Filed under: Personal, life —
Posted: 22:37
January 31, 2010

We live in the Internet age. Everyone and anyone is connected to the Internet, some more often than others as it becomes common place for mobile phones connected 24/7. In these changing times it is very easy to forget that, while the Internet is a wondrous place to be, it can also be dangerous…let me explain.

Many years ago while I was working at a local Nottingham ISP I was asked to go on a radio show to discuss the dangers that the Internet presents to the younger generation. Evan all those years ago people were aware of the dangers but they still needed to be reminded of what to watch out for. Now lets roll forward some 8 years to the Facebook, MySpace and MSN generation where you are considered strange if you don’t have a Facebook, MySpace or MSN account and to not be on the Internet makes you a ‘dork’*.

So is the Internet any safer now that it was back then? No.

What we are seeing more of very passive behaviour on the part of parents and the role that they *must* play in order to keep their kids safe on the Internet. Now that may seem like a harsh statement and I would like to think that most parents are sensible but many aren’t. Only today I heard that someone I know has just signed their son up to a free Live email account and then set them up with a Facebook account despite their son being below the age of 13 required by Facebook. Now we all know that there are kids out there below the age and the that is a fact but there are ways that this can be done *safely*, let me give an example.

Firstly if you wish to give your child an email account of any sort then you should setup the computer so that you get a copy of ANY emails that they get. This means that you can ensure that they are not talking to people that they shouldn’t be that could bring them to harm. Second, if you are going to set them up with a service like Facebook ensure that you set it up under an email address that is delivered to YOU not to the child. That way if someone wants to add them as a friend then you will get to know about it so that you can make sure that they do REALLY know them and they are not just added them for the ‘numbers’.  As adults there are a great many people that just anyone as a friend on Facebook as it is a ‘numbers game’ which is ok as we are mature enough to make that decision, but as a child then this *must* be policed by someone who is responsible. This does not even take into account ensuring that ’safe surfing’ is taking place with kids.

The fact that someone in this day and age has setup an account without putting any measures in to place to ensure the child’s safety is really bewildering and disturbing to say the least. In our house we have an ADSL router which has built in content filtering to ensure that all of the children are able to surf the Internet safely without exposure to ‘unwanted’ content. I have also setup OpenDNS to ensure that whatever the filter in the router does not pickup then OpenDNS will get it. The children’s computers also run Interguard which allows me to monitor things that they do such as MSN, web mail as well as keystroke logging. This means that I can monitor things that they do without them knowing, not so I can play ‘god’ over what they do but so that I can be a responsible parent and ensure that they are safe. The last thing is, when old enough, they can go on Facebook but email notifications are sent to me or Jules so that we can make sure that they are not doing anything daft and the kids respect that.

I like to think that our children are quite ’savy’ when it comes to computers and the Internet and they are but when they’re chatting on MSN they have no idea that the person they are talking to is really who they claim they are…that’s my job.

At the end of the day this is just my opinion for what it’s worth and as much as I would love it to be, the world is not perfect but you can be damn sure I will do all I can to make my kids worth perfect. As always I welcome you’re thoughts on this as opinions always vary.

- Rob

* not sure if the term dork still exists but it did in my day.

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Filed under: Business, Personal, Personal Develoment, Uncategorized, life —
Posted: 09:37
December 28, 2009

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas break and Santa brought you lots of lovely things, this post was originally due to be put up last week but unfortunately the time just didn’t appear !

I was speaking with a friend the other day and he was having a bad day. First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.  Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.  He explain how his day had gone and I said to him, “sounds like you’ve had some fun today”. At this he replied “ain’t that the truth, still, s**t happens!”. This got me thinking.

How many times have we all heard that said? I know I have said it a fair share myself over the years but when you say this what are you really saying to yourself and more importantly what are others hearing? Ok we’ll start with what others are hearing as that is sometimes more important in life. At best they find this funny and laugh it off as just something funny, however more often you will be seen as a very negative person, a ‘glass half empty kinda guy’. People inherently do not like to be around negative people, they want to surround themselves with positive, happy people that are going to help them to feel positive and happy themselves. After all when you meet with someone and they ask if you are well, they don’t want to hear that your back aches from driving 4 hours to see them, or that your tired because you had to get up at 3am to get to the appointment with them on time. They want to hear how great you are and how wonderful life is (though not literally).

So what does it say to yourself? If you are not able to find the positives in any situation then you will always see the negative, obviously. However, the impact on your life can be massive as over a period of time (which could be months or years) it can eventually start to make you feel unhappy with your life and every thing will just seem dour and pointless. It may seem a little extreme but I have been there and after a number of tough years in both work and family I found it hard, real hard with daily life but I still carried on. What changed me was two things. First of is someone who I consider to be a very good friend who over a period of time helped me to see there was two ways to look at everything and what you take from it is a choice and you must choose to take the positive or the negative. The second was when I joined a business networking group, the people there were *very* positive people despite being early morning. What I learned there was while you will make some close friends you can really talk to your must put your best business face on and show everyone there that you are having the best day ever because when you do people naturally gravitate to you.

With that in mind lets take another look at my friends day and see what he could have took from this had he looked at things differently:

“First off in the morning his car wouldn’t start as the battery decided to die. Then after a neighbour had managed to get it jump started” – What can be taken from this? Ok first off the car would not start which is a real pain for anyone who has had it happen. That said a good neighbour came over and helped him get it ‘jump started’ which took a LOT less time than waiting for a break down truck to come. So he has good neighbours to be thankful for.

“….he then couldn’t get out his street because of all of the snow and had to wait until there was some grit down which meant he was late for work.” - So he couldn’t get out of the street straight away because of the snow, after all we did have some last week. However, the positive here is that it turns out that once again one of his neighbours had some grit and went out and spread it the length of the road so all the neighbours could get out.

“Once at work things didn’t get any better one of his companies servers started to have problems which is when we were speaking.” – Here again is another positive. Ok on of the servers is down and clearly he was out of his depth, but what he did was called me and we located the problem, resolve it and had the server up and running in less than an hour.

So next time you’re having a tough day, always, always find the positives in whatever happens because it is always there. It’s all too easy to focus on what it negative in the world but it takes true spirit to find the positives.

I wish you all the greatest success for the New Year, hope you all have a great one!!

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, Personal, life —
Posted: 21:37
November 16, 2009

I wrote last week about the importance of checklists for all aspects of your business. Expanding on that I learned a valuable lesson at the weekend in the most unlikely of places, in a hospital.  Our youngest son has had some medical challenges which started before he was born, he was given a 1 in 10 chance of survival when it was first diagnosed. However, he didn’t let it hold him back and battled on growing stronger each day. By the time he was finally discharged from hospital he had been an inpatient for almost 3 years, but he is unique. This means that he has to be managed much differently to any children with ’similar’ ailments so much so that his consultant has made oxygenation plans, care plans, flow charts for his care etc. Last night we had to take Danny in to children’s A+E as he had a bad chest infection. When we got there we explained the situation to the nurse and then again to the doctor. I explained that his oxygenation plan states that unless he is in 3lts of oxygen he should not be admitted. We also explained that there are certain procedures as to how Daniel is dealt with in most situations and he should consult the PICU unit to get more information.

To cut a long storey short the two key things happened that sealed our fate to 6.5hrs in A+E and a lot of stress and arguments. The first thing was that the doctor did not contact the people we had clearly told him to speak with to get more information. Instead he just rang the on-call person which mean that the wrong information again was fed back. The second was that the carefully written procedures for handling Daniel and the care & oxygenation plans were not made accessible to all people that may be in contact with him. This mean that he was given all of the wrong treatment.

So what has this to do with my IT life? Simple.  The first lesson is when you are dealing with a client, new or existing, the most important thing to do is LISTEN. Let them talk, make notes and ask questions. This simple step alone can save you hours in wasted time and if the client is on a flat-fee contract this means money saved. Second lesson is as you begin to create business processes, checklist and procedures to run your business smoother make sure that everyone that needs to know they are there..know. After all you could have the best product/service on the planet but shouting about it in the middle of a dessert is not gonna do a great deal of good is it.

So to summarise; Stop, Listen then Talk….in that order then you can’t go far wrong.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear them.

- Rob

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Filed under: Business, Personal Develoment, small business —
Posted: 23:24
November 13, 2009

When I first started in I.T I was young and able to absorb everything I read and memorised it all. Then as the years passed by I learned more about processes for performing regular tasks in my work and they became my own. So much so that they were engrained within who I was and I never needed to look this type of information up.

However, as I have gotten more involved in the business of running a business and not just owning a job it has become much more difficult to remember this so fluently as I used to. This gave rise to processes. Many people have come across Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which are common practice in large organisations but not so in small businesses, why? The reason is quite simple; In order for a large business to run fluently and in the way the creator designed it there must be an SOP as he/she will not be there to train every role in the business.

I am currently in the process of creating a whole raft of checklists for tasks which are undertaken at a clients site along with business processes for things that must be completed within our own business. So what needs to be documented? Anything and everything…..this sounds like a mammoth task but it isn’t. The reality is that you need to document anything which needs to be done but should not require you to perform it yourself.  For example my topic this weekend is ‘SBS2oo3 to SBS 2008 migration checklist’. This is simply a checklist to tech’s to following when they are performing this type of migration. It is not a full migration manual for SBS but it is a ‘crib sheet’ to help job the memory of a training technician so that something important is not forgotten.

Does your business need checklists and procedures? Maybe. Would it benefit? Definitely.

- Rob

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Filed under: IT Support —
Posted: 14:13
November 7, 2009

I ran into an issue on a new SBS2008 server at a clients office recently. Whenever I tried to launch Active Directory Users and Computers on the SBS2008 server it would come up with a Visual C++ Runtime error and the message read:

“The Application has requested the runtime to terminate it in a unusual way. Please contact the application’s support team for more information”

The first job was to install all of the available updates which did not resolve the issue so a search of the usual online communities was in order and after a short search I came across someone with the same issue here.

The suggested resolution was to open Active Directory Sites and Services which in my case was not affected, then go to ‘Tool’ and on the ‘Disk Cleanup’ tab click on delete files. The issue seems to be caused by the installation of third party apps, however there is nothing unusual installed on this server but in this instance the AD tools were not happy. No the less simply following this method the issue was resolved and I hope this helps others.

- Rob

Comments (1)

Filed under: Personal, Personal Develoment, small business —
Posted: 12:19

My experience of the IT community up until running my own business was..well inbred to say the least. The company that I worked for previously bordered on almost grooming you to distrust other IT companies as if they were the ‘enemy’.  To my shame this was a feeling that was exaggerated in some of my future engagements after leaving there and setting up on my own. However, about 2 years ago I joined the BNI which is an international business referral network which brings different businesses together to allow them to pass business once a certain rapport has been made. I will always remember the first meeting I went to was at Woodborough Hall in Nottingham on a dark November morning. I arrived there at 06:45, that’s right 6.45am, to a room full of people that I had never met. I mean talk about a fish out of water, I don’t think I could have been more uncomfortable if I had been stood there naked!

None the less the first person to that came to speak with me was Adam Harris from Bear-IT who came over to speak with me and discuss what I did. This totally opened my eyes to the fact that maybe, just maybe, those other IT companies were not so evil after all and that maybe, just maybe, there could be synergies between seemingly rival businesses. After this Adam invited me up to meet with him to discuss things further. I was told by another IT company that I was working with at the time not to discuss software and tools etc as they should be a closely guarded ’secret’. However, once I started talking with Adam I found that we all do the same things, same tools, same software just a different business with different faces. So I reciprocated the openness that was shown to me.

Fast forward on to the beginning of this year when I was approached by another IT consultant and fellow business owner from Birmingham. Richard Tubb from Netlink IT contacted me following some posts which I had made on Twitter. After reading Richard’s blog it seemed clear that he had travelled the business path which I wanted to embark upon, making the move from being ’self-employed’ to being a ‘business owner’, so we began to talk. Once again I was astounded at the openness of information that was being afforded to me by someone I had only known a short time. Things such as the type of tools to use, how to deliver the best customer experience, service management and delivery, all of which is normally hidden information within the IT trade. So why was all of this being given free of charge, without a catch or clause? Because Richard believed in the community and the power of working together instead of against each other. Now all of this collaboration what highlighted when in May 2009 I was drafted in by Richard and some of his peers to assist in a massive nationwide upgrade project for one of their clients, you can read all about it here. All in all there was 8 different IT businesses working together under on collaborative umbrella which meant that what was a massive project which included over a dozen servers, 200+ desktops across 13 sites was all made possible by the IT community working together instead of against each other.

It was once said by John Donne “No man is an island”, and no truer word has been said. For those that run businesses it can be quite isolating but there are people out there who are willing to work with you and help you so don’t be afraid to ask.

If you are interested in developing a strategic alliance with myself then please feel free to contact me at rob@potter-tate.co.uk. Alternatively if you have a storey you would like to share about how the community has helped you then send it over as it would be great to share.

- Rob

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Filed under: 22, 27, 31, 33, insane stuff —
Posted: 16:43
November 3, 2009

It been some time now since I last posted something up. Part of this is because I have been very busy trying to develop the business and grow it which as those of you who have businesses know it takes some effort to do. Also in doing that I have been a little disorganised, while I make no promises as to how organised I am now what I can say is that I am always trying to improve on this.

What I have learnt over these last months is that I have spent most of the last few years just “getting on with it” without actually knowing what ‘”it” is that I am trying to achieve. Through the introduction that I had made to a book called “E-Myth Revisited” I have learnt a great deal about small businesses and why they succeed and more importantly why the fail, I would encourage ANY business owner to read this as there is something for everyone in there.

However, what I did learn was that I did not yet have any specific goals in my personal life or my work life, both of which are absolutely critical if you are to succeed. After all if you have no goals what have you to gauge success against? So I set about working out what my goals would be for the next year, while the book encourages ‘life’ goals I felt I needed to take smaller steps.  Once I had finished writing them down the list to be quite honest felt almost overwhelming and I felt a little lost with it.  That feeling has been lurking around for some time but recently I had what some would call an epiphany which has changed my perspective a little.

I have always been a keen cyclist but about a year ago my road bike was side-lined due to mechanical problems which I just didn’t know how to get sorted. But thanks, and that’s a BIG thanks, to my dad he took it and managed to get it sorted out (thanks dad!). So about a month and half ago I started back getting up at 6am and cycling. At first I was doing 7 miles in the morning and soon moved on to 14 miles which was a really great feeling. This weekend I stepped it up to 18 miles which was no big deal but along the way there is a hill, not too steep, but it is about a mile long. So here I am 6:30am going up this long dragging hill in the lowest gear at just 5mph. I looked up the hill to see yet more hill and thought I need to walk, there’s no way I can get all the way up there.  It was an all consuming and overwhelming feeling that I felt I had no way of overcoming. Then it suddenly dawned on me and I thought, “if I walk this will hurt, if I cycle this will hurt and while I cannot manage all that way I CAN get just 1 metre further”.  Now logic may well be screaming “all those 1 metres all add up to the same distance you moron”, my heart is saying “I can do 1 metre more”.

So I continued up this hill completely and totally focused on just 1 meter ahead with the occasional look up the hill for any obstacles ahead until I hit the top, where I relaxed and just pedalled on. The strange thing was all the hills on this route after this one was so much easier by comparison and they really did feel much, much easier.

Without realising it I had broken down this insurmountable goal of climbing up this long drawn out hill to much smaller, manageable steps of 1 metre chunks.  By focusing on a ‘micro-goal’ and making sure that I kept looking ahead to check I was on the right path with no dangers I was able to achieve my goal.  I have now applied this same logic to my business goals and suddenly they don’t seem too insurmountable anymore I just need to take one step at a time.

To some this may be obvious as some people work this way naturally but to others it isn’t always and if this has been of use then please let me know. Or if you have any better ideas on how to make goals more bite sized then let me know as I am always interested in new ways of doing things.

- Rob

Comments (3)

Filed under: Business, IT Support, small business —
Posted: 20:54
June 3, 2009

I went out today to visit a client who was having problems with ESET Anti Virus.  It transpired that despite paying for the software from their previous supplier and it being licensed until September 09 it was having a problem with the username & password for downloading updates. They did not have a copy of the username and password details nor were they able to contact their old IT supplier as they did not seem to be in contact any longer. The simplest way forward was to contact ESET directly to try to obtain the details. After a brief conversation with the main switchboard I was told that they would get someone to call us back from tech support as soon as they were available, yeah heard that before! However I was pleasantly surprised to receive a call back from their tech support team asking how they could help. I explained the situation and gave the username that we had from the software, I was asked to hold. The next thing person to come on the phone asked if I had a “query regarding why the account was suspended”. I replied that I was just trying to find out what the password was as to was not downloading updates anymore. I was then told that the reason it had been suspended was because the previous IT supplier had not paid them for the software. I was asked if I was calling from the “end user” to which I replied “yes”.  Now at this point the client had paid the supplier for the software, however the supplier had not paid ESET so by rights the dispute was between client and supplier; ESET was under no obligation to correct this situation. What they actually did was nothing short of exceptional.  The man on the phone said “ok, I will re-activate the license to the end of it’s period in September. The only thing I ask is that when it is due you renew the product with us”.  This surpassed anything that I was expecting from this situation, the fact was as I said ESET did not have to put this right but the did. 

At the end of this, for the cost of a license, they have a very satisfied client who will tell a good few people how well ESET looked after them.  It was once said that sometimes you have to give something away free in order to get more business, this is a classic example of how to look after you client even if it may cost you a little; in the long run it will be worth.

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Filed under: Business, IT Support, life, small business — Tags: Business, IT Support, life —
Posted: 19:37
May 13, 2009

Over the years I have seen a great many IT engineers come and go, after all 16 years is a  long time in the trade. During that time I have also taught a number of engineers the best ways to do the job, many of which had no formal qualifications such as MCP, MCSE etc. The first lesson that I have always made a point of teaching is to listen; listen to the client. Whenever you go out on a service call you will be given a description of the issue that you are there to resolve. In my opinion, the golden rule is to sit down with the client and ask them to explain the problem and listen.  There are two reasons why I always do this; firstly the information that you have been given on your job sheet will be what the help desk interpreted from the client but may not be accurate so best to check. Secondly, you will allow the client to vent themselves to you and during the discussion you can usually connect with them on some level which will invariably given you a better insight to both the issue faced and the client personally. I have always felt that this was standard, common sense in all businesses.  However, those of you that follow me on twitter (@robfranklin) will have seen the experience that I had with Dell’s tech support on Friday which left me feeling somewhat frustrated.  Here is how the conversation went:

Me: “Hi there, I have a problem with BackupExec for Small Business Server that was supplied with these new servers for my client”.

Dell: “What is the problem?”

Me: “When I enter the license key it says that it is invalid. It accepts the “Premium” license key but it will not accept the SBS key”

Extended period of silence…now 15 minutes in to the call and not progressed

Dell: “What license number do you have?”

Me: “The license key is…”

Dell: “That’s a serial number”

Me: “It says license key?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number”

Me: “But it says on the front cover that it is the “Software License Key” and inside, just above the key, it says “Software License Key”. Surely it would say serial number if that is what it is?”

Dell: “No that’s the serial number, you need to go to the Symantec licensing portal and register the serial number”

Me: “But I have done dozens of these and I have always just entered the key into the software”

Dell: “They have tightened up the licensing recently”

Me: “Hmm, ok where do I go to register the ’serial number’?”

So now we go to the Symantec licensing portal, I complete the registration in order to log on to the site. After entering the ’serial number’ it says that the ’serial number’ is invalid.

Me: “It says the number is invalid”

Dell: “Are you sure it is entered correctly?”

Me: “Yes I’m sure but it does not say it is a serial number it clearly says it’s a license key”

Dell: “Ok I need to speak with Symantec, can you hold"?”

Me: “Err yeah ok”

So I was put on hold, 35 minutes in to the call and I had made no progress. Needless to say I did not stay on hold as by this point I was completely frustrated by the fact that the support technician was simply not listening. The conversation above it not verbatim but I must have explained to this guy about 10 times that it clearly states it is a License Key and not a Serial Number but he was not listening.

The most important skill that any person who is in a customer facing role can do is just listen. By not exercising this most fundamental skill during this call my whole experience with Dell’s “Pro-support” was completely destroyed and had this been my first experience then I would be one very unhappy client and would think twice about buying Dell again.  That said only a week before I had spoken to them and the support tech I spoke to I cannot say enough about. He listened and acted on what I was telling while verifying what I was saying was correct.

I can only assume that my bad experience was a one-off but none the less it was a bad experience.  So if nothing else, don’t talk just listen and everything else will take shape.

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Filed under: Business, small business — Tags: strategic web masterclass, web marketing —
Posted: 21:18
April 8, 2009

Following on from my recent post about Strategic Marketing Masterclasses, the same company is now running Strategic Web Masterclasses. So what is a “Strategic Web Masterclass”? In simple terms it will help a business owner or the person tasked with looking after the website to be able to an action plan that is tailored to their business and not just something off the shelf. For those that are interested the course can be fully funded for eligible businesses. Read on for more info:

Overview
Award winning marketing consultancy, Fresh Marketing Solutions have put together a course to help all businesses maximise the return from their website. The 1 day Web Masterclass will provide the opportunity for learners to put together a website action plan that is tailored to their business. They will learn about the different considerations when producing a successful website and will be able to put together an action plan to be used in their business.

Masterclass Content
During the intensive 1 day course, learners will cover a variety of topics such as graphic design and page structure, web standard and technologies, getting the right content, search engine requirements, being realistic with your budget, planning your website and writing a brief for web designers. The course is suitable for any team member that wants to understand how to maximise return from their website.

The Benefits
Upon completion of the course each learner will have a good understanding of the various elements that will help their website to become more successful. By having this first hand understanding you will be in a better position to chose the right web company and get the most from their current website.

The Web Consultant
With over 10 years experience, our Web Consultant selected to run the Masterclass has a wealth of experience across businesses from a variety of sectors. These range from large organisations, small to medium enterprises and independent sole traders.

Course Details
Masterclasses will be held in May 2009. The course will be delivered in a local training facility where refreshments and lunch will be included. Specific details of location, times etc will be issued in the learner packs sent 2 weeks before the course begins. All learning materials will be provided.

The course is priced at £500 per learner (excluding VAT) with the option of group discounts.

Funding Now Available
For eligible companies*, Fresh will be able to arrange government funding to meet 100% of the course costs.

Important Information
The course will be delivered over 1 day from 9.30am to 5.30pm You will receive notification by email that we have received your booking form.
A pre-course information pack will be sent out to all learners in advance of the course. The course must be paid for in full before the start of the course. This booking form constitutes a legally binding contract. In the event of cancellation, refunds will be made minus any associated costs.

* For businesses that are eligible for funding, payment will be required prior to the course which will then be reimbursed to the learner.

If you are interested then please feel free to contact me directly rob@freethecityone.co.uk or contact Fresh Marketing Solutions directly on 01623 786786

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