I’m writing this blog post in a sort of reverse order – inspired by the blog post ‘Scott Hanselmans Complete List Of Productivity Tips‘ by Danny Schreiber. Specifically by the paragraph:

Keep your emails to 3-4 sentences, Hanselman says. Anything longer should be on a blog or wiki or on your product’s documentation, FAQ or knowledge base. “Anywhere in the world except email because email is where you keystrokes go to die,” he says.

I had already written some long e-mails (I do that quite a lot), so now I’m making a blog post out of them. I like the idea of writing a blog post and then referring to it in an e-mail; I write a lot of long e-mails or messages to people, mostly on technical topics.

Let’s start this blog post

Just before Christmas, my brother and I went to a technology conference in Milton Keynes. It was the seventh event of its type and we were excited to attend because we wanted to see a group of technology focused people come together. The tickets for it were free, around 150 people were expected, there were 5 speakers, the venue was good, they had some big name sponsors and there was even the promise of free pizza! Guess what – it sucked!

One interesting thing did come out of it though – by chance. We happened to be sitting next to someone from the Bedford branch of the British Computer Society (BCS). He had seen my 1 minute talk and was interested to learn more about Kevin and I – and what we are doing on our websites. So we had a chat and have since exchanged a few emails.

He asked me if I thought I would be going to the next event, but I said no because:

We got tickets for the the one in March, but to be honest I thought that 4 out of 5 of the talks were very poor and the event wasn’t very well organised e.g.:

• No indication on the website of what the talks were about
• Some of the talks were in the wrong context for the type of event (e.g. the first was about being productive when working from home – that is nothing to do with technology. One was someone simply saying that to get good coffee you need good ingredients and good equipment. Another was someone explaining how website design is comparable to stage production. The last one was entertaining, but in terms of a technology conference; it was very weak – he basically gave some examples of the social media networks that he uses and how they have changed over time)
• None of the presenters allowed the audience to ask questions
• The event was very 1 directional and didn’t encourage any participation
• No photographs, audio or video of the 1 minute talks (I have asked)
• Only a brief mention of the sponsors (a listing of their names – no explanation of what they do)
• No information given on the future events of this format, or the 1 day event (they announced the dates, but not the content)
• I missed out on getting a ticket for the last event, so I asked them about a waiting list. They then set up a waiting list and I was on it. I didn’t hear anything from them, so the day before the event I told them that I was 2nd on the waiting list – then they e-mailed the people who were on the list with a URL to obtain a ticket. They didn’t ask for ticket information on the door anyway

so we probably won’t attend it.

It’s a shame that Milton Keynes doesn’t yet have any ‘real’ geeky events or conferences like Oxford and London do.

Thanks.

Paul Richardson

Recently, he asked me for some feedback on the BCS Bedford 2014 agenda – I had a look at it and sighed. I din’t know what the sigh emoticon is, so I wrote him a long e-mail instead:

Hi,

Instead of staying at school in Milton Keynes to A Levels, I decided to go to Bedford College to do a 2 year BTEC National Diploma. Whilst there, during a lecture we were told about the BCS and given some information on it. I didn’t subscribe to it and I don’t think anyone else did either, because whilst it might have been interesting, it wasn’t inspiring. At the time, I thought that not getting a high number of IT students to subscribe to the BCS was a fail – and a big loss for everyone.

> Cyber Security – the discoveries around the globe

I am interested in this, but probably wouldn’t attend a presentation on it unless I knew it had good reviews. Most security breaches are from social hacking to gain access to computer systems, not computer hacking.

> Agile Project Management and Project Assurance

Very few companies use Agile.

The companies I’ve worked for (Barclays, Deloitte, Capgemini) and other companies I’ve worked with either don’t use a methodology, use a very watered down version of PRINCE2 or they use a bespoke methodology (e.g. ASAP http://scn.sap.com/community/asap-methodology).

> Information Systems Development for Managers

I wouldn’t attend this.

> Latest usage & trends in Mobile Apps

Most people aren’t that interested in the latest usage stats and trends, because they fluctuate. They want to know how they should prepare for the future.

> SharePoint Meeting

Sharepoint can be an interesting topic (I am SAP Portal certified – SAP Portal is SAP’s version of Sharepoint), but it will have a very limited appeal – I wouldn’t travel to attend a presentation on it.

> The evolution of Social Media for SME’s in 2015

Rather than talk about the evolution of social media, I would rather hear about how social media can be integrated via API’s, etc. to build better platforms. Also, I’m not keen on including the phrase ‘for SME’s’ in the title because the same rules apply for SME’s that apply for individuals, large corporations, etc.

> Technology – Enhanced Learning

This could mean anything. With that total alone I wouldn’t attend.

I haven’t been to http://www.campuslondon.com/events/, but I would really like to one day. The talks and meetings sound engaging and aim to help people to achieve things.

I would really like to see the BCS bring people (creative talent) together, to help them do things like:

• How to come up with ideas (for businesses, applications, websites, etc.). The process for coming up with ideas is very long and complicated
• How to validate ideas
• Find people to work with (developers, advertisers, platform people, artists, project managers, theme developers, plugin writers, copywriters, etc.)
• How to monetise
• How to make use of open data sets, API’s, etc.
• How to work as a team – and the tools that make it easy
• How to get resources for things outside of your skills, or to free up your time (e.g. ODesk, Freelancer, 99Designs, etc.)
• Learn about different platforms – to find out which best suits each individual’s requirements
• Learn about projects like http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/, http://www.rackspace.co.uk/startup and http://www.startupbritain.co/which help get projects off the ground by providing resources and advice
• Invite large companies (Google, Microsoft, Spotify, etc.) to talk at events
• Talks on bootstrapping, Angel Investments, crowd-sourcing, etc.
• Talks and demos on various tools available for managing a project (Asana, basecamp, ODesk, MindMeister, etc.)
• How to attract more customers
• Hot to convert more of your current users into paying customers
• Talks about different industries – gaming, social, banking, traffic, B2B, B2C, etc.
• Talks and demo’s from hardware vendors (e.g. Oculus Rift, Pebble, Google, Samsung, etc.). Many people probably don’t even know what John Lewis sells – so get a John Lewis salesman in to talk about the latest (and future) technology, such as 4K TV, wireless HDMI streaming, curved screens, latest tablets, Nest, robot cleaners, robot lawnmowers, Microsoft Kinect, etc.
• Talks and demo’s from providers – e.g. BT to talk about the data infrastructure. I have seen presentations from BT and they were fascinating. Get HP in to talk about the future of the CPU (10 years ago I talked with an HP salesman about their prototype 85 core CPU – that was fascinating), data centres, remote monitoring, etc.
• etc…

i.e. talks that people will find useful, rather than just interesting.

This is just my view anyway – I hope it makes sense 🙂

Thanks.

Paul Richardson

He then asked me what sort of talks I would like to present, so I replied with: