Author Archives: Josh

A great way to think big and uncover your company’s potential

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Originally published over at Melbourne.co.uk

In a company like ours, where we’re dealing with customers 24/7 and managing the day-to-day activities of the business, finding time to think about the future can be a challenge. There’s always something you could be doing – a ticket that needs responding to, a report to write – but taking a step back and flexing our imaginations from time-to-time is just as important.

In the tech industry, there are literally no limits to what we could achieve, yet as technologists, we can sometimes experience a failure of imagination because everything is a problem that needs to be ‘solved’.

However, disconnecting ourselves from the distraction of solving a problem immediately is potentially the strongest approach to thinking imaginatively and uncovering our potential as a business. Let’s ignore the limits of today and think what “could be”.

I recently facilitated an internal workshop aimed at doing just that. When I announced we were “going to play a game”, there was an unsurprising degree of scepticism. Games are what we play on the Xbox, or the pool table to let off steam – not to develop the business. But I decided to try out The Grove’s Cover Story game, to allow participants the opportunity to unleash their visions for the company.

The Game

You can play Cover Story online instantly!

Essentially, I asked participants to imagine a future accomplishment of Melbourne so big  that it gets published on the front page of a newspaper. The aim was to uncover shared goals and come up with ways of making those happen.

The game is simple. The below process is adapted from the Grove website.

Start by drawing a large cover story poster for each 5 – 8 person group. Arrange the chart however you want, but make sure it has the following six components:

  • Cover – states the spectacular success accomplished by the company
  • Headers – reveal what the story is about
  • Sidebars – include parts of the report
  • Quotes – testimonials about the accomplishment from anyone imaginable
  • Images – pictures that support the cover story
  • Brainstorms – used for writing down ideas before starting the activity

After taking 5 minutes for players to quietly ponder where they want the company to go, have the team members collaborate with their groups and fill in the components of their charts. This can last 30 – 45 minutes.

Once all the cover stories are complete, give each group 5 – 10 minutes to present their big-picture ideas. As a team, work to recognise any commonalities among the stories and reflect on how these similarities can actually be applied. While some of the stories may seem extravagant, the collective thinking process may uncover real possibilities for your company’s future.

Why it Works

The Grove says that without a creative outlet, it is easy for companies to get stuck in a mundane slump, not progressing toward its potential.  The game allows you to dream of the improbable, which could lead to envisioning what is attainable. By freeing yourself from all restraints, you can release your imagination and think big in order to realize what direction your company should move toward.

I’d recommend every company – no matter how big or small – have a go at playing the Cover Story game: it’s a great way to stop thinking about the restrictions and identify your company’s shared goals.

Josh @ Melbourne

The Jubilee Time Capsule: 80,000 memories

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Originally published over at Melbourne.co.uk

Memories are precious. You can’t replace them. “Memories are what warm you up from the inside”, wrote Haruki Murakami.

And throughout the 60 years of her reign, the Queen will undoubtedly have inspired countless memories in her capacity as Head of State and Head of the Commonwealth.

I think that’s why I’ve been so personally excited by the Jubilee Time Capsule project, that we are an important part of. It’s more than just a bunch of servers humming away in a datacentre: it’s a unique collection of memories. Over 80,000 of them, in fact, submitted by people from across the world, creating a crowdsourced archive of the Queen’s 60 years on the throne. Photos, videos, text: all part of a digital timeline unlike any other in history. And we’re proud and honoured to be chosen to host this unique time capsule for the 21st century.

In September, the Jubilee Time Capsule was closed for entries and “sealed”. So today, my colleague Steven and I have headed to that London for a very special event. Following the sealing of the capsule, the best 60 entries have been collated by an impressive panel of judges. This Diamond (re)Collection will then be presented to Her Majesty the Queen on a Samsung tablet.

It’s hard to believe that something we’ve been working on over the last year will now be presented to the Queen. It’s a huge honour, of course, but for us it also represents something that’s one of our core values: trust. Trust is something that’s earned, and we’re humbled really, that, as a team of young-ish, northern(-ish) geeks we’ve been trusted with delivering the hosting for a project on behalf of one the oldest institutions in the world.

Thanks must go to the guys at Capsool.com who developed the technology and to our friends at Attido Mobile who designed the iPhone and iPad apps to help people upload memories to the capsule. And, of course, a huge thanks to our support team at Melbourne, who helped design and provision the servers that host the Jubilee Time Capsule. While it was treated with the same love and care as all our customers get, it’s great to demonstrate that the platform has experienced 100% uptime – which is exactly what we aim to offer to all customers.

So as I write, we’re about to set off to the Commonwealth Club now. We’ll be uploading our own snaps and videos from the day on Twitter so keep an eye out over @MelbourneHost.

Live your life in the cloud with 4G

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I’m barely coherent without a coffee in the mornings. So it was fortunate that I nipped over to Teacup on Thomas Street before work for a cup of coffee and a spot of BBC Breakfast with Rory Cellan Jones to talk about today’s 4G launch.

For the uninitiated, 4G (or LTE as it’s sometimes called) is the latest generation of mobile phone technology, allowing significantly faster mobile Internet connectivity. In fact, Rory’s tests this morning showed 19 Mbps and 15 MBps up, which is even better than the UK average broadband speed of 9 Mbps!

Given that more and more of our personal data is being hosted and processed in the cloud, and our increasing reliance on mobile data apps, the advent of 4G cannot come quickly enough. Fast, reliable mobile data will only increase the use of cloud technologies to store and share content. More and more of us will live our lives in the cloud.

However, as with any brand new technology, there is a cost. Users have to invest in a whole new infrastructure, with only a limited number of handsets currently supporting 4G in the UK and the small, current data tariffs don’t reflect the potential of storing your life in the cloud.

Nonetheless, this is just the start. Like 3G, ten years ago, the technology will mature and consumer choice will expand. For cloud providers like us, it’s an exciting time to step-up to the plate and continue to deliver reliable, secure infrastructure for future 4G-based uses.

 

Macclesfield – on the leading edge of digital

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Until recently, my only knowledge of Macclesfield was of an unfortunately named supplies shop. And, of course, I’d heard the rumours about a Bond-villain style mansion owned by a certain global mega-agency.

But in fact, I’ve learned that Macclesfield is a burgeoning digital and creative hub.

Set amongst the leafy lanes of Cheshire, the town of Macclesfield has attracted some high-profile names such as Matmi and become an attractive choice for growing businesses like Abstraktion. It’s less than half an hour from Manchester and on the fast line to London too.

So last Wednesday, the cosy surrounds of Inca Cafe Bar played host to some of the leading digital and creative businesses in the area. My occasional cycling buddy Martin invited me and Chris Marsh down to his event Digital Edge, to meet some of the leading digital businesses and give our perspective on the future of the cloud.

Digital Edge is a fun event. About 30 of us packed out the venue, where Claire the owner was serving up local beer, cider, tasty toasties and stew. Good honest grub. And that, for me, really set the tone. Martin had asked us to serve on a ‘panel’, but essentially it was a two-way conversation throughout; an inquisitive, intelligent audience really testing our knowledge about cloud computing and debating our opinions about the future.

We were pretty conscious of turning up to an event like this and not knowing anyone, but there were friendly faces and, of course, Martin kept everything running smoothly – including plying me with some 6% cider from Somerset. And with a crowd that size, it’s actually a chance to talk to everyone that turns up, rather than whipping round quickly collecting business cards.

So is Macclesfield the new Silicon Roundabout? Well apart from the sheer fatuousness of that statement, there is something going on in the cobbled streets of this market town that’s making an impact around the world. We’ll be going back whenever we can to learn more.

Sign-up to Digital Edge on meetup.com and follow them on Twitter: @digitaledgemacc.

Is the cloud the right fit for owner-managed businesses?

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In 1919, a young man named Conrad bought a 40-room hotel in Cisco, Texas. It was a backup plan; he’d originally wanted to buy the town’s bank. The hotel did surprisingly well and, in 1925, he opened his first high-rise hotel: the Dallas Hilton, and the first hotel to bear his name.

Fast forward almost 90 years, and I’m in the Manchester Hilton: a tall, gleaming edifice that stands testament to Conrad Hilton‘s entrepreneurial spirit despite war and economic depression. It’s a building that often scrapes Manchester’s perma-cloud so perhaps for those reasons, it was an ideal place to take part in a seminar about what ‘the cloud’ can do for entrepreneurs and owner-managed businesses.

For the more cynical amongst us, it may seem surprising that in 2012, we’re still discussing what ‘the cloud’ is. Unfortunately, this is a side-effect of the term ‘cloud’ becoming the biggest buzzword since “social media”!

No more. To be honest, we got involved in this seminar because there’s so much misinformation or inaccurate content that exists about ‘cloud computing’ and saw it as a chance to set the record straight. But, perhaps more importantly, it was also a chance to sit down with some of the region’s leading entrepreneurs and answer their questions about the nature of the cloud and how it could help them grow their businesses.

And it’s not surprising that most people are confused. The cloud has been touted as the answer to everything from managing your accounts to avoiding your mother-in-law! But, as with everything, the real answer is to talk about what you’re trying to achieve and then examine whether cloud technologies can play a part.

But time-starved business owners still want a simple answer. The best I can offer is that, with a reputable cloud provider, using a cloud-based option can offer increased reliability and flexibility over traditional hosting and software delivery methods. It’s also easier to scale up resources allocated to cloud hosting and, importantly, scale down – meaning businesses that are growing rapidly can rapidly expand their technology infrastructure and also respond to seasonal demand.

It’s tempting to start with a technology – be it cloud, or physical – and design a solution around that. The thing is, a cloud solution that’s poorly put-together can end up costing more. That’s why we’d always recommend having an in-depth face-to-face conversation with whomever is hoping to provide your solution and insist it’s benchmarked against other options, as well as considering the potential for growth. This is why we’ve also put together a document: the five dangers of cloud servers. We hope helps you ask your potential providers the right questions when it comes to considering a hosting or service platform based on the cloud.

Finally, here’s a copy of the presentation that Steven delivered at the seminar yesterday morning. To be honest, it’s best done in person… but you can enjoy the hand-drawn slides anyway! You can also read a roundup of the tweets from the event below.

Review of the HP (Hewlett Packard) v165 USB Flash Memory stick

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As published on the product page…

I selected this model on the basis of the fact it’s very small, has no flashing lights and carries a relatively huge capacity.

I wanted to use this in my HP Microserver as a USB boot drive, so that I could have maximum hard drive storage capacity. It worked as expected at the start, being successfully formatted under Ubuntu Linux and acting as a boot drive (no swap file). I was concerned about wear, but as a boot drive, it generally wouldn’t be accessed apart from at boot or to launch media management software (Plex) which generally runs a service. I also took steps to minimise wear by installing Linux without swap and creating my media library and transcoding scratch drive on a real hard drive in my RAID array.

It worked well for a while – but an order of magnitude slower than a hard drive. However, one day my server stopped providing service and, on reboot, wouldn’t respond to ping.

Unfortunately, the worst had happened: somehow the USB boot drive had been corrupted, taking details of my RAID array with it as well as my settings for Plex media manager.

I couldn’t even access data when I plugged the USB drive into another computer – it shows up as a “USB Composite Device” under Mac OS X provided by Integrated Technology Express, Inc. but I don’t even get a prompt to initialise the drive. This suggests to me a microcontroller failure.

Ultimately, this only caused inconvenience as I rebuilt the server with Ubuntu and a new content setup (had been replicated) – but I would strongly reconsider using a USB flash drive as a boot drive of any sort and especially this particular model. Unfortunately, I’m beyond the return date now but if I could, I’d be getting this swapped. It’s fine as general data storage but definitely not something that needs reliability or integrity.

I suppose you pays your money and you takes your choice – but think carefully about where you’re using it.

What’s the value of a testimonial?

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Originally published over at Melbourne.co.uk

We’re lucky that lots of our customers recommend us to other people. And some of them kindly offer or agree to give us a few words for our website to share with you.

You might’ve seen them, at the foot of various pages – links to stories about other companies that use our services and are happy to talk about them. Sometimes we link to them in tweets or share them with prospective customers, if they’d like to check out credentials. To be honest, we probably don’t make as much of them as we could do.

But what’s the real value in a testimonial?

Last Monday, I’d had a busy day back after a non-stop weekend. Loads of emails to respond to, content to create and a spot of troubleshooting to throw in as well. Add to that, a bike ride over glass-covered roads and, by the time I got home, I was ready to collapse with a drink.

As is my (bad) habit, I flopped onto my sofa and got out my iPhone. Amongst other things, I checked my work email and saw an unexpectedly swift reply from a customer.

There are times when you see something and you know it’s all worthwhile. One of the reasons I love working for Melbourne is the honest commitment to customer service from every single person. And it’s not easy to maintain that, when there’s a hell of a lot going on at once.

It was an email from Phil at Netweaver. Reading it put a grin on my face and I forwarded it to my colleagues straight away. It’d been a tough day (and it’s been a busy week since) but knowing we’re appreciated and that someone wants to share it with others is a great feeling. And that, for me, is the real value of a testimonial.

If you want to read Phil’s story in his own words, check out his testimonial here.

Ending over the air TV broadcasts will congest UK broadband even further

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Originally published over at Melbourne.co.uk…

The House of Lords has recommended ending the use of airwaves to broadcast TV and re-allocating this spectrum to mobile data usage.

TV “should be delivered exclusively over the Internet”, reports the Reg. The House of Lords report, titled Broadband for All – an Alternative Vision, presents a series of recommendations that are part of a wider set of suggestions to improving broadband quality in the UK.

The fact is, that if the recommendation contained within the report were to be adopted by the Government, it would put never before imagined pressure on the UK’s Internet infrastructure. This is why the committee’s consideration of a universal service obligation for minimum broadband quality is a good starting point.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of the UK’s domestic and business broadband relies on adapting old copper-wire technology to handle it (i.e. DSL). This means it’s inherently going to be of a lower quality and speed than the fibre-optic broadband Internet access available in some of the biggest growing digital economies in the world, like South Korea and that’s being experimented with by Google in Kansas City, USA.

In Manchester – a major broadband not-spot - tenants of the Manchester Science Park are lucky to get 100 MBps Internet connections provided by our network. If we’re going to stop using the airwaves to receive broadcast content, then this type of connection will become the bare minimum businesses need and consumers will expect to consume content online.

In my opinion, the Government needs to step-in and realise that without significant fresh investment in the UK’s Internet infrastructure, we will continue to languish in the global broadband league tables.

New Age Media in dark age brand destruction exercise @newagemedialtd

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This morning, Abid at Crafted Pixelz broke the news that a hitherto unknown digital marketing outfit in Stoke called New Age Media Ltd appeared to have been spamming Google Places reviews for the north west.

Two accounts, by the name of Stephen and Peter consistently marked digital agencies as 1 star and occasionally added one-line reviews. At the same time, they marked up New Age Media. Naturally, this annoyed a hell of a lot of people. (At the time of writing, the four pages’ worth of reviews are being slowly deleted – screenshot).

Update: this has now hit The Drum magazine.

When you work in the digital industry, you don’t mess with it. As soon as this came out on Twitter, the rapid response and investigation suggested the following:

  • Stephen appeared to be Stephen Mizon (@Smizon) the founder of New Age Media, describing himself in his Twitter profile as providing tips on running a business.
  • Peter appeared to be Peter Wootton (@PeterWoottonSEO), “Head of SEO” at New Age Media. In his Twitter profile, he calls himself a “credible” expert.

The flurry of tweets this morning awoke the @NewAgeMediaLtd Twitter account. And, of course, they went for the classic “disgruntled employee” approach.

https://twitter.com/NewAgeMediaLtd/status/205632080812572672 https://twitter.com/NewAgeMediaLtd/status/205632315030904833

…which is odd, given it seems their founder and Head of SEO appear to be linked with this given the names and Twitter. Oh, and they (were) listed on LinkedIn as a Sole Proprietorship (ht _@chappers_).

New Age Media claimed on Twitter that “an ex-employee is being investigated” but given that the names of the Google accounts match the founder and the head of SEO, this doesn’t seem very convincing. Additionally, in an now-deleted tweet, @smizon provided his opinion on the ethics of leaving negative reviews (see RT here).

Bemusingly, New Age Media claim the reviews were left by “Steven” (an ex-employee) not “Stephen” (their founder).

https://twitter.com/NewAgeMediaLtd/status/205644908416073729

I invite you to click on the links above to check the spellings.

New Age Media’s website also appears to be a bit of a mess. Their website has an inaccurate company registration number listed (and name). If you’re interested, here’s Newage Media Limited‘s profile. And maybe it’s time Pete read some of his articles on online reputation management (although the free content sites that highly similar articles appear on are not particularly high quality). Update: I’ve not been able to corroborate any of the grandiose-sounding statements made on their client testimonial pages like this either.

In any case, any firm worth its salt would take responsibility and apologise rather than simply divert the blame. This hasn’t yet been done.

This whole debacle is ridiculous and humiliating for New Age Media. If you’re trying to promote your brand, the last thing you do is slag off your competitors and then lie about it. The digital and creative industry in Manchester is a community that works together and talks to each other. And stuff like this gets found out quickly.

On a positive note, within an hour of Abid’s first tweet and subsequent retweets, I was messaged by a contact at Google. This afternoon, he’s let me know that the reviews have been marked as spam and the accounts blacklisted from reviewing ever again. Victory!

New Age Media have now deleted their Twitter account. Let’s hope we never hear of this agency again.

Update: In a bizarre move, New Age Media have now posted a breathtakingly arrogant response on their website. And, according to the commenters below, it’s alleged that they’ve created other fake Google Places accounts in the names of complainants on Twitter.

Have a look at what else was being said online.

@_SenoraBlanco sums up the whole affair in one image:

My £0.02 on who owns your Twitter followers

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Yes! this has been utterly discussed to death. But I’ve got to have my say on this.

I first started grinding my teeth about on this topic when Laura Kuenssberg, formerly BBC Chief Political Correspondent defected to ITV overnight, switching her Twitter account from BBCLauraK to ITVLauraK.

Today, Mehdi Hassan of the New Statesmen has announced he’s joining Huffington Post UK as Political Director in July.

There are all sorts of legal opinions on this, but my personal opinion is more simple.

I think that when people follow you on Twitter, it’s usually on the basis of something you’ve tweeted and a combination of reading your name and bio.

If you state where you work and, particularly, if you include it in your Twitter name, you have an obligation to your followers not to hijack what they’re reading when following your tweets. For example, I chose to follow Laura because of her position as BBC Chief Political Correspondent – hence BBCLauraK. If I had chosen to follow her as an individual, I would’ve happily followed an alternative shared feed.

The BBC’s tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones happily operates this approach (@ruskin147 vs @bbcRoryCJ) as does their technologist, Bill Thompson (@billt vs @bbcbillt)

Yes, there is an argument that your Twitter account is yours to do with as you please – but it’s a slap in the face of your followers and your employer by stealing their audience in this fashion. It certainly reflects negatively on you and what you think of your followers.

Funnily enough, I was discussing this with my hairdresser the other day. Poaching clients from salons is a huge no-no for stylists. It’s a form of carpetbagging - and ultimately, as word gets round, that stylist will no longer be able to work in that industry.

It’s telling now that, having unfollowed Laura the moment she moved to ITV, she now makes zero impact on my life. Perhaps it’s because I don’t consume much news outside the BBC or tech publications, but this is the real impact that her move would have had if she’d not taken her Twitter followers to the BBC’s key competitor.

Mehdi now has to think carefully. As @ns_mehdihasan, can he simply change to ‘HuffPoMehdi’ or should he create a new account? If I was the New Statesmen, I’d wonder what audience I’d lose by allowing him to take his followers to HuffPo. Individuals are powerful brands, but these accounts have been grown by their association with their employer’s brands.

Personally, I’ve never stated my employer in my profile and have no plans to. Where work stuff is interesting to my followers, I’ll retweet it. And usually, I’m on the shared work account tweeting enough interesting stuff with personality without the need to create a ‘Corporate Josh’. This doesn’t mean I’m not proud of my current association with Melbourne. I just like to a draw a clear line that won’t leave me in a sticky situation if my employment ever changes (I hope it doesn’t!).

In any case, a light-touch policy for employers is essential. Agree what you’re going to do if or when the time comes for a staff member to move on – will they hand over the keys like a company car used for work and business? Or will you let them take the audience they’ve grown for you to your competitor?