Archive for May 2009
Happy bank holiday folks
Posted by Powwownowteam in Opinions on 22nd May 2009
Many of you may not know that we work on Paradise Road, it’s true – look on the website.
I’ll spare you the cheese about what a ‘paradise’ my working environment is but I can tell you about the town Paradise Road is situated in – Richmond. As we’re on the cusp of bank holiday (YAY) if you fancy a day out in Richmond (worth the trip) here are a few tips:
Start off by heading to Richmond Park where you have 2500 acres, 650 free roaming deer and a whole lot of walking, you don’t need to be a rambler to enjoy the Park. There are beautiful plantations; Isabella is my favourite, children’s play areas, a café, ponds, cycle tracks, horse riding and most importantly room to picnic without sitting on someone else’s lap.
Fooling around with Google Maps
Posted by Carl Pappenheim in Techie Talk on 22nd May 2009
They say you shouldn’t take your work home but, if you’re lucky, sometimes your curiosity is piqued by something that you just have to investigate on your own time. No, I’m not talking about cyber stalking the office babes on their Facebook pages, quiet down at the back. This week, I’ve been putting the finishing touches to our new conference call scheduler application and, while implementing a Google maps tool for calculating time zone differences, I started thinking about their zoom levels. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to print off directions and found that the route was too small to be clear, then zoomed in and found the route didn’t quite fit all on one screen. It seems like a big leap at those times, yet when you’re looking at the whole world, or zoom all the way in to one street, the contrast between stages isn’t nearly so obvious. So what is the change in scale each time you click the plus or minus?
How to manage human resources in a small organisation
Posted by Andrew Pearce in Opinions on 21st May 2009
Andrew Pearce, 20 May 2009
Many small business owners can not justify a dedicated HR resource. As a result they manage their business obligations internally. These obligations can include anything from writing a new contract to tackling health and safety issues. For bosses to maintain a competitive business, it is vital that they not only understand these obligations but also know how to manage them efficiently.
Spring is here…
Our first Powwownow baby was born on the 16th March this year.
Not-so-little Ethan weighed in at 4.18kg (9lb 3o) and was 54.5cm tall at birth.
Staying awake at night
To introduce myself – I am Paul Lees one of the Directors of Powwownow. I was also around at the start so that qualifies me as a founder.
Powwownow is 5 years old and now quite a big operation so my role is now more strategic than operational (there are lots of very good people doing the operational roles).
Things that keep me awake at night (and I suppose therefore make good blog food) are:
• The impending number change (0870 ceases to pay a rebate from 1 Aug 2009)
• Getting (and staying) at position 1 for all of our keywords on Google – without resorting to black hat techniques
• Keeping tabs on the wider economy and business trends – which inevitably have an impact on our business
• Developing Powwnownow and allconferencecalls – increasing geographic coverage and additional facilities such as web conferencing and video conferencing
I ♥ start-ups
Posted by Powwownowteam in Opinions on 14th May 2009
Since starting work at Powwownow I have done many a thing around the office (all perfectly above board I might add) but the latest project I have been working on is partnerships and in doing so I have met some really interesting people who work for some really interesting companies.
My favourites are those from start ups (sorry if I am offending anyone I know from the corporate world but these ‘start up’ guys are just a whole lot of fun and have unbeatable levels of passion, which gets me all fuzzy inside)
For the purpose of this article I am going to concentrate on my top 5 start ups that I have worked with who give me the ‘fuzzy’ feeling (aka – they are so passionate that I feel they’re going to burst) you may wonder what the purpose of this is – it gives me content and it’ll give you an insight to the best companies to work with. With people like these, you just won’t go wrong
New beginnings
Posted by Powwownowteam in News on 14th May 2009
The best place to start is normally the beginning, unless of course you’re going backwards, then it’d be the end – right?
So, here we are at the beginning of the blog, after much excitement we have downloaded and installed, jazzed it up with our rather fetching tone of lime green, added some plug ins we thought were relevant, told staff to add pics and now the reality of ‘the really hard bit’ faces me and it’s called content.
Content, a word I didn’t mind ‘that’ much, before I had to add some to a blog , so on that note I am going to go away, take 5, think of something that’ll knock the socks off you and return with it.
Be prepared to have your socks knocked off kids :)
