Category Archives: Waffle and randomness

Waffle and randomness

Working from home vs living at work

Saturday 18 May 2013 – 1:17

Before one of my recent business trips to Manchester, my eight-year-old son expressed concerns about my sleeping arrangements. It seems that, until my wife explained that I would be staying in a hotel overnight, he thought that I might have a comfy chair to sleep in, in the office!

Sometimes though, it does feel as though that might be the approach I need to take…

Ten or so years ago, working from home was an occasional event – and I could get done in 5 hours at home what took 8 in the office (no distractions), with the added advantage of no travel. Since 2005, I’ve officially been a “home-based worker” with varying degrees of working on customer sites and, in recent years, typically working from home most days with only a couple of days in the office each week.

This has some significant advantages (both to me and to my employer) – I’ve seen my kids grow up, never missed a school nativity play, or sports day etc. but it also re-calibrates the expectation of working at home. The new normal is to be in my home office for a full day – and then to probably go back again in the evening.  I don’t have a desk at the company office (I barely even use a hot desk), and modern communications mean that I’m contactable almost 24×7, if I choose to be (at least 12×5).

These last few weeks have reached a new level and this week was particularly bad.

On one day this week I had no breaks between dropping the kids at school and wall to wall conference calls.  I had to ask my wife to bring me toast and Marmite when it reached 11:00 and I hadn’t managed to get any breakfast, then to do the same for me with a sandwich at lunchtime (munched on mute whilst taking part in a call). At 15:30 I finally got off the phone (mobile phone battery severely depleted, my ear seriously warm) to deal with the day’s email – and it was the evening before I got around to doing something productive.

I’m slightly embarrassed to say that, on one day, I managed to go straight from bed (after working into the small hours the night before) to work, and back to bed again in the evening without having got dressed. I do feel sometimes as though I live at work, rather than work at home.

So, the next time someone is working at home, and you joke about skiving off, remember that the 9-5 has its advantages too…

This weekend, I’ll be continuing my drive to separate home and work IT (just as I do for telephony) in a quest to be able to switch off the laptop at evenings and weekends…

I can but dream…

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Technology Waffle and randomness

Eurosport Player lets me watch the Giro, without a Sky subscription

Saturday 4 May 2013 – 23:45

Last year, I developed a new sporting interest. In common with many others in the UK, I found myself glued to the TV highlights for the Tour de France, followed by the various cycling events at the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Vuelta a España, and even taking a day out to watch the Tour of Britain. I haven’t got a road bike yet (hoping to get one soon – I’ve entered a trialthlon later in the year and am hoping to ride London to Paris next year) but I was looking forward to watching the Giro d’Italia. At least, I was until I found out it’s not available on free-to-air TV:


MT @: Extensive [#Giro] race guide. Stage info and TV times here: http://t.co/FJTZfCHs5J ^MW Gutted it’s not on Freeview @
Monday 29 April 2013 23:31 via Mobile Web (M5)ReplyRetweetFavorite
@markwilsonit
Mark Wilson

Tonight, determined not to miss Bradley Wiggins in action in the first of the Grand Tours, I was searching the Internet for Giro highlights and even considered taking out a Sky subscription after reading that I can get a Sky Go monthly ticket and watch via my Xbox.  An online chat with a Sky representative confirmed that I would need to pay £35 for a single month’s TV and even thinking of that as £1 a day didn’t help.

I considered hitting the torrent sites until I learned (thanks to Ian Murphy/@journoian) that the highlights are on Eurosport as well as Sky Sports.  A little research suggested that, for £4.99 “Crowd Pass” I could access the Eurosport Player for a month (Android, iOS and Kindle apps, PC and Mac, as well as Sony and LG smart TVs – unfortunately not Samsung…). There’s also a £2.99 “Sports Fan” option but that involves a 12 month commitment.

So, despite being delayed by two sullen blokes hitting coloured balls around a big green table, here I am, watching Cav, Wiggo and co. racing on the Italian riviera, just as I suspect I will be for the next three weeks!

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Technology Waffle and randomness

Major change to my role at Fujitsu

Tuesday 2 April 2013 – 12:00

Over the last few weeks, I’ve dropped a few hints online about a change in my job at Fujitsu. Some, eagle-eyed LinkedIn connections saw me update my profile a couple of weeks ago to add a new position – as Fujitsu’s Head of Practice and Lead Architect for Messaging in the UK and Ireland – and today is my first day (although I’ve been picking up parts of the role for a few weeks now).

After almost three years in a strategy role, supporting two Chief Technology Officers with very different areas of focus, it’s time for a new challenge. My new role is a mixture of line management and practicing consultant so I’m actually returning to my technical roots whilst gaining additional experience of directly leading a team and being responsible for growing part of our business (including some challenging financial targets). Added to that, as messaging moves into our Business and Application Services service line, this is an opportunity for me to work in an applications business whilst building on many years of infrastructure experience.  There’s also some pretty exciting stuff going on with Microsoft (I’m not sure that’s announced publicly, so I won’t say anything more here) – but it’s a great time for me to be making this move.

Messaging is not entirely new for me – from the mid-1990s through to the mid-2000s, I worked on a number of NT and Microsoft Mail/Exchange migrations/implementations and I was one of the consultants working on ICL’s partner stand at the Microsoft  Exchange 4.0 UK launch roadshow.  In addition, one of my technical career highlights was the work I did at Polo Ralph Lauren, to design and project-manage a migration from Novell Netware to Microsoft Windows Server, from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange Server and to roll out a standard desktop build across Europe, in multiple languages, with just two Windows XP images (one uniprocessor and one ACPI). The success of that project was down to the professionalism and capabilities of the team around me – and it will be just the same in this new role.

As for this blog, well, I’ve been pretty busy for the last few weeks, as I’ve juggled two jobs – and I expect I’ll be just as busy over the coming weeks and months – but I’m still tweeting and I’ll still knock out the odd blog post too.  There might be some more Microsoft Exchange and Lync content but I expect that the usual mix of photography, social media and observations on the state of tech will persist.  This blog has been here for 9 years now, the content just shifts slightly as I do different things in my life and it seems that some people still find it interesting enough to read (or at least to subscribe)!

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Technology Waffle and randomness

The conference call productivity drain…

Tuesday 19 March 2013 – 9:12

The following script is based on a real conference call. The names and times have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent but, other than that, it’s pretty accurate:

9:45 (15 minutes before the meeting): Reminder pops up, “snooze” it until 5 minutes before.

9:55: I’ll just finish writing this email… I wonder, was there any preparation required for this meeting? I haven’t done any but no-one else will have either…

9:59: Ah yes, that meeting – how long?! An  hour and a half! Dial the conference service. What was the meeting passcode again? Got it, I’m in. Ah, hold music.

10:00 (advertised meeting start time): “The chairperson has not arrived. Please wait…” more hold music.

Just after 10:00: Call is opened, just two people so far. Social chat about what’s going on.

10:01: Someone else joins the call. Say hello, bring them into the chat. More banter.

10:02: Two more attendees join. Roll call. Explain that we’re waiting for a few more.

10:03: More attendees. Almost quorate now. Roll call, just waiting for Michael and Stuart. Michael did say he would join but, in the interests of time, start the meeting.

10:05: Michael joins the call. Apologies for lateness. Quick roll call and bring up to speed on introduction. Start meeting properly.

10:07: Stuart joins the call. He’s in the same building as the meeting organiser and wants to join in person. He’s told the room number and drops off the call.

(call continues for another hour or so…)

This is “normal”?! Several middle-managers, not exactly inexpensive resources, waste time waiting for others to get themselves organised. A few minutes, multiplied by several attendees soon becomes an hour of lost productivity for the company.  I’ve even seen this on calls with hundreds of people (literally) waiting.

I admit, sometimes meetings over-run for good reasons. Only last week I had to delay a meeting and missed another two calls completely because an important issue arose which needed immediate resolution (a personnel issue – and people trump process in my mental rule-book) so I allowed a meeting to over-run. I tried to keep others informed though, rather than leaving them hanging on a conference call waiting for me to arrive.

But, in our organisation, people accept the sort of practice I’ve laid out above as normal (or at least, they tolerate it) and I’ve coined a term to describe the company timezone (which is 3 minutes after the real time).

The thing is, we’re not alone. That’s why I feel comfortable talking about this issue on a public forum – it happens in organisations all over the country – indeed, all over the world, all of the time.

Yesterday, Matt Ballantine published a blog post entitled “clock watching”, in which he suggests it’s not collaboration tools we need, it’s somebody asking “why are we meeting?”. Quoting from Matt’s post:

“Imagine if the workflow for setting up a meeting, rather than being ‘find a slot available for the attendees, book the meeting’, was more like:

- state the objectives and outcomes required for the meeting
- understand who might be active participants
- describe who should be informed, yet not necessarily attend
- validate that this will require a meeting to achieve the necessary outcomes
- plan out the activities for the session
- validate again that a meeting is the best route for the outcomes to be achieved
- work out the correct time for the meeting
- find an appropriate time slot for the meeting
- send out participant briefing notes to everyone concerned”

For a while now, I’ve been asking “Do you need me on this call? I’m not sure what value I’ll be adding”. In future I’ll be more strict. And I’ll be starting the meetings that I control right on time, rather than when we have most people on the call. If people realise that they miss things by turning up late, maybe they will be more punctual? Or maybe I just need to chill out?

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Waffle and randomness

Lego: the best value toy that money can buy (and tracking down replacement parts)

Friday 15 March 2013 – 10:27

Thirty years ago, I was a ten-year old boy who spent a huge amount of time building Lego models, usually to be destroyed by my younger brother*. Today, my sons are playing with that same Lego, supplemented by a growing number of sets of their own (slowly taking over our house in spite of my efforts to contain it to the living room and their bedrooms).

Imitation sets are just not as good

There have been a few sets gifted from others that are not “real” Lego.  It may sound ungrateful but these mostly have been passed on to charity shops as either:

  • They had black and white instructions that were difficult to follow.
  • They needed us to download and print the instructions ourselves (surprisingly expensive and impractical).
  • They just didn’t fit together as well as real Lego (the models are too fragile).

Whether it’s Knex, MegaBlox or one of the plethora of wannabees, it seems that imitation Lego is really just a false economy.

Sourcing replacements for broken parts

One of the properties of Lego bricks is that they are incredibly strong. Anyone who’s every stood on one whilst walking bare-foot can tell you that! But, ever so occasionally, a practically indestructible Lego part gets broken and, faced with an inconsolable eight-year-old who wanted to use a 2×2 plate with ball connector that had snapped off (“it’s really rare and we’ve only got about 2 of them Dad”), I set about locating replacements (super glue had done a better job of sticking my fingers together than it did two pieces of Lego…).

There are various Lego parts databases online, as well as sites specialising in selling second-hand Lego parts (although parts availability can be patchy). I found the BrickSet Lego Brick Guide to be comprehensive, accurate and easy to work with (it ought to be – I’ve just noticed it’s an official Lego site!) and I searched for the part I needed, using a set number that I knew it appeared in.

Lego’s parts replacement service is not available in all countries and I couldn’t find it via the UK website but a friend who used to work at Lego said they often sent out parts to replace broken/missing pieces. So, after locating the exact part, I went to Lego’s replacement parts system and requested a new piece.

This is where Lego excelled. Not only did they replace that part but I also asked for replacements for some others that had become broken over the years and Lego shipped them, free of charge. I would have paid for them, if I could find them but Lego’s customer service is so good and their confidence in the quality of the product so strong that they will replace the broken pieces.

The real value of Lego

I can’t think of any other toy that’s provided as much play value as Lego and it was interesting to read an article about how Lego’s price has changed over the years (it’s not as expensive as it first seems).  Then, last weekend, my sons spent their pocket money on some more.  My 6 year-old plumped for some Lego Star Wars sets (no surprises there) but my 8 year-old bought a battery pack, motor, lights, switch and gears.

Over the next few days, he built a vehicle that drives itself, worked out how best to arrange the gears and motor, how to make it stronger, how to tweak the electrics so that the lights came on separately to the motor. Each iterative change brought improvements, and taught him a little more about making things work. In short, Lego taught him about physics, engineering, electronics (arguably innovation too…) – all with very little input from me.  Whilst my wife is looking for ways to feed his interest (and apparent aptitude) for STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I think we might get quite a long way just by buying lots of Lego Technics and Mindstorms!

 

* On one notable occasion I “left home”, aged 7, walking out after my brother broke up a Lego model I’d created… I came home a few hours later in a panda car…

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Waffle and randomness

How to be a CEO, in 10 minutes

Friday 8 February 2013 – 12:00

Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselvesRecently, I was listening to a CEO give a fantastic explanation of his job (described as “how to be a CEO in about 10 minutes – some free of charge advice”). Of course, it’s a massive over-simplification* but, fundamentally, this is what business is about.  I’ve left out all of the juicy metrics – they were confidential – and I’m not naming the CEO either but I thought it would be interesting to share the basics, particularly if, like me, you have no formal business qualifications…

If you run a company – it’s a good idea to have a strategy. Often, that strategy boils down to three things:

  1. Run the company properly
  2. Grow the company
  3. Prepare for the future

Whilst all three principles need to be applied, 1. needs to be in place before you can focus on 2. and 3., so let’s look at “running the company properly”.

There are three important metrics to consider:

  • Gross margin
  • Operating expenditure
  • Operating profit

We’re all in business to make money (or generate value in another form – which generally involves raising funds along the way). Gross margin is about customers allowing companies to charge more for a product or a service than it actually costs to create because the company adds value. The amount of margin that customers will allow depends on the types of products or services that are sold – and some products rely on high volume sales with low margins, whilst others are highly profitable in themselves because they attract a premium price (e.g. if they are in short supply).  Even if you don’t know what the margins are, it’s pretty easy to see which companies are charging a premium and which are not.

So that’s gross margin.  The next thing to consider is operating expenditure (OpEx).  This is the overhead of running a company: premises, people, etc.  Reducing OpEx is about reducing overheads – and if you want to know if you are an overhead, consider whether your presence in the workplace has a direct impact on customers.  If it doesn’t, then you’re an overhead…

You can’t run a company with zero OpEx, but it needs to be appropriate and under control.

Gross Margin minus OpEx equals operating profit – and I said earlier that, generally, we are in business to make a profit.

Now, profit is all well and good, but companies need cash in order to function – and a company’s cashflow is vital in order to be able to buy materials (to create products and services) and to allocate money for capital expenditure (CapEx) like new equipment and other investments in growing the company (e.g. acquisitions).  Just like a current account, negative cashflow is not necessarily a problem, as long as the company can be recapitalised (e.g. by its shareholders), or borrow money from a financial services institution (e.g. an overdraft, or a loan).  At some point the intention is such that the incoming revenues are sufficient and the margin/OpEx healthy enough that profits grow and cashflow turns positive. At that point, a company can return value to its shareholders, or invest for the future.

So that’s how to run a company, with a little bit of growth in the mix too (principles like the service-profit chain can help too, linking profitability, customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and loyalty and productivity). With the basics in place and a good team on board, planning for the future is about vision - recognising upcoming challenges and finding new opportunities (maybe even some disruptive innovation).

 

* At least, I imagine it is – I’ve never been a CEO and don’t expect I will be in the near future either!

Photo Credit: Mukumbura via Compfight (licensed under Creative Commons).

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Waffle and randomness

Book review: The Archers Archives

Sunday 27 January 2013 – 11:37

Most people who read this blog do so for technology content of some sort (although I have to accept there may be some stalkers too…). Readers seem to tolerate my occasional rants and wandering off to a bit of photography or motoring from time but I’m not sure there are very many fans of The Archers subscribed to my RSS. Or maybe there are?!

I’ve been listening to “the world’s longest running soap opera” for a few years now but the fact that Auntie Beeb makes it available as a podcast is a huge advantage. Now I don’t have to be close to the radio (or digital alternative) at a certain time and I don’t have to inflict my daily catch-up on family members who are less interested in the goings-on in Ambridge (although I was amused and maybe slightly concerned a few years ago when my son, then aged-about-4, started to repeat “for more information go to bbc dot co dot uk slash archers” and danced around to the “dum di dum” theme as I was listening in the car!)

My Archers addiction is only a few years old though (I did listen for a while on the radio a few years before that), but I sometimes start to wonder what a certain reference might mean, when the day’s script hooks back into something from the distant past. So I was especially pleased to receive a copy of The Archers Archives in my Christmas stocking.

Produced for the Archers 60th anniversary (so not covering the last couple of years), this book walks though all of the major events since the programme’s inception, including interviews with the actors and actresses who play the major parts, as well as key members of the production team.

There’s some interesting information on the BBC website but I thoroughly recommend the book to anyone who enjoys the Archers and is intrigued to know more about the history of Ambridge and its community.

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Waffle and randomness

DIY home electrics

Sunday 30 December 2012 – 10:06

I’m fortunate enough to live in a pleasant market town which generally has a low crime rate.  Unfortunately, recent months have seen a significant increase in the number of burglaries and, with Thames Valley Police seemingly mystified as to who the culprits are (other than suspecting that they are coming in “across the border from Northamptonshire”!), I started to look into ways to increase the security of our home.

Of course, if someone wants to get into your house they will find a way but the advice we’ve been given can be paraphrased as “make sure your house is less attractive than the alternative” and, although I already have several security measures in place, an extra security light (with PIR) on the front drive was an inexpensive modification (and also quite handy when arriving home in the dark).

In the UK, regulations have brought electrical work under the control of the local authority Building Regulations but that doesn’t outlaw DIY electrical work entirely. All it means is that the works need to be carried out to a particular standard, as well as distinguishing between major (notifiable) and minor works. As my household electrics were professionally upgraded a few years ago (including extensive re-wiring for most of the ground floor and a new consumer unit), I know that they are in good shape and felt reasonably confident in my abilities to run a fused spur in our garage from the existing ring main (many projects would be “notifiable” – this is not).

It took me a few hours, and the hardest part was getting cable clips to attach to the blockwork/mortar that makes up the interior walls of our garage but I got there in the end. For a description of the electrical changes, there’s some good advice on the ‘net, like the description of the project at lets-do-diy.com. Unfortunately, there’s also a fair bit of scaremongering out there – this post on the IET forums is a great example, with one user asking if the person asking the question is qualified, highlighting that a circuit could be overloaded and others saying that any circuit can be overloaded, but that’s the point of adding a fuse where the rating of the cable changes! Others point out that there are also degrees of experience and that qualification has very little to do with competence. From my perspective it’s good to see that electricians are no different to us IT bods – still dealing with the fallout from bodged DIY jobs and squabbling over the value of certifications over experience!

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Waffle and randomness

Tomorrow night I’ll be taking calls for Children in Need 2012 (#CiN)

Thursday 15 November 2012 – 16:22

Normally, on a Friday night, I can be found in my living room, on the sofa, watching something on TV.

This week will be different because tomorrow night, instead of watching telly, I’ll be working in one of the Children in Need call centres.  My employer is one of the organisations selected to provide the service for the BBC’s annual fundraiser and many of us have volunteered to “man the phones” so, if your call ends up in Manchester tomorrow, there’s a (small) chance that it will be me that takes your details.

There will be events taking place up and down the country in support of this great charity initiative and, if you’re able to do so, please give generously. More details can be found on the official BBC Children in Need website*.

*markwilson.it has no affiliation with Children in Need, other than as a supporter.

 

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Technology Waffle and randomness

More retail banking security theatre

Sunday 4 November 2012 – 11:31

Yesterday, I bought a new suit. Nothing remarkable there but I paid on my Lloyds TSB Duo Avios credit card. A card that I will shortly be cutting into little pieces because it’s useless to me if the bank declines transactions on an apparently random basis…

You see, I also wanted an extra pair of trousers and they were out of stock. The very helpful guy at John Lewis went through the online order process, I supplied my credit card details and all was good. Then we went to the till and paid for the suit jacket and first pair of trousers.

The £250 transaction for the suit went through OK but a short while later I was called by John Lewis to say that the £80 order for the trousers placed a few minutes earlier had been declined.  That seemed strange – especially as it was placed before the larger transaction (I’d expect the large one to be declined if there was some sort of anti-fraud flag triggered by a small purchase and then a large one) so we tried again. No joy. Declined by the bank. So I supplied some different card details and all was OK.

I was annoyed. I use multiple credit cards for good reasons but at least I had been able to use a different card even if that does mean that my personal and business transactions are mixed up. Fast forward to this morning and I was incensed.

Sunday morning, 10am: enjoying a rare lie-in whilst the kids are away; the phone rings – it might be my in-laws and it might be important, so I answer.

“This is an automated anti-fraud call from Lloyds TSB…” (or similar). I’m angry now, but I comply with the whole process as I think I might be charged twice for my trousers.  This process involved:

  • Confirming that I was (imagine robotic voice) “Mr Mark Wilson”. 1. Yes, that’s me.
  • Confirming my year of birth. Not exactly a secret, especially not to anyone who might answer my home phone.
  • Confirming my day and month of birth. Again, public information, and known to all in my household.
  • Listening to some details of some possibly fraudulent transactions: two declined for £80 and one approved for £250; both flagged as Internet purchases at John Lewis, a “grocery or supermarket” retailer. Not much help there as John Lewis is a department store (Waitrose is their supermarket brand) and clearly store transactions are incorrectly flagged as Internet purchases – which means the information is unreliable at best and confusing if it had been a different retailer with whom I was less familiar.
  • Confirming I had made those transactions. Tempting to say no but that would be fraudulent. I said 1 for yes, anyone in the house who answered my phone could have answered anything…
  • Supplying my mobile phone number for future anti-fraud calls (I probably didn’t supply it in the first place because I was concerned they would use it for marketing…). Well, at least my mobile is more immediate, and more secure than the home phone (only I use it).

Pure security theatre.

I can understand the banks wanting to reduce fraud – it costs them millions. But my account has a significantly larger credit limit than transactions I attempted in John Lewis yesterday and they could go a lot higher before declining transactions and inconveniencing me as a customer. I can see some patterns that might have flagged the anti-fraud systems but not the sense in declining the first and third transactions yet accepting the second (larger) one. It’s possible that John Lewis stored my card details and applied them after a short delay but, even so, I’d think it’s pretty common for people to make in-store transactions and place orders through the retailer’s online channel at or around the same time (in scenarios like the one I described).

I’ll make the most of the interest-free period until my next bill, pay in full (as always) and then I’ll be closing my account with Lloyds TSB. “Security” that stops me using my cards when I want to, and disturbs my privacy at home (with an automated call using publicly-available information!) is “security” I can do without…

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