Anton’s Hat

This is a presentation i gave recently to the Construction IT Alliance about networking for business and how technology can support networking efforts and help generate referrals. Interesting that while the crowd were mostly traditional building businesses they were very open to ideas around technologies that might help them.

Not so comfortable about the idea of publishing on the web. To counter those objections I proposed that they had expertise that they could show online which could actually make a customer feel more comfortable about picking up the phone and calling them. It effectively acts as a frame of reference for the customer. Which helps engender trust. (Something Chris Brogan talks about a lot)

What do you think? Is there a place for plumbers who blog? What’s the ROI? When you look for a plumber online do you just want to know his number to call him or do you want more?

I’m absolutley delighted to hear today about the Launch of Decisions for Heroes. Robin Blandford is a very smart guy and through his blog he’s been entertaining and inspiring people for the last few years and I’m glad to know someone launching such a worthy service.

To be frank it’s difficult to think of something that’s more deserving of praise than building a piece of technology that will help rescue teams save more lives.

Robin Blandford recognised that all rescue teams have three common challenges. “They have a lot of equipment to train in, massive communication logistics, and large amounts of paperwork to back it up.” explains Robin.

So what does Decisions For Heroes do? Decisions For Heroes was created to monitor response readiness, team availability, valid qualifications, and experience. Armed with a laptop and internet connection, 999 responders can record the details of their rescue operations and training exercises. The software automatically performs analytical charting, draws heatmaps, and benchmarks reports and such like to outline areas of strength, weakness, and expertise.

Organisations are granted the ability to share data and perform paperless reporting between their teams. Easy-to-generate statistics can be used to observe patterns, educate potential casualties, and reduce accidents in a community.

Robin writes for technology from his blog and in a great example of listening to what works and practicing what you preach he gathered over 1,800 rescuers from Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, and Australia to trial and shape the development of the software.

I have only one criticism. No free version. Robin has chosen NOT to go down the Freemium route which is perfectly reasonable from a business perspective. However it does create a few issues. I have several friends who work in Mountain rescue, I’d love to be able to recommend D4H to them but I can’t. Why? I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen the software as there is no free version to kick the tyres with, I’ll be telling them to check it out and get in touch with Robin but they’ll have to pay to see how it works. That doesn’t make me overly confident that they’ll give it a whirl. This could be easily resolved with a demo account with dummy data so someone can see the system as it would work.

I’m also a great believer in letting your users use your software the way they think it should be used. I think Robin may have cut off the possibility of unintended uses. Often systems designed with a particular market in mind end up serving several they didn’t intend to. I fear that D4H’s potential outside of the rescue field may never be seen. And that’s a shame as I can think of several places where this type of task logging team management would be useful. An example might be sales teams or ESB or National Grid Engineering teams working on powerlines.

Robins press release reads “Decisions For Heroes is amazingly intuitive” I have no doubt it is but I can’t testify to that.

Today Robin launched ByteSurgery Ltd. to commercialise and expand Decisions For Heroes to emergency services around the world from local fire brigade to alpine ski patrols. I’m impressed with Robin anyway and I think this is a great product. If you’re a Hero you really ought to give him a call.

Update: Robin dropped by to tell me there IS a trial version and that teams who want to try it out can get in touch directly.

I’m posting this as I travel to Dublin on the new Gobus service from Galway and I have to say I’m a fan already. Not only is it the only direct bus service between the cities it’s also the only intercity transport service IN THE COUNTRY from Galway to offer a WiFI service.

They’re also smart enough and have enough foresight to know that this isn’t an opportunity to squeeze another dollar from your customer and the wifi is free. The also have toilets on board for those that need them. I don’t know the guys at Gobus but here’s a quote from their about page

GoBus is a new coach company, operated by Jim Burke & Sons of Tuam. Jim has spent over 30 years in the Transport Business and prides himself in listening to customer requirements and being able to provide the right solution at the right price.

I think it’s safe to say that in this case those aren’t idle words. I’m not crazy about their website and I think they could have better information, or an FAQ section may be in order, but the payment route is simple and clean.

This is a company that has got the important basics right for me and improved web experience is more of a nice to have. More importantly while not being as comfortable as the newer rail experience from Irishrail (you don’t have a table and working at a laptop is more difficult) at 10 euro single and 20 euro return on top of everything else, it tops the Irish Rail(43 euro) and Bus Eireann (13.60 single 17 return)euroin terms of value for money, and in the current climate (yes I did use THAT phrase) can our public services afford to continue to offer poor services with no value add? Surely a Green government should be encouraging people to our public transport system by offering services customers want, at prices that are reasonable with added services that make them even more desirable.

Please can whoever is in charge of our Public transport hire Jim Burke as a consultant, I have a feeling it’d be money well spent.

Update: It appears I’m behind the times on this as corrected by James in the comments. JJ Kavanaghs beat them to it

Those who know me may know a previous hat (sic) I wore was as a credit manager. I worked both in the areas of credit assessment and credit control/collections. While often this was for large companies like Dell, Yellow Pages and NTL a large chunk of the time was spent setting up and managing Credit Control facilities for companies like Euro Sales Finance a large factoring company in the UK. This means me and my team had to deal with the book debts of a large portfolio of small companies. So I have a unique insight into the problems and threats faced by many different types of companies from a cash flow perspective.

Obviously cash flow has become a problem over the last few months and, just lately, in a kind of conversational way I’ve found myself being asked for advice by friends and peers in startups who are having issues with defaulters. Of course I gave them what help I could in a short conversation, just simple steps and techniques for dealing with their clients and they were very grateful.

Anyway the same folks have coerced me into running a course on Credit control and Collections for small businesses and I’ve agreed. So I’ve put together 2 options. One is a two hour evening course and the other a more in depth half day course. It’s not fixed in stone but I’m told that 100 euro per person is about the right price for the 2 hour session and around 250 for the half day. What do you think?

There will be course resources as well and some other speakers may join us on the half day course. The venue is most likely Dublin initially but I can do it in other places as well. I’ll solidify details and dates when I’m more sure of the interest level.

If you’re interested in this type of thing or if you have any feedback on what I’m proposing please leave a comment below.

Bizcamp Limerick was definitely one of the best events I’ve been to in a long time with a fantastic focus on actually doing something. Some of the people who attend the event had come from Donegal, Kerry, Dublin and Cork to name a few places. The superb Caelan King CEO of Revahealth delivered his talk on failing for success which was a highlight for me.

The energy was fantastic and I feel a little privileged to have been speaking at the event. Here’s my slide deck I hope you find them useful.

I’m really delighted that a few people have found my talk useful and/or inspiring. I’d love any feedback you might have regarding the presentation and what parts were most useful for you. It’s a goal of mine to try to improve it as I go. I may make a slidecast from them if people are interested.

52 years later this is still one of the funniest sequences I’ve ever heard.

Two comedy geniuses in Peter Cellars and the inimitable Spike Milligan back when it all started for them both really, on The Goon Show.

You’ll think of it every time someone asks you the time for weeks…

I’m not one for grandstanding but the word reaches me this morning via Zee at the Next Web that Facebook have done something incredibly silly. They have declared unilaterally that they own your Data. That’s right every photo, every bog post every status update is theirs to do with as they wish.

You are apparently privileged to be a customer of Facebook and shall be treated with the contempt you deserve. As far as I’m concerned this is the end of Facebook, not in the short term though. But it guarantees that it won’t be viable as a commercial platform in the longer term and creates an opportunity for competing platforms to exploit.

Facebook has an unhealthy obsession with attempting to capture all the value while marginalising it’s users and partners. It has a record of competing with developers on it’s platform and abusing user data for it’s own gain. And at a time when I expected them to loosen their grip on user data to allow their platform to spread and dominate the entire market completely they have done the opposite.

This opens so many opportunities to competitors that, unless it changes this, and fast, I see this as the beginning of the end for Facebook. I don’t think they’re going out of business or anything, the masses of investment and current user base ensures that, but I do think they are starting down a road that leads to Hi5.

Facebook thinks that privacy is the issue, it’s going to find out very soon that the real issue for people on the social web is trust, privacy is practically irrelevant.

Assuming this isn’t changed I will be deleting my account there over the next week and I’m just glad that I was too lazy to ever add a lot of data to it in the first place. See you on some other service, probably twitter or friendfeed or (perhaps one of our Udoogoo networks)

How do you feel (and I mean YOU not how you think others will feel) about Facebook owning everything you use there? Happy about it?

It appears that Google Docs now work on the iPhone and on their own Google Android operating system, which sounds fantastic and cool. Try it here m.google.com/docs

I do question though whether this is just innovation for innovations sake. Is this actually a useful feature? Can you foresee yourself editing spreadsheets “on the go” as it were? Frankly I can’t see this.

There is of course the argument that it’s more of a “why shouldn’t you if you want to?”. Perhaps though Google have a longer view focusing on future devices.

I’d love your thoughts…

Someone is making some money from Twitter even if they aren’t, and while he’s at it @Walter from Sxoop Technologies has given a great demonstration of how to sell to the long tail and use a mashup of existing services to create real value.

He’s created a great little app called Twitter Mosaic. It’s one of those “Ronseal” apps that does exactly what it says on the tin. It makes a mosaic of all your Twitter followers or those you’re following.

IT’s not complicated and you don’t need to reveal a password. Just input your username and hey presto… your very own twitter mosaic. Choose if you want it to be those you follow or those who follow you as well. Great for use on a blog post or a website, embed codes provided. Cool.

That’s when it gets very interesting. A few clicks take you to a Zazzle merchant page where you can get a very unique and personalised mug, T-shirt or bag with your twitter friends on it, and even a business card with your twitter details. This is very clever and very cool because by definition no two peoples items will be the same. Mixing Twitter, Sxoop’s own tech and Zazzle, it’s the very definition of long tail marketing.

Go here to see it in action.

Oh and here’s mine

Like all great truths this has to hidden in a huge dose of comedy. I laughed out loud a couple of times.

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn’t Fucking Work