Darryl King’s blog ireckon

No I didn’t just swear. It is a very real question.

When something happens twice to me in very quick succession I often think it means I am supposed to take notice. I have. So you’d better too!

On Saturday while getting some last minute paint for our old office (a couple of quick repairs) I visited a commercial paint supply business to get my supplies. Half way through them preparing my order, I noticed a message stuck over their EFTPOS terminal “EFTPOS Down”. Yes Solver Stones Corner this is you.

So I asked. Noticeably before starting a $200 order they didn’t ask me if I was intending to pay electronically, they just assumed I could read their small note and that I would process it. I did, albeit a little late.

So yes their EFTPOS was down, I had a company credit card, so I asked them to do it manually.

“Sorry they took that option away, but you can walk to an ATM it is less than 5 minutes”.

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[ NB> to see how Dymocks handled this, quick note at bottom, follow up post to come ]

I had a mission. A simple mission. All I wanted was to replace a copy of a good book that was so good, someone has lifted it!

The book itself is not the issue, but it was a good project management book which I like to keep handy to explain to people our project management documents and process.

Anyway I digress. Too late to stop at a book shop and none of the local major stores show in store inventory, (Gee wouldn’t that be such a good idea! Live store inventory) and my preferred local bookstore Coaldrakes at Milton, is nearly closed and doesn’t have it in stock. I want it now. Well more importantly I want to order it now and just have it turn up quickly.

Help - Google! Yes look at that Angus and Robertson has it, Dymocks has it. That’s a start. Amazon has it (of course) and they will ship tomorrow which means less than 5 days and I will have it. How do I know this? Well I have always gotten my books from Amazon quicker than they promise.

Angus and Robertson, ships within 24 hours 7-14 days till I get it. Okay that is one slow camel it is coming on, unless of course it is actually coming via the USA, in which case I may as well just order it from there.

So back to Dymocks. Well look at that, yes they have it and can ship immediately, even better they seem to be the only site on the planet that has it as a downloadable PDF. Wow that is better; I can store it and not waste any paper. Except the electronic version is dearer than the paperback (now that is odd). The electronic version is enough to make me jump in and buy it.

This is what happens next: (more…)

Today our first twitter recruited employee started at ireckon. Scott Hampson, aka @agent_x, has started with us in our important role as Site Producer /Project Manager.

Last year, when the person previously in that role left, to move further afield, we decided to run with our existing team and let the whole GFC thing run its course.

This role is very important, for obvious reasons, and so I had to make a tough call and let someone go from a position that had become redundant but who we were trying to get to do some of this work, and look for a likely candidate. (more…)

If you watch TV (with all the product placements), or use twitter a lot, you could be forgiven for believing we are all about to become Mac users.  Further to this, today I read an article by Mark Nutter at Smashing Magazine, Five reasons why designers / developers are switching to Mac.

I found this interesting. Let’s be clear I am a PC, so much so that I turned up in this photo on FaceBook, which Jane Copeland cleverly tagged, “who wants to play One of These Things Is Not like the Other with the laptops?” Yes there is my red Dell in the middle of a sea of Macs. (more…)

I often use an analogy of prospecting for gold when asked why I go to certain events or participate in some seminars. In the rough early days of prospecting, people stood in streams, panning for little nuggets of gold, to pay their way. Much of this was mundane, fruitless work, but work none the less.

Throughout the process there was a chance of finding those gold nuggets, or if that stream ended up being empty of gold, they would move to another. Attending conferences can be a little like this if they are industry specific. Often you will discover you already have heard, or know some or a fair bit of the content, because the conferences are aiming to fill a middle road or a broad area of attendees. Let’s face it they need to make money so if they are too niche they may not get enough people engaged to make profits.

The trick in all of these events, in my opinion, is to pan the stream for the little nuggets. Often the combination of a few little nuggets adds up to something far more valuable than finding one big nugget.

There are many good reasons to attend events, and I greatly enjoyed my time at SMX Sydney 2009 for the very obvious reasons of meeting new people, re-meeting people I have met before and for the social engagement.

Here are 13 little (or not so) nuggets that were worth panning the stream for: (more…)