An Adapters Christmas Word Search

It’s been a busy 2016 for us Adapters. Blogs, articles, interviews, meetups, user groups and conferences have all provided us with frequent platforms from which to evangelise about modern technology used for real-world customer benefit. We love it!

 

For a lot of us though, we’re now heading into a well-earned festive break - so, here’s a little something to kick-start the fun and relaxation. Indulge yourself with our festive word search: Guaranteed free of reindeer, turkey and eggnog. Instead, still evangelising technology, there are 30 words and terms of relevance to modern cloud services hidden therein. In true word search tradition, words can run left to right, right to left, up or down, or diagonally.

See how many you can find!

When you’ve found them all, consider how many you understand. If it’s all or most, pat yourself on the back, you’re clearly well abreast of cloud technologies.

If a bunch of these are somewhat alien however, fear not, all is by no means lost. IT is ever-changing. Mainframes and dumb terminals, PCs and client-server, the internet and e-commerce, devices and the Internet of Things, it never really stands still. Cloud is just the latest in a series of technology shifts. All you need to make the most of it are some experienced technology evangelists and a managed cloud service provider and integrator you can trust…

Happy New Year from the Adapters!

See you in 2017 for more tech advancements – we wonder what it will bring!

Heroes, Villains and vote-winning IT Services

Adapter Paul Streets weaves the political agenda into the World of IT and draws customer service parallels with a valuable lesson.

 

My usual two-wheeled commute was temporarily replaced by the car recently. The novelty of listening to a radio proved alluring as I flitted between stations, surveying the choices. It’s been a good few years since I slipped from Radio1’s demographic so I finally settled on Radio4 for my homeward journey.

The station runs a series of interviews called ‘At Lunch With’ where reporter Becky Milligan chats candidly over lunch to politicians and other public figures. This is an ‘off-the-record lunch, on the record’ they say. On the face of it, these interviews are a world away from IT services, but are they? 

Heroes and villains

The particular interview I listened to got me thinking: News and media are full of real-life heroes and villains across the spectrum of politics, sports, entertainment, arts and more. Scandals, cover ups, wrong doings, and also (thankfully) some good news - we’ve heard them all. I pondered - what do I like to see in such politicians and public figures? What gets my vote and what gets my goat?  Words and phrases like ‘trust’, ‘honesty’, ‘integrity’, ‘inner compass’, ‘honour’, ‘no spin’ and ‘not points scoring’ all sprung to mind as I mulled this over.

A secret recipe

I hope we can all think of figures in society today that embody these types of values and approaches. They may not grab the headlines quite as prominently as the villains of political and public life, but they do exist.

This got me wondering whether there are any lessons from such people and behaviours relating to IT services. Well you know what? I think there’s a recipe for sound IT services lurking in here. These aren’t the sole elements we require of course - IT is complicated and multifaceted. However, if we apply trust, honesty and the aforementioned values to our customers and services, then these certainly provide firm cornerstones for success.

Vote-winning IT services

Technology aside, IT is all about people. All the best examples of service I’ve seen during my career are when both supplier and customer uphold these types of values – being heroes, not villains. Desk thumping, finger pointing, an ‘us and them’ attitude, secrecy, ticket ping-pong, hidden agendas, none of these serve either party well in the long run.

Good service starts with being able to pick up the phone and trust that your supplier or customer will quickly get on board with your needs and pull together towards a shared goal. Search out that elusive ‘win – win’ where the customer gets a good service at a fair price and the supplier has the satisfaction of a job well done and a happy customer. Get it right and the effect will be every bit as compelling as any Maturity Model, ISO standard or best practices framework. For customers and suppliers alike, it’ll be vote-winning!

REFERENCES: Thanks to Radio4 for the inspiration for this article. You can listen to Radio4s “At Lunch With…” series by reporter Becky Milligan on their iPlayer Radio at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03fvldp/episodes/downloads

A Liking For Chocolate

A Liking For Chocolate, by Peter Sheterline.

Review by: Nick Holder – Platform Development Manager

This one is pure fiction (or at least I hope it is, for reasons that will become apparent). It is a mixture of an old-school detective novel set in a current-day high tech world. Set primarily in Swansea it describes real locations, as an integral part of the story.

The story starts with the murder of an academic technologist on a Gower beach, witnessed by a local surfer who can’t explain what happened to the police and so becomes the prime suspect. The detective leading the case is not a technologist and is learning as he goes from people he meets and his resident geek DC, who sails close to the wind in her investigations.

Swansea is my adoptive home and so I recognise a lot of locations, idioms and traits of the area. This has enhanced the reading experience for me, but I don’t think not knowing the area is a barrier to enjoyment.  I enjoyed all the usual twists and turns you would expect from a good piece of crime fiction, as well as the technology angle which gave it a nice twist on your standard detective work.

There is none of the Agatha Christie style of “implausible reveal” in there. You get the clues as the characters get them and it all builds methodically to the end. This is especially impressive, as this is the first fictional work from the author.

I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to his next work.

If you are a geek who likes crime stories this is a must. If you also happen to be a surfer who knows Swansea, doubly so! 4.5 because being very British, 5 monsters can never, practically, be obtained.