Daily Life

Roadshows all done

BudgieUK — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:05:01 +0000

It was actually over a week ago that the roadshows were completed, but I have been busy (I know its a lame excuse).

The general concensus is that they went well, and the customer feedback has been very encouraging.

The final roadshow was at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff … wow is that an impressive stadium or what?

Apparently, the grass is removed if its not needed (it takes about three days), and replaced when it is needed …its rolled out as new turf, and it takes about a month to be usable again.

You will see in the picture below that they use artificial lighting to ensure the grass grows as quickly as possible.

This afternoon is going to be very busy with the news about V3.0 of the iPhone software, so I will try to post something about that tomorrow.

Roadshows … the continuation…

BudgieUK — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:04:15 +0000

After a good start, the roadshows have continued well, with very positive feedback from customers, clients and members of staff alike.

In one of the recent roadshows, I had the opportunity to speak to a customer about them working with us on testing and validating some of our new product developments. They were very keen to do this, and actually offered to be “guinee pigs” for anything we thought may be of interest to them, so I suspect I will be seeing more of this particular customer over the next few months

This week we have the final roadshow of this “season” at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Thursday and then we will have a break for a while, and will probably carry out another series of events (with a different focus and structure) in a few months time.

Back at the “ranch” the overall roadmap now has some structure, and its encouraging to see that my collegues in development are keen to shorten the time-scales as much as possible to get product to market as soon as possible, so we just need to work out the priorities, and then press the button to kick off this round of development.

The roadshows are go (at last)

BudgieUK — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:12:28 +0000

Well, after 2 false starts last week, the roadshows eventually got underway today.
This roadshow was hosted at the Rebok stadium in Bolton and it went really well.
All the presentations went well and the clients and customers that attended seemed to enjoy the experience.
It’s nice to meet your customers face to face and to be able to tell them all about your new products etc. Today was a great opportunity to tell the customers about a new data-centre product that we have developed, and it was encouraging that they seemed genuinely interested in the product, so we now have to see if that interest turns into real sales!

What a washout

BudgieUK — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:08:42 +0000

What a strange week I have had. The week started with a level of expectation as we were going to start a whole new series of roadshows where we travel around the UK running a series of events that help our customers understand some of the technologies and strategies they can use to improve their performance, and we hope buy more of our products and services. This soon changed when the snow started falling! All of this weeks events have been postponed and so we now have to not only rearrange the events, but make space in our diaries to fit them in. Next week we are off to Manchester.. as long as the weather is kind to us! Tomorrow I’m off to the local Volvo dealer to test drive an XC60 so I will report back on that next week.

Twitter taking off

BudgieUK — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:46:38 +0000

I don’t know if you watch “This Morning” or listen to Chris Moyles, but if you do you will have heard about Twitter. I have been telling people about it for about 18 months, but when you try to explain it, it actually makes no sense.. But it’s taking off and it’s becoming mainstream almost overnight.
If you are not on Twitter, go to www.twitter.com and set up an account.. It’s free, and you never know, may may just “get it” and enjoy using it. You will find me as @budgieUK

Twitter becomimg mainstream

BudgieUK — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:58:51 +0000

I thought I should just blog this before going to sleep. While watching TV, after a quick check on Tweetie, I discovered that Stephen Fry was stuck in a lift… so what I hear you say!
The facinating thing for me is that in real time I know (along with the several thousand other Twitter users) that an A list celebrity is stuck in a lift… How many times in the past has this ever happened?
Sure if it’s masively newsworthy you may hear about it from a news network eventually, but this is different … this is Stephen himself speaking to the world directly… and we could all be part of it… he even posted this picture for us all to see. Who would have thought that such a mundane thing could be so significant? Nite nite

Working from home can be very useful

BudgieUK — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:43:18 +0000

Due to the weather conditions, it seemed like a good idea to work from home today (or WFH as it says on the locator board in the office).
I don’t know why, but when I’m WFH I seem to get so much more accomplished. Today, after multiple phone calls, emails and IMs I managed to get a really useful piece of information about a project I have been working on… I know that if I had been in the office I would not have got the information from the supplier concerned.

I was also really pleased that one of the Project Managers has managed to pull together all of the different work streams going on in the engineering department so that I can get a clear view on what activities are going on and I can now communicate the roadmap with some confidence on timescales… So it’s all going in the right direction

Just recently, I’ve changed the way I pick the people I chose to follow on Twitter. I often now look for people nearby, and have a look at their most recent “tweets” .. If I like what I see, I follow them. This seems a bit random but I am finding some interesting people to follow.

Summary of the day

BudgieUK — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:29:56 +0000

I have been taking a number of photo’s today with my trusty iPhone and really just as a historical keepsake I thought I would post them here… No real reason other than I can!

Just look at the weather…

BudgieUK — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:44:32 +0000

Well, the best laid plans etc…

The snow this morning near home was not as bad as I expected, but it seems that London has ceased to be able to function.

We have decided that the roadshow event we had planned for the Oval tomorrow should be postponed until mid February due to the severe travel problems everyone is having, so it seems that I will be working from home tomorrow instead of standing in a room presenting to 40 to 50 people.

Roadshows

BudgieUK — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:34:23 +0000

Tomorrow sees the start of the next round of roadshows. We did the previous roadshow tour last October and it was really successful, so I’m hoping this series will me too.

First thing tomorrow I will head off to the office, and will meet up with my collegues to get all the “stuff” together… Load it all I’m the back of the hire car, and head off mid afternoon to the Oval, which is the first of the four venues for this series.

I’ll post some photo’s once we are all set up and on the way.