RSSTeamsales night out – Allys leaving party…
Dec 18
So last friday night, Teamsales descended on an unsuspecting Coventry… you can see some of the results here…
Thieving Ba*****ds, TomTom and Autoglass…
Dec 06
Business, Life Business, Life 46 Comments
The subject of this blog, probably gives you a fair idea what this is going to be about and go someway to explaining why at 4.54am on a cold wet December morning I find myself in the waiting room at Autoglass Birmingham.
So yesterday I left my car in Coventry ‘Central Six’ railway station car park (for which Virgin kindly tax me 6 quid), I get back from London at 8pm to find the passenger side window of my car broken and suprise suprise my TomTom missing.
Obviously my TomTom wasn’t on display but the cradle was stuck to the windscreen, those clever crims of course realise that this just means the TomTom itself is hiding in car somewhere (in my case in the drivers side mini glove compartment).
I phoned the police to report it, they said this week there was a run on sat navs, and apparently even if i removed the cradle the classic mark on the windscreen is enough to justify a breakin…. sigh mental note to self – carry windolene and duster in car.
Now this is just a royal pain in the ass because my car has frameless doors making a temporary repair impossible. A quick call to Autoglass and they would love to fix it under insurance, unfortunately they can’t do it for another 2 days! (presumably maxed out fixing windows in the aftermath of a spate of TomTom thefts!), I protest and the helpful call center lady makes some calls and says comes back with the 4am in Birmingham option!
Those of you who know me will know that I am positively joyous in the morning and love nothing more than a good early start – NOT!
Anyway here I am at Autoglass – and I am frankly impressed, its a textbook example of both customer care and effective brand and message communication.
The waiting room is warm, clean, comfortable with (as far as I can tell) infinite free coffee, TV and Internet access (hence my ability to blog on the experience!).
The way they convey their brand messages is very open, and quite clever, all over the workshop walls are messages such as ‘professional – be calm and confident’, ‘caring – show respect for customers and their cars’, and many others. Obviously these are directed at their staff, but also get seen by customers reinforcing their confidence…
Good stuff Autoglass - I approve!
No time to blog :(
Dec 04
I have hit severe guilt about my poor blog, leaving unloved… All I can do is make excuses, my life just doesn’t seem to have enough hours (or train journeys) to pander to its needs, so while I have been gone great things have been happening:
- bit10 completed its purchase of Networks New Media
- bit10 has a new Non-Exec director in the form of Alan Malik (director/owner of the ultra successful Exasoft).
- bit10 has just had its best sales quarter ever (an undisclosed sum
) - I personally recovered from the Cannonball 8000 (took a while mentally, physically and financially)
- bit10 placed in the top 20 fastest growing companies in the midlands, top 150 in the UK, for the 6th year running!
- My role at bit10 is in the process of changing from being Business Development Director to Strategic Director, which basically means I am formally responsible for the strategy and direction (and problem solving) at bit10. Woohoo!
- My addiction to a certain online game persists to eat my life when not a work (which is also probably to detriment of my blog!).
So maybe now the nights are drawing in I will try to be a little more useful and blog again!
Nominet – What sort of milk would you like sir?
Oct 26
Business Business, Life, Web/Tech 3 Comments
Yesterday I had the pleasure of a meeting with a Nominet, the Internet registry for .uk, at their Oxford headquarters.
It is, without doubt, the first time ever, I have been offered coffee and asked ‘What sort of milk would you like sir?, full fat? semi-skimmed? skimmed?’.
I have been trying to think anecdotally how this reflects on Nominet, good customer service? good choice? too much time on their hands?!
Whatever, I think its great! However I am not sure that bit10 consumes enough milk to justify 3 types of milk which is a shame!
Cannonball 8000 – Off we go…
Sep 13
Internet, Life, Play Cannonball, Interweb, Life, Web/Tech 2 Comments
For the next few days I am away on the Cannonball 8000, from London to Budapest.
You can see our progress on our Team 30 Cannonball website… http://www.team30.com.
So until I get back I will be blogging there, so pay us a visit and see how we are progressing.
Political party leaders – When will they realise?!?
Sep 06
Life Life, Politics No Comments
Talking about… BBC News: Blair hit by wave of resignations
Wow what a day in British politics. 8 resignations (as of now), albeit Junior ministers, just because Blair has refused to name his date for leaving office.
Lots of angles to talk about here! Aaahhh!! I don’t know where to start.
Would 1 let alone 8 junior ministers really bother to throw themselves on the sword for such a short term issue?! I suspect there is more to this story… which I am sure I will find the truth out about while watching a 30 second snippet on a History Channel documentary about ‘early 21st century British politics’ in about 40 years time.
However, when will it finally dawn on any parties that general elections are basically a popularity contest?!! As such this always means the popular kid at school will win.
Large amounts of the voters don’t care/don’t understand/are set in the ways to for the current policies of the parties to actually matter.
The labour party I suspect realised this back in the 90s, when they ousted Kinnock and killed off John Smith (remember him?!), to make way for a young and trendy Anthony Charles Lynton Blair aka Tony (I wonder how much of a lead he took, on the naming front, from the famous ancestry denying Anthony Wedgwood Benn aka Tony Benn).
So Is Gordon Brown (who I will let you decide to what extent he does or idoesn’t fulfill the popular kid at school role) the right way to go?!
It took some time for the popularity factor to dawn on the Tories, after the relative success of Maggie aka Baroness Thatcher, they hit rock nearly bottom on popularity with the unbeatable neutrality of John Major.
In an attempt to combat the Blair, they wheeled in William Hague, in hindsight probably a potentially good card played out of at the wrong time, had they thrown him down on the table after his appearance on Have I Got News for You.
Next followed Iain Duncan Smith, I have tried to find something good, bad or of note to say about Iain Duncan Smith and frankly the best I can come up with is that he has the best personal website of all the party leaders I have looked at in this blog!
Next the Tories moved onto Michael Howard, oooh bad move – up until now they seemed to demonstrating some form of iterative improvement, and maybe this was just a step on the path they had to take, however the vampiric image was always going to be a problem!
Now it gets interesting… David William Donald Cameron, the tories (almost) younger play - if I was a gambling man (which I am), I would say this is almost certainly a Blair beater, and possibly very unsporting against a Gordon Brown play by Labour.
The only chance that labour have is to find someone new, young, fresh, charismatic and appealing to the voters.
Anyone fancy a small wager?
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For once I feel obliged to point out that the views expressed in my blog are my own and not those of my employer bit10!
London – the City that never sleeps – yeh right!
Aug 24
Last Wednesday I was in London with Rob and Gem on a Pareto Law training course. In the evening I went out in Fulham for a drink or two. Apparently ‘Life Begins at Fulham Broadway‘, its a lie I tell you!!
We started out in Zinc, that abruptly shut at 11pm, wondering around revealed every other bar was shut, eventually we found Chateau 6.
Chateau 6 is a really nice chilled out bar, we got a bottle of wine in, and then at midnight all the lights came on and the bouncers wanted us out!
All that remained open was a dicey pub/club thingy called Fiesta Havana, which taxed us £3 each to get in and was just rubbish and only open until 2am anyway!
Dejected I did the right thing and thought lets have a kebab, could I get a Kebab?! Nope all 5million kebab houses and take aways on North End road were shut, I mean what is that all about.
Lets take this in contrast with last night, when we were out in sunny Coventry, spoilt for choice with many bars and clubs open until the early hours of the morning, and as for takeaways, do they ever shut in Coventry?!
So to sum up, in my opinion Coventry is better for late night drinking than London, unless of course you want to go to the West End and get ripped off!!
Converting people to World of Warcraft… one co-worker at a time…
Aug 24
For the last year or so Steve C and I were the only WoW players at bit10, however we have seen a recent flurry of newcomers…
Through no particular effort by Steve and myself, Rob fell first, he in turn converted Craig and now Steph is going to give it a try!
In addition Rob has got 2 of his housemates playing it.
WoW is undoutably an awesome game, however with 6 million players worldwide and rising rapidly, but its ‘crack’ like ‘play for 5 minutes and you are hooked’ qualities are a little worrying!!
(The) Varsity
Aug 14
There has been some extensive debate on the Warwick blogs, here, about whether The Varsity pub, that nestles nicely on Kirby corner outside the university, is in fact called ‘Varsity’ or ‘The Varsity’.
For my 10p worth I think its ‘The Varsity’, and I can say so with some certainty, because once upon a time, shortly after I graduated from Warwick (30th Auguest 1999), a friend (Jay McGuinness) and I embarked on a 1 day epic adventure doing a tour of the majority of ’The Varsitys’ in the country (at the time). So here you go (apologies for the poor image quality)…
Lincoln…
Leicester…
Wolverhampton…
Birmingham…
Coventry (City Centre)
Coventry (University of Warwick)…
So there you go definetely ‘The Varsity’, in fact the Unversity of Warwick arm was ‘The New Varsity’!
Wine…
Aug 08
If you like your wine (and who doesn’t), I would strongly recommend you take the time to visit Matt and Mark at Vinology. I buy all my wine there and they really know their stuff. Highly recommended.
You can find them over in Stratford, on Henley Street opposite Shakespeares Birthplace.
Also as a bonus if you mention my blog they will give you a discount!!
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