A free plug (in) for Scottish Technology

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the need to encourage engineers, notably The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and it’s £1mn cash prize. Unusually for prizes and competitions these days its not something that involves a 12 week, 360 degree TV series, with 4 celebs pouring scorn on the hopefuls (many of whom seem in need of a self awareness pill).

Instead the competition will have a properly talented judging panel. Unveiled last week the panel features our favourite Physicist of the now Brian Cox – thats him who gets to travel the world and look up in wonder at the sky in order to explain what it’s like on the various moons of Jupiter (I’m betting unpleasant with a distinct lack of decent TV reception). You can check out the other judges here QE Prize Judges – or you could do a quick Google (which would be highly appropriate as one of the judges is indeed from Google).

Sadly, the need for the prize has been driven in an attempt to correct the lack of prestige for engineering in the UK (though the competition is open to all nations). Over the past decade or so it’s been clear that too many clever folks have shunned engineering in favour of the challenges presented in making Mortgage Backed Securities sound like a perfectly sensible investment. Thats a bit of a pity – but lets not cast gloom on the initiative

So how can you get involved? Well you could make a nomination (you can’t nominate yourself, your mum, Aunt Sissy or anyone who has shuffled off this mortal coil). Stuck for a nomination idea? Why not have a look through the latest Scottish University research output – University Technology. UT is a cross Uni bulletin board to promote the latest opportunities.

Why not? Lets face it you voted 12 times for Jedward, and you’ve already forgotten who won last years x-factor.

Stirling whisky festival – I’ll need a lift

If like me you stick with the safe options when buying whisky then you might be interested in the Whisky festival planned for next year. The Stirling Whisky Festival, or to give it it’s full name The Spirit of Stirling Whisky Festival, is a welcome addition to the Stirling season and could well help with dragging me away from the normal Whisky purchase  – The Macallan. Nothing wrong with Macallan of course – its rather nice – but when investing in a bottle of malt I tend to stick with what I know for fear of blowing my investment badly.

Occasionally, though I have taken the odd risk. On holiday once with Mrs O and the offsprung we stumbled across Scotland’s most southernly distillery at Bladnoch – Wigtown Bay. I guess I must have been in “I need a drink” mood because I nipped into the gift shop and bought a bottle of The Bladnoch. The lady behind the counter seemed a bit puzzled that I didn’t want a tour of the distillery – and more surprised that I wanted to buy a bottle of whisky from her. Perhaps it was available for a fiver less at the local supermarket – I don’t know as I don’t recall ever seeing a supermarket on that holiday. Equal to her surprise though was my own – I’ve never tasted a whisky which had lemony undertones, it was rather nice. So nice in fact that when taking cover from a rainy squall in the Whisky Shop while visiting Inverary a few years back I asked if they had that whisky from that place in Wigtownshire. Much to my wallets embarressment they did – oh well the credit card came to my aid. 

The other whisky I like is the “e” variety exemplified by Jack Daniels – can’t beat a Jack with Ginger Ale, ice and a slice of lime. Ok, Ok , Ok – I know…. real whisky must be drunk on a mountain top, surrounded by heather while beating yourself with a branch from a Rowan Tree. And never with ice. But as a pre dinner cocktail a Jack and Ginger is a favourite (is it ok to mention cocktails on the same page as whisky?).

Whatever your method of drinking whisky maybe like me you should head along to the Albert Halls for the Stirling Whisky Festival next year. I promise not to bring any ice or mixers – I wouldn’t want to get thrown out for unruly behaviour.

Full info at: http://www.spiritofstirlingwhiskyfestival.co.uk (Drink responsibly and all that sort of thing).

Casecheck and advertising

You can never guess what a client will do with your software systems when you hand them over. Take Casecheck for instance – www.casecheck.co.uk – when we built the original platform for the Legal Case Law site we didn’t realise just how creative the Casecheck folks could be.

As part of  the original DNN Development we included our Article Editor DNN Module for publishing news and blogs. But now with a creative twist its getting used as part of their new Suppliers Directory. Pay an annual fee and you can pop your promo advert onto the hugely popular Case Law site. We thought we should be part of that directory so we’re proud to point you over to the site – Software Development entry.

Just goes to show that you can never quite tell what a client will do with your children.

And it was all yellow – Scottish uprising triggers a pallette shift

Royal weddings and a Scottish uprising - quite the week for the constitution. 

For the second time in too few weeks I found myself listening with interest to the views of David Starkey (shame on me, this will never do). He was being quizzed by Jon Snow on the Royal Wedding (you must have seen it – it was on all the channels, esp Fox). So why my interest in what this little English constitutional historian had to say? In short he was concerned with what the Royal Wedding had highlighted – a country of two halves. I hadn’t much thought about Will’s and Kate’s wedding TBH - and that was his point. With no street parties above the Solway Firth or Tweed the evidence of an Un-united Kingdom was more than apparent – and the Royal Wedding in his words missed an opportunity to unite.

Fast forward not quite a week, and the political map of the UK suddenly changes its colour palette. The place at the top of the artists palette normally reserved for Paprika Red had been hijacked by a rather vulgar Sunflower Yellow. Scotland had ditched its Labour habit for Alex Salmond’s SNP – and in some measure.

So in a week when all the UK should have been waving the Union Jack, buying Royal Wedding souvenir mugs and eating ice cream & jelly in the street the Scots were quietly getting ready to appoint oor Eck the next King of Scotland (would that be Alexander IV?).  Seems David Starkey was more right in his view, that we are an un-united Kingdom, than he probably thought a week ago – at least then the Scots voted Labour as they always could be relied on to do.

So what next? Oor Eck is a shrewd cookie so he’ll want to play a steady as you go game if he wants to re-establish the Jacobite monarchy - but of course as we know any government with a majority quickly slips on banana skins, builds Duck Houses and generally behaves like…. well… like a government. But if Mr S can keep his troops in line – you never know where we might be in 10 years time.

As for David Starkey – I wonder if he knows where the descendants of the Auld Pretender are, because if we do the independence thing we’ll need a Scottish royal family so we can have a scottish royal wedding, buy the souvenir mugs and eat ice cream and jelly on the street. Then we can marry one of the royal Jacobite offspring into the english monarchy, unite the parliaments, then wish we hadn’t and complain about it for 300 years. All we need is a latter day Darien Scheme to trigger the parliamentary union – but I suspect we wont have to wait long for a suitable crisis (they seem to happen every weekend at the moment).

In the meantime, regardless of your political views (and mines are suitably confused) remember to look at the stars, see how the shine for you, and they were all yellow.

Politics, Religion and Royalty

The three essential things to avoid talking about – even with close friends – are undoubtedly religion, politics and the royalty. Views can become polarised rather quickly, friendships strained or broken. So let me ignore my own advice…

This week see’s a bit of a “perfect storm” (stupid phrase BTW) – politics, religion and royalty all more in the news than ever.

I got my voting papers in for the Scottish Parliament. Keen to ensure I didn’t miss the deadline (though the sealed envelope still waits for posting) I set about the task of ticking three boxes. Favorite MSP…. well that’s easy,  you simply knock off the nut bars and loons and then decide who of the few remaining candidates you loath least. Next favorite party…. equally easy, you simply knock off the nut bars and loons and then decide who of the few remaining parties you loath least.   

Next the Alternative Vote – yip I’d definitely like an alternative to voting – but I couldn’t find an option for apathy, anarchy or revolution. So AV or First Past the Post? Easy in the end – I’ve never liked the idea of condoning a single politician or party so the idea of saying I like theses folk in order of least loathing appeals.  I’d prefer if I didn’t have to say 5 up to 1 though. I’d rather have it numbered 10 up to 5 – lets not give the impression to our politicians that we actually favour their politicing in any meaningful anyway.

So that’s politics out the way – now religion.

Religion in Scotland is tricky (just like any other country) – but in Scotland it’s confused and mixed up with the countries two leading Football Clubs – thats a shame. At a time when we are obliged to consider who governs the country and who will lead us to the promised land of economic recovery our headlines are instead dominated by deep rooted, historical, religous problems. Shameful. This football season has sounded more like a discourse on religious tensions than the reporting of 22 guys (mainly foreigners) chasing a ball to decide which Glasgow based football team will win a football league.  Shameful – count me out. 

So Royalty. A Wedding approaches – best of luck Kate, hope it works out ok for you. Personally I’ll be doing my best to avoid the gooey eyed BBC presenters coo-ing and aw-ing at the pretty couple. But best of luck to the pair of you. And best of luck defending the right of the Monarchy to behave like the Monarchy. I don’t often (in fact never) agree with David Starkey – but I agreed with the first few paragraphs of his Sunday Times piece that I read (before on principle I stopped reading because I started to agree with him). Succession is a male thing – but is coming under pressure to be a matter of equality - a first born girl would be the heir to the throne . That sounds fair enough – but this is the monarchy  - it doesn’t live by any normal behavioural patterns – if it did succession wouldn’t be based on right of birth at all. And then there is the rather crazy notion that the Queen abdicates and Charles steps aside to let William gain the throne. Complete nonsense – this isn’t AV and it isn’t First Past the Post – it’s the monarchy. If the Royal Family were to start opting in or out of the duty imposed on them at birth the institution of monarchy would crumble pretty quickly - and quite understandably I don’t see that being an ambition of any of them any time soon. 

There is though a rather more important Royal question that we tend to hide from – it seems the heir to the throne can’t marry a Roman Catholic. Undoubtedly a question that our Politicians would rather not have to think about, debate or address. Politics, Religion and Royalty - no wonder we tend to avoid talking about them with friends. So lets just tick the ballot papers in secret and wave the Union Jack at the happy couple – it’s a lot simpler.

The corner shop just got bigger – retail trends

The worst retail quarter for some random period. Hardly the most cheering news if your in retail. VAT up, job threats up, inflation up – sales down. Contrast that with what appears to be the ever expanding world of Supermarkets – the thing that we are all supposed to hate because they have undermined the high street.

Our local shops are a shadow of what they used to be, the local butcher with his unhealthy overproteined complexion is long gone and so is the baker. OK the cakes from the baker were typically Scottish, thats whipped double cream tipped onto the top of a bread roll with jam - but at least you could buy a loaf and the occasional strawberry tart in the summer.

But despite the impact the supermarket has made on the high street – we love them. And I have to say that I find myself welcoming the news that (if rumours are true) we are about to have an Asda dropped onto the former site of a nearby MFI. Within a couple of years I’ll be wandering down to the local corner shop to buy a pint of milk and coming back with 6 bottles of Furstenberg, The FT, razorblades, a jar of pickles, the latest DSLR magazine and a 100 grams of smoked cheese. But not with the milk – I’ll have forgotten that in my retail spending frenzy.

It seems that with supermarkets having largely completed the destruction of the high street with out of town supermarkets they are now going in for the kill, suffocating the last businesses that have persevered over the years. But I can’t complain about the impending arrival of Asda – at the moment if I want anything it’s a 10 min car trip to the local Tesco (even I need money from a free to use ATM) – so I can’t complain.

Our remaining local retailers are bound to feel the strain – the mini market and the newsagents being the hardest hit. That’ll leave our local  hairdressers, bookies and the headstone business. Hmmm…. a headstone for the high street, sadly ironic.

So it looks like our local high street is about to get replaced with one large, brash, neon lit, corner shop – that’s a pity but at least I’ll get an FT when I fancy one (though note to Mrs O, I can’t promise to remember the milk).

Will the Amazon marketplace replace the local economy?

This morning I ran out of coffee, Illy Espresso to be exact. Weekend espresso is my wee treat to myself – so in the car and off to Tesco, a couple of miles down the road.

I drove by the dozen or so shops that are well within walking distance but that don’t seem to sell anything I want. At 9:30am I didn’t really want to place a bet on a horse (two off), book out a DVD (two off), buy a headstone (thank goodneess), get a haircut (have you seen my fringe?), pay for a “1p off” (only while stock lasts) tank of petrol, buy fish & chips, buy a pizza, buy baby clothes, get ointment for my piles, or wander round the oddly stocked and solitary mini market.  I did want an FT – but the local paper shop doesn’t have much call for that round here. So Tesco then.  

That’s a pity. We’re loosing a lot by not having the local shops and facilities that were common not so long ago. Tesco are clearly irresistible (other large all embracing stores are available). But it’s not just the local retailer that is disappearing. I still miss Borders  on Glasgow’s Buchanan Street and now see that Waterstones is up for sale – I hope it goes to a good home and I hope it can find a way of surviving the onslaught that the online world is delivering to the high street book trade.

But I’m conflicted – we sell ecommerce and online solutions - and we’re working on some rather clever marketplace stuff. We’re even encouraging folk who are selling online to use the services of Amazon – if your an etailer you can find out here how to sell on Amazon. So I’m conflicted – I know that the future of retail is online and that the trend for some time to come is undoubtedly driven by the bulk buying power of Tesco et al, but I still want my local independent stores.

Not only am I conflicted, I’m also a hypocrite. The Parcel Force chap has just delivered a new toy for me – a nice fancy camera. I’d researched on line – asked a few friends (cheers Murray and Adam) – but shamefully I’d also had a play with the thing in a local store before buying it online. I’d had every intention of buying it online from the online version of the camera store I’d been in, but then a cheaper website was pointed out (all Adam’s fault).  Deal done and a big saving to be honest – but at the cost of undermining the local (and expert) retailer. I’m ashamed of myself, though not enough to have paid an extra £70 in store.

But Tesco shouldn’t be complacent. On returning with a tin of my highly cherished Illy coffee I felt obliged to check out the Amazon price (yes they are also selling groceries). Ignoring the postage the price point compared to Tesco was slightly cheaper – imagine that, Amazon cheaper than Tesco (every little helps?). Not only that but there were 11 reviews of the Illy Coffee I had just bought. 11 reviews for a tin of coffee, I nearly joined in! 11 folk discussing my favourite coffee – that’s 11 people more than I know locally that would want to chat about my preferred caffeine based drink.

So how long before a significant minority of us are doing the weekly shop from our iPads and Android enabled telly’s – and doing that shop with little in the way of loyalty to the local economy. Not long I suspect. That’s a pity – but at the moment inevitable.

There is more stats on the size and growth of Amazon on the Web Wise Business site – Multi Channel E-commerce. A quite staggering growth rate.

Scotland – e-commerce economy held back by a lack of fibre in the diet

Seems we’re missing out on a fair amount of business here where the Heather grows and the Wild Mountain Thyme does whatever it does up a mountain. A fuller account is reported on the e-commerce in Scotland article on the Web Wise Business site but it can be summed as “what on earth are we thinking about”.

Scotland IS have been busy doing some research and it turns out we are missing out as an economy on £12 billion of business (that’s quite a lot of  money – it could buy you about a quarter of a pint of Facebook for instance). The Scothmin picks up on the story as well at Digital growth program.

Further numbers are available at the Scotchland Government website – Research on Broadband. These make for interesting reading in places – though a lot of it is rather banal “Of those businesses that are ‘quite likely’ or ‘very likely’ to seek a faster broadband connection, the main perceived benefits of faster connection are faster file transfer and enhanced productivity.” Yes quite, thanks for that stunning insight.

A more interesting front page statistic is that “only 11% of businesses feel that they are significantly constrained by their current broadband connection speed”. That is rather concerning, it means that the remaining 90ish percent are okish with it. That shows a certain lack of imagination – though the detail in the report seems to contradict that front page statement repeatedly.

Speed is important – it opens up much more opportunity. Video imaging to a remote workforce, complex and feature rich online (and affordable) applications for business and office, a richer e-commerce experience, better access to public services and information, geo location services that work in a flash rather than a stutter, remote education and remote personal one to one tuition, remote homecare for health, feasible flexible working for mums, dads and those on a yacht in the med. 

Do we really lack such a vision as a business community? I suspect not.

It’s in the nature of any group to think their sector is vital. Politicians seldom seek less political power, the Health and Safety Exec seldom reduces burdens, the legal sector seldom reduces the size of the statute books and so on – so of course the IT/Media/Techy world want more power in the infrastructure (“More Power!” and grunts of “Arrh! Arrh! Arrh!” are allowed at this point).  

But (you knew there was a but didn’t you) faster, better, broadband to the economy is like fresher, cleaner water was a century ago to the health of the Scots. We need fibre and we need it now. We are a small, modern country with a modest population gathered in a handful of cities for the best part –  what are we waiting on. Lets get a lot more fibre in our Scottish diet.

How to become an economist (q4 GDP worsens, as expected)

A back of the envelope calculation on the GDP for q4 of 2010 suggested that the ONS seemed to be a bit over opimistic with the -0.5% figure. You can see my very crude calc at the previous blog on the subject: http://objectiveassoc.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/gdp-blip-or-double-dip/

And as expected the figure has been revised, from -0.5% to -0.6%. Not as bad as my crude calc – but I like this game. Lets face it the Bank Of England seem unable to come up with anything approaching an economic or inflation forecast thats beliveable and the ONS seem to be overly optimistic – so lets all become economists. You don’t have to be right – you just have to tell folk why your previous wild assed guess was wrong because of a lack of data, emerging situations, the oil price, the weather, a tummy upset or because you were distracted by a really funny post on Facebook.

So lets all become economists – all you need to do is buy something from Tesco and then try and buy it again two weeks later for the same price. Run the price difference through any random algorithm you can come with it and publish it on Twitter or even better as an answer to a question (any question) on Quora. 

It’s a doddle – apologies to all economists, I know you mean well.

ps the price of Coffee is about to rocket. So if you see a buy 1 get too many offer on Instant  Nescafe – grab it.

The second dot com bubble – party on dudes

“Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.”

Twitter looses money and yet is valued at $10 billion USD. Groupon turn down $6 billion USD from Google. While Facebook is valued at a sum comparable with VISA at $60 billion USD.

This feels like a most excellent adventure.

I’ve blogged before that I thought the Web 2.0 world was starting to look like an over inflated dirigible – my previous blog here. But now the same concern is expressed in todays Observer – Is this the start of the second dot com bubble. It all seems strangely familiar and the themes in the article ones that I have seen before (and sadly often).

The Web 2.0 world has undoubtedly changed the social and commercial landscape – no debate. But when Facebook is valued at the same level as VISA I fear we have completely lost the plot. I knew Facebook had been valued at daft money – but I hadn’t realised how completely nonsensical the valuation was – VISA. VISA for petes sake.

That’s a hard thing to say for a software developer but at times like this I can’t help myself pointing out that we appear to have travelled to a world where “bowling averages are way up and mini golf scores way down, and we have more excellent water slides than any other planet we communicate with” .

So is it a bubble and will it burst? Well it certainly shows all the signs of being a bubble – valuations that bear no resemblance to profits and all the baloney that goes along with “new” business models. Have a 10 minute wander through Twitter and look for social media advice – everyone is an expert. It’s like 1987 and 2000 when everyone could predict the next share to buy/sell/stag – instinct tells me that when everyone is an expert it’s time to take a contrary or at least reflective view.

But will this bubble burst? I’m not so sure that a proper burst is on the cards. The Web 2.0 Social world is delivering – it is changing social interaction, business, politics, even crime and the occasional revolution. But unlike 2000 when the internet was being over sold (56k modems for goodness sake!) the Web 2.0 Social World is already delivering, building opt in databases of rich marketing data that marketers could only previously dream about. So I suspect that when the burst comes it is likely to be more like a deflating tyre as opposed to a fan hitting moment. Some of the big names will of course vanish – but who can guess which ones will be gone in 5 years time? Personally I could live without Quora despite my occasional poke at it.

We may well be in a bubble inflating web 2.0 world – but that’s the nature of things. Whether it’s Dutch Bulbs, dot coms or Collateralised Debt Obligations we do have a tendency to follow things in increasing numbers until they go bang.

The valuations being thrown around are nonsense – but that’s not to say that the social world isn’t worth a lot of money. Just don’t think the crazy valuation party is going to last, but in the meantime in the words of Abraham Lincoln “Be excellent to each other. And… PARTY ON, DUDES”.