Collaboration Technology 2.0

I was at a networking event the other day. A professional acquaintance standing in a group beckoned me over. "Hello" he said, before turning to the others and adding," Do you know Michael? A lot of people in the industry don't like him."

I was gobsmacked - not by what he'd said but by the open admission of what I'd long suspected. As my father said "It's not what you know! It's who you know." Now, if the people you know don't like you - your *!!*ed. It's just a shame it took me so long to find out. When I was managing a £4.5 million budget a lot of people appeared to like me.

Loosing your job is bad enough - loosing 25 years of professional connections is quite another thing. Moral of the story?  Your peers are the enemy.

Gordon Brown stated that he wants to cut 'unnecessary projects.' Leaving the question aside of why -- after controlling the levers of power as Chancellor and then as PM, there are such targets at all, what project won't get cut - why the revenge ones of course.

I shared a cab the other day with a Treasury Official, who on knowing my involvement as Former Head of IT for Crossrail with a big government project, said that while HMG took the short-term political credit for getting the Crossrail Act onto the statute book they knew the long-term fall-out of the inevitable cost overrun of the estimated £16 Billion bill would land on the next administration -"Just like they'd done to us with the Dome."

With some Crossrail politically appointed consultants paid up to £3,500 per day to work there, it's time to pull the plug on a 'revenge' project and save the taxpayer from funding politico-tribal wars.

Continue reading "Death by a thousand Cuts" »

I blogged recently about BT unable to deliver broadband to my fathers house. The saga continued when we found out that the problem was with the BT hub router at the exchange behind the Half Way House Inn on the Hungerford to Newbury Road (someone visited it) as the 'brown-out' was effecting lots of people in the district whose livelihood relied on an internet connection. 

After complaining to the Executive Chairman's office we were assured that the faulty component would be replaced on July 30 as the part need to come from overseas. Whether it was or wasn't, the problem of intermittent internet connectivity continues.

If I was writing about the Outer Hebrides, there would be little excuse but we're talking M5 corridor. It seems spare parts have to be imported from China on a needs basis.

While we have a strategic stockpile of nuclear weapons it appears there is no stock of vital infrastructure equipment on which the Prime Minister can rely to deliver his 'Digital Britain vision for economic recovery. Let this be a warning.

With Swine Flu in the up it's time to dust of your working from home policy and make sure it covers staying away from work if there's infection about your domain. Make sure that HR are comfortable with it and communicate it to your staff. Make sure that you've enabled technology such as call forwarding and videoconferencing to make remote work feasible and effective. Working from home isn't without it's challenges so pay attention to building working relationships, establishing trust, and encouraging collaboration.

There is a business continuity platform worth looking at called Wamey and Imjack. It is useful as a contingency tool with regards to any potential pandemic, adverse weather or acts of terrorism. The platform has a number of tools that allows a business/education institution to carry on seamlessly. Take a look at the demo links below.
http://www.wamey.com/demo/index2.html
http://www.imjack.com/demo/index2.html

Organisations should ensure that remote working and collaboration tools are ready to scale to meet higher rates of absenteeism in the event of an outbreak of Swine flu. The unfolding situation is an "indicator to pay attention" to business continuity plans.

Handling Swine flu from an IT perspective is about enabling people to continue to work together or collaborate with reduced levels of face-to-face interaction. It is imperative to have work-from-home capabilities ready for staff. Executives need to think about how they would do business if the level of face-to-face contact with customers and staff drops dramatically.

However, it is almost too late for companies without remote working tools to put them in place in time unless you appoint someone to stay on top of the issue. If anyone is looking for advice on this matter no better place to start than with Ian White and myself, Michael Pincher. We've been here before and can help implement business continuity strategies pretty quick - call me on 07923691849 anytime if you need any help.

My dad's 95. He's still working and has just published a book called Treachery. It's about the incompetence of MI5 in the cold war. A month before publication his broadband went on the blink. I've been trying to resolve the problem; replacing the router (twice) and reporting the problem to BT's "Not-so-help-desk" in India six times. I've had a line engineer out. I've had an OpenReach engineer out. Still the (intermittent) problem occurs.

Now while I know it's BT incompetence at a delivering consistent digital dial tone (Pa lives in the M4 corridor) but every day the problem goes on he's more and more convinced its the intelligence services putting a spoiler on things. Any of you geeks out there know of any way of telling?