Singapore Archives - trefor.net

What do the following countries have in common?

France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Poland, USA, Mexico, Hungary, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Liverpool.

They are all places where we have customers. During our monthly Exec meeting yesterday a Singapore customer was discussed which made me think of totting up all the other places we have installations.

It’s quite a cool list and quite took me by surprise. We are a business with global reach. Most of them represent locations of overseas offices of UK based organisations that we supply services to – broadband, SIP, MPLS connectivity, phone systems, that kind of thing.

I slipped in Liverpool for a laugh. That’s not overseas. It’s on Merseyside – top left on the map for you Southerners. It’s where our engineers depart from when sailing to see these customers. Big port etc.

Strikes me it’s about time a certain CTO made a tour of duty to visit all these locations, just to make sure everything is ok 🙂

Inset photo is of a bunch of Timico engineers gazing wistfully back at the shoreline of Liverpool as they depart Blighty on a trip over the water.

There is a big pile of junk mail in my pigeonhole – downstairs behind reception. This morning I took the unusual step of looking at it. I have to do this once in a while because every now and again something turns up that is not junk. Very infrequently.

Today it was, as usual, junk. One flyer did catch my eye though. An invitation to “Submarine Networks World 2012“. I noticed it because I thought it was a wonderfully badly targeted piece marketing – a good subject for a blog post. Maybe they saw my piece on the Virgin undersea cable near the Isle of Man and figured I would be a good guy to have along.

The flyer arrived airmail from Singapore. Hmm, Singapore eh? I quite like Singapore. Before Timico I did quite a bit of globetrotting in my job and Singapore was a paradise in the Far East that one could rest at between visiting countries where the signs were totally illegible to the Western eye. I used to stay at the Hyatt Grand Regency on Orchard. Beautiful hotel, great bar, fantastic service etc etc.

So now I’ve changed my mind and I’d like to go to the conference. I don’t want it to cost anything mind you. Certainly not the S$4,190 it costs to attend or the business class airfare (it’s a long flight and I need to be in the right frame of mind when I get there). I don’t even want to pay the S$319 room rate at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel though I’m sure that’s good value for the quality of the accommodation.

In fact I’ve convinced myself that this is the one conference I absolutely need to attend in September 2012. If someone will stump up the cash – £7k will probably cover it – I’ll go. In return I promise to write a blog post condensing my learnings into three concise, highly readable and absolutely on the money paragraphs that will save you the effort of having to go (there could be a business idea here 🙂 ). The post will undoubtedly include pictures of palm trees and the Indian Ocean (Pacific?).

All that aside this is still not very well targeted advertising. This is surely a business model that needs to change.