Author: chris

The last few weeks

Posted on by chris

The last few weeks have been, to say the least, hectic. As well as the new projects and job I’ve started we’ve had a couple of special events happening.

The marriage blessing cakeIt’s not often you get the opportunity to throw a really BIG party, and we didn’t waste our chance when our youngest chgild Reuben was baptised/christened (call it what you will) and our marriage blessed at our church a couple of weeks ago. It was, to say the least, a fantastic day. We had over 140 people at the church service, and about 60 came to a restaurant for a meal afterwards.

The christening cakeWe really tried to make it a special day, and many people have said to us since how much they enjoyed the church service. And, of course, the food went down well, too. Rather than plaster pictures of us here which would no doubt lead to cries of consternation, here are a couple of pictures of the cakes that people very kindly made for us.

Boo Hewerdine from behindThe other event we went to was a friends 40th birthday party. He’d booked one of his all-time songwriting heroes, Boo Hewerdine, and had got a band together. However a few days before the drummer broke her wrist, so he called me in as backup. It was a really enjoyable gig, and I highly recommend downloading the free MP3s from Boos site – and buying some of his CDs, too. Here’s a little picture of my view of Boo from behind the drums.

So after the excitement of Reubens first Christmas and all those parties, it’s nose to the grindstone to get projects finished in time for deadlines. Which means I shouldn’t sit here any longer writing this. Toodle-pip.

Link-o-rama

Posted on by chris

I’ve had a folder full of text files containing links to interesting stuff for months now, and I’m just not going to have time to write full blog posts about all of them. So here are a few of them, with some quick thoughts from me.

1) theundersigned.net/2006/06/why-business-blogs-are-important/
It’s pretty much all there in one page. Print it and leave it on your bosses desk.

2) redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/too_much_good_s.html
If you’re going to get into this business, you’d better make sure you really are unique – or streets ahead of any competitors.

3) escapefromcubiclenation.com/get_a_life_blog/2006/05/all_the_worlds_.html
When things are getting you down, it could always be worse. At least you still have your trousers on. (You do, don’t you?)

4) redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/individual_vs_t.html
Team blogs can be good, but they aren’t always the answer.

5) domscripting.com/blog/display/69
A great little solution to a simple problem.

6) marketposition.com/blog/archives/2006/07/seo_in_a_nutshe.html
Does what it says on the tin: search engine optimisation in a nutshell.

The image gallery cometh

Posted on by chris

One of the most popular places on my site, the image gallery is looking a bit depleted at the moment. I have about 6 or 7 image albums to put on since the move to WordPress, and I’m finding it difficult to get time to do that. So sorry if your favourite image / the one you linked to in your MySpace profile isn’t there yet. It will be soon, hopefully.

In the meantime I’ve added a new album with a handful of pictures in called ‘Nature’. It’s mostly pictures of sunrises and sunsets, ‘cos that’s what I like best. I also have plans for lots more very specific image galleries soon, and I’ll be trawling through my dozens of CDs of photos digging out anything that could be useful to someone.

Happy drivers

Posted on by chris

On the box the other night I caught the latest Skoda advert, proudly displaying their new tagline ‘Manufacturer of happy drivers’. It’s a great ad (using unexpected sounds appeals to me); you can see it here. And what a fantastic change it is for such a large company to put the focus so much on the customer, not on the "brand" or product. Of course, it could all be moonshine, but companies nowadays should be wary about talking what they can’t go walking. If you see what I mean.

As the wise people know, creating passionate users – in other words happy, satisfied customers – is the an important key to being successful long-term. Being the only, or cheapest, or most powerful will work for a time (being all three will work for a lot longer) but if you want people to stick with you even when your competitors get plentiful, cheaper, and have more features, you’ll need people to be – not just happy – but passionate about you and your products/services.

A quick real-life example. I was in a restaurant about an hour ago and while I was waiting I overheard a conversation between a couple and a gentleman at the bar. The gentleman asked the couple if they visited the restaurant often, and the couple said they went every week. In fact the gushed about how much they love the place (it is a great restaurant) and I’m sure that gentleman went away with a very positive impression of both them and the restaurant.

How much do you want people to be passionate about what you do, so much so they act as a salesforce and evangelism team all by themselves? It’s worth the time and trouble to make them happy, I think.

You may have notice I didn’t link to the video on the Skoda site itself, but it’s a shining example of how to get it wrong (in fact their main site is a mess as well). It’s a shame, because not only is their site design very simple (and rightly so, it’s a refreshing change from the Flash-heavy monstrosities you normally get with car manufacturers) it’s actually been done relatively recently, as the use of .Net technologies testifies to. Don’t tell me it’s impossible to create a decent, web-standards compliant website using .Net because it is – I do it every day at my new company. They may be in the mood for creating happy drivers, but creating happy browsers is obviously not high on their list of priorities.