Blog a big hit in Alaska!

Ok, so that is not entirely true as Alaska just shows up as part of the US for people viewing my blog but it did make me smile for a minute.

I was however very impressed by the volume of data that Google Analytics has to offer, and whilst I'm not exactly setting the blogging community on fire with the number of hits I get, it is at least pleasing to see that every now and again someone reads what I have to say.

NCWE Awards: Extreme Blue wins 'Over 250 Employees - Short term placement Award'

..."and by some distance".

What an eventful day yesterday turned out to be.

Helen Bowyer, myself and David Frost, Director General, British Chamber of Commerce.

After some troubles with a tree on the line at Ashurst, myself and Helen Bowyer finally made it up to the NCWE Awards at Cafe Royal in Piccadilly. To start with there were a couple of major plus points for this ceremony, that being it was free to enter and free to attend for nominees (which makes a nice change). Also the list of categories was very encouraging too, singling out charities and smaller companies for awards and not putting them in with the giant corporations such as ourselves.



Top marks for the champagne reception, however I must confess that drinking champagne at 11:50am was a bit decadent even for my liking. The lunch was also excellent, not that I could eat that much as nerves (and perhaps the champagne) seemed to be getting the better of me! So much so in fact that I didn't have a sip of the wine, which for those of you who know me was quite a revelation.






After lunch, the serious bit kicked off starting with David Frost - Director General, British Chambers of Commerce, giving a short talk about the value of work experience. This was particularly good, especially considering the candid nature of David's insights of the newly graduating workforce, and also for the fact that he managed to fit this in on the same day the budget was announced.



So, on the to awards! What can I say, other than I was delighted that Extreme Blue was nominated, but the fact that we won the award was something else entirely. Before each of the winners were named, a small amount was read about what the company did to deserve the award and this one mentioned "A University Relations Island in Second Life", and "Students being able to patent their IP". Even in at my most cautious, I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone else had done those things too so thankfully it gave Helen and I a few moments to compose ourselves before collecting the award.


All in all, I was totally stunned (as the photo suggests) and delighted in equal measure. The success really has been down to the efforts that the students, mentors and project stakeholders have put in to make the scheme such a success and it was great to pick up the trophy on their behalf. Now I have the pleasure of telling the students :-)

Extreme Blue wins NCWE Award!

Full report tomorrow....

Ministers, Mainframes & Manchester

A couple of things to talk about today...

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being involved in an event with the Naace*and MP Jim Knight, Minister of State for Schools and Learners. My role was to give, at distance, a tour of the IBM University Relations island to the audience at Torquay, with me based at Winchester, and Jim based in London! (if that makes sense). Whilst my portion of the event went quite smoothly I'm pleased to say, the event had its fair share of hiccups. Including, speakers not being present, people dialling in and out of the conference call mid speech (yes that's right, the audio was conference call while we were presenting in world!?) and some fairly run of the mill Second Life issues. On the whole, it felt perhaps like a bit of an opportunity missed and in my opinion, most of the problematic factors could have been solved by those leading the event logistics. However, it was a good opportunity to showcase what IBM is doing between industry and academia.

The main focus for me was to talk about IBM's event with Manchester University to talk about mainframe computing, which happened today. Whilst the attendance was not as good as hoped (I think we peaked at about 15 people), the level of interaction was excellent and in fact we over ran the talk by about 45 minutes answering questions. Give me 15 engaged people rather than 50 zombies any day! Some good questions about IBM careers afterwards too, almost certainly more of these events to follow. Also, many thanks to Chris Hodgins for hosting the talk today.


* Note - You can now also see the writeup by Chris.. here



* Naace is the professional association for those concerned with advancing education through the appropriate use of information and communications technology (ICT). The Association was established in 1984 and has become the key influential professional association for those working in ICT in education.

Extrme Blue back in the news: The Office Maverick

Good to see Extreme Blue back in the news!

A story just recently posted in the online version of The Guardian details Jane Harper (founder of EB) and her being featured in "Mavericks at Work". I'll let you read through the article for yourself, however the highlight has to be the author making the comment..

"...Extreme Blue, the most ingenious internship programme I've ever seen..."

high praise indeed, and from unbiased source this time ;-)