Archive for June, 2009

I’ve now been back at Powwownow in my freshly-graduated state since last September.  Out of the many challenges I’ve been faced with in that time, none has proved as insuperable as answering the inevitable question: “So, what exactly is it that you do?”

That’s not to say I haven’t been busy.  My list of activities is as diverse as it is incomprehensible (to that attractive girl serving me drinks): writing command-line PHP scripts to forward fax e-mails, writing Javascript IVR applications, configuring SIP phones, managing the office VOIP server, repeatedly rebooting PCs, flat-packing cardboard boxes, changing lightbulbs…

See? You stopped listening halfway through – and you’re probably not even drunk.  Imagine yelling that into someone’s ear at a bar!  Where, oh where, is my pithy one- or two-word job description?

Things were once much simpler.  Everything worth doing could be summarised in a simple “career noun”, preferably ending in “-man” or “-er”, ranging from the high-powered (“lawyer”, “hitman”, “prime minister”) to the less so (“labourer”, “binman”, “musician”).

Nowadays one is more likely to be introduced to someone sporting either a clever euphemism (“sanitation engineer”, “rock star”) or a mind-bogglingly verbose and indecipherable title (“Director, Non-Sterling Vanilla Fixed Income Sales to UK Investment Management Groups and Israeli Funds, Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets”, or “Temporary Part-Time Libraries North-West Inter-Library Loan Business Unit Administration Assistant”, to choose a few real-life examples).

But even by today’s standards, my role is hard to define.  To begin with, the best summary I could come up with was “IT stuff”.  If people pressed for more details, I might venture “fixing people’s PCs… and stuff”.  At the odd moment, it felt like the most apt label might have been “PA to Miguel Louro”.

Lately, though, having been given the opportunity to work on some interesting projects and, in the process, learn PHP and Javascript, I’ve started to claim in casual conversation that I do “computer programming”.  As creating a website was to be my next step in a project now on hold, I’ve even been known on occasion to jump the gun slightly and refer to myself as a “web designer” – trendier-sounding, but a somewhat extravagant claim given that I’ve never written a web application in my life.

All in all, the diversity of what I’ve been doing here has undoubtedly been for the best.  It’s kept me interested and engaged, and has given me the chance to experience elements of what elsewhere might constitute several quite separate roles.

But it does mean I have to think twice when I’m asked about my job.  And by the time I’ve come up with a reply, the eyes of the attractive barmaid have usually already glazed over.

With 12 new websites to roll out – actually make that 11 now that the Powwownow German website went live on Wednesday – you may well wonder how Andrew Pearce, CEO and myself managed to get two days out of the office to jet off to Amsterdam.

Well with the temptation of Dutch beer, cheese, frites and canals plus the perfect excuse of meetings with a new marketing agency and potential partner, it was easy!

With the Dutch conference calling market being the fourth largest in Europe behind the UK, Germany and France, we were aware of the opportunity to treble Powwownow’s share in the marketplace in the next couple of years and expand our international brand presence. So with the help of local knowledge, contacts and language skills we’ll be able to launch another new website, communicate more effectively with existing and potential customers and be recognised and recommended as the fastest growing free teleconferencing provider in Europe.

So cheers to Amsterdam!  Proost!

Well I’ve now been in my current job for a year now, and apart from leaving my beloved South Shields for the bright lights of Richmond on Thames, all is well. Got me thinking though about some of my previous career moves including portaloo cleaner, pidgeon culling and DSS House clearing. Some of these are pretty minging, and wondered where they rank in the Top 10 worst jobs. So if your thinking you have got a bad rap then check these out. Oh and as it happens I’m in the top three.

1. Roadkill Collector. Pretty self-explanatory. These guys not only have the job of peeling the remains of dead critters in various forms of decay off the road, they also get to do it whilst in the path of oncoming traffic.
2. Manure Inspector. Manure is an important natural fertilizer, but first it has to be checked for contaminants like E.coli and salmonella. That’s where manure inspectors come in. Not only do they get to search for bacteria that causes diarrhoea and puke if ingested, they also get to wade through animal poo.
3. Portable Toilet Cleaner. You had to know this one was coming. First of all, I have serious reservations about using portable toilets, much less cleaning one. Portable toilet cleaners pick up leftover toilet paper, spray on a de-greasing solution, hose the entire unit down with scalding water, scrub, squeegee, dry, and then finish it off with a deodorizing spray. And yet, even after all of this, I would rather take my chances in the behind a bush. Also don’t run away with the idea the ladies smells like a sweet summers day either.
4. Crime Scene Cleaner. If not the dirtiest, this is definitely the most mentally disturbing job. Crime scene cleaners wear nuclear suits, respirators, and chemical spill boots. Still they must have strong stomachs as they brave blood, decomposition, and the loose remains of human bodies once the police have left the scene.
5. Pest Control Worker. Pest control workers use their knowledge of pests’ biology and habits along with an arsenal of pest management techniques applying chemicals, setting traps, operating equipment, and even modifying structures to alleviate pest problems. In short, pest control workers have to think like pests and go where pests go usually to places that are dark, damp, and dirty. Plus, they get deal with gut stripping chemicals.
6. Ape Urine Collector. This job sounds a little made up but sadly it is not. Ape urine collectors are employed by scientists who need ape urine to study factors that affect their reproduction. The work involves tracking down apes and laying down large plastic sheets or attaching plastic bags to poles in hopes of catching adequate samples to analyze.
7. De-construction Worker. While this may seem like a variation of a regular construction job, the difference is that you’re not building something, you’re tearing it down. By the end of the day, deconstruction workers are literally covered dust, chipped paint, and dangerous debris such as glass. Still, while dirty and somewhat dangerous, deconstruction might also be strangely satisfying.
8. Zoo Cleaner. You’d think working at a zoo would be fun, and it probably is, if you’re the zookeeper. Zoo cleaners, on the other hand, are in charge of the behind-the-scenes work, which means cleaning the zoo as well as the animals, including the lost and forgotten places on their bodies. Remember not all animals are as well groomed as a Crufts winning pooch.
9. Hot Zone Superintendent. Hot-zone superintendents perform maintenance work for bio-safety labs that study lethal airborne nasties for which there is no known cure. These little blighters include disease causing organisms such as anthrax. Given that it is a sterilized lab, the work is not that dirty. But what it lacks in grime, it makes up for in stress.
10. Dentist. Probably not the job most people would expect, but it definitely warrants its place in the top 10. Dentists spend their days wading around one of the dirtiest cavities in the world, the human mouth. This particular orifice combines some of the more repugnant features of all of the aforementioned careers blood, dirt, bugs, and disease. Unlike other bad jobs which require little in formal training. Dentists are forced to endure years of schooling and pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to even practice their dirty job. Is it any wonder that dentistry boasts the highest rate of suicide of any profession?
    

If you can think of anymore please tell us all…

June is being very exciting time for all of us in accounts department due to an introduction of automated invoicing system.

Huge applause and many thnaks to all involved in such a difficult task.

As you may or may not know, the PowWowNow office is located in Richmond Upon Thames. If you have never been to Richmond, it is not only a nice place to work it is also a very nice place to visit. To entertain and amuse you all, here are five ‘fascinating’ facts about Richmond:

• There are lots of Richmond’s all over the world, nearly all are named after Richmond Upon Thames, but Richmond Upon Thames is named after Richmond in Yorkshire.
• Richmond, Virginia got its name after someone was up a hill there, looked down and thought it looks like the view from the top of the hill in Richmond Upon Thames.
• Novelist Virginia Woolf lived in the house next door to the PowWowNow offices. Richard Attenborough, Mick Jagger, Brian May, Amanda Holden, Ronnie Wood and Henry VIII are also all reported to have lived in Richmond.
• Marc Bolan of T.Rex fame sadly died in the borough after being involved in a car crash in Barnes.
• At the highest point in Richmond park you can see all the way to the way to St Paul’s Cathedral. This view has been protected by law since 1710. In 2005 the mayor of London (Ken Livingstone) tried to overturn this law to make way for city development; the views fate is still undecided.

We finally moved to the new house, further away from London, seeking the quiet life. In the previous place it sounded like we were living just across the road from the police station. Sirens were on all the time, morning, afternoon, night, you name it! This is not the main reason why we moved though, we simply wanted a bigger place with a greener grass and more surrounding wild life. Speaking of wild life, just the next day after we moved we found in the garden a long trail of feathers, like someone had a long heavy fight! We were now worried that the wild life was too close, but it didn’t take long to see who did the mess in our garden: the neighbour’s fluffy cat!

I wonder who got sacrificed in the first night in the new garden…

We often talk about the cost effectiveness of voice conferencing over face-to-face meetings and I recently had cause to remember a personal experience. Nine years ago, I was working for a software reseller dealing with enterprise solutions. Most of the software was American and Bill the CEO of our main partner company was coming over to the UK. Keen to impress him and to take advantage of his presence, we set about arranging meetings for him with both existing Clients and potential prospects. Key amongst all these appointments were two in Manchester, one with a rather large Cereal producer and the other with a rather large public body, the only problem we faced was that the meetings were arranged for the day he arrived in the UK from Dallas.

Timing was critical and not helped by the fact that Bill was flying in to Gatwick and the only flights we could get to Manchester were departing from Heathrow. On the fateful morning I picked a colleague up from her house and drove to Gatwick to wait for Bill to land (in theory at 7:30 am). The plan was a quick dash round the M25 (asking for problems) to get us to Heathrow with plenty of time to catch the flight to Manchester. Now there’s a reason for the expression “sods law”, Bills flight was delayed and eventually landed one hour and fifteen minutes late. We still had a chance to make the connecting flight, so the CEO of a major USA software company changed into fresh cloths behind my car in a multi-storey car park and off we shot.

The M25 was built to frustrate people and duly obliged, however we reached the Check-In desk just as the flight was closing, just in time in fact to discover that Check-In Staff can also frustrate and with a smile on their face, politely told us we were too late to board the plane.

Now I was faced with a predicament, I had two meetings to attend in Manchester and the CEO of our major USA partner standing next to me. I took the decision to see if we could get a connecting flight with another airline, fortunately this was possible, although three last minute flights cost the equivalent of one weeks all-inclusive holiday in Spain.

After an uneventful flight, during which Bill demonstrated his party trick of falling asleep the moment he sat in an airline seat and snoring loudly, right through take-off and remaining that way until landing, (maybe it was the company he had). Now as you are aware — mobile phones must be turned off when on a flight, so as I turned mine on, I discovered I had a message — our meeting with a rather large public body had been cancelled, judging by the time of the message was left just as we flew over Birmingham.

To be fair the meeting with the very large cereal producer went very well, but the cost of that one meeting ran to several thousand pounds — could we have achieved the same result with a Powwownow web and voice conference? Probably, it would certainly have been a lot cheaper, less stressful and easier.

Thinking I’m either Toni or Guy i made the mistake of attempting to cut Bucas’ Hair, a job that i thought would take just 30 minutes!!! 2 hours later and

a bin bag full of hair. I stood back to admire my handy work see attached photo. Neither owner or Dog will be venturing out the house for the next 2-3 weeks.

Andy

PS off for some hair-restorer