Wednesday, 2 December 2009
More Reviews
Carried out three partner reviews today and did some preparation work for tomorrow and some more work on figures for 2010. Which took up the whole day. Tomorrow is the customer advisory day which means that training will have to take a back-seat.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Course Development
Had a conference call with our Japanese Authorized Training partner first thing in the morning, then did some preparation for the customer advisory council. Finally spent most of the the rest of the day working on the course development for the SA course, doing background research and gathering ideas for storyboards. Going slower than I would have liked.
On a personal front it was Edward's parent's evening and he is doing alright with an even balance of "A" and "B" grades. It was felt by his form teacher; Mr Marshall, that actually he should be looking at turning the A's into A* and the B's into A's as he is quite capable of this.
On a personal front it was Edward's parent's evening and he is doing alright with an even balance of "A" and "B" grades. It was felt by his form teacher; Mr Marshall, that actually he should be looking at turning the A's into A* and the B's into A's as he is quite capable of this.
Monday, 30 November 2009
End of Quarter
We believe that training has had its best quarter ever this quarter, this is an improvement over next quarter but will be hard to beat for the next quarter. Started looking at the possibility of doing partner enablement and charging for this, looks like we should be able to do this for 120 partners and if so this would be a significant new line of business for next year.
Rounded out the day with a meeting about the customer advisory coucil happening later in the week for which I am a facilitator. Should be interesting, first one of these we will have done properly.
Finally left at 6pm and spent an hour at the gym, good wort-out felt good most of the evening, there was nobody in when I got back. Izzy got a prize (box chocolates - ironic) for being the best muffin seller at Costa.
Joanna didn't do her blog because she had no internet connection - what gives?
Rounded out the day with a meeting about the customer advisory coucil happening later in the week for which I am a facilitator. Should be interesting, first one of these we will have done properly.
Finally left at 6pm and spent an hour at the gym, good wort-out felt good most of the evening, there was nobody in when I got back. Izzy got a prize (box chocolates - ironic) for being the best muffin seller at Costa.
Joanna didn't do her blog because she had no internet connection - what gives?
Thursday, 26 March 2009
The Apprentice
It's Back! Admit it you love watching this reality soap dressed in a designer suit. Does it take longer than a single episode to determine the weak cannon fodder? I think not.
Incredibly even before the start of the programme one of the 15 contestants had already dropped out, the pressure obviously getting to him, or was it the propsect of meeting Sir Alan?
For me there are a number of aspects which make this enjoyable TV, however far removed from the real world of business that it may be. The first are the fantastic one liners which the combatants come up with, lines such as:
At Torchpaper we know that strategy is something which is tempered by experience, disciplined by hard successes and bitter disappointments. It comes from a dedicated and long path to eventual enlightenment - it is not a line on a CV or an entry on a website.
The Apprentice? Roll on week two!
Incredibly even before the start of the programme one of the 15 contestants had already dropped out, the pressure obviously getting to him, or was it the propsect of meeting Sir Alan?
For me there are a number of aspects which make this enjoyable TV, however far removed from the real world of business that it may be. The first are the fantastic one liners which the combatants come up with, lines such as:
- "For me making money is better than sex".
- "You don't need to make friends on the way up when you are not coming back down".
- "I love the sound of my own voice".
- "I think you've got it all wrong" - said to a prospective customer.
- "You will get a great job, plus it's done by women not stinky men".
- "You don't want to lose the first task - not to girls."
- "I can't be responsible for two puppets".
- "Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity".
At Torchpaper we know that strategy is something which is tempered by experience, disciplined by hard successes and bitter disappointments. It comes from a dedicated and long path to eventual enlightenment - it is not a line on a CV or an entry on a website.
The Apprentice? Roll on week two!
Friday, 13 February 2009
Web Conferencing Just Got Easier
Have you ever been to a meeting to find that perhaps it really wasn’t of value to you? Worse yet how many of us have travelled miles to a meeting which ended up being cancelled, or postponed because of the weather or other random act.
I took part in my first web-conference in 1990 in the offices of the pharmaceutical company GSK, known then as Glaxo. This was in a purpose designed facility costing hundreds of thousands of pounds where we participated in a trans-Atlantic conference call. But ever since that time I have been struck by what a wonderful tool web-conferencing is and I have been keen to use it at every opportunity to reduce my travel time, reduce costs, suffer less from cancellations and postponements and more recently to reduce my carbon hand prints.
Nowadays with excellent broadband speeds web conferencing is becoming easier and cheaper.
I have up until recently been a fan of WebEx, this service works well and is, relatively cheap. But in the spirit of Open Source I’ve been tracking a product called dimdim which promised similar functionality for even less. The initial releases of this product could not match the reliability I’d come to expect with WebEx.
Enter dimdim 4.5 and it is finally living up to expectations. Why is this important? Well as local authorities are moving towards flexible working and home working becomes essential in reducing costs and promoting better working, the ability to have meetings which are not face to face, reducing time and costs, becomes key. In many of the larger organisations growth has left them in multiple buildings geographically dispersed across a town or city. In such cases meetings with collegues can often become tiresome affairs, requiring you to find a meeting room in a location which is easy for all. Sometimes you find that a meeting room is not available either when you need it or at short notice.
Using a system such as dimdim is easy, quick to setup and requires no training, although I’d suggest that you have a practice before doing your first real live web meeting! You can kick off a meeting immediately or schedule it for later. Once you have your meeting setup, you should login ahead of time to load up any presentations or documents you want to share. If you load up a PowerPoint presentation or PDF document you can use them as slide shows, annotating and pointing as you go.
There is a shared whiteboard, or you can sha
re your screen which is useful for showing people applications such as databases, emails or for conducting demos. There are many ways to interact with your participants, including the ability to use webcam video and audio, two-way if you like. There is the ability to chat with all attendees, or send private instant messages to individuals, even as you present.
As far as audio is concerned their dial in facility is US based, so I’d suggest that you use your own teleconference facility if you already have it, or use one of the teleconference facilities such as Conference Genie, PowWowNow, Conference Now or myriad of others.
One big benefit of dimdim is that viewers of a presentation do not have to download or install any applications, plug-ins, ActiveX controls, etc. That is sure to please participants specially those who don’t have the privileges to install bits on their machines.
So what are you waiting for, go ahead and share.
I took part in my first web-conference in 1990 in the offices of the pharmaceutical company GSK, known then as Glaxo. This was in a purpose designed facility costing hundreds of thousands of pounds where we participated in a trans-Atlantic conference call. But ever since that time I have been struck by what a wonderful tool web-conferencing is and I have been keen to use it at every opportunity to reduce my travel time, reduce costs, suffer less from cancellations and postponements and more recently to reduce my carbon hand prints.
Nowadays with excellent broadband speeds web conferencing is becoming easier and cheaper.
I have up until recently been a fan of WebEx, this service works well and is, relatively cheap. But in the spirit of Open Source I’ve been tracking a product called dimdim which promised similar functionality for even less. The initial releases of this product could not match the reliability I’d come to expect with WebEx.
Enter dimdim 4.5 and it is finally living up to expectations. Why is this important? Well as local authorities are moving towards flexible working and home working becomes essential in reducing costs and promoting better working, the ability to have meetings which are not face to face, reducing time and costs, becomes key. In many of the larger organisations growth has left them in multiple buildings geographically dispersed across a town or city. In such cases meetings with collegues can often become tiresome affairs, requiring you to find a meeting room in a location which is easy for all. Sometimes you find that a meeting room is not available either when you need it or at short notice.
Using a system such as dimdim is easy, quick to setup and requires no training, although I’d suggest that you have a practice before doing your first real live web meeting! You can kick off a meeting immediately or schedule it for later. Once you have your meeting setup, you should login ahead of time to load up any presentations or documents you want to share. If you load up a PowerPoint presentation or PDF document you can use them as slide shows, annotating and pointing as you go.
There is a shared whiteboard, or you can sha
re your screen which is useful for showing people applications such as databases, emails or for conducting demos. There are many ways to interact with your participants, including the ability to use webcam video and audio, two-way if you like. There is the ability to chat with all attendees, or send private instant messages to individuals, even as you present.As far as audio is concerned their dial in facility is US based, so I’d suggest that you use your own teleconference facility if you already have it, or use one of the teleconference facilities such as Conference Genie, PowWowNow, Conference Now or myriad of others.
One big benefit of dimdim is that viewers of a presentation do not have to download or install any applications, plug-ins, ActiveX controls, etc. That is sure to please participants specially those who don’t have the privileges to install bits on their machines.
So what are you waiting for, go ahead and share.
Friday, 6 February 2009
A New Behemoth in the ECM World?
Until this year ECM vendor Open Text was the gorilla in the ECM market place. It has swallowed up many rivals, whilst other competitors such as Documentum, FileNET and Stellent were acquired by yet larger fish - EMC, IBM and Oracle. This left Open Text as the leading independent player in the ECM marketplace, with a strong focus in this area.
However in the background almost without our notice search vendor Autonomy have been moving towards the ECM marketplace with its acquisitions of various "rivals" such as Verity, Zantaz, Meridio and most recently WCM vendor Interwoven. I say rivals although you would not have thought this as Autonomy has always said it has been in the enterprise search space or rather "Meaning Based Computing" a term which nobody else uses and very few truly understand. Its recent acquisitions belie this however and whether by accident or design Autonomy is now moving firmly into the ECM space.
A contrast between the two companies draws up some interesting similarities - both started as search engine companies, both have grown by acquisition, Open Text having acquired Basis, Capatris, IXOS, Hummingbird (and through them RedDot and Valid) amongst others. Both companies are now addicted to acquisitions (after all it's an easier way to grow) and both will suffer from technology indigestion.
Whilst acquiring another company in the same space with similar technology does offer some attractions it also brings some significant challenges and difficult choices about future investment. It brings a great deal of uncertainty to customers also. Even internally for those company's sales forces the messages become blurred. As of the Hummingbird acquisition Open Text had multiple product lines: 3 web content management systems, 2 document management systems and 3 records management systems. All of these have to be integrated or dropped and if this happens how will the customer base react and be handled? Autonomy is heading the same way.
Is this good for the market? Is it good for customers? You may have different views on consolidation - it reduces competition, but it makes choices easier (obviously there is less to chose from) and the larger companies are more stable and secure. However if I was an Interwoven customer now - I would be worried about my investment.
One can also see this as a further step towards commoditizing the ECM marketplace, in this new world the proprietary companies have to add more value and features to their products lines to compete with open source startups such as Alfresco and Nuxeo.
Other coverage of this subject:
However in the background almost without our notice search vendor Autonomy have been moving towards the ECM marketplace with its acquisitions of various "rivals" such as Verity, Zantaz, Meridio and most recently WCM vendor Interwoven. I say rivals although you would not have thought this as Autonomy has always said it has been in the enterprise search space or rather "Meaning Based Computing" a term which nobody else uses and very few truly understand. Its recent acquisitions belie this however and whether by accident or design Autonomy is now moving firmly into the ECM space.
A contrast between the two companies draws up some interesting similarities - both started as search engine companies, both have grown by acquisition, Open Text having acquired Basis, Capatris, IXOS, Hummingbird (and through them RedDot and Valid) amongst others. Both companies are now addicted to acquisitions (after all it's an easier way to grow) and both will suffer from technology indigestion.
Whilst acquiring another company in the same space with similar technology does offer some attractions it also brings some significant challenges and difficult choices about future investment. It brings a great deal of uncertainty to customers also. Even internally for those company's sales forces the messages become blurred. As of the Hummingbird acquisition Open Text had multiple product lines: 3 web content management systems, 2 document management systems and 3 records management systems. All of these have to be integrated or dropped and if this happens how will the customer base react and be handled? Autonomy is heading the same way.
Is this good for the market? Is it good for customers? You may have different views on consolidation - it reduces competition, but it makes choices easier (obviously there is less to chose from) and the larger companies are more stable and secure. However if I was an Interwoven customer now - I would be worried about my investment.
One can also see this as a further step towards commoditizing the ECM marketplace, in this new world the proprietary companies have to add more value and features to their products lines to compete with open source startups such as Alfresco and Nuxeo.
Other coverage of this subject:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)