Archive for November 2009
Five miles to save the planet
Posted by Powwownowgreen in Opinions on 27th November 2009
Chances are you may have seen the new campaign from the Government’s Act On co2 initiative. It’s not as hard-hitting as some existing climate change campaigns (check out this polar bear one!) but it outlines the simplicity in doing our bit to help in the fight against global warming.
After all, we can all drive five miles less a week, can’t we?
Well, I thought I’d prove it by cycling to work once a week. Because, at Powwownow, we like to practise what we preach. Hopefully it might make you do something similar.
The One That Got Away
Posted by Buca Pearce in Opinions on 24th November 2009
As a Portuguese Water Dog I’m bred to help the fisherman in Portugal pull their nets onto their fishing boats, however living in Windsor and working in Richmond (to be honest i have no idea how i arrived in either of these places) i feel a little lost. I cannot even see the sea from my Master’s house. There are lakes and rivers for me to swim in but not that many fisherman that need help pulling their nets in. I do try to help the ones with the big rods sitting on the bank. I run around them, jump into the lake hoping to aid them pulling out their catch, only to be shouted at and chased off.
Fly Powwownow announces first special offer – 5,000 free conference calls
Posted by Powwownowteam in News on 20th November 2009
As you may remember, last week Powwownow launched an advertising campaign and a new web site www.flypowwownow.co.uk in response to airline Flybe’s ad claiming that ‘Conference Calls don’t win business’. Our message is clear: you can spend hundreds of pounds flying to business meetings, or you can organise a conference call with Powwownow that costs just a few pounds. You will save time, money, and CO2 emissions by doing so.
The site and the campaign have been extremely well received and have created a large amount of buzz, and we’ve decided to take things one step further. In response to another campaign – BA’s offer of 5,000 business class flights to new and existing exporters, flypowwownow.co.uk is now offering 5,000 free conference calls for SME’s. Again, the difference is clear: the business class flights aren’t really free once you take into account taxes, travel and charges, whilst if your UK telecoms provider gives you free calls to landlines (as most do these days), organising a conference call via the instructions provided will cost your business precisely nothing.
Overcoming the junk mail filters
Posted by Powwownowteam in Techie Talk on 19th November 2009
(image courtesy of danshill)
We think we’ve done pretty well at Powwownow over the last few years. But that doesn’t mean we’ve not had our challenges.
And one ongoing challenge we’ve experienced is finding a way to avoid our communications (which are essential to how we provide our service) being intercepted by email client junk filters.
As Andrew explains in an article in today’s Telegraph, the success of Powwownow relies heavily on our customers receiving the information they need to be able to hold a conference call. Without that information, there can be no Powwownow. And the number of calls to the help desk asking for information to be re-sent suggest that it’s not a seldom occurrence.
Cake Club
Posted by Louise.Rowlands in Events on 18th November 2009
The first rule of Cake Club……if you don’t make cake you can’t eat cake..
Here at Powwownow we like eating cake and we like a bit of a competition so we thought we’d combine the two and have a cake off!
Now the competition is simple:
- Tell the club chair you want to take part
- A list is drawn up and you are pitted against one of your fellow cake club members
- Every Monday two members bring in their offerings
- The rest of cake club blind taste them and vote for their favourite
- The winner goes through to the next round
- After knock out stages one lucky club member is crowned king or queen of cake club
Looking back at the Future
Apollo 11 Eagle Banner
The 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landings recently got me thinking about how I imagined the future would be then and how it actually turned out.
One of the highlights of my childhood was the Apollo moon program. Whilst I am not actually old enough to remember President Kennedy pledging to put a man on the moon before the end of the 60s and, for that matter, I don’t know where I was when he was shot (I was probably throwing my toys out of my pram), I do distinctly remember both the actual moon landings and the various missions that lead up to them.
The real cost of air travel
Posted by Powwownowteam in Opinions on 12th November 2009
Here at Powwownow, we don’t mind a bit of honest competition. But recent advertising from the people at Flybe.com seemed a little less than truthful. So we felt we ought to take a little direct action with our own ad, published today in the London Metro.
OK, so it’s a little cheeky of us to take their ad and throw it back at them. But we felt there was something important missing in their claim that face to face meetings – and particularly face-to-face meetings that involve air travel – are ‘better’ than conference calling.
Movember Rain
Posted by Carl Pappenheim in Opinions on 9th November 2009
When you look upon my face
You can see some hair unchained
And darlin’ when I kiss you
My lip don’t feel the same
‘Cause nothing stays bald forever
And we both know faces change
And it’s hard to use a razor
In the cold Movember rain.
We’ve been through this such a short, short time
Just since the month began
Though hairstyles always come and fashions always go
Well it takes a certain someone to grow a ‘tache today
‘Tache today.
And if you could take the time to back my facial panther
It would be all worthwhile
Raising cash for prostate cancer
(Prostate cancer)
So if you want to support us
Then darlin’ don’t hold back
Just visit our web pages
And spend some cash for ‘tache.
Workspace: the final frontier
Posted by Powwownowbizfish in Opinions on 4th November 2009
Is your workspace holding you back?
Let me explain. Because of what we do [we're a conference calling company in case you didn't know], when we talk about business efficiency, we usually look at ways businesses can save time or money by changing their methods. But a conversation the other day prompted me to wonder whether there wasn’t an opportunity for greater efficiency staring us in the face every time we sit down to work – ie should we be doing something different with our workspaces?
Are they optimally designed? Could we rearrange things to increase productivity? I decided to research the issue, and how better than to look at the workspaces of the world, courtesy of Flickr? I had a look around and realised workspaces can be loosely categorised into groups. Which one is yours? Or, more to the point, which one would you like to be?
Techspace [courtesy of No Robotcha!]
Tech heaven. The more screens the better. And three mice [mouses?] doesn’t mean inefficiency, it means business. Note: no need for desk space to store paper. Everything is digital.
