Proactive Paul

Ubuntu in Business

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How not to promote a product

Imagine going into a guitar shop, with a distinct chance of actually buying a guitar, and not being allowed to try one out.

Imagine a new restaurant coming to your neighbourhood, and staging an open day, but not offering visitors any tasty samples.

Imagine signing up for golf lessons only to learn that you never get to hold a golf club, but only get to hear lectures.

Imagine the Geneva Motor Show crammed into a small noisy nightclub on Brick Lane, with no cars to inspect, but only a series of eight well rehearsed TV adverts to watch.

Now you have some idea of what Canonical did with “Ubuntu in Business” on Tuesday 13 July 2010. Too much noise and too much hype, little or no hands-on and not much chance to “ask an expert”. It was a brilliant idea done spectacularly badly.

I have fumbled with Ubuntu Server, with Ubuntu Desktop and with Unbuntu Notebook. And my business continues to run PCs using XP.

If anybody would like to run a “Linux Open Day” in a proper conference centre, with proper sessions, in proper breakout rooms (without loud music) and provide me with a bit of a hands-on experience and the odd expert to tell me where I’m going wrong with my own Ubuntu experiments, then please let me know.

And if Canonical are doing a debrief after “Ubuntu in Business” . . .

(a) please let them know about this blogpost! Thanks!

(b) and if you actually work at Canonical, can I ask - have you ever been into an Apple Store? How does that compare to your event? How can you promote something like Ubuntu without offering a hands-on experience?

Footnote

In my experience, switching from Windows to Linux is like switching from a knife and fork to chopsticks. They both do the same job, and they both work perfectly well. But they are different! The trick in mastering chopsticks is to actually have an example to work with. Watching other people do it does not really help. Doing it yourself with no help is tough. Having an experienced person show you how (and actually putting the tools in your hands, not in theirs) can make all the difference. At this event, Canonical were pushing on an open door, and what amazed me was their clownish disconnect with genuine, potential users.

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Posted on 13 Jul 2010 by Proactive Paul

The World is not flat!

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London Wiki Wednesday

A twofold, big “thank you” to @osmosoft who hosted @londonwikiwed on 7 Jul 2010 at their offices by St James Park. Firstly, the team at London Wiki Wednesday is always grateful for help and support with the regular meetings.  And secondly, it made me realise that the world is not flat.

Oh? You knew that already?

Well yes, most of us do! But until that upstart Galileo started mucking about with his telescope in 1610, we all thought the world was flat!

Exactly 400 years later, we have a new breed of upstart like me and @osmosoft (and a few more whom I won’t shame by naming them) who are now challenging the established orthodoxy of “work” and how we do it. There are a number of significant ideas coming out of London Wiki Wednesday and it dawned on me last night, that we are all trying to do the same thing.

At one end of the scale you have Osmosoft whose Tiddly Space idea is intended to be a robust, enterprise level tool to make a Wiki work in an extended environment across multiple organisations. At the other end of the scale you have me with my book The Paperless Expert where I show small businesses how to use a Wiki purposefully on little or no budget.

In between those two extremes I can see a number of players emerging with solutions of varying complexity and price. The one thing we all have in common is this:

• Collaboration should not focus on the “collaboration” but on the “work”.
• Documents in the traditional sense are dead.
• My generation (40 plus) possesses few individuals who are both capable of and willing to bring about change.
• The bright young things of today have no problem with electronic documents and new ways of working.
• The new orthodoxy championed by the younger generation and a few of us oldies, is impeded by a general sense of fear and inertia.

Is that the “Galileo feeling”?

It’s a case of round pegs and square holes. What may surprise most of the oldies is that they have it the wrong way around. We should not be making our IT systems support our traditional ways of working. We should be adjusting the way we work to make the best use of IT.

Did the earliest pioneers of motoring fit their cars with horse shoes?

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Posted on 8 Jul 2010 by Proactive Paul

HackCamp inspires an oldie

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A weekend mix of the trivial and the profound

Google’s offices in central London played host to HackCamp over the weekend of 12/13 June 2010 and I was there! To hack! And for those of you who don’t know, in software developer circles the verb “to hack” means “to write code” or “to program” or generally “to develop software” and it has no connection with what the press call “hacking”. So I hacked, slowly.

The bright young things amongst us made immense strides, fuelled by a seemingly endless supply of sugary snacks and sugary drinks. With around 65 people, some in teams, some working independently, 25 new hacks were created by Sunday afternoon.

A full list of all the ones submitted is here. The judging and award ceremony recognised the value of both the trivial and the profound ideas, and two lucky people walked away with X-Box 360s!

Generally, these things did not exist last week! Have a look at the recipe finder - the award winning, fully functioning hack put together by LVG.

Background http://london.hackcamp.org.uk/hacks/gu-recipes

Functioning site http://gu-recipes.appspot.com/

What did I learn? I can hack more quickly in peace and quiet. However, I can pick up tips and advice from the others (at gatherings like this), more quickly than I could by reading online discussion forums and O’Reilly books.

I’m prototyping a mini CRM project (in my spare time) and to give you an idea of how long I’ve been doing that, it started with SHA1, moved to MD5 and this weekend was rewritten to use PBKDF2. Inspired by the experts, this perennial novice is committed to do more!

And I’m coding it by hand, and not using a library, because this way I will learn more! What’s your side project?

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Posted on 14 Jun 2010 by Proactive Paul

Why aren’t we saving the planet?

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The Royal Society played host to Prof. Geoff Beattie

“Why aren’t we saving the planet?” is the title of Geoff’s latest book. You know who he is don’t you? He’s the psychologist who does the analysis of body language on the TV show Big Brother!

I met him at the Royal Society on Wednesday evening, 9 Jun 2010 and in addition to listening to his talk, I had an excellent chat with him afterwards; about bananas!

Anyway, Geoff’s point is that we have explicit messages that we deliver on the subject of Green issues, and we have implicit messages that are are known only to ourselves, personally, deep down inside. And by analysing non-verbal signals, Geoff and his team have identified a correlation of just 19% between what we say we believe and what we really believe.

So his point is that there are a lot of Green fakers out there. And I’m coming to find you! I have speaking engagements lined up for June, for September and for November to talk about my book The Paperless Expert and I will be ready to respond to your body language on Green issues!

And bananas? Oh! On 8 Jun 2010 they were good according to Mike Berners-Lee and on 9 Jun 2010 they were bad, no, very bad, according to Prof. Geoff Beattie. See what I mean? You can never tell who’s telling the truth!

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Posted on 10 Jun 2010 by Proactive Paul

David meets Goliath

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Self publishing your own book?

My book The Paperless Expert was printed on 19 May and went on sale on 21 May 2010. This is the first book I have ever written. It took two and half weeks to write the 184 pages and it has taken a further two and half months to get in published.

And to do that I needed 6 people:

• Author
• Illustrator
• Typesetter
• Publisher
• Printer
• Distributor

And being keen to learn about the whole process, I have ended up fulfilling 5 of those 6 roles! The only thing I couldn’t do was print a decent book on my colour laserjet printer! Nor did I want to! So, I used the Espresso machine in Blackwells Book Shop on Charing Cross Road (London). I am really grateful to Leon and the team at Blackwells, because they were truly helpful and patient.

So last week, equipped with a handful of books which were literally hot off the press at 4pm, I attended GeekCamp at 6pm! It’s an event for book lovers, and the objective is to promote real books and encourage reading.

Ooh! That was exciting! It was a bit like David meets Goliath! The big wigs from Harper Collins explained to me why my book is not a real book! But the man from Cambridge University Press was kinder, and advocates the use of print on demand for books in niche markets.

Well my book may have been self published, but it is a real book. It has an ISBN number and as soon as I have jumped through the right hoops, it will be available on Amazon. Moreover, it has a unique angle on being paperless, which I have not seen anywhere else. It offers a paperless solution which is:

• open source
• cross platform
• cost free

Some of the high calibre bods at GeekCamp were genuinely helpful and some remained aloof. Perhaps that explains why self publishing and print on demand have become so popular recently. I might even write a book about that!

For the time being I am content with just this one The Paperless Expert and we’ll see how sales go.

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Posted on 25 May 2010 by Proactive Paul

Profit from Green

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Cate Trotter highlights the trends

This morning, whilst looking around for London events on Eventbrite, I stumbled across a talk at The British Library which has two different titles, depending on which web site you’re looking at:

• Eventbrite Profiting from Green – How to Make the Most of Key Future Trends
• The British Library The cutting edge of green - For all businesses wanting to capitalise on the growth of green

Luckily both titles appealed to me and whilst I am always interested in profit, I am also interested in knowing what’s happening at the cutting edge. In the event, Cate Trotter’s talk was more about existing trends and their potential for development. In particular there was a lot of focus on niche markets and a concentration on suppliers of products.

None the less I did learn that 26% of the population are indifferent to green issues and that there are two small groups of 4% each which can be described as advocates and radicals. That leaves the rest of us in a majority of 66% in the middle. That band actually covers two strains of consumer who will consider the green credentials of a purchase to a lesser or to a greater extent.

The overriding message that I took from the discussion is the ubiquitous rise of the internet. I was also pleased to discover that you can now use paperless tickets on public transport in Prague, as long as you have a smart phone. That wasn’t the case in 2007 when I was there.

I am especially interested in moves towards a paperless office and so I asked Kate about service industries rather than manufacturing and retail. Whilst advocating turning off the printer, there was little more to say, and clearly this is an area which really deserves a bit more discussion. We don’t need to be in manufacturing and retail in order to adopt green measures. The book The Paperless Expert is out later this month and focuses on how small business can become paperless on a no cost basis!

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Posted on 11 May 2010 by Proactive Paul

Ruby In The Pub

It’s the internet - it’s not a piece of paper

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The Times can learn a lot from The Guardian

I wonder how many people like to read an online newspaper report on a single web page? Perhaps spread over two is OK? Recently, The Times has gone in for 9 or 10 page spreads.

I read the first page of that report on the Budget today, but felt disinclined to click so many times just to read one report. I would be interested in learning why The Times is increasingly adopting this time wasting strategy.

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Posted on 24 Mar 2010 by Proactive Paul

Duncan Bannatyne and views on non-doms

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Is The Telegraph contradicting itself?

The headline article on page B1 of today’s UK edition of The Telegraph, relating to Duncan Bannatyne and the non-dom issue is here.

The real detail is not (see foot note) on The Telegraph’s web site though! I wonder why that is?

So here you are, this is Duncan’s column from page B12  . . .

---

THE recent revelations about

Lord Ashcroft’s non-dom

status only serve to

strengthen my belief that it is high

time we understood fully the effect

of non-doms on the UK economy

and on business owners and

entrepreneurs.

Although non-doms are not

required to pay tax on earnings

made outside the UK, that’s not

the end of it. They can also reduce

the tax on their UK earnings, and

here’s how it can happen.

A non-dom simply needs to say

that his or her UK company is

managed by a board of directors

outside the UK and then make a

charge to the company for

“management services”. This

reduces the pre-tax profit of the

company and so reduces its

corporation lax bill.

The money transferred offshore

for “management services” is tax

free and can be used to fund the

non-dom lifestyle abroad - the

yachts, planes and mansions.

The non-dom situation is very

relevant to business owners like

me in the UK because we iind

ourselves at a distinct disadvantage

when competing with businesses

owned by non-doms. Normal UK

business owners pay taxes on all

earnings before paying for a new

car or a family holiday, unlike nondoms,

so there is less money

available to pump back into the

future of their businesses.

This is not. the fault of the nondoms;

rather, it is the laws that

allow them lo play the system that

need addressing.

Non-doms have to provide for

their families and they often give

generously to charities abroad. I

understand their motivations

completely. But the situation is not

fair and the laws need to be

changed; if they aren’t, the vast

majority of UK businesses will feel

unfairly penalised and more of our

country’s assets will be conn-oiled

by non-doms.

A case in point is the recent

announcement by my non-dom

friend and colleague James Caan.

He is venturing into the health

club industry and has acquired five

existing clubs.

As I pay UK tax on all of the

earnings that fund my lifestyle,

and corporation lax on all of the

profits made by my businesses, I

am clearly at an unfair

disadvantage. It’s just as well

James and I get on so well, and

there couldn’t be a nicer man to be

in competition with, but you see

my point. And what about all the

other health club operators up and

down the country without nondom

status?

The Lord Ashcroft story

highlights the inadequacy of the

domicile rule when applied to

taxation, and points to the urgent

need for reform.

In my view, all UK residents

should have a duly to pay UK tax

unless they can prove that they arc

paying equivalent taxes elsewhere

in the world. This would level the

business playing Held and

encourage, rather than stifle, the

growth of enterprise and small

business in this country.

A change would also create

badly-needed revenue to the

exchequer and help to ensure that

our economy emerges as strongly

as possible from the downturn, by

rewarding innovation and

productivity, rather than giving the

ability to exploit tax loopholes.

Duncan Bannatvne is the founder and

chairman of Bannatyne Fitness and

author of bestsellinq books Anyone Can

Do It and Wake Up and Change Your Life.

His new book, How to Be Smart with Your

Time, is out on April 15.

---

I agree with Duncan Bannatyne!

Foot note

What I found rather odd today was that the B1 article was easy to find, and this B12 article was “hidden away”! Thanks for finding it @pillsburyb

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Posted on 18 Mar 2010 by Proactive Paul

Apply a little lubricant

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Use your imagination

I’m working on a new Wiki at the moment, and Benjamin Ellis has given me a useful idea! In a tweet from SXSW - that’s a big conference for geeks (and others), held every year in the USA - Benjamin said:

Now, whilst he was probably thinking in broader terms than I, it made me think a bit more about the nature of the Wikis which I’m running. All of the business ones and the one I have personally.

What are the Wikis for? If not to reduce friction? Anytime I have to tackle something new, like getting a Huawei stick to work on a Mac, I add a new page to the Wiki. That means that the next time I have to do that task, I don’t waste time and energy trying to work out the solution. I simply go and search the Wiki to find the notes that I wrote last time.

In business, areas of friction benefit from a bit of lubricating with a Wiki! We are always trying to make our credit control procedures a little better at Proactive. More effective, more of a regular routine and less of a daunting task! We work on that Wiki page regularly. And today it’s Tuesday, so it’s credit control phone call day. Did you get a statement from us yesterday?

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Posted on 16 Mar 2010 by Proactive Paul