Fun in Las Vegas, Barcelona is tempting, ISP hell and project ‘Malaysia’ is full steam ahead
It the end of March and once more I’ve slipped on my ‘monthly’ blog posting. There is just so much happening.
My February blog didn’t mention the DIA EDM conference in Philadelphia which at which we had a booth. Once again a very good conference for us and we very busy meeting existing customers, existing prospects, partners and even finding time to find a few new prospects. We’ve currently stopped going to the European DIA meetings as we weren’t finding them value for money. As I write this the DIA 2007 EuroMeeting is ongoing in Vienna. However, the invitation to have a booth at next year’s EuroMeeting in Barcelona has just crossed my desk. Now, I am tempted. I’ve previously mentioned that I love Barcelona.
This gets me to wondering just how much the choice of venue affects the attendance figures. We have previously discussed how the 2006 DIA Annual Meeting was held in Philadelphia and there was a theory doing the rounds that that had surpressed attendees. Still Barcelona ….. everybody wants to go to Barcelona – right? So I’m thinking the conference will be well attended. But, on the other hand, its expensive compared to the US shows and I know it just won’t be as productive. I am torn – watch this space.
February also involved supporting Qumas by exhibiting at QumasConnect – their annual user conference. This was held in Las Vegas – party central. Things didn’t get off to a great start. I arrived at the airport on Saturday afternoon after a transatlantic flight only to find that the hotel booking I had made at Bally’s (through an internet hotel booking agency) didn’t exist. There were two major events in town and consequently a severe shortage of hotel rooms. I end up in the Howard Johnson Downtown (though it claims to be on the strip) for $289 for the night – oh dear. From there things got better and I worked my way back towards Bally’s via the Westin. Five nights and three separate hotels.
The Qumas conference was a huge amount of fun. Not only do they know how to party it seems that a lot of the clients do as well! The final night I staggered away from the bar at 4:00am leaving a couple of them to it. Unfortunately, the phone went at 7:00am the next morning with a prospect looking for a proposal. Life is tough on the road!
March has been quiet on the travel front as we have been getting the rest of the v3.2 out of the door and trying to update our literature. We finally also got around to having our delayed company ‘Christmas bash’ in mid-March. The run up to Christmas was simply too busy and, as for January, it seems that some of our staff are compete social butterflies – mid March was the first Friday night they had available.
Early March also saw one of our ISP’s completely crash our main www.pleasetech.com website for several days. They then sent us a very nice email apologising, and I quote exactly:
-- starts --
“We would like to apologise for the recent loss of service to your website pleasetech.com. This was caused by an unfortunate series of failures to the hardware supplied to us.
Fortunately, due to our back-up systems, we were able to capture and restore your data. To maintain accurate data consistency, we decided to use an older restore.
This means that if you have uploaded any files in the last 2-3 weeks, you may find some data missing from your website. You will therefore need to re-upload your website, using the files you have backed up in line with our terms and conditions.
We know this is not an acceptable level of service …………...
-- ends --
Not acceptable – you are telling me. I think the really interesting thing is the tacit admission that the best back-up they have is 2-3 weeks old. As Tim Robinson, our CTO, put it: “what a bunch of losers” – well he may have used slightly different words. Next time you find me at a conference don’t hesitate to ask which company it is – I’ll be pleased to tell you.
March has also seen hard work on the ‘lets set up a software development and test center in Malaysia’ plan. We have identified offices and all the boring things like lawyers, accountants but, infinitely more interestingly, we have a short list of candidates for the role of Malaysia Development Team Leader. We fly out to Malaysia on 16th April to conduct final interviews. There has been an interesting learning curve for us in the recruitment process. We have found that telephone interviewing is actually quite hard. We initially tried it around a speaker phone and found that just didn’t work. A better solution was conferencing everyone together. Of course, the one thing which doesn’t appear to change no matter which country you are in is people’s ability to add stuff to their resume/CV which close questioning doesn’t back up.
The main disadvantage of working with Malaysia is that we are now stretched at both ends of the day. 5:00pm in Malaysia is 9:00am here in the UK. Whilst 5:00pm here in the UK is 9:00am on the West Coast. They tell me that a long working day is good for the soul.
Returning briefly to the theme of articles which resonate. April sees the return to TV in the UK of The Apprentice with Alan Sugar. In the UK we have the Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice. In the Dragon’s Den, entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a bunch of business angels hoping to secure investment. Whilst in The Apprentice which originated in the USA is, apparently, billed as the ultimate job interview.
I have to confess to watching neither on a regular basis. However, I have a passing interest and I have done some judging of the business plans and presentations associated with the entrepreneurship part of the University of Bath MBA course. This cast me into a role not dissimilar to the so called Dragons. I have also, in my time, raised £11 million (~$20million) in venture capital and I can tell you the whole process is nothing like the TV program. The point, of course, is that the TV program is designed to be entertaining and not to resemble reality.
The big problem is, of course, the average person doesn’t necessarily appreciate this and thinks that all entrepreneurs are the aggressive ‘dragons’ depicted on TV.
This is why I was delighted to read a recent article in the Times newspaper Saturday magazine entitled “The Antipreneurs” which purported to introduce the new “caring, sharing entrepreneurs”. In the interview with Robert Calcraft and Antony Buck of REN Cosmetics, Antony says “Everyone assumes entrepreneurs are like Alan Sugar or the dragons in the Dragon’s Den. They think you have to be suit-wearing, self-obsessed, aggressive bastards; someone who wants other people to lose; sees business as confrontation and toughness as crucial. There’s a total lack of humanity – what about collaboration and enjoying what you do?”
Thank you Anthony – you took the words right out of my mouth.
My February blog didn’t mention the DIA EDM conference in Philadelphia which at which we had a booth. Once again a very good conference for us and we very busy meeting existing customers, existing prospects, partners and even finding time to find a few new prospects. We’ve currently stopped going to the European DIA meetings as we weren’t finding them value for money. As I write this the DIA 2007 EuroMeeting is ongoing in Vienna. However, the invitation to have a booth at next year’s EuroMeeting in Barcelona has just crossed my desk. Now, I am tempted. I’ve previously mentioned that I love Barcelona.
This gets me to wondering just how much the choice of venue affects the attendance figures. We have previously discussed how the 2006 DIA Annual Meeting was held in Philadelphia and there was a theory doing the rounds that that had surpressed attendees. Still Barcelona ….. everybody wants to go to Barcelona – right? So I’m thinking the conference will be well attended. But, on the other hand, its expensive compared to the US shows and I know it just won’t be as productive. I am torn – watch this space.
February also involved supporting Qumas by exhibiting at QumasConnect – their annual user conference. This was held in Las Vegas – party central. Things didn’t get off to a great start. I arrived at the airport on Saturday afternoon after a transatlantic flight only to find that the hotel booking I had made at Bally’s (through an internet hotel booking agency) didn’t exist. There were two major events in town and consequently a severe shortage of hotel rooms. I end up in the Howard Johnson Downtown (though it claims to be on the strip) for $289 for the night – oh dear. From there things got better and I worked my way back towards Bally’s via the Westin. Five nights and three separate hotels.
The Qumas conference was a huge amount of fun. Not only do they know how to party it seems that a lot of the clients do as well! The final night I staggered away from the bar at 4:00am leaving a couple of them to it. Unfortunately, the phone went at 7:00am the next morning with a prospect looking for a proposal. Life is tough on the road!
March has been quiet on the travel front as we have been getting the rest of the v3.2 out of the door and trying to update our literature. We finally also got around to having our delayed company ‘Christmas bash’ in mid-March. The run up to Christmas was simply too busy and, as for January, it seems that some of our staff are compete social butterflies – mid March was the first Friday night they had available.
Early March also saw one of our ISP’s completely crash our main www.pleasetech.com website for several days. They then sent us a very nice email apologising, and I quote exactly:
-- starts --
“We would like to apologise for the recent loss of service to your website pleasetech.com. This was caused by an unfortunate series of failures to the hardware supplied to us.
Fortunately, due to our back-up systems, we were able to capture and restore your data. To maintain accurate data consistency, we decided to use an older restore.
This means that if you have uploaded any files in the last 2-3 weeks, you may find some data missing from your website. You will therefore need to re-upload your website, using the files you have backed up in line with our terms and conditions.
We know this is not an acceptable level of service …………...
-- ends --
Not acceptable – you are telling me. I think the really interesting thing is the tacit admission that the best back-up they have is 2-3 weeks old. As Tim Robinson, our CTO, put it: “what a bunch of losers” – well he may have used slightly different words. Next time you find me at a conference don’t hesitate to ask which company it is – I’ll be pleased to tell you.
March has also seen hard work on the ‘lets set up a software development and test center in Malaysia’ plan. We have identified offices and all the boring things like lawyers, accountants but, infinitely more interestingly, we have a short list of candidates for the role of Malaysia Development Team Leader. We fly out to Malaysia on 16th April to conduct final interviews. There has been an interesting learning curve for us in the recruitment process. We have found that telephone interviewing is actually quite hard. We initially tried it around a speaker phone and found that just didn’t work. A better solution was conferencing everyone together. Of course, the one thing which doesn’t appear to change no matter which country you are in is people’s ability to add stuff to their resume/CV which close questioning doesn’t back up.
The main disadvantage of working with Malaysia is that we are now stretched at both ends of the day. 5:00pm in Malaysia is 9:00am here in the UK. Whilst 5:00pm here in the UK is 9:00am on the West Coast. They tell me that a long working day is good for the soul.
Returning briefly to the theme of articles which resonate. April sees the return to TV in the UK of The Apprentice with Alan Sugar. In the UK we have the Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice. In the Dragon’s Den, entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a bunch of business angels hoping to secure investment. Whilst in The Apprentice which originated in the USA is, apparently, billed as the ultimate job interview.
I have to confess to watching neither on a regular basis. However, I have a passing interest and I have done some judging of the business plans and presentations associated with the entrepreneurship part of the University of Bath MBA course. This cast me into a role not dissimilar to the so called Dragons. I have also, in my time, raised £11 million (~$20million) in venture capital and I can tell you the whole process is nothing like the TV program. The point, of course, is that the TV program is designed to be entertaining and not to resemble reality.
The big problem is, of course, the average person doesn’t necessarily appreciate this and thinks that all entrepreneurs are the aggressive ‘dragons’ depicted on TV.
This is why I was delighted to read a recent article in the Times newspaper Saturday magazine entitled “The Antipreneurs” which purported to introduce the new “caring, sharing entrepreneurs”. In the interview with Robert Calcraft and Antony Buck of REN Cosmetics, Antony says “Everyone assumes entrepreneurs are like Alan Sugar or the dragons in the Dragon’s Den. They think you have to be suit-wearing, self-obsessed, aggressive bastards; someone who wants other people to lose; sees business as confrontation and toughness as crucial. There’s a total lack of humanity – what about collaboration and enjoying what you do?”
Thank you Anthony – you took the words right out of my mouth.
posted by David Cornwell, PleaseTech Ltd at 4:18 PM
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