Celebrating Success with Prince’s Trust: sponsoring awards is always fun especially when it helps the winners really get on in life

Sean Duddle Brown, winner with Andrew Haskell

I enjoyed a great afternoon and evening in a room full of genuinely stimulating people at the Prince’s Trust ‘Celebrate Success Awards’ in Cambridge last month (Mon 05 Nov 2012).

It was especially satisfying because I had the privilege of presenting the award for ‘Educational Achiever of the Year’ sponsored by Smart421 and KCOM Group plc.

As a high-tech business we really understand the importance of education, training and development in order to stay ahead of the wave of new technology.

Andrew Haskell with Darren Atkins, runner-up

 

I think that it’s really inspiring to hear how some of the young people supported by the Prince’s Trust have overcome real adversity and stuck with education to achieve great results.

Well done to all who picked up awards Monday evening and to all of the nominees – you’re all winners in my eyes.

 

Everything you could automate with IT was completed by 1981

Office Printer
Photo: Frank Baron for The Guardian

I was reading some spam about how IT is really changing the business world today and it got me thinking. When I started work in 1981 everything was already run on a mainframe, so in my opinion the next 30 years of computing was not been about delivering change at all – it was just about moving things backwards and forwards.

In the first 15 years the only demonstrable changes for users was the location of their printer and their applications. Printing went from a computer centre, to a print room in their building and then on to their desk. Day to day applications moved from the computer centre to their desktop PC and then to a computer room in their building.

The following 15 years moved things about again. Moving the printer back to the end of the corridor and printing into colour; applications moved from the computer room back to a computer centre; printed documents moved from the filing cabinet to the recycling bin; the development team moved 5000 miles away; and finally our private experiences started to move from a close circle of friends to being publically available on the internet.

What next ? Every application is moving to a mobile device; data is moving to ‘somewhere in space’; and we’re even being encouraged to ‘bring our own device’ to work – moving the workstation to the home and back each day.

The future of work is rapidly changing and perhaps now, at last, we will have the next phase of true automation.

But I’m yet to be convinced.

 

Kanban: What is it good for?

Benjamin Mitchell
Photo by James Neale

No doubt about it, Benjamin Mitchell’s (Twitter @benjaminm ) presentation at SyncNorwich last night certainly resonated with attendees.

Kanban: What is it good for? An introduction illustrated with war stories

Approaching a hundred people packed into The King’s Centre in Norwich for the monthly meetup of SyncNorwich, the geek-friendly interest group which was only launched 5th June this year and which has already proven to be a big hit with start-ups, developers and technologists from many tribes.

Mitchell, a Lean/Agile consultant and coach with experience in financial trading systems, delivered a proficient and well-grounded 45-minute keynote using nothing more than Post-It Notes and a powerpoint featuring index cards and even more Post-It Notes, clearly the stock-in-trade of a busy Agile Scrum master.

Networking at SyncNorwich
Photo by James Neale

Repeatedly extolling the virtues of keeping things simple and avoiding the pitfalls of planning systems like Jira, he impressed on the audience the art of the possible with a few ‘basic’ techniques from Kanban – the manufacturing process democratised by Toyota – which, when applied to the world of application development, promises to transform lurching or limping projects into lean projects with little (or less and less) wasted time.

“Monitors in daily stand ups suck the energy,” cautioned Mitchell. There spoke the voice of sometimes bitter experience, which came across loud and clear. I did notice several people in the audience stratching away on backs of envelopes, a ‘note to self’ for action next Monday perhaps. No shame in that. We were all here to learn something. My note to self: ‘buy more masking tape’

Note to self
Photo by James Neale

His witty anecdotes and on-the-fly Questions and Answers engaged everyone and enlivened what could so easily have been a mundane or routine subject area for those without deep expertise. This meant that he connected with attendees at all levels, including those new to kanban with no prior knowledge of direct experience. Skillful stuff indeed.

Recounting tales of holding agile scrums in fire escapes (to avoid the attention of an enemy CTO) and Agile-sceptic managers who “won’t blame you – yet”, Mitchell performed like a one-man comedy store, blending hard facts and soft skills which, to me anyway, came across as persuasive and surprisingly compelling.

Mitchell recalled an Agile development project when he wore a t-shirt sporting the message “Our ambitions outstrip our capabilities” causing uproarious laughter amongst the developers and testers in the audience and a few wry smiles from secretly-embarrased managers. No names no packdrill here, mate, you’re safe.

In all, it was a well-tuned and cleverly-crafted slot. Mitchell’s delivery was as good as the content. It was hard to know how the organisers might top the Lightning Talks at the August meetup. We need not have worried.

As well as intros from Paul Grenyer, and cold beers, I think this is exacty the kind of quality that SyncNorwich will become known for.

Twitter:  @SyncNorwich
Read the feed:  #SyncNorwich

All photos by kind permission of James Neale Photography

RELATED LINKS
Benjamin Mitchell’s blog  http://blog.benjaminm.net
IT Kanban Podcast http://itkanban.com/podcast/

 

Sentiment feels nice – Reality is better – lessons in teamwork from Team GB at London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Louis Smith
Photo: courtesy of TeamGB.com

When Team GB men’s gymnast Louis Smith said “Team Success beats Individual Win” he just about said if all. Now there’s a man who not only excels as an individual but also understands the power of team work, and demonstrated it yesterday.

Louis Smith showed in Men’s Team Final that individual contribution to team success is where it’s at and picked up an Olympic Bronze medal alongside Max Whitlock, Dan Purvis, Sam Oldham, and Kristian Thomas.

Of course, you don’t have to be an artistic gymnast or an Olympian (or both – eh Louis?)  to know the power of team work.

Most Smarties train hard, work hard and play hard but would never claim to be Olympian. However, people tell us that same sense of teamwork pervades everything we do, on every engagement for event client. Sentiement is nice but reality is better.

We’re loving seeing team work in action at London 2012.  If you’d like to keep track of the Team GB medal haul, check out our company homepage smart421.com

#OurGreatestTeam

 

#OurGreatestTeam – our shameless enthusiasm in support of Team GB at London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

#OurGreatestTeam – we can relate to that.

Never mind worries of the underground being squeezed and the overground delays because of momentary heatwave – the London 2012 Olympic  and Paralympic Games is upon us. It’s been a bit of a organisational marathon just getting here. And the official brand police is watching so a thousand apologies if this blog avoids brand names (apart from our own that is).

Like you, we’re finding the building enthusiasm quite contagious and, like the majority of the nation, very keen to see Team GB do well.  And because team work means so much to the kind of work we do everyday, we’re truly loving their Twitter @TeamGB #OurGreatestTeam  – all 541 of them  (convenient if it was 421 but- oh well) .

So we’re showing our support with new banners on our own homepage smart421.com

Also from Monday (30 July) the Smart421 homepage will display Team GBs medal haul, and we’ll keep it updated everyday so you know where to come for the latest news on how many medals Team GB has achieved.

All the rumpus during the last 69 days with the Torch Relay teaches us some important lessons:  for example, if I stood on the Cornhill in Ipswich or the Broadgate centre in the City (or anywhere else for that matter) wearing a posh tracksuit and carrying a flame-on-a-stick, the chances are I might get some raised eyebrows, plenty of  ”tut-tutting”, maybe get badmouthed on Twitter or certainly get moved on by the cops.

But – just imagine – add a fanfare, a police escort and cheering crowds – suddenly the flame-on-a-stick takes on an entirely different significance.

So right now, we’re off to get ready for the Opening Ceremony.

Enjoy the weekend watching the Games and see you Monday for an update on Team GB medal haul.

 

Three and Out ! – online banking apps, mobile networks and broadband outages point to why more resilience is now needed

“outages with online banking apps, mobile networks and broadband point to why more resilience is now needed” Martin Brazill

I’m beginning to feel like I’ve had a glimpse of the Stone Age. My personal BT Broadband was down for eight days which left a surprising large gap in my life.

Why ? Well, I needed to pay my credit card bill which I always do on-line in the evening – very convenient. So without broadband I decided to fall back to my O2 smart phone and my Nat West Banking app. Ah – only to hit problems with the bank, which was off line due to the widely publicised RBS problems. So I decided to phone up my branch – ah [again] no mobile network was available.

OK, so I survived a few hours “off the grid” but it did make me think that with our dependency on technology and communications we need stronger resilience. Up until now the pace of change has been so great that it’s been [comparatively] uneconomic to build resilience.

Now with the maturity of the Cloud solutions there are fewer costs barriers and no excuses not to build that resilience. Smart421 is already helping our customers with this – so if you want us to help you please form an orderly queue here.

And yes, I managed to get my credit card paid off too – eventually.  Phew.

 

Amazing what you see on the morning commute into London – if you look up.

The Shard, London

As the majority of ‘Smarties’ will tell you, the morning commute to client site or Group offices can be a mixed blessing. Although it’s great on arrival,  the getting to where you want to go can be quite another matter. Second-guessing train delays, travel connections, negotiating traffic jams and walking the ‘final mile’ are all part of the day’s work for an ‘out and about Smartie.

Not that you’ve ever have those kinds of problems – right?

A Smartie’s friend who works between Bermondsey and Borough inspired us recently with an early morning email. With it came an attachment  – a remarkable photo of London’s new landmark, taken as they trotted across London Bridge.

“… all the commuters just stopped… to take a picture”, he said.

We’re loving The Shard, London.

If you look up, it’s amazing what you see on the morning commute.

What remarkable things have you seen on your commute?  Let us know.

Photo used with kind permission of Simon Sweet.

 

Today is 1989

Think back to the late 1980′s – the PC is pervading offices and I am running the Information Centre in Mobil Oil, developing small PC applications and running a Help Desk.

Every day a business user would come to me with a well thumbed copy of PC Magazine to show us some whiz-bang PC they had seen or some software they wanted.

My job was to ‘hold the line’ and stick to the strategy – 3 year refresh cycles. More often than not they had greater desktop processing power at home than at work – I certainly did. What we had not grasped was that the PC had become consumer technology – the IT department had to catch up.

Fast forward to late 2011 and we have the Cloud. How many IT managers are still ‘holding the line’ ? Now they face users with well thumbed iPads accessing their holiday photographs from their Cloud storage saying it’s going to revolutionise the way they work.

This time it is the 5 year outsourcing deal that stops them embracing the change.

So has Cloud become consumer technology now ?

My view is that it’s well on the way – with iCloud here and G-Cloud on the way we will be using it as consumers and citizens before we know it.

Should I be worried ? Only if I was back running my old IT Department.

 

World’s Biggest Coffee Morning

Even though we’re a hi-tech ICT business, we have been known to down tools now again to support a worthy cause.

Yesterday saw just that, when staff at the Ipswich technical centre invested their morning break to join companies, community groups and individuals up and down the country in the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning - an initiative of MacMillan, one of the UK’s leading cancer support charities.

Our staff rose to the occasion and the tables in our staff Bistro were choc-a-bloc with every sort of cake imaginable. If anyone wants any baking lessons, they need only ask some of technology practices on how to turn out a great sponge, or the secret of carrot cake, or adding a fondant icing to a chocolate fudge cake.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of fun and consumed a lot of cake. But more importantly, everyone did their bit and stumped up a donation to help support the fantastic work done by MacMillan.

Pleased to confirm that we were able to donate over £300. So a World’s Biggest thanks to all our staff for their generosity !

 

Good day in the office, plus 20K for charity

From left: Steve Meek (Smart421), Adrian Koertzen (O2), James Reddington (O2), Neil Ralph (Smart421)

Wednesday (7th Sept) was a good day “in the office” – well… ok then, remote office - at Newbury and Crookham Golf Club. Smart421 directors and account managers joined other senior executives from Telefonica UK and partner firms for a great day of golf in aid of two excellent UK charities:  Think Big, and Naomi House Childrens Hospice.

There was a good turnout  – 28 four balls in total (14 four balls teeing off from the 1st and 14 from the 10th). Smart421 were joined by friends from Telefonica UK and Amazon Web Services. We met several new friends at the 19th !

The day was excellently organised by O2, and the entire team led by Karl Littlewood deserve full recognition for all their hard work front of house and behind the scenes.

The fairways and greens at Newbury and Crookham were in excellent condition and obviously put up a good fight, as many players reported how they got caught out several times on what seemed to be obvious shots. That’s what we like to hear.

Nearest the pin winner N. Edwards receives his prize from Neil Miles, MD at Smart421

Smart421 sponsored the Nearest the Pin on the 17th (160 yards, Par 3) which was won by N. Edwards (8 feet).

As we went around, we witnessed some excellent drives, memorable recoveries and near-professional putting. Some other shots are probably best forgotten.

Revived from a decent 2-course buffet and a pint, players packed the club house for the evening. This included presentations from the two charities (John Wilkes at Naomi House and Kate Hyson at Think Big) and prize giving by the sponsors (DHL Supply Chain, SapientNitro, Smart421 Ltd, Bytemobile, Utilyx, IMI Mobile, Cisco, Ericsson, Hartwood Services, Hays, Alcatel-Lucent).

Overall Winner team with Neil Miles

Smart421 sponsored the overall Winning four ball, which was collected by a rather astonished-looking D. Cronin, R. Sang, J. Lingard and J. Hannity (wth a very respectable 108 points).

The evening was topped off by celebrity auctioneer Jonathan Pratt and the organisers were able to confirm that the day had raised over £20,000 for the charities.

All photography by Jim Templeton-Cross