for small businesses with big ideas
SubscribeTalk at Online Information 2008
Yesterday, I spoke at Online Information 2008 about Information Management and small businesses. Online is the largest gathering of the information profession in the UK so I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak
I talked about the new opportunity for information professionals to bring their skills to the small business sector. I wasn’t sure how much interest there would be as Online, and the information industry, has historically been dominated by large corporates. So I was relieved to see so many people in the audience, and reassured by how many of my colleagues from the information profession are interested in this sector.
Business libraries for small companies
I had the pleasure last night of meeting Neil Infield, Manager of the Business and IP Centre (BIPC) at the British Library. I’ve long admired Neil for making the British Library relevant, accessible and welcoming to small companies. I’m particularly chuffed when small business owners, unaware that I’m a librarian, rave to me about the resources available in the BIPC and how knowledgeable and helpful the staff are.
It's getting closer...
Back in November 2007, we released our first beta version of OneIS. Since then we’ve been gathering feedback and developing OneIS so that it can really help our clients with their day-to-day work, making them more efficient and helping them give better service to their clients.
All this has cumulated in a summer of really hard work to deliver version one of OneIS.
We’ve already got some great early adopters using the new version, and we’re now getting ready for our official launch in January.
Read on for a quick run down of our major improvements…
Hosted services reduce the risk to your business
Before I started OneIS with Jennifer, I worked as a freelance IT consultant to small businesses. I had some really good clients who did lots of interesting things, and were kind enough to recommend me to others.
Every now and again, I got phone calls which started “I’ve been told I should talk to you, I’ve lost all my files.” It’s good to get clients by word of mouth, but when the introduction is in response to a disaster it does make things more, shall we say, interesting.
Fortunately in every case I managed to get the important files back, but it’s a nerve wracking time for that new client who’s wondering if their business will survive.
OneIS technology case study at SUN.com
Sun think that more smaller companies should do what we’ve done, and build their infrastructure on top quality hardware with plenty of redundancy for reliability.
Meeting Scott McNealy
Last week, I met Scott McNealy. It’s not every week I can boast about meeting a computer industry legend.
Scott’s the chairman of Sun Microsystems, who supply our servers and the Solaris operating system to run on them. Sun have been extremely helpful to us with all sorts of things. It’s very important to have a good relationship with your server vendor when you’re running a hosted service, and as a small company it’s wonderful (and surprising) to get such personal attention from a global corporation.
As well as providing us with high-quality hardware and technical support, we get the occasional treat, such as this “VIP Event” to meet Scott. When I got the invite I didn’t realise how exclusive it was—just 25 startup companies attended.
Ebic Conference Social Impact Awards
Anyone working in the not-for-profit sector and making innovative use of knowledge and information management, may be interested in applying for a Fellowship being offered by TFPL.
City Information Group: Working with IT
Last night I gave a talk about my experiences of working with IT Professionals at the City Information Group meeting. These are some of the things I spoke about, and links to resources I mentioned:
What to put on your intranet
An online space for sharing news and information with your colleagues sounds like a great idea… but then you have to fill that space. At that point many people go blank on what should they actually put on their intranet. Well, here’s an A-Z of ideas to help you make the most of your intranet, and a few tips for getting going:
A Acronyms used in your organisation or sector, particularly useful for new team members, plans for your next Away day
Telephone numbers: not as easy as they look
In OneIS, we have to handle lots of different types of data. One of the more difficult is telephone numbers—they may look simple, but if you want to manage them well there’s a lot you need to get right.
When I was researching how to handle telephone numbers, I couldn’t find anything which described the problems and potential solutions. So here are some notes on what I found and how we handle phone numbers in OneIS. Hopefully it’ll be of use to anyone else trying to solve these problems, and of interest to those involved in data and information management.
Book review: Information Architecture for Information Professionals, by Sue Batley
In Information Architecture for Information Professionals, Sue Batley provides an excellent overview of Information Architecture, with particular focus on the aspects requiring the skills already practiced by Information Professionals.
If you’re responsible for helping an organisation make the most of it’s information, there’s a lot in this book which will help. While aimed at the Information Professional, it’s very approachable and perfectly suited to those who want to learn more about the theory and practise of Information Management.
How Green is OneIS?
Some estimates suggest that 2% of global CO2 emissions come from the information technology industry. In the UK, running servers uses 1.5% of the country’s total energy consumption. And making computers and then disposing of them has a huge environmental impact.
It’s hard to argue that computing can ever be a “green” activity, but stopping all potentially damaging activities is unrealistic as most people would be reluctant to abandon the modern world. If we accept that the internet and computers are here to stay, we have to work to minimise their impact on the environment.