Pinched this off YouTube – it’s a quickfire interview I did at the onlincolnshire #godigital2013 conference
I’m talking about how mission critical reliable broadband is these days and how you plan for problems.
You know it makes sense…
PS In the vid I’m wearing my new sports jacket – Harris Tweed. As the winter continues it vicious bite it makes a lorra lorra sense
Gave a talk this time last week at the The Onlincolnshire Digital Conference (#godigital2013) chatting about what sort of online or broadband cloud services our customers start to use after they have FTTC installed. I was not the only one. Rob Wilmot of BCS Agency (some of you will remember him as founder of Freeserve) and Stephen Parry of LloydParry told us about the cloud services they used in running their businesses.
Something that Stephen said really stuck in my mind. He uses a SAAS product called FreshBooks for his accounting, invoicing and expense management. What’s more he uses it on the move and recounted a story of a visit to a client in Frankfurt. After having lunch with the client Stephen photographed the receipt and loaded it into his expenses folder using the FreshBooks iPhone app.
After finishing his day’s consultancy and heading back to the airport he invoiced the customer from his iPhone, including the cost of the lunch (no such thing as a free one). One assumes that the customer pays electronically by bank transfer. Wham bang job done.
This is the future.
It’s quite pleasing to see that since I last posted on Shareband bonded ADSL the proposition seems be gaining traction. Lincolnshire County Council broadband initiative “OnLincolnshire ” has placed a contract with Timico and is promoting the technology into the business community in the mostly rural county.
LCCs concern is that businesses in Lincolnshire have a level playing field with those in more urban areas of the country and to this end are not only trialing the technology but also will likely be using the results to build case studies to attract business users. Great.
I have to say that my experience of working with LCC is that they are a very forward thinking organisation. As a long time resident of Lincoln it is nice to be able to work locally. Time was I had to get on a plane to meet customers.
The beauty for businesses in Lincolnshire is that along with the work that the Council is doing on connectivity comes EC funded grants to help pay for it. Living in a rural backwater suddenly becomes economically attractive as well as offering a high quality of life.