been based around its use to promote personality not policy. When the election does happen, I hope as much attention is paid to policy as personality because, frankly, I do not care about the person who is PM, I care about what they will do.

As a PR guy I often face a challenge...would you prefer to be liked or to be right? Would you rather be your clients friend or your clients counsel? Ideally both, but we do not live in an ideal world. I think politicians have the same challenge. It is a shame that so many of them think so little of the voters that they prefer to be liked rather than right. Spin can only get you so far...

September

2007-09-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

I loathe and destest with a passion the phrase "time flies". To start with it is inaccurate. Time does not fly, it passes. If it passes quickly then perhaps it "passes quickly" but it does not fly.

Yet, having spent most if not all of my life loathing hearing phrases like "where has the year gone" and "I cannot believe it is a year since", I finally find myself a touch more sympathetic towards the concept. Why? Because I cannot credit the fact that the month of September has passed already and we are in the long (or proably for the "time flies" brigade, unexpectedly short) run in to Christmas.

I heard a theory the other day that makes sense related to this topic. The idea goes that, if you are, for example six years old, your whole experience of time is based around six years - so the gaps between birthdays and Christmas for example, seem to be forever, because all you know is six years in total.

When you get older, you have experienced multiple birthdays and Christmases, so time goes quicker because your whole concept of time is longer in the first place. This theory made perfect sense in the pub one Thursday night, although I still regret buying the "time goes slower" watch from the bloke who told me the theory for £50...

In the UK the nights are closing in again, the mornings are darker and this week a sure sign of the passing (or "flying" if you prefer) of time came when I was bullied into putting the central heating on.

My view on central heating has always been pretty negative. Whilst, like anyone, I like being warm, I remember the days as a student when we "double glazed" our windows with cling film. I have no idea if it was successful, but I doubt it. My view has always centred on the simple philosophy that if you are cold, put more clothes on/drink more.

Of course the last few years have been heaven in that respect. Central heating is now officially "environmentally unfriendly" and therefore joins the list of things like Chelsea tractors and Jeremy Clarkson that are discouraged in the modern age.

I finally gave in to the bullying earlier this week when it was particularly cold one morning.

Tonight the heating has come on as usual. Whilst privately counting the cost of every penny (probably more to my bank account rather than the environment to be honest), I have remained philosophical. No more. Tonight I faced the ultimate insult: "Why is so hot in here?".

More fun than you can handle

2007-09-24T09:49:00.000-07:00

My assertion that I will deliver a new blog entry on a weekly basis continues. However, I have failed again to hit my Sunday night deadline. I could make an excuse: it was my birthday this weekend. But truth be told it was pure lazyness. I could have, should have and would have, but didn't.

So how to celebrate being 38? A little while ago, we bought an annual pass for the Tussauds Group of attractions (http://www.annual-pass.com/). The premise is pretty simple. You buy a ticket that gives you free entry into a number of theme parks for a whole year. These include two that are pretty close to where we live. Last year we had a Legoland pass and we used it loads. And, to be fair, this pass is a bit of a lifesaver in the summer holidays as I am sure you can imagine?

So on Friday, my last day as a 37 year old, Sharon and I decided to go to Thorpe Park (www.thorpepark.co.uk) just the two of us. No kids, no queues, just the two of us with a big old theme park to go around. Fast rides, thrills but hopefully no spills.

First problem was a dodgy bottle of wine we had the night before going. Neither of us were feeling exactly top notch and fighting fit for a roller coaster! Second problem - half the park was closed, either for safety checks or refurb.

We gave it an hour. During that time we went on the X ride (backwards roller coaster - Sharon liked it - she could not see where she was going. I hated it - I could not see where I was going).

The highlight was Detonator (http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/explore_the_park/detonator/detonator.asp?css=2). By god it was high, by god you fall quickly, by god I am glad I did not have to queue for an hour like you would in the summer holidays.

Feeling our age we retired to do a bit of shopping and have some lunch. Some grow old gracefully, some disgracefully, and some of us just realise that fun is something we can only handle in small doses.

Autumn

2007-09-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

The first of September is an odd date. It serves as a wake up call for a million different reasons. The summer is over, people are back at work and, suddenly, everyone wants to get stuff done. It serves as the Autumnal alarm clock.

In the last few weeks I have received calls from new business opportunities, calls for headhunters asking for recommendations for roles to fill and an increased urgency from clients to get stuff done that, a few weeks ago, were not priorities.

A few years ago I had a job where the terms included six months' notice. When the time eventully came to leave, I needed to get the clock ticking before I got another job (imagine the advert otherwise: PR person required to start in six months' time - yep...).

I remember vividly being on holiday in Ireland at the time. My son was due to be born within six months, I was on notice from my job, it was August, no-one was looking for people. Uh oh, I thought, here we are about to become a father and I will be unemployed and penniless.

Yet along came 1st September - the calls started coming through and, eventually, I was lucky enough to have the choice of two really good job offers.

So, we enter the run into Christmas and as a family we took the first tentative step at the weekend. The first Sunday roast of the Autumn took place. Like the first barbecue, it seems to signify a change in the seasons. Already I am being lobbied for the return of the central heating. Huh. If ever we needed an Indian Summer!

Anniversary

2007-09-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

One of the less well reported anniversaries of the week was the 20th anniversary of mobile phone technology. It was reported by the BBC here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6983869.stm. I do not really agree with the sentiment that mobile telephony started in 1987 - Vodafone had existed as a company for more than two years by then - but this anniversary did set me thinking about how much impact the mobile handset has made on society.

During my days with Motorola, we often used to talk about the impact on emerging markets of mobile telephony. And there is little doubt about the effect mobile communications is having on a world that previously did not experience any form of telephony.

Whilst I am astonished by this, I also feel that it is easier to forget the impact that mobile communications has had on developed markets like the UK. Twenty years ago, text messaging was leaving personals on teletext, Blackberrys were things we picked from bushes not retail stores, photos were things we looked at but did not send, voicemail was answerphones (if you had one at all), phonebooks were address books that were written, predictive text messaging was unheard of and the Nokia ringtone was the figment of someones imagination.

We had never heard of camera phones, polyphonic ringtones (or any other), prepay, vibrate (well most of us had not!), SMS, WAP, GPRS, 3G, HSDPA, POP, SIM.

At least we had all heard of video calling. It was going to be the next big thing! At least not everything changes...

Done it!

2007-09-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

Today was the day of the O2O 10k race in Reading. I have done two 10k races before, including this one last year, which was my first. I am hardly what you would describe as a regular.

My objective this time, as always, was simple and two fold: run the race sub 1 hour and run it all (no walking, stopping etc). Whilst I have always managed a sub 1 hour time before (like...all of two times), I have never managed to run the whole way - it is a bit of a mental thing. I have run this whole distance in training but not in a race without a little walk here or there.

So the bottom line is I managed both. The time was 59 minutes and 39 seconds (cutting it fine huh?) and (considerable drum roll required here) I ran the whole way. No walking, not once, not even for a little bit.

First to the time. I was slower than last year so my paranoia kicked off as usual. However, checking the results earlier I notice that the winning time this year was a minute and a half slower than last year. So that's ok then. If the guy who managed to get round the whole course in little over half the time I did, took more than a minute and a half more than last year, I am not going to beat myself up for doing roughly the same!

On running the whole way? That felt like a great achievement. More so because I had not managed that previously. Twice I had been determined. Twice I had not quite managed it. Always (twice is hardly always but there you go, you see a pattern emerging) at the 7km mark I have lost the will to see it through. Not this time though.

I will avoid the "life is a race" cliches, to everyone's huge relief. But I am pleased that I have finally achieved a goal I set out to achieve. And I am pleased that I did not give up.

The right thing to do

2007-08-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

I was intrigued this week about the fuss caused by the Duchess of Cornwall’s plans to attend the memorial service for Diana Princess of Wales. For a PR person this made for an interesting dilemma.
For those who have not followed the story, the Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Camilla Parker Bowles) is the current wife of the Prince of Wales and is generally viewed as the person – at least within the media - most responsible for the break up of the marriage of Charles and Diana.

Diana, despite her untimely death ten years ago, remains an icon to the British people and is probably in death, even more than she was in life, one of the most iconic people in history. It is extraordinary to see the pictures of her this week. Like the best music, her image has neither aged nor seems out of date.

Camilla was apparently personally invited to the memorial service by Prince Charles’ (and Diana’s) children Princes William and Harry. She agreed to attend, then this week, following negative press comment, decided it would be better not to go. She felt her presence would be a distraction from the main event. She was probably right and, frankly, as a PR move, making the decision she has made (or been advised to make) is probably the right call.

Camilla could now be seen as having snubbed the desires of William and Harry and as uncaring for not attending the service. However, all of these accusations would have had more purpose had Camilla not agreed to attend, then changed her mind. Now the feeling is that she was prepared to go to the service, but now she has realised that to do so would be distracting.

It is a brilliant PR move. No one can accuse Camilla of not caring about the service, but at the same time, she will not be seen to be snubbing the service.

For a PR guy this provides two lessons that I think are really relevant. The first is that people have long memories. Ten years on, the public accept Camilla and may have warmed to her, yet there are still certain places that she cannot go, things she cannot do.

The second lesson is this – doing the right thing is the right thing to do. It is a mistake to do something for the PR value, but doing the right thing usually brings PR benefits of its own. I like to think that Camilla has looked at the situation, thought it through and decided to do what she thinks is right. If so, any PR brownie points she gains are well deserved.

100 days and counting

2007-08-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

I realised the other day that my business is now more than 100 days old (or should that be young). It has been an education but an enjoyable one and, in many ways, this week was typical of the whole experience so far.

This week a number of things happened that seemed to conspire to push things off course. Without boring you will all of the details, a combination of a few domestic appliance issues and some time lost through my own fault led to Friday without me having completed everything I had wanted to.

I had a panic for a while, then spent a big chunk of Saturday working, cleared a backlog and am back on track. The part of Saturday I was not working for and all of Sunday have been all the more enjoyable knowing that the things that needed doing are done. The lesson learnt will not be forgotten. I can accept that I am not always in control of when I work but that there is always a bit of space for flexibility. Oh and panic achieves nothing.

I am squarely back in my running shoes now. Since I got back from holiday, I have been working towards the O2O 10k race in Reading on 2nd September (http://www.readingo2o10k.com/). This was the first race I took part in when I ran it last year and I was pretty shocked to see that last year I completed it in 57 minutes and 6 seconds. My shock was because the first practice that I did over the same distance this year took more than 65 minutes. Fortunately, I have got a bit fitter since.

Last year I had two goals. First was to complete the course in less than 60 minutes and the second was to run the whole race and not walk at all. I achieved the first last year but not the second. Part of the way through the course, you can see the finish line, although you still have around 3K to go. Seeing the faster runners reaching the finishing line served not to spur me on but to drive me to have a bit of a rest…

This year I take the same two goals into the race but with a third objective, that will hopefully also help with the first two. I have decided for the first time to raise money by asking people to sponsor me. The cause is the MS Society, which is close to me. Should you wish to sponsor me, you can find all the information you need at http://www.justgiving.com/chrisbignell. Since I am determined not to stop running this year, I hope the drive of raising some money for a good cause will spur me on. If you do decide you want to support this, may I thank you very much in advance.

The customer is king ...

2007-08-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

So I blew it last week and missed posting. I do feel a bit disappointed with myself but there we go. Normal business resumed this week and whilst I could come up with a hundred excuses for not updating last week, I am not going to – the reality is I should have and did not. Enough.

It has been an eventful week. Back to work and I have been full of enthusiasm! My break was fantastic because it was two weeks and because it was so good to relax after quite a lot of worry when setting the business up. I loved being in La Rochelle and we are determined one day to buy a place close to there. To do so I need to continue to build the business and increase the rate at which we innovate and differentiate – hence the renewed enthusiasm!

Despite the abysmal football result for the Saints yesterday (http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/?page_id=8849), I remain positive. Luckily I went with my son who told me at the end “Never mind Daddy, it is not the winning that matters but the game”. Needless to say I gave him a stern talking to and sent him to bed early J.

My mind has been dominated this week by the concept of the customer experience. So few companies now say to themselves “how can we do this better”. There are so many examples, but having wrestled for almost two hours tonight to put together a bicycle with instructions that were about as useful as a chocolate teapot, once again my expectations as a customer have been short changed.

My wife, Sharon, used to be a very loyal customer of Direct Line insurance. On several occasions we considered changing insurers but she loved the service she received there and remained loyal. Finally, one year we looked for other quotes and found one considerably cheaper with Privilege Insurance. They were new at the time, but the price difference was enough for us to want to make the change.

A few days later the documentation arrived – only for us to realise that Privilege is a division of Direct Line. Despite Sharon’s loyalty to Direct Line over a period of 5 years, the company could offer her a better deal by moving to another brand rather than remaining with them. The cost of acquiring a customer is always more than retaining one. I wonder how many millions of others moved from one Direct Line company to another in the way we did.

The customer experience is an incredibly complex yet important area and it is one which I would like to devote more time to in my working life. I am convinced that, more than ever before, getting this aspect of a business right will propel companies forward.

French Leave

2007-07-30T00:17:00.001-07:00

So I am late blogging this week, but my excuse is this, I am in France…everything takes a little time over here.

As well as being very relaxing, pleasant, enjoyable and all the other clichés people use about holiday time (all of which are true by the way), there are also certain things one notices about a different country that seem to emphasise the difference between home and elsewhere. I have enjoyed observing this in the last week.

An example would be as follows: as a consequence of last week’s floods in England (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/6911778.stm), the car we used to drive here had a problem – it was filling up with water – to the point that both the driver’s and passenger’s footwell areas were wet through and you could see an inch or so of water in the bottom of the car. As the problem got worse day by day the initial plan to leave it until we got home, was canned for finding the nearest Peugeot garage (www.lara.peugeot.fr). We got there. They looked at their schedule. They offered to look at the car next week. We begged, cried and pleaded in broken French. No chance. We asked again. Oh, so you are really concerned? OK we can look at it now then…They gave us free bus tickets into the town, advised on the best place to have lunch and within a couple of hours we had a dry, clean car back. I am not sure what broke the initial reluctance. It may have been the efforts to speak the language or the look of horror on our faces at spending another week with the car filling up with water. Whatever it was, it worked.

Another observation is the road system. Whilst many of the best motorways are ‘péage’ – you have to pay a few Euros to use them – the cost is pretty reasonable and they are incredibly well maintained. The A roads are also in great shape. Once you get onto the village roads they are in a terrible state – repaired again and again, potholed and uneven. This might cause a problem if it was not for the fact that you are probably stuck behind a two ton pile of straw, doing a maximum of 10 miles per hour anyway!

Shades of Noah

2007-07-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

Quite often when something goes wrong, you are not in the position to recognise the enormity of the impact of an event on people.

Take the recent floods in the UK. Over the past six weeks or so, the UK has been in the midst of some of the worst weather for 40 odd years. Flash flooding has brought various villages and towns to a standstill all over the UK.

So what? Well the floods came to us on Friday and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it and, going forward, I am going to have a hell of a lot more sympathy for people affected.

To get to the happy ending right away, I am now sat with my wife and son in a house near La Rochelle in France enjoying our holiday. So our little drama on Friday did not in any way affect us beyond minor inconvenience. None the less, it was a very strange day.

We woke on Friday to find (like most people in the South of England) that it had been raining hard all night. Puddles were forming but nothing more really. Much like most of the last few weeks…

Having caught up with some work I had to go out at 10am to get some last minute stuff for our holiday. I drove no more than five miles from home and was out for less than an hour. However in that time, every way back to my house became blocked by flash flooding. We have been where we live for more than five years and never, ever, had even a minor problem before. Literally in a matter of minutes, the water level rose in some areas by several feet. I watched as police put up road blocks, only to see cars go past these and then become totally flooded within five minutes.

I spent the next five hours trying to get home – every single way I knew was blocked. I could get to within 400 yards of my home, only to find another van up to its roof in rain. I must have made more than 30 U-turns in one day. Even the afternoon school run held more excitement than usual for Sharon, joining hundreds of other parents and their kids wading knee deep in water through the roads surrounding the school making them impassable to all vehicles.

Inconvenient, a little weird and very annoying when we were on a schedule to get away on holiday but, as I mentioned already, we got here so what the hell – just an adventure really? Not for the people I saw on my travels bailing out their houses, removing carpets, etc.

I made it home at 3.30pm. That was four and a half hours for a five mile journey. I could have done without it but in comparison to some of the people I saw with either cars or houses full of water, not much of an inconvenience. So I feel guilty asking for this but, if possible, next time it happens can it please be some time I am not due to go on holiday? That would be nice.

I just got ‘poked’!

2007-07-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

OK, so everyone reading this will know instantly that I am talking about Facebook and, of course, like the rest of the world, you can find me on there. Check out one of my photos by the way, the one with the polar bears.

It is not the fact that I got poked, but by whom. Tim Kinder poked me. I have not seen Tim for probably more than ten years and the last contact I had with him was almost as long ago. Tim was a friend from University Radio Exeter, now known as Xpression FM (http://xpression.ex.ac.uk/). To be honest, we were not especially close (like best mates or anything) but I associate knowing Tim with a happy time in my life and I would certainly describe him as one of the World’s good guys, so it was great to hear from him.

And to me this is the beauty of Facebook. My parents’ generation still send long “round robin” letters at Christmas time along with the Christmas cards, all the latest on what they did, what their kids were up to, what holidays they went on. They were invariably torture to read.

Hopefully, Facebook is a replacement for that. I have no idea what Tim has been up to for 10 years, nor do I need to know every detail. No offence to him, but I have probably not thought about him for a while either. All the same, it is brilliant to know he is ok, and that we have reconnected through the internet. So thanks for the poke Tim and whilst our paths may cross infrequently, it is great to know you are well.

Up in the sky

2007-07-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

I had the most amazing experience yesterday. A friend offered to take me flying in a small plane he is qualified to fly.

We went from Thruxton (http://www.pilotfriend.com/UK_airfields/airfields/EGHO%20THRUXTON.htm) to Compton Abbas (http://www.abbasair.com/byair.html), had a spot of lunch and then headed back to Thruxton.

As I mentioned, it was an unbelievable experience. There were many reasons:

Although it was bumpy, it was nowhere near as bumpy as I’d expected – and in no way as bad as a commercial flight in turbulence
The take offs and landings were unbelievably smooth – again a much better experience than commercial flights – we seemed to just float into the air
Flying over Thruxton race circuit when there are car speeding round the track below is incredible
Everything (warning - cliché coming) looks so different from the air, but when it is an area you know, it is amazing what you see.

I can see why people get addicted…

In two weeks time, we are off on holiday and, for the first time in many years, we are going for two weeks. Last year we went to France for a week and the six days were not enough to completely relax. Determined to put this right, I booked the same accommodation as last year but for two weeks. Of course, this was before I had my own business so I was confident in my ability to head off for two weeks without the need for a laptop!

We are staying in a gite close to beautiful La Rochelle (http://france-for-visitors.com/atlantic/la-rochelle/index.html). I was lucky enough to go there as a kid and it seemed as idyllic then as it does now. We went to the same place last year, just after the real heatwave in the UK last summer (note the just after!). We spent the whole week searching for jumpers in the local shops.

Being a great believer in the “lightning cannot strike twice” approach, we are going to the same place, in the same week. Bring on the sunshine!

Meeting a legend

2007-07-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about my new life is the ability I now have to go off and do something because I want to, rather than because I have to or need to.

It does not happen that often, but this week was a great example. My friend Rachael Church-Sanders contacted me to ask if I would like to come along to her conference – Sport and Technology (http://www.sportandtechnologyconference.com/).

So last Friday I spent the day at Inmarsat in Old Street in a very interesting conference, discussing everything from convergence and its impact on sport to whether technology will replace the referee.

Most exciting of all, I got to meet a genuine football legend. Rachael is a huge Exeter City fan from her time at Exeter University (www.ex.ac.uk). We met when we were both involved in the radio station at the Uni (http://xpression.ex.ac.uk/), although at the time it was known as URE – University Radio Exeter.

Rachael had managed to persuade Exeter City’s (http://www.exetercityfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Welcome) legendary Director of Football, Steve Perryman (http://www.steveperryman.com/), to attend the drinks reception after the event.

In the short time I spent with Steve he truly was a gentleman of the highest order. It was a privilege to meet him and I wish I had asked him for his autograph! It could have been a first on ebay – “FOR SALE: Agenda for technology conference signed by Spurs legend”.

The events of Friday in London (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6253418.stm) were quite bewildering for a country boy up in the big City. It was an odd experience for me because on the tube that morning I was thinking how safe travelling around London now felt. I suspect getting into “town” in the next few weeks will not be without its traumas.

Annoyingly it took me ages to get home, not due to the car bombs but because the train company could not find a driver for the train. I think we can all forgive disruption due to the unexpected – delays due to the totally predictable are something else.

Keeping fit

2007-06-24T11:46:00.001-07:00

First of all I would like to congratulate my wife, Sharon, for managing to run the “Race for Life” today in some pretty poor conditions for running. It was no mean feat running 5km, cross country and in the pouring rain - to do so in a very respectable time is a great achievement.

My own running has suffered from a number of setbacks recently, but hope is now on the horizon. First “mystery virus” turned up and led to a week of “taking it a bit easier than you would otherwise take it” advice from the doctor. I stopped running.

During that week I also chose to go to London in a new pair of shoes. Within minutes I had blisters and by the end of the Mobile Awards I had blisters on my blisters. Running abandoned for another week.

Last week I got back into it and did several runs ranging from 2.5 miles to 4 miles. This week I am hoping to step it up again and also find some other forms of torture – probably by joining a gym.

I have been a member of a gym before, but I have always considered gym membership as something you pay for rather then find for whatever reason you cannot use (rather like insurance). This time I am determined it will be different, but I do wonder how many gym’s have a business plan based around knowing that more than 50% of people who join will go along less than five times before giving up.

When I worked in Camberley a few years ago, I used to swim each morning in the local pool. It was easy to get up, go to the pool, swim, shower and then go to work. You were always ok as long as you were out of the pool before 8.30am. After that was “gentle swim” time and woe betide anyone still in the pool at 8.31am trying to finish off their routine. The gentle swimmers were very territorial about their patch. Acting like a pack of panthers (only much slower, obviously), this group of octogenarian doggy paddlers would express their distaste by slowly surrounding the offending swimmer until they were forced to slow their pace to a much more acceptable 1 mile per hour or less. How we used to love watching the unsuspecting new boy being hunted down in super slow motion until the moment of awful realisation struck. What sport!

I have had an interesting week, other than yet another marathon session on the phone to my ISP this week. This time email was working but web browsing was not. AS usual they tried to blame this on my wireless router and as usual I told them this was not possible, so the next target for their “blamestorming” (http://www.unwords.com/unword/blamestorming.html) was a mystery virus hanging around my wireless network infecting anyone nearby. I was expecting them to tell me to get my computer to “take it a bit easier than you would otherwise take it” for a week or so…

1986 and all that ...

2007-06-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

I got a great email from a mate this week entitled Born Before 1986? You may have seen this going around before. The basic premise is that things were better back when. You can see a copy here: http://www.dublin.ie/forums/showthread.php?t=4170.

Whilst I do not buy the “the past is always better than the present” argument, the email did make me think about some issues. As I write this, my five year old son is upstairs happily using the Internet. He is more than adept at playing games on the various BBC sites on his own. I am lucky that he likes to play outside too, so I do not think this activity is a replacement for an active life, but his upbringing is very different to mine.

My son can watch any one of 15 or so kids TV stations on Sky – so many that kids channels have their own section on the TV menu. He can watch TV pretty much from when he gets up to when he goes to sleep if he wants to, and would if he could get away with it! I remember 1982 as the year where we finally got four choices of channel in total, only to realise that Channel 4 was “alternative” and had nothing for the young uns. Still, our teenage years were punctuated with watching the films on Channel 4 with a green triangle … and if that means nothing to you, no I will not elaborate!

I am not going to choose between childhood today and when I was a kid - thankfully I don't have to! What is certain is that my son’s generation will all be so familiar with technology that their opportunities will not be limited by whether they can use a computer or not – that will be a given. I only hope that the ability of my son's generation to communicate effectively is not impacted by their use of PCs, email, text and the rest.

Not that the average five year old always finds it that easy to communicate anyway. So far, we have wondered why he wanted us to switch on the Alligator in the car (turned out to be the Sat 'Navigator'). Yesterday, he kindly referred to me as a 'buffool' – I am guessing some hybrid of a 'buffoon' and a 'fool'. When we visited Legoland (www.legoland.co.uk) he wanted to go on the 'roastercoasters' and, to this day, his favourite drink is 'blackcarrot' squash. Any other examples that anyone can offer? There must be many.

Your letter....

2007-06-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Mobile Awards this week, thanks to the publication itself. It was a fantastic evening, held at The Brewery (http://www.thebrewery.co.uk/) - a venue I hadn’t been to before.

The awards were handed out by Omid Djalili (http://www.omidnoagenda.com/). He was fantastic, doing a really funny routine and then handing out the awards in the shortest respectable time.

On the way to the event, I shared a cab with some of the other guests. For some reason the subject got onto Jim’ll Fix It, a famous 70s and 80s Saturday tea time TV programme in the UK. Anyone of a certain age will not only remember the programme but also, chances are, they wrote to it too.

For those who did not grow up in the UK, the point of the programme was for children (mostly) to write to host Jimmy Saville (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Saville) requesting that he “fix” it for them to meet someone famous or do something exciting/amazing/etc.

I would bet that more than 80% of the kids that watched the programme wrote in with a “fix it”. In fact in the cab, everyone who watched the programme had written in at some point. From visiting Cadbury World – www.cadburyworld.co.uk (“we wanted to steal loads of crème eggs before Easter to sell at school”) – to dancing with Torvill and Dean (“I fancied her”) everyone had sent some request. My wife remains the only person I know not to have written in.

Probably the most famous “fix it” was a group of Cub Scouts who wanted to eat their lunch on one of the roller coasters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. In case you have never seen it, this short extract gives you some idea of the resulting mess - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wwPeSDCCAs.

After five weeks on my own now, I am really starting to enjoy working for myself and starting to get a bit of perspective on the job. I often find it takes a while to get used to a job and why should it be different working for yourself?

The only real negative is the admin chores – even more so when things go wrong. I had an email and hosting provider that had delivered the correct service for 80% of the past five weeks. This week I finally lost patience and dumped them for a better one. I would not name and shame but get in contact to know who to avoid!

On the same night my broadband fell over. Before I had my own business this was fine – it was always working again in the morning. Now this sends me into blind panic and paranoia – and onto the support lines, in this case for the best part of four hours. Don’t know why I bothered. I got nowhere that night and the next morning it was fine again.

By the way thanks to everyone who was kind enough to get in touch when I said I was ill. I was really surprised and grateful for the interest. For the record it was apparently some distant cousin of Glandular Fever – “not so serious but do a bit less than you would normally do”. Since starting out on my own, I have had this absurd desire to get everything done as quickly as I can, so this probably counts as good advice!

Being stupid and being ill

2007-06-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

I imagine breaking news is a bit of a double edged sword for a national newspaper journalist. On one hand there must be a real thrill in writing up a breaking story. On the other, what if you already had your front page all sorted out and ready to go?

I could sympathise today, as long you replace “breaking news” with “something monumentally stupid” and “national newspaper” with “personal blog”. I had decided what I was going to witter about (as much as I ever have) and then I decided to clean out the barbecue (nice bright evening for one) with the garden vacuum…

Fast forward 20 seconds. The positive: most of the debris in the barbecue is gone. The negative: Most of it is spread over the garden. In a less salubrious neighbourhood it would look like a huge cocaine deal had gone wrong. In my beautiful village, it was probably more likely a consignment of Women’s Institute talcum, destined for the Village Fete had crashed into the garden.

Anyway. I am ill. God knows what is wrong with me but it must be bad – I did not even have a glass of wine on Saturday night…I think it is a significant case of Man Flu (http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2077385.html). I am feeling better today than yesterday (when I had to sit in a boiling hot bath for about an hour, constantly topping up the hot with more hot, to try to stop my legs aching), but still not quite right. Symptoms are: headache, neck ache, legs aching, lack of energy. There is probably “something going around” – I think there always is, but if anyone has had the same symptoms and gone to the doctor, can you let me know if I need to worry or just keep taking the generic pain killers that they always tell you to take.

Whilst in the mood for help, does anyone know how to stop a cat from “poo-ing” in the garden. The most useful advice I have received online is “buy your own cat – it will never poo on its own patch”. Hmmm.,.not ours – it is too lazy to crap on anyone else’s garden. No sense of pride this cat.

It is a regular source of grief in our household that the garden I toiled to create over 18 months is mostly covered in cat poo. It drives me nuts – partly because I always seem to be the first to notice that the garden stinks and partly because, wrongly or rightly, I always think it is me that clears the stuff up. I can hear you saying “life is too short” but it is always the little things huh? The worst bit is I actually built the bloody cat a toilet – not with a flush or anything I grant you but all the same, I built a little outdoor cat litter place with a box for her to do her stuff. Yet she STILL chooses to crap all over the garden. It drives me nuts.

Anyway, I was going to blog about allergies and the benefits of a wheat and dairy free diet but that will have to wait till next week, now I have got all steamed up on cat poo.

To conclude, a short list of things I have loved this week:

Redbush tea (http://redbush.com/) I cannot get enough of this stuff at the moment. There must be something very soothing in it because it is really doing it for me.

Co-codamol: Ok I found these yesterday, left over from when I was really ill after having my wisdom teeth out but I have never known a pain killer like these – 10 minutes after using them I was feeling good. I am not in any way endorsing the use of pain killers, but these did the job for me yesterday.

Massage: After four weeks of lugging a laptop everywhere and then hunching over one when I got there, I needed my back sorting out – I went to Hampshire Court and that is what they did (http://www.qhotels.co.uk/hotels/the-hampshire-court-basingstoke-hampshire/reflections-spa-leisure.shtml).

Finally, finally (and if you have made it this far, my sympathies/congratulations (delete as appropriate) it seems I was talking even more rubbish than usual last week. Supertramp are NOT a middle of the road American supergroup but a middle of the road British supergroup. They still have a website (http://www.supertramp.com/) but despite their Britishness, do not mistakenly go to http://www.supertramp.co.uk/ – unless you want a trampoline!

2007-05-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

To borrow the words of a ‘middle of the road’ American supergroup (http://www.supertramp.com) – “It’s raining again….”.

I have a bucket outside my back door that had weeds in it from last weekend when we spent some time sorting out the garden. I was too tired after a day in the garden last Saturday to empty it and too lazy/overworked (delete as applicable) during the rest of the week to bother.

On Saturday it had weeds and nothing else in it. As I write this on Monday evening, it now has six inches of rain in it too.

This was a very visual reminder to me of exactly how much it had persistently rained in the UK over this Bank Holiday weekend. For those reading from outside the UK, Bank Holidays are really public holidays – not sure how they got to be called Bank Holiday although I am pretty sure you can find at least one opinion here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Holiday.

Two things are universally true about British Bank Holidays. These are the following:

No-one in Britain believes that we get enough of these holidays.
The weather will be extreme one way or the other on these holidays.

Examining the first of these theories first…it is certainly a well hold belief that seems to stand up as you will see here: http://www.tuc.org.uk/work_life/tuc-4809-f0.cfm. The information may be out of date but the sentiment is strong.

Regarding the second theory, it does seem to hold weight too. Invariably the Easter holidays will usually provide the opportunity for the first barbecue of the year. This weekend proved to be the other end of the spectrum.

I usually see weekends as time to spend relaxing at home so the fact that it has rained continually since 6pm Saturday wouldn’t normally cause me too many problems. I say “wouldn’t normally”, but my wife and I decided this was the weekend to get away for a few days.

Not sure if you have started a business before, but the following has been the pattern of the last four weeks for me.

1. Late nights/early mornings – not necessarily caused by work as much as planning, admin, adrenaline and, frankly, at times fear.
2. Poor sleeping – I only dream about work, people to contact, people to chase up, people I have not spoken to for yonks (by far my favourite word of the moment).
3. Lack of non-work related conversation outside of work. My wife has been helping out with some of the work things and this means that our typical conversation now consist of the following phrases: “Did you do that today?” or “Can you do that tomorrow?”

Incidentally, don’t’ think I am complaining about any of this. I have always and still do believe that work is important to me and I am thriving in this environment BUT, I still have to ensure that my relationship is not being neglected so…

So it was time for a trip away. In this case Cheltenham and the Hotel Kandinsky, part of the Alias Hotels Group (www.aliashotels.com). We had previously stayed in their sister hotel in Exeter and had a great time, so this was a much anticipated treat. All was good and we did have a great time BUT, it didn’t stop raining from start to finish…

So what to do? We ate well at La Tasca (www.latasca.co.uk) and The Slug and Lettuce (http://www.slugandlettuce.co.uk/page.php?VenueID=20) as well as in the hotel and everywhere else we went. We also went to Stow on the Wold (http://www.stowonthewold.info/) where we visited a Flea Market (no fleas) and then headed home.

Things to be aware of if you ever decide to visit Cheltenham:

1. There is no cinema at Cheltenham currently. The last film we saw at the cinema ‘sans children’ was Cast Away (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/). Many people may consider this alone a reason not to go to the cinema again but we were prepared to break the habits of years this weekend. No luck – no cinema.
2. GCHQ Cheltenham is an amazing building, but I would not suggest trying to get too close for obvious reasons (http://www.gchq.gov.uk/about/accommodation.html).
3. Everyone in Cheltenham seems to have a thing about rose wine – well especially in the Slug and Lettuce. I do not want to you think that we spent the whole weekend there, but in two short visits, totalling less and three hours, I saw more people order rose wine than I sold in 7 years working behind a bar.

All in all, it was a wet but wonderful weekend and a lovely way to celebrate our wedding anniversary in advance (ahhhh!!!). It was also really kind of my parents to look after children to make it happen.

Work-wise it has been another very busy week. I spent some time this week at the Wireless Event at Olympia (http://www.thewirelessevent.com/). My impression was that it seemed to be a show looking for an audience to a certain extent but having said that everyone I spoke with there felt it was worthwhile in terms of business generation so fair enough.

I met up with James Middleton from telecoms.com (www.telecoms.com) this week as well as Joia Shillingford whose blog is very good (http://joiashillingford.blogspot.com/).

The business continues to look good and despite my best efforts to avoid it, I have managed to do some admin this week too. Next week is an exciting one as I start work with a new client as well as (hopefully) having my first invoices paid. Blimey – it is like having a real business!

2007-05-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

It is a beautiful day – why not go down to the coast, get some fish and chips and sit and eat them by the seaside!

Earlier today, enjoying the first day of unbroken sunshine for ages, a kernel of an idea sprang forth. Forty five minutes later we were 4 miles from Southsea. Forty five minutes later we were still 4 miles from Southsea. Note to self…not every idea you have is either unique or original.

Having parked (a mile away for £5), we made our way to the promised fish heaven. I have tasted fish and chips from Whitby (www.whitby.co.uk), and my wife hails from Tynemouth and the stuff they serve up is not too shabby either. It seems ironic to me now that I live 10 minutes from the best fish and chip shop in Hampshire, yet I chose to go 60 miles to get some seaside stuff that was not very good at all. Still, what the heck, it turned out to be a good day.

It is a long time since we have ventured to Southsea – and last time was to check out the Aquarium (http://www.bluereefaquarium.co.uk/) . This time we went for route one fun with a trip to the funfair (http://www.clarencepier.co.uk/index.htm) .

Last year we had a season ticket to Legoland (www.legoland.co.uk) . We went a lot and by the end of the season, even the kids were getting a little tired of the rides. This was a new concept for me: a (what seemed like) temporary structure with a load of fairground rides strapped to it. First time I went on the roller coaster I was thinking “how is this secured to the ground”. Second time I tried not to think of it and just went with the flow. It was a lot better.

It would be tempting to make the cheesy segue into how much running your own business is a roller coaster ride but I am going to avoid that one. Anyway, I have had a good week re-establishing contacts with old colleagues and discovering once more what a small world we live in. I re-established contact with an ex-Toshiba colleague who is now at Novatel Wireless UK (http://www.novatelwireless.com/) – five minutes from where I live. I also caught up with Mary Lenninghan of Total Telecom, which is a brilliant resource for telecommunications news (www.totaltele.com) and guess what, she went to the same University as me. I am seriously expecting a long lost cousin to turn up next week as editor of the Economist.

Enough of work, it is still Sunday evening, the sun is shining and whilst I will be 100% back in business mode tomorrow morning, it is quite nice right now to smell the fresh cut grass and chill for a moment or two more.

By the way, for those who care but do not yet know, the Saints did a great job, but lost on penalties in their bid to reach the playoff finals (check last week’s blog for details) (http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/match/?page_id=6599&fixture=2840548&t=2) . I was very proud and also wish Derby the best in the play off final.

The Grecians of Exeter fared no better today with a defeat at Wembley (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/6649837.stm) . Not sure whether the day out was worth the defeat for those I know who attended but I hope so. There is always consolation on disappointment. You just have to find it!

2007-05-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who sent me a note last week. I have now managed to set up a blog site where you can also find this weekly update so, from next week, I will only drop you a note with the url rather than my random ramblings – much easier to ignore should you wish to!

Anyway, trust you have had a good week. I have had another busy time – both working with my clients, which was great, and more frustratingly, trying to sort our bits of admin etc that seems to take forever but needs to be done all the same.

Of course it has been a short week as well with the Public Holiday in the UK on Monday.

I spent two out of the four working days this week in London. I also had a couple of meetings with a new client that is starting to work with me next month. More about that when I can share who they are and what they do!

It was great to catch up with James Blackman, the editor of Mobile News this week (http://www.mobilenewscwp.co.uk/) – at a Costa Coffee in London on a rain sodden Thursday.

It was also very good to catch up with Steve Williams from UKTI this week. I worked with Steve when I was at Motorola on a couple of events and he was kind enough to give me some of his time this week to explain more about the work of UKTI and how this might be of interest to my business (http://www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk/).

The admin frustrations this week were led by my inability to set up a wireless file sharing network at home. I am no technical expert but also probably know a little more than the average bear about these things but for some reason I could not work it out for myself… more effort required next week! (Any help greatly accepted). I also caught up with Matt Warder from Edelman this week for a beer and his response was “Why not get someone else to do it for you – are you trying to run a communications business or an IT business” – good point well made!

As I write this I am watching Manchester United lift the Premier League trophy, and Sheffield United get relegated. My own team’s efforts (www.saintsfc.co.uk) to get promoted to the Premier League got severely dented by a home defeat to Derby in the first part of the play offs. Part two will be on Tuesday night and frankly I am not looking forward to it. My college mate Adrian Hobart now works for the BBC, is a huge Man United fan and managed to do the report on BBC news about United winning the title. Somehow he kept it very professional!

There is a ex Exeter Uni frenzy currently because Exeter City FC (http://www.exetercityfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Home/0,,10436,00.html) have managed to get to a one off game to return to the football league at Wembley next weekend. I know several Exeter grads who are going and am sorely tempted to make the trip myself. Hopefully they can do themselves justice!

Trust you have a good week and hope to talk face to face soon

A week is a long time in business

2007-05-08T01:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to thank everyone who’s wished me luck striking out on my own and also tell you a little about XL Communications’ first week.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time getting to know two of my new clients this week. Both come from people who I have worked with previously. I will let you know more as time goes by but we had a nice piece of exposure for one of them on Mobile Today this week. If you want to see it, you can do so here: http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/content/16182.asp?men=0&sub=1

Mobile Today is run by Mobile Magazine and is a great source of information for people interested in the UK mobile market and I spent a few hours with Guy Middleton this week who is editor of Mobile. We managed to grab a couple of beers in Soho.

It was good to catch up with Steve Mallison-Jones from Indigo Red this week. Steve runs probably one of the best PR recruitment businesses in the industry (http://www.indigored.biz/).

Two days of my time was spent at MEX (www.pmn.co.uk/mex/). MEX is run by PMN and is aiming to get the user experience on the mobile handset placed at the centre of debate about the future of mobility. It was a fascinating couple of days in London, catching up with those I had not seen for a long time and meeting new people. I was also one of three people tasked with noting down everything that was said so that a report could be produced after the event. I have spent a few hours since trying to make sense of my notes…!

I also attended a Sport and Technology (www.sportandtechnology.com/page/0001.html) event at Virgin Media thanks to my old friend Rachael Church. It was great to catch up with Rachael at the event and very interesting to meet the people who were there.

Over the long weekend we have been busy getting loads of admin done. The highlight of the weekend for me was the Saints making it to the play offs for the Premier League (this will mean nothing to those not interested in football/soccer!) The rumour mill is still full of a take over of the club by Paul Allen of Microsoft fame. The best load of rubbish I heard at the game was the theory that the football club owns land by the waterside so Mr Allen can park his boat there…hmmm

I managed to get a 10k run in on Saturday. I am planning to do the Hook 10 mile race (http://www.hookfunrun.com/) in two weeks time and I am seriously in need of doing some more practice! No “justgiving” page yet but maybe next week….

Thanks again to everyone who sent their best wishes. Looking forward to the chance to catch up in the next few weeks.

All the best

Chris