On our first day, we were up at the crack of dawn to get kitted up with our ski equipment and to take the gondola to the top of the mountain. The views from the Gondola were picturesque, and we were able to relax for 30 minutes on our way up.

We went straight into lessons. Unfortunately our group of 7 was split as Jason has already skied and he went into an intermediate group. The rest of us sat in a beginner group. I think the scariest thing was worrying about not being able to stop! The first morning for us beginners was pretty tiring, having to walk up the slope, then ski slowly down, and repeat until your legs ached. But it was all worth it when you learn how to stop and turn!

In the meantime, while the beginners were learning how to stop, Jason went higher up the mountain and did some of the bigger ski runs, and generally had a lot more fun skiing down the whole mountain!

The first few days we spent learning the basics of skiing, how to stop, turn and slow down, and just getting used to the feel of the slopes. Oh, and trying as much as possible not to fall. On our 3^rd day we finally managed to ski down the slopes in one go. It was a bit tough in some areas as there was a fresh fall of snow earlier, and without speed (us newbie’s were skiing very slowly) we got caught, and had to trudge our way down. Having said that, it felt amazing having accomplished it, and we were ready for bigger and better slopes!

The next few days we spent practicing in the mornings, and skiing down different slopes in the afternoons, trying out the different slopes, and generally having loads of fun. We had a few adventures with people falling, and some scarily steep slopes, but we got through it all, and became “certified skiers”!

The food on the mountain wasn’t so great – but you were so hungry you would eat anything. The food at the base of the mountain was excellent. We found a couple of local restaurants who did some amazing food, from Moussaka to Baklava, and a list of things I can’t even pronounce. But we ate very well, and went to bed fairly early in the evenings after gruelling days on the slopes.

We spent a little time wandering the streets of Bansko – a beautiful area. It is situated below the highest part of the Pirin Mountain, and has breathtaking views. It has some beautiful buildings and a lot of historical and cultural monuments.

A definite must for skiing enthusiasts, just try and avoid the European School holidays, as this makes it extremely busy on the slopes

At Powwownow, we like to do unusual things to let people know about what we do. You may, for example, remember the hands-free kits that we gave away?

Well, we’ve been at it again, and this time we’ve been creating some viral videos for video sharing websites like YouTube and Daily Motion.

These videos were shot as if they were real CCTV footage featuring seemingly unaware office workers who were using their meeting room for their own devices, with amusing consequences. We set up a YouTube channel and uploaded the videos as if we had ‘found’ the clips from real-life offices (we hadn’t, of course; we had set them up and filmed them ourselves). And the message? “Powwownow – repurposing the meeting room since 2004.”

So, in one video, for example, a haphazard office worker practises his golf swing, only to put his club through the meeting room wall. In another, two office workers have a steamy rendezvous under the meeting room table. While in another video, three cheeky workmates improvise with the meeting room table, turning it into a homemade pool table.

Judging by the YouTube comments, it seems there was a mixture of responses. There were the Internet savvy among you who could smell a fish; they knew it was a piece of marketing material. Others weren’t so sure. Most viewers, however, seemed to find the videos funny – which is the most important thing, anyway. Hopefully they found them amusing enough to send to friends and family so they would enjoy them, too.

Of course, we couldn’t keep the fact we were behind the videos a secret forever. So now the secret’s out – it isn’t real footage – it was us all along!

If you haven’t seen them already, check out the Powwownow YouTube channel.

Sadly, we don’t have one of those on the staff so you’ll have to make do with me.  And I haven’t been in a statistics lecture for the fat end of a decade.

The first thing to do was obtain the data.  Obviously my memory is perfect in every way but, as it happens, I wasn’t present for every round so I just needed to double-check.  I had a look on this blog but sadly certain people have been less than rigorous about publishing up-to-the-minute status updates with regard to cake club concoctions and results so there were still some gaps, hem hem.  I did what I usually do in such situations and whinged at some volume to nobody in particular until I got some attention.  Luckily for all within earshot, Louise told me she had all the Cake Club emails saved in her outbox and promised to email them over once she had done some actual work, thanks Carl; shut up now.

The emails were a massive boon and I quickly decided on a strategy for recording the data, keying in names and departments into a big spreadsheet.  Here are the distributions by department:

Interesting what a disproportionate slice is given over to Marketing, given that only one of them actually got to the final.  This is, as any Liberal Democrat will tell you, a failing of the tournament system.

However, backslapping was not on my agenda.  I was interested in something far more interesting: the perfect Cake Club recipe!  I went back to the spreadsheet and created eight columns which contained 1 and 0 for ‘yes’ and ‘no’.  The first column recorded whether that cake won or not and the remaining seven recorded attributes of the cake.  The attributes ranged from ingredients (chocolate, fruit) through style (sponge, pie) to presentation (individual servings, sandwich).  I felt fully confident that I could seive out the statistically most successful cake and, with this information, travel back in time a fortnight and make sure that I won the final!

Here are the distributions of the various attributes.  Remember, there were 30 cakes in the tournament total:

Two thirds were sponge!  And over half had chocolate in!  But did popularity among bakers curry favour with the voters, or was it a recipe for disaster?  The proof is in the pudding.  I set up a more complex calculation, looking at the percentage of times a particular attribute won on occasions where it was used.  With such a small sample size (only three cakes in some cases) the results weren’t ever going to be accurate but I reckoned I could make some sort of rough comparison.

If an attribute had no effect we could assume it would win  exactly 50% of the time (as you can only either win or lose you have a 50% chance of either, assuming it’s random) so I subtracted 50% from each result to see which ones affected the score negatively (winning less often than 50% of the time) and which affected the score positively (winning more than 50% of the time).  The results are intriguing:

Notice that the best-performing ingredient, nuts, is one of the least common and chocolate, by far the favoured flavour, makes a rather poor showing, doing worse than random.  People are indifferent about pies but sponge sandwiches are the way forward and despite the time and effort it takes a pretty special person to make a success out of cupcakes, almond mice etc.

It seems that the best possible cake is one in a sandwich format, with sponge and nuts – weirdly, this describes precisely the cake I made in the semi final!  If someone in Marketing had made it, that would have made it a statistical dead cert to win any heat.  However, individual serving cakes made by a salesperson with fresh fruit and chocolate .. well .. sorry, Stew; I guess the numbers were against you!

The eagle eyed among you will notice that in the departmental section of the graph I’ve sneaked in a line for baker gender.  Very, very interesting to see that not only did no girls make the final, being female actually counts against you generally; nearly a 10% skew towards miserable failure for anyone who actually follows a recipe and cleans up after baking – let that be a lesson to you, girls!

There’s been a lot of smack talk and scandal in Cake Club this inaugural year and it was good to get some real numbers down.  Finding out that blokes really are 8.33% better at baking was just the icing on the cake! Hope you enjoyed seeing some hard facts.  All I can say is, next year you’d better watch out for nut sponges made by men from Marketing.

Oh, and if you can spot all the cake-related puns in this post… you need a hobby.  Baking, perhaps.

Tesco is banning people to go shopping in their pyjamas, so why wouldn’t we ban people for attending conference calls half sleeping and yawning all the way through!

So yes, you can attend a Powwownow in your PJ’s – Just make sure you’ve had your coffee first!

Other ASCCB include:

• Heavy breathing
• Noisy eating
• Arriving late
• Whispering to others in the office (we can’t see you but we can hear you!)

• To give us examples on other ASCCB you can think of, go to our linkedin discussion in the “Powwownow Business Efficiency” Group.

At least conference callers need to learn how to hide their ASCCB with In-conference controls like the Mute Key (#6 in the keypad) – This way they can do whatever they want without distracting, interrupting or off-putting the rest of the participants!

Also, you can use the Recording Key (press #8 to start recording) to capture and send us one of your colleagues ASCCB!

To learn more about the Powwownow ASCCBOs and report someone, go to http://www.powwownow.co.uk/ASCCBO

England         16   V   20       Irland

27th February 2010    I    16:00    I    Twickenham    I    Six Nations

Last week we gave you a useful little guide (well, we hope you found it useful) about which features you should have on your conference call phone to get the most out of Powwownow. We thought we’d follow it up with something similar: a guide to how to keep your conference calls secure.

First of all, I should point out that, on the whole, having a conference call is nothing to worry about and ‘tapping’ into conference calls is a very difficult process. Nevertheless, if it’s something you are worried about, there are a few simple security measures that will help bolster the security of your calls.

Follow the steps below for complete peace of mind on your next conference call.

• As you are probably aware, with Powwownow you are given a PIN to begin a call. This has obvious security benefits because it means only those who know the PIN will be able to access the call. This is of course only beneficial if the PIN remains confidential information – so don’t write it down where it could fall into the wrong hands if you’re worried about the sensitivity of a call.
• Most conference call providers – Powwownow included – will have a ‘lock’ feature that will enable you to lock the call once all participants are on the call.
• A simple roll call will aid the security of a conference call. Knowing who is definitely on the call allows you to make sure there are no unwanted gatecrashers!
• Another feature that will improve conference call security is the ability to end the call when the moderator exits. This means that once the moderator leaves the call the system will hang up the call for the remaining participants.

[photo courtesy of revlimit]

Well, not really. Some conference call phones can make having something as simple and enjoyable as having a Powwownow seem frustrating. So here are a few tips to make sure you get a conference call phone that suits a Powwownow – and, more importantly, suits you!

• First of all, don’t just go out and buy the cheapest conference phone you can find. Try to find a phone with everything needed to meet your conference calling needs. Although you can get a number of budget conference call phones, it’s always best to pay for what you need. If you buy a phone without some of the features you need, you’ll only regret it. You’re better off in the long term to spend the money on a phone that meets all your requirements. Spend some time searching the web to find the right phone for you.
• A conference phone is so much more than a phone with a speakerphone on it. You will find that speakerphones don’t offer anywhere near the same clarity that you get from a conference phone. For example, if there is going to be more than two people taking part in your conference calls you will want to make sure that the phone you choose provides 360-degree coverage to make sure everyone can be heard. Another important detail that you are likely to want is an echo/noise suppression feature to ensure background noise or feedback is kept to a minimum.  Wireless is another option that is likely to be important for you to ensure maximum flexibility and range, although most decent conference phones will have the wireless feature.
• You should consider the range of the conference phone. Many of the top-end models will have coverage of anything up to 20ft or more. If you need more coverage than your phone offers you can look into a number of other options, such as extension microphones or two phones with the ability to sync together to increase coverage. If you want to have a natural two-way conversation where you don’t have to wait for the other person to stop talking completely before you can chip in then make sure the conference phone you choose has full duplex technology. Most conference phones should have this feature.

The Chinese year follows the lunar calendar, and is called the Lunar New Year, as it starts at the beginning of the Lunar calendar, which is also the spring season. This is the most important festival of the Chinese calendar, and is full of many traditions which are centuries old. It lasts for 15 days.

The tradition starts about a month before, where people will clean their houses to sweep away any ill-fortune, and welcoming good luck and fortune into the home. Decorations are put up, and these are very symbolic, often depicting words such as “happiness”, “wealth” and “longevity” with the colour red being in abundance. People will also buy new clothes and get their hair cut, so everything is fresh and new for the New Year. Red is a prominent colour at this time, as it represents joy, virtue, truth and sincerity.

This is a time for families, where you reconnect with family and friends that you may not have seen for a while, as well as forgetting any issues that may have occurred in the past year. The festival starts with New Years Eve, where families will get together over a feast for dinner. This dinner is full of symbolic meaning. Dumplings imply wealth as they are shaped like ancient gold coins. Jiu (hard liquor) is drunk to symbolise longevity.

In the morning, children will greet their parents by wishing them a healthy and happy new year, and they will receive money in red packets. These packets, or envelopes symbolise wealth and luck, and are handed out to the younger generation by parents, grandparents, and even neighbours and friends.

The Lion and Dragon Dances are extremely popular. It is believed that the beating of the drums and the face of the lion or dragon will scare away the bad spirits. So if you have been hearing drums around lately, you can be rest assured that the evil spirits are sure to have been scared away.