Categories
End User fun stuff

The Art of communications

A prize for anyone who can guess what I’m playing.

Prize if you can guess what I'm playing
Prize if you can guess what I'm playing
Categories
Business internet

Smart 421 business process change and Hotel California

Continuing with our season of guest guitarists I present for your entertainment and delight Mr Hugh Hyndman, Solution Architect at change consultancy Smart421. Hugh was in today as part of a team brought in to assist with a major new project upon which we have embarked.

Timico has grown from very small beginnings with four of us in a room at the stables at Langford Hall to a company with around 140 (ish) staff scattered around two main locations – Newark and Fareham, the home of NewNet.

Having bought 4 ISPs en route we find that the processes that sustained us as a small company, ie blood sweat and tears, are no longer good enough to take us to the next level. That isn’t to say we don’t have processes but if we are to double or treble in size over the next few years we need to have the infrastructure to support the growth.

Having been through a couple of business change processes in the past I find this one reassuringly familiar and probably far more exciting, having a personal stake in the outcome and also having seen before the effect of such a project on a business.

Hugh, I am very pleased to say, is one of the more competent guest guitarists we have had in. He gave us a very recognizable rendition of Hotel California. Note the perfect Bm chord (4 strings only).

Hugh Hyndman of Smart 421 plays Hotel California at Timico
Hugh Hyndman of Smart 421 plays Hotel California at Timico
Categories
Business voip

GenBand set to rock and roll with Nortel acquisition

Next up in the guest stitched up to play the guitar in front of a totally uncritical audience is Jason Dackins of GenBand. Up until a few months ago I had never heard of Genband.  Now they are about to become one of my most important strategic partners as they acquire the Nortel carrier division, CVAS.

GenBand is being financed by One Equity Partners (JP Morgan) and is putting together what I believe will be a major force in the carrier VoIP market.  Other assets in the stable include the Session Border Controller NexTone. 

I was happy to entertain them and little did they know that they would be entertaining us.  Jason is playing Yviva Espana (I think).

Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Categories
Business fun stuff

Richard Rodrigo Baxter plays in guest guitar spot at NOC

Richard Baxter of Neos Networks bravely took up the challenge of playing the NetOps guitar when visiting the Timico office last week. Watched by colleague Gary Waterman he entertained the Tech Support teams with a virtuoso performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, or at least I think it was 🙂

This was such a successful event that I’m thinking of creating a new guest guitar spot on trefor.net. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t mean that all suppliers have to entertain the team in the same way in order to get the business. But it might help…

Anyone else wanting to appear in front of a particularly uncritical audience should get in touch. Next time we will have the audio recording facilities lined up and post it on YouTube.

Rodrigo Baxter plays Concierto de Aranjuez
Rodrigo Baxter plays Concierto de Aranjuez at Timico NOC