markwilson.it

Category: Waffle and randomness

  • Hopping Mad in Olney

    Top Notch Hop NotchThis is a technology blog but, every now and again, I find a way to weave in something different and, if I were a betting man, I’d say that more than a few of my readers like the occasional beer…

    I’m a relatively recent convert to the world of real ale. Maybe it’s a maturity thing but I used to drink lager in my teens and early 20s, moving on to Guinness for most of my 30s but, more recently I’ve  switched to what my Dad would have called proper beer. But, unlike Dad, my preference is less for mass-brewed stuff (although I am partial to a St Austell Tribute or few) – instead I like to try a local ale when I’m out and about.

    That’s why the opportunity to visit my local micro-brewery (Hopping Mad, brewing just around the corner in Olney) was not to be missed. The evening was organised by the Newport Pagnell and Olney Lions Club and, although I have nothing to do with the Lions, I was a guest for a fish and chip supper washed down with free-flowing ale – quite possibly the ultimate  “p***-up in a brewery”…

    David explains allHopping Mad Brewers Limited was established in July 2010 by (entrepreneur and beer enthusiast) Matthew Hargreaves and (experienced business operations manager) David Wright. After searching for a suitable location in the Northampton, Milton Keynes, and Bedford area, they settled on Olney, which has been a great base for the company – situated close to the boundaries of three counties and, whilst the town itself is small (with a population of around 6000), the surrounding area has a population of close on one million people.

    Initially known as Amazing Ales (a play on words around the hymn Amazing Grace, the most famous of the Olney Hymns), the Hopping Mad name seemed a much better fit as it describes how they are “mad passionate” about beers – and the strapline of “brewing just around the bend” is a nice touch too.  After signing the lease to take on the unit where the brewery is sited on Yardley Road, they prepared the site with additional drainage, decoration, etc. and began to source some equipment.

    (Near) unlimited samplingHopping Mad is a “15-barrel brewery” – a term derived from the capacity to brew 15 brewers’ barrels of beer at once (more volume than a 5 barrel setup for a similar amount of effort). It’s no co-incidence that there is a lot of equipment on the second-hand market from brewers moving up to a 30 barrel setup and the core of Hopping Mad’s equipment was obtained from Yates Brewery in Cumbria (who were moving to a larger installation). Additional fermenting vessels were purchased elsewhere and work started on brewing the beer in mid-2010.

    Matthew and David were determined to “get it right first time” as people will try local produce once but there is no second chance if it’s not up to scratch, so they took advice from the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), local publicans (including Reg Pearson at the Robin Hood in Clifton Reynes) and others (including Graeme Baxter at Yates’).  They’ve been well supported by local free houses (unfortunately tied houses are generally unable to select the ales they might like, except perhaps for special events) as well as retailing directly to consumers (with 5 and 10 litre draught casks, 72 pint casks and, soon, 500ml bottles) although the emphasis is very much on getting people into pubs to drink beer and direct retail is primarily aimed at brand-building.  Whilst Hopping Mad beers can be found across the country, the vision is one of a well-known brand within a 40-mile radius of Olney.

    Cask aleI won’t try to explain the process of brewing (I took a lot of notes, but I’m sure they are incomplete – the British Brewing Association has a description of the brewing process too) but each brew produces 15 brewers barrels (60 firkins/540 gallons/4320 pints). At present, the brewery produces two or three brews a week but is hoping to increase that to four by the end of 2012, with five as an eventual target.

    A micro-brewery is defined as one that produces less than 500,000 litres a year and this micro-brewery status reduces the amount of duty to be paid by 50%. As a bonded warehouse, Hopping Mad pays duty at the point of sale and, with five staff, the brewery’s major costs are split are split between ingredients (including the use of premium Maris Otter barley), labour and duty.

    At the moment, Hopping Mad have five ales in production:
    Pump clips

    • Brainstorm (4.3% ABV) is a traditional best bitter and was the first Hopping Mad beer, often taken by pubs as a guest ale.
    • Fruitcase (4.5% ABV) came next, as a fruity golden ale.
    • Hop Notch (3.6% ABV) is Hopping Mad’s session beer – malty and tasty and even though it’s relatively weak, it tastes like a stronger beer [I can testify to this… I’m sure that mostly drinking Hop Notch was one reason I didn’t suffer a hangover the day after my brewery visit].
    • Balmy Days (3.9% ABV) was originally a summer ale but some pubs have taken it as a permanent line (it works well with curries, etc.).
    • Amazing Grace (4.4% ABV) is aimed at festivals, brewed less frequently (perhaps once a month).

    There’s a sixth beer on the website too: Hoppiness (3.7% ABV) is another fine English Ale, with a hoppy taste (as the name suggests).

    I asked the best way to keep the beer (for example, the 5 litre draught casks that I buy from time to time) and, after the initial guffaws from around the room about keeping beer (rather than drinking) it, Reg from the Robin Hood suggested to keep it at around 10-12 degrees (otherwise it’s too cold to taste, but not too warm either). Matthew and David explained that, whilst beer does have a “best before” date it is essentially a stable product and the “best before” date is exactly that – a date before which to enjoy the beer as intended (i.e. it’s about consistency) as any contact between the yeast and oxygen will cause secondary brewing that may affect the taste.

    After having got off to a great start over the last 18 months, Hopping Mad are not standing still. I was fortunate enough to taste a not-quite-finished dark ale called Black Jack and there are plans for an American-style pale ale of around ABV 5% in the summer, as well as a winter warmer towards the end of the year [I’m looking forward to that one!].  As for the future, whilst there was talk of a longer term vision to malting in-house (a return to local, sustainable, business), Matthew and David’s immediate goals are about improving their beers, pushing the reputation of the brand and continuing the quality. Amen to that!

    You can learn more about Hopping Mad including details of shops and pubs that stock the beers at HoppingMad.com.* Hopping Mad is also on Facebook, and recently featured on Anglia News.

     

    *not .co.uk – the domain squatters there were too greedy!

    [markwilson.it has no affiliation with Hopping Mad, but I do like to support local businesses, and they do produce some very fine ales!]

    [Updated 22 February 2012: thanks to Bill Beton for pointing out the correct spelling for Maris Otter barley]
    [Updated 23 February 2012: New links to Hopping Mad’s Facebook pages, and Anglia News package]

  • Culinary creations and “International English”

    As a bit of a foodie, I’ve always enjoyed creating meals although, if I’m perfectly honest, I normally do the “glory cooking” when we’re entertaining friends, and my wife looks after much of the everyday food preparation.

    Right now, Mrs W. is very busy in her work (for which I’m very grateful – freelancers need to “make hay whilst the sun shines”!) and that means that I need to pick up a few more tasks around the house. Combined with my need to eat healthily and carefully count calories (I still have another 5kg to lose before the end of March) I’m currently taking on most of the responsibility for our meals, spending a good chunk of the last two weekends in the kitchen, with a good share of my culinary creations heading towards the freezer for use as ready meals.

    I’m no Masterchef contender, but my food generally seems to go down well, and it’s good to try something different from time to time. Last weekend, I was creating a Spanish-inspired meal for friends and I decided to make Crema Catalana for desert.  The recipe I followed is pretty simple but I found myself thrown by two things:

    1. “Cups” of ingredients (give me grammes, or even pounds and ounces).
    2. Strange terms like cornstarch (could that be cornflour?)

    I finally found a use for a kitchen computer as, with a little help from my smartphone, I had determined that quantity in a “cup” depends on the product. There’s a handy reference at AllRecipes.com. So that was number 1 sorted. As for 2., well, yes “cornstarch” is what we, in England, call “cornflour” and there’s a useful Wikipedia entry on “International English” food terms.

    [English is the language spoken by (most) people in England and adopted by many other nations. Some of the variations even make sense (color instead of colour, for example) but I speak, read and write English – and find the term “International English” to be nonsensical. There is English, and there is American, Australian, etc. I know that languages constantly evolve, but… OK, I’ll come down off my soapbox now.]

    My time in the kitchen is not normally a topic for this blog but I thought these references might be useful for others. As well as for me, next time I’m confused by a recipe written in “International English”.

  • Why should the UK move to GMT+1? And do we really need “daylight saving time”?

    As I wondered around the house this morning resetting a plethora of clocks (two ovens, four heating themostats, two wall clocks in the childrens’ bedrooms, fixed-line phone, two mobile phones, two cars – thankfully the computers, PVR, radio, some of the mobile phones and many other devices change themselves), I did have to wonder “what is the point?”. Maybe it’s because my son woke me at 5.30 (because his body clock has not suddenly changed overnight) and consequentially I’m grumpy…

    At this time of year, the media churns out the same old stories (it must be great for editors – rehash the article from 6 months ago and put it out again) and the gist is always that someone wants to change the time zone that the UK operates on, the Scots don’t want to (because being 500 miles north does make quite a difference), meanwhile someone else thinks it would be good to be on the same time zone as the rest of Western Europe (except Ireland).

    But this is England. The Greenwich Meridian runs through London. Universal time is based around Greenwich Mean Time. Why should we suddenly end up on GMT+1 in the winter and GMT+2 in the summer? Why do the clocks need to change at all?

    Some will argue road safely concerns in the winter – but we either have to travel to work/school in the dark or travel home in the dark so that doesn’t make much sense to me. I believe that the original intention with daylight saving time was to increase the available hours for farming – except that farmers work all hours, and it doesn’t actually increase the number of hours in the day when we have daylight or darkness! With modern machinery the farmers where I live work through the night at harvest-time, so I don’t really see that being an issue.

    Advocates of a switch in time zone are suggesting harmonisation for businesses in the UK and continental Europe to work the same hours. But how many businesses really work from 9-5? There are still local customs that lead to long lunches and late evenings in some parts of Europe; I certainly don’t get to go home because the clock has hit a certain time; and, anyway, business is global these days – we’re all well used to working across timezones.

    If we do have to mess with the timezones, why would it even have to apply in Scotland (who are vehemently against any further variation in “daylight saving time”)? Unlike England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland has it’s own parliament and can elect to do whatever it likes (the Welsh and Northern Irish assemblies have some powers too). Australia and the United States work across multiple timezones (I’m sure some other countries do too) – so could the UK, if that’s what it takes (although we are tiny in comparison)! I don’t know too much about the US (except that East cost is 5 hours behind us and the west coat is 8; and that their clocks change at a different time of year so I always miss at least one conference call!) but some Australian states don’t even observe DST. So why not abolish DST in Engalnd and Wales, and let Scotland decide what it wants to do? Northern Ireland could probably abolish DST too, but I can see why they would want to follow Éire’s lead.

    It seems to me that daylight saving is an outdated concept, that (in England at least) causes disruption twice a year for no real advantage. So, instead of moving forward yet another hour, I propose we stay on GMT indefinitely!

    See also:

    A brief history of timezones

  • No longer one of Microsoft’s Most Valued

    Three years ago, I was very excited to announce that Microsoft had given me a Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award, recognising some of the work I had been doing at that time around virtual machine technology (specifically Hyper-V). I’ve been re-awarded twice since then but 1 October has passed once more and, for the 2011/12 season, there is no award for me.

    To be honest, that’s not a surprise and all good things must come to an end. MVP awards are for people doing great work in the community to evangelise Microsoft products* and I just don’t do much of that any more.  I also don’t have the same relationship with Microsoft’s evangelists that I enjoyed a few years back, and the PR people stopped feeding me information (so I guess my influence must have been on the wane). Ultimately, my career has moved in a different direction and I honestly believe that to keep me “on the team” would devalue the programme and what it stands for. (Kind of like the MCSE did when the exams got too easy…)

    As I’m writing this, it seems like a good time to mention the Windows Server User Group too. I spoke to Mark Parris a few weeks ago, and we agreed that I would step down from any activities there (the user group still exists, under Mark’s leadership). Realising that this might look like bitterness on my part, I want to be clear that it’s unrelated to any decision about my MVP status – I just chose to announce it at the same time because it comes down to the same issues of time/priorities/career focus.

    Thanks to all of the people both inside and outside Microsoft, who have supported me over the years, read this blog, retweeted my comments on Twitter, etc. I hope you’ll continue to do so, now I no longer have the badge. And good luck to all of the MVPs I’ve met over the years, either online or in person – as I joked with Aidan Finn a couple of weeks ago, if Microsoft ever launches a “Most Valuable Strategist” programme, I’ll be right in there!

    *I appreciate that this may be a slightly contentious comment. Many MVPs offer objective and impartial advice too!

  • Confessions of a business traveller…

    There was a time when travel was an everyday part of my life. Maybe not the international variety, although I’ve done my fair share of that, particularly when I was working for Polo Ralph Lauren, but I used to spend my weeks hammering up and down the motorways of England, Wales and, less commonly, Scotland and Ireland too…

    These days a typical week is split between my home office (commute time, 5 seconds from my bedroom) and London (commute time, 4 hours). This week was different though – as I write this I’m travelling by Eurostar, speeding through France at 300kph, on my way home from Paris.

    Holiday Inn Paris Bastille, next to a sex shop...“Lucky so-and-so”, some of you might think but, even though long-distance train travel is vastly preferable to flying, we’re not talking luxury here: I have a standard class seat and my hotel last night was a perfectly comfortable, but not over the top, Holiday Inn (next to a sex shop, as it happens… make what you will of that!)

    Even those of us travelling “on expenses” need to be mindful of costs, especially in the current economic climate, so I have a few tips to share with anyone making a similar journey…

    St Pancras International (2)First up, is the domestic train travel before the Eurostar terminal atLondon St Pancras (in my opinion, a wonderful place to travel to/from). I bought a normal, off peak ticket into London and an advance ticket home again (two singles) but it turns out there is another, less well advertised, option: cheaper fares are available to connect with London International (CIV) services.

    Next comes  the Eurostar boarding pass: if you have a supported smartphone, don’t bother printing a paper copy – Eurostar have a mobile app (for iPhone and Android) that allows you to download your boarding pass and simply show the QR code on your screen to the reader on the gates.

    My next tip relates to the journey itself. After travelling on modern trains in the UK, it’s easy to forget that the Eurostar fleet is now starting to show its age and lacks features such as in-seat power sockets and Wi-Fi. Thankfully, Eurostar are embarking on a refurbishment of their fleet next year (together with the addition of some new trains) – and Wi-Fi is certainly part of the plan, although I’m not sure about power sockets for laptops, etc. On that basis, it might be worth making sure that your devices are well-charged before setting out on the journey.

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/Eurostar/status/110675523667116032″]

    Mobile communications are another issue and, even though European mobile carriers are being forced to reduce their pricing for voice communications, data roaming charges are best described as excessive. O2 kindly sent me a text to tell me that calls would cost £0.36 a minute outbound and £0.11 a minute inbound. Meanwhile SMS messages would be £0.11 to send and free to receive, but data was – are you sitting down? – £3.06 per Megabyte. And that was in France; it gets steeper in other parts of the world. For that reason, I didn’t use push email, Twitter, or much else whilst I was travelling. I recommend turning off Data Roaming on your smartphone/tablet, resetting the statistics, and then turning it on only when required, taking care to watch what’s being used (just 5 Foursquare check-ins racked up 1.6MB of data, bringing a whole new meaning to questioning the cost of social networking…). Aside from the fact that I’m a social media junkie, it’s amazing how reliant I have become on Google Maps – and I got lost at least twice, including on the way to from the Metro to our offices.

    On that note, as I write this post, my train is just about to leave the Channel Tunnel and I’ll be glad to be back in the land of 3G communications again!

    Finally, if, like me, your destination is Paris and you feel like using some apps, I have a couple of recommendations:

    • I already mentioned Eurostar but the other is from the Paris transit authority, RATP (for iPhone and iPad). These apps needs connectivity, but tap your start and end stations on the map, then it will work out the quickest journey by a variety of transport modes. Transport for London could learn a lot from this…
    • I was less enamoured with the Lonely Planet Paris Travel Guide (for iPhone). Maybe if I was on a leisure trip it might have been more useful but the £3.99 cost was not worth it for me – the user experience is poor (very un-iOS) and the best thing I can say about it is that is has an offline map of Paris, although it only covers the city centre and I tended to use the paper copy that the hotel gave me…

    Oh yes, and one more thing: make sure you have some offline media to entertain you on the journey – I’ve watched quite a few TED talks on this trip and am currently listening to my Spotify playlists in offline mode…

    So that’s about it. This leg of my journey is drawing to a close, I’m now speeding through Kent and Twitter is calling. Hopefully these tips will be useful to someone else making a similar journey soon.

  • The perils of online billing…

    Like most people, the mail I receive from the postman these days breaks into three categories:

    As I use Direct Debits to pay my bills, they generally need little more than a cursory glance before being “filed” (i.e. chucked in a big box until I get around to doing it properly) but I also elect for paper-free billing where it makes sense.

    I say “where it makes sense” because so many organisations (e.g. First Direct, ING Direct, Marks and Spencer Money) seem to think that providing records in HTML, CSV or Quicken format is enough – and it’s not, in my opinion.  The paper-free billing that has value to me provides a PDF of the paper bill that would have been sent to me by post and organisations that do this include American Express, BT and E-ON.

    The wrong way

    If you were watching my Twitter stream over the weekend, you might have seen me ranting about BT‘s paper-free billing though, because there is a catch: and it’s one that’s worth knowing about.

    I mentioned how haphazard my paper filing is and my digital filing is not much better.  I get the emails notifying me that my bill is ready for download and I generally think “OK, I’ll look at that later”.  After all, I know it will be paid (by Direct Debit) and, if there is a problem, I’ll notice the exceptionally large/small transaction on my bank account and investigate at that time.  Every once in a while, I get around to downloading the statements and storing them in my “digital filing cabinet” (my NAS, at home).

    Except that I’m finding more and more of my providers don’t maintain a complete history for download. And BT was the one that really took the biscuit… I logged into BT’s website to retrieve my statements and successfully downloaded around 15 or 16 months’ worth. My problem was that I had a gap between the last time I did this, and the oldest statement available online.  I called BT, who told me I only have access to 6 months history (really? I can see more than that!) and that I could write a letter requesting the missing statements. Smelling a rat, I asked how much that would cost. £4.80 per bill, I was told. I said I wouldn’t be needing the address, thank you very much, and hung up.

    Then I hit Twitter:

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/markwilsonit/status/107455235949211648″]

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/markwilsonit/status/107455937794686976″]

    I got several sympathetic responses (including one follower who says BT promised him unlimited access to statements when he signed up for paper-free billing so he pushed the issue and was sent every single statement since his account was opened…) but one in particular copied in the @BTCare account. I had previously ignored that account, preferring hashtags like #BTDoesntCare because my previous experience of @BTCare had been unhelpful, but this time they responded with a URL for a web form, promising to follow up the issue.

    The next day (a Sunday, no less, and which should be applauded), BT called (from a call centre in Northern Ireland, rather than the normal Indian operation) and explained that I only had access to 6 months statements online and words to the effect of “it wasn’t their fault I hadn’t downloaded my statements in time, as they had sent them to me each month by email”. I pointed out that they hadn’t sent me the statements – what they actually sent was an email saying words to the effect of “your statement is ready, when you want to go and take a look” but not “be quick before it’s gone”. I also highlighted that they give me a £1 a month discount for paper-free billing and to charge any more than that was unreasonable – £4.80 for access to old bills was obscene, especially as I don’t want a paper bill – the PDFs will be fine.  At this point BT changed tack, claiming that they had some discretion, and offering to email me the missing bills.  After needing to speak to my wife (because it’s her name on the account and they can’t cope with two people being jointly responsible for a bill…), they sent me the missing statements and I was a happy camper. Almost.

    I say almost because this shouldn’t happen. How many people who are less connected online, or less pushy on the phone, would have just paid up the £33.60 BT wanted for seven statements and invested  time/effort/cost into posting a letter? And why is there only 6 months’ history available (and I’m “lucky” because I can see a bit more than that)?  The answer to that is poor IT, or poor decision making – presumably someone made an arbitrary decision to limit online statement availability and reduce the storage cost to BT – ironically, these statements are clearly available to BT’s customer services staff, although they may well be dynamically generated (as they used to be on the customer-facing website which, incidentally, was a painful process and the reason I rarely went in to download them!). Or, to take another view, how much did sorting out this mess cost BT (quite a bit, I would imagine, so surely it’s better to get it right first time)?

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/markwilsonit/status/107847209340502016″]

    The right way

    Now let me give you an example of an organisation that has paper-free statements working perfectly: American Express.

    I would use AmEx exclusively if only their cards were as widely accepted as Visa or Mastercard but their web portal allows me to download the most recent six months’ statements and, crucially, to request any previous statements for retrieval within 24 hours, at no cost to me.  At the back end, I’m sure the statements are pulled from near-line or off-line storage to on-line, managing American Express’ storage efficiently but almost transparently to me, and delivering an excellent customer experience.

    I’ll finish this post (I’m sorry, it is a bit or a rant), with a partial retweet from Simon Bisson that just about sums up the situation for me:

    [blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/markwilsonit/status/107456687102894080″]

    Well done American Express. BT and E-ON you need to do better. Bottom of the class: almost everyone else I deal with…

  • Some thoughts on modern communications and the boundary between work and play…

    A few months ago, I wrote a post for the Fujitsu CTO Blog about modern communications. In it, I posited the concept of “service level agreements“ for corporate communications:

    “[…] regaining productivity has to be about controlling the interruptions. I suggest closing Outlook. Think of it as an email/calendar client – not the place in which to spend one’s day – and the “toast” that pops up each time a message arrives is a distraction. Even having the application open is a distraction. Dip in 3 times a day, 5 times a day, every hour, or however often is appropriate but emails should not require nor expect an immediate response. Then there’s instant messaging: the name “instant” suggests the response time but presence is a valuable indicator – if my presence is “busy”, then I probably am. Try to contact me if you like but don’t be surprised if I ignore it until a better time. Finally, social networking: which is both a great aid to influencing others and to keeping abreast of developments but can also be what my wife would call a “time-Hoover” – so don’t even think that you can read every message – just dip in from time to time and join the conversation, then leave again.”

    I started to think about this again last week. I was on holiday but that doesn’t mean I stopped communicating with my colleagues. I’ll admit it let me be selective in my responses (i.e. there are a lot of things happening at work right now and I answered the messages that were important or interesting to me, leaving many items for my return – after all, I had set an out of office message) but there were a few times when my wife asked me if I was working, as she saw me tapping away on my iPhone…

    I maintain that work is something I do, not a place where I go and that, in this day and age (and at my level of responsibility), there is a grey area between work and play so I was enraged when I read an idiotic post about how telecommuting does not work (hello, 1980 is calling… and it wants you back…). Indeed, my “home-base” is one of the things that attracts me to my current role. Getting me back into a 5-day commute to an office that’s probably at least an hour (and maybe two) from home will require some serious persuasion…

    So where is the line? Should we all leave the office and stop checking our devices at the end of “the working day”? What about social networking – part of my job is to build a reputation (and therefore enhance my employer’s) as a thought leader – should I ignore something on Twitter because it’s not “work time”? Or should I ignore Twitter, Foursquare, etc. because it is “work time”? Should I be writing this blog post at 8.30pm? But then again, it is on my personal blog… even if a version of the post might eventually appear on a company-owned website…

    In the end, I suggest that the answer is about outputs, not inputs. If I’m producing results, my management team should (and, in fairness, probably will) be comfortable, regardless of how many hours I put in. On the flip-side, there are times when I need to work some very long days just to make sure that I can produce those results – and I’ll get frustrated with organisational challenges, non-functioning IT, pointless meetings and disruptive colleagues, just as everyone else does in a modern office environment.

    The days of the 9-5 job are long gone (for knowledge workers at least), but so are the 8-6s and even the 8-8s. We live in a 24 hour society – and the new challenge is finding a balance between “work” and “play”.  I’d be interested to hear your thoughts…

  • Social Media, the BBC and Jon Jacob (@thoroughlygood at #digitalsurrey)

    Last month I travelled down to Farnham to see Michael Wu’s talk on the Science of Gamification at Digital Surrey. Despite a hellish journey home*, I enjoyed the evening and met some great people, so I decided to come back again last night for this month’s talk. I may feel like an interloper from “analogue North Bucks” – and it would be fair to ask why I’m at an event for networking amongst the Surrey digerati – but my first two experiences of Digital Surrey have been great, so it looks like I could become a regular, if they’ll have me!

    Last night’s talk was from Jon Jacob (@thoroughlygood), a BBC writer, journalist and producer – who was at pains to point out he was speaking on behalf of himself, and not the BBC. Actually, Jon has a post about his own performance, which is worth a read.

    I took a lot of notes in his talk, which included his reading test on LBC whilst being constantly heckled by Sandi Toksvig, but I think it was best summarised with these points:

    • Jon has used and shamelessly exploited social media to build a “brand” and pursue a career.
    • Social media is at risk of being taken over by dangerous forces who don’t understand it. Many of us like using it, or tolerate it, but more and more people are using social media, including groups that don’t “get it”. Early adopters need to keep an eye out for:
      • Protest-driven people who know technology, bring together armies of geeks and put together massive project management teams to deliver projects in time and budget.
      • People with a little bit of information – they learn how to use Twitter on a Tuesday afternoon and set up as “social media experts” on Wednesday.
    • Social media is a conversation to tap into for stories and sources. More fundamentally it’s a transaction between the author and their own audience. If we post something on Facebook, implicitly we want attention: if we deny it we’re liars! It’s the same for Twitter – about the actor and the audience – not about how large is the audience…
    • If we listen to a radio programme and don’t like then we won’t listen again… it’s the same for TV… if it’s a bit tired we’ll go elsewhere. If that’s how it works for radio and TV, surely it must be the same for social media?
    • It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, the focus is about copy/editorial, not the medium.
    • The secret to engaging copy is that the personality flows through. Be the same person on the medium and in person. Tap into joy rather than avoid it. Exploit everything about yourself in a good way and turn into something (on a personal level or a corporate level).
    • Social media is nothing more than a distribution method, just as TV and radio are.
    • The thing that excites Jon is coming up with ideas and doing things. Maybe people have ideas and feel a bit frightened. Maybe they have ideas and “marketing” didn’t like something. Clearly there are certain laws to follow but it’s actually quite difficult to be that naughty. It’s hard to bring down governments!
    • We need to tap into people with ideas. Don’t just ask them to write a blog post but inspire them, create a delicate ecosystem, get people enthused. That can’t be bottled or put in a book but we’re missing a trick if we’re selling something and have teams of copywriters – maybe we need to do break out of our boundaries and do something different.

    By the way, I found Jon’s talk to be completely engaging (thoroughly good, one might say). I saw some negative comments and sure, maybe he went off in a few seemingly random directions, but at all times I was completely switched on to what he was saying. There’s not too many presentations where I can say that!

    *OK, so “hellish” is a slight exaggeration but the Highways Agency did close 5 out of the 6 lanes on the M1 northbound where the M25 filters in, at around 10pm, to lean a ladder up against an overhead gantry. I’m sure the resulting queues were just for their own amusement.

  • Humanising the customer experience (and why there are not enough Ts in alphabet spaghetti)

    Every now and again, a story comes along that just makes you feel good. And it makes you realise just how important it is for employees to understand their personal impact on a customer experience.

    I saw a tweet earlier this week which highlighting a couple of letters, one written to Sainsburys by a three year old (with a tiny bit of help) and the other, a response from their Careline. It would have been so easy for Sainsburys to ignore this, or just to respond in a “standard” letter but instead, they wrote in a style that was clearly aimed at “Lily”, signing off with their age, and enclosing a token gift. Very sweet.

    And now there’s even imitation from nearly-31-year-old Managing Directors of PR agencies who don’t think there are enough Ts in cans of alphabet spaghetti for them to write their press releases. Oh how true that seems at times!

    This sort of reaction is not new – but it is heart-warming, and great to see in today’s society of bland corporate identities.  (The positive press it’s generated won’t have done them any harm either!)

    I’m sure, if I look hard enough, I can find a letter from the Institute of Advanced Motorists, congratulating me, aged 7 and a-quarter, on my entry in their road sign recognition competition at the Northampton Town Show (which was only beaten on the last day) and enclosing a book token. I still remember that today – and it makes me smile when my own son (who is approaching that age) asks about road signs on our journeys…

  • Santander lives up to its reputation for poor customer service

    Today is the last day of the tax year, here in the UK, which means it’s traditionally the end of a crazy month of competition in the Individual Savings Account (ISA) market. For those who are outside the UK (or even in the UK, but perhaps not well versed in financial services), an ISA is a savings account which does not attract any tax on interest paid, within certain limits.

    With interest rates at a all-time low here (currently, the Bank of England base rate is just 0.5%, and typical savings rates are below that) it was worth shopping around for a decent Cash ISA. Santander’s Flexible Cash ISA was leading the market for instant-access ISAs at 2.8% above bank base rate, fixed until 2012 so, a few weeks ago I opened an account online, ignoring the reports of poor customer service because this is an infrequently-accessed savings account, not my current account. After waiting for the usual letters to arrive with various registration details, I finally negotiated the mess that is online “security”, logging on to my account with an arcane mix of personal IDs, passcodes and registration numbers. Quite why banks insist on this incomprehensible mess of identifiers (which only get written down somewhere…) is anyone’s guess – if a securID token is fine for staff accessing their systems remotely, I have to wonder why they can’t do something similar for retail customers but, to be fair, I’ve seen worse (ING Direct) and my bank (First Direct) is no better.

    After logging on (and ignoring the option to install some additional Trusteer Rapport software to further bog down my system) I saw an option to “Pay Money In” so, naturally, I thought this would be a good way to transfer some money into my account… oh, silly me…

    Screenshot of Santander web page with option to pay in money from an external account

    I supplied the details that the website requested (source sort code and account number, together with the amount of money to transfer) and it issued a receipt, including confirmation that:

    “Assuming the funds are available, they will be credited to your account within five days and will be availabel for withdrawal a further two working days later.”

    Great. Except that, despite receipting the transaction, Santander didn’t actually take any action on it. I checked six days later and found that the money had not left the source account. Wondering what was happening, I called a number for “general banking enquiries” from Santander’s “Contact us” web page. That was the wrong number – apparently I needed to speak to the Personal Banking team on a different number… still, at least the call centre was in the UK.

    I spoke to a helpful chap called “Paul”, who told me that he’d never heard of this option in Santander’s online banking pages and that I couldn’t transfer money into the account using Santander’s systems – I’d need to send it from the source bank.  With just two working days to the end of the tax year, I asked if Santander accepts Faster Payments and he said that, even though he can’t tell me what the limits are “for security reasons” (10 seconds on the Internet tells me that Santander’s current limit for outgoing payments is £300 but there is no figure listed for incoming transactions), my payment of £5100 would be too high and when I said that my bank would let me send up to £10,000 through the Faster Payments system he told me that was “illegal”! Hmm… I wasn’t convinced.

    Instead, “Paul” suggested that I use the CHAPS system for a telegraphic transfer into my ISA and that he would credit my account with £25 to cover the fee that my bank will charge for this. I agreed to this, and called my bank to set up the transfer for £5075 (£5100 minus £25 – as there are strict limits on the amount of money that can be paid into an ISA).

    After checking that transaction had indeed taken place, I found that there was no £25 credit to my ISA, only the money I had transferred via CHAPS, so I called Santander again and spoke to another helpful, but clueless, chap called “James”.  He told me that a cheque would be issued for the £25 charge but that Santander couldn’t pay this into my account “for tax reasons”.  Nonsense. With one day left until the end of the tax year, and no practical method to use my full ISA subscription now (not to mention the wasted time spent on the phone), he said he could send me another £25 cheque but I wont be using my full ISA limit for 2010/11.

    I can only assume that Santander’s staff are either:

    • Inept.
    • Really badly trained.
    • Will tell customers anything to get them off the phone and move on to the next call.

    I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to which, or for Santander to respond – which they won’t, because they don’t appear to use social media – but if you’re looking for a market leading ISA (or indeed any retail banking product), my advice is to steer clear of Santander.

    [Updated 6 April 2011: I’ve still not received the cheques from Santander, but I did manage to pay some money into the account in a Santander branch yesterday – I wonder why no-one in the call centre suggested this?]
    [Updated 7 April 2011: Yesterday, I received a letter from Santander, dated 29 March – so 8 days old – advising me that they couldn’t carry out my transaction because there is no direct debit in place between the two accounts. Fair enough, but that doesn’t excuse the call centre’s inability to advise me of this, or the website accepting the transaction even though the supporting account links did not exist!]
    [Updated 8 April 2011: Another letter from Santander, dated 4 April and advising me of a £25 credit into my account which didn’t actually take place.]
    [Updated 12 April 2011: Received a cheque from Santander for £25 – although it’s unclear if this is as a result of my call on 2 April, or on 4 April (the letter is dated 6 April – 2 days after my most recent call) – I’m still expecting another £25 as I was promised two credits – one to cover my CHAPS fees and one for the inconvenience that Santander caused me]