This Blog So Far

I created this blog primarily as a way of improving my writing, and as somewhere to jot ideas to share with others.

I’ve now posted over 90 articles over the last 2 years or so, and it’s interesting to see what others think.

Most Popular

Pizza. Mmmmm.

Well, my most popular article so far has been “Anyone for a Metre of Pizza?” and it’s been viewed by over 850 people. I think that just says that lot’s of people are interested in Pizza. Especially in gigantic portions.

Next up is a more industry-related article “The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orangeries”. I suspect a lot of people have found that during their research into buying an orangery.

Then, interestingly, is my article about “Small Giants” – businesses who would rather be great than huge. I was pleasantly surprised about that one.

My Favourites

A couple of articles I’m really proud of, although very few people have read them:

“Can I put Your Name in Lights?” was inspired by a neon lamp demonstration case I saw for auction in the US.

“Icebergs are Hard to Copy” is all about an organisations culture, and how hard it is to copy the “deep” values within that organisation.

“Recruitment as Marketing” describes our recruitment process which we’ve developed after 15 years of gradual learning.

And Finally…

“Heathrow’s getting a reputation” made me smile when I first saw it, and I was staggered when I encountered a notice at our terminal 5 – see “We just don’t do airports well in the UK”.

I’m off to India tomorrow for Cycle India. If anyone would like to sponsor me, see http://www.justgiving.com/Dave-Blakeman

Fundraising for HEAL

Next week I’m taking part in Cycle India – a fundraising charity cycle ride organised by Matthew Glover (The Regenade Conservatory Guy).

I’ve paid all of my own expenses, so every penny raised goes straight to charity (helping kids in India). Rather than just asking for donations (which I’ve never been very comfortable about), I took some inspiration from the Domino Project’s Malaria book. The idea is to publish a book without any royalties or other costs, and contribute all of the profits to charity.

So before Christmas I decided that I’d combine together all of the marketing hints and tips I’ve created over the last 5 years into a book. It’s over 50 pages and I’m pretty pleased with the whole thing.

It includes the “secret” of how our RoofWright adverts get everywhere on the internet, as well as lots if interesting stuff from around the world. I can’t claim much originality, but I’ve tried an awful lot of stuff over the last few years, and this includes some of the gems.

Information-Packed

Lead Generation and Marketing

Personally, I get really frustrated when a great idea which could be explained in a page or two occupies a 300 page book which takes a week to read, so I decided to keep the content rich but concise.  You could read it in an hour or two, and I suspect that just about everyone will find something new in it. (I know if I’d read this 5 years ago almost everything would have been new to me!)

Around 30 people have contributed so far – if you’d like to join them simply visit:

https://www.justgiving.com/dave-blakeman

And donate £20 or more. Send me the receipt and I’ll send you back a copy of the e-book by return.

Of course, if you’d like to contribute anything at all it would be greatly appreciated.

I promise it will make you feel better, and it could make your business feel better too!

The Paradox of Completeness

We’ve been building our flagship application (RoofWright) for nearly 15 years now. The bespoke nature of conservatories and windows makes specification extremely complex. And we’ve learned a great deal on the way.

More features often equals more complexity

Features = Sales
Over that time we have added thousands of features, the majority of which were required by one or more customers. This has resulted in a very large number of satisfied customers. And each new feature means we may gain access to additional customers.
However, each time a feature gets added, the software gets a bit more complicated, which may in turn put off some of our existing customers. Over time, the customer who originally requested the feature may not be a customer anymore, or may operate differently, and no-one else may ever need it again.
Evolutionary Baggage
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to work out when a feature is no longer required, so it gets left in, even if no-one ever uses it. A bit like the way in which humans have retained the appendix although it’s original function (the digestion of foliage) is no longer required.
An Alternative
Almost all long-running software businesses have the same problem. The cost and risk of removing a feature may exceed the short-term cost of leaving it alone. And it’s not a very exciting thing for developers to do, so it rarely happens.
One potential way of identify unused features is to add accurate auditing of feature use. This would involve recording the frequency of execution of each routine in the software, a bit like a software version of the measuring strips put across roads to measure traffic volumes and speeds. This is almost certainly a candidate for automation,as doing this manually would be infeasible. Assuming that the software is properly factored, any rarely or never-used routines would indicate potential simplifications. It would then be a matter of careful analysis before culling any unused feature.

Another Alternative

There is another alternative, but it’s much harder to bring off. Rather than adding features, it can sometimes be better to generalise what is already there. For example, replacing special-case switches with lists of expressions (which could be empty much of the time). This will mean less confusion for the majority of users who don’t need lots of special extras.

My money’s on this approach, and we’re definitely going to do more of this in future…

That Sinking Feeling

The other day I was out cycling in  preparation for Cycle India 2012. As I was riding on the towpath of our canal, I came across this sorry sight:

Something's not quite right...

It turns out (according to a local boat owner) that a hole in the tarpaulin had let in sufficient water to swamp the boat. Strong stuff, rain.

Stupid Banks

“Stupid Banks”.

That’s what I overheard my daughter saying tonight. Actually, the language was a bit stronger than that, but that was one of the phrases. I think a lot of us use a silent “Stupid” when saying the word “bank”.

A Master-class from the Experts

Anyway, I try not  to think about banks because it just gets me grumpy. To cheer me up, I have a copy of an article titled “Trading through the Economic Downturn”, by the Royal Bank of Scotland, published in 2008. I always smile as I imagine substituting the opening line with the phrase “If your business is struggling in the current climate, simply find someone to lend you £20 Billion…”

Customise Your Debit Card

Back to today. To their credit RBS have a neat idea. Kids can order a debit card with their own artwork on it (pick from range of pictures or upload your own artwork) – a fantastic idea to make banking a bit more fun.

The way it works is that a student with an RBS account can log on and create a new card by picking the artwork. So she went through the process, picking her artwork for a few minutes, trying out different options until she was happy.

And now for the “Stupid”

At which point it’s time to pay (it costs £5). And then (in a manner only a bank could conceive), she was invited to enter her card number to pay for the artwork. Yes, the card number of the card which she is trying to purchase, and does not yet possess. The card which is waiting to be ordered, but which will never arrive because it hasn’t been paid for. Stunning.

RBS have missed a massive opportunity here. Rather than charging for this service, if they offered it for free to any student account holder, they would have thousands of youngsters queuing up to open accounts, all for the cost of a little advertising. I’m not sure about what the banks pay to acquire new customers, but I’m sure it’s more than £5  (and I doubt it costs them anything like £5 per card). What a missed opportunity.

And another thing. Why can’t I customise my bank card? I have a few ideas of what I’d write on it…

No Anaesthetic Necessary

Bikes.

When I was a kid, I was REALLY into cycling. I loved the cycling, the bikes, the challenge. And pretty much everything about the sport.
One day I was in a hurry to get to a meet a few miles from home. I was about 12 at the time, and knew no fear.  Bike helmets hadn’t been invented, and cycling on ‘A’ roads unencumbered by protective clothing was considered the norm.

Because I was late, I was cycling faster than normal on my new racer. And there was a steep hill with a dangerous bend at the bottom. I’m not quite sure how, but I think I hit a patch of oil, and was thrown into the path of oncoming traffic.

Brick Wall

In my case, the oncoming traffic was a lorry pulling a caravan. I hit the corner of the caravan, taking a sheet of aluminium off it (which surprised the lorry driver somewhat). If you’ve never hit something heavy and immovable with a bike, the first thing which you notice is that everything seems to go very slowly (apparently that’s adrenalin cutting in, speeding up your reflexes). The caravan didn’t even seem to notice, but I just felt an enormous SLAM. Like running into a brick wall.

“#$%#, that’s wrecked my bike…”

My first thought was “#$%#, that’s wrecked my bike”. My second thought was “Better get it out of the road before someone runs over it”. A few moments later I realised that my right hand was red. So was my arm. In fact, I could see a slither of bone. But I couldn’t feel anything. And it felt strangely like I was watching rather than participating.

I don’t remember much of the next bit. Someone rung my parents and they drove me to hospital at speed. The next thing I remember was a doctor appearing with a needle. “What about anaesthetic?” I asked. “You won’t need any” he said. And sure enough he just sat there and sewed up my hand as I watched.

That’s a weird experience (it hurt like hell soon afterwards!)

Anyway, there is a point to this. Sometimes things which might normally seem impossible can happen easily in the right (or wrong) circumstances. We are capable of far more (both mentally and physically) than we normally appreciate, and sometimes extreme situations bring out the best (or maybe the worst) in people.

Given the current economic situation, one unexpected effect may be that many more people will get put in positions where they have to do things they never thought possible. And in many many cases, they’ll find out that they are possible.

The Model ‘T’ Ford (and why it happened).

I was at our US office for a couple of weeks recently and over the weekend I spent time at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan, and the adjacent open air museum Greenfield village.

It’s billed as the ‘best historical exhibit in the US’, and it’s certainly well worth a visit. One of the great features is a real model ‘T’ Ford in pieces, which kids can assemble from its component parts. Every few minutes, passing children are invited to bolt on a new component. At 9am there is just a bare chassis, and by 4pm the entire vehicle is assembled.

Kids building a model ‘T’

I couldn’t resist a ride on an original model ‘T’ Ford and was amazed how quietly and smoothly it ran (I wouldn’t fancy it in a Michigan Winter though. Heaters were considered unnecessary, as were side windows).

Riding in a Model T Ford

The “Boring” Stuff

Amazingly, although the Model T went through hundreds of innovations, the power unit remained almost totally unchanged for 13 years and over 15,000,000 cars. Cars from 1914 can apparently accept engines from 1925 without any modifications. It did over 20 US miles per gallon (about 22 UK mpg) and would run on unleaded petrol, paraffin or almost anything inflammable. Apparently moonshine was a popular fuel with farmers. Both for them and their vehicles.

In the museum, there was one of the world’s only light bulb manufacturing machines. Apparently 17 corning glass ribbon machines around the world manufactured 80% of the world’s lightbulbs.

Also, there is the world’s only ‘Dymaxion’ house. Designed by Buckminster Fuller (the inventor of the Geodesic Dome), it was intended to provide a means of rapidly prividing housing using the surplus aircraft manufacturing capacity which became available after the second world war. The house is round (actually dome-shaped) to reduce material usage and also increase it’s heat retention ability.

While I was wandering around Greenfield village, I found the following quote, which I think sums up a great deal:-

If you don't believe you can do something, you can't!

Food for thought…

Your Personal “Burn Rate”

I first came across the idea of a “burn rate” during the .com boom of the  late 90′s. It represented the speed at which a business could burn through its cash, which at the time (for some reason) was regarded as a good thing, as it indicated the amount of advertising and “investment” the business was doing.

A while ago I wrote about Making Scary numbers Make sense. So I thought I’d put the two ideas together to work out the “personal burn rate” that we’ve inadvertently created for ourselves.

NB. This is a purely amateur view, and although I’ve checked the data from two sources, both are internet based and could be wrong.

Debt Versus Deficit

Firstly, there are two numbers which politicians regularly get mixed up. The first one is the “public debt” (or our national debt), which is the TOTAL amount of money a country has borrowed and not paid back (or defaulted on!). This number is often ignored because it’s too scary. And the other number is the “public deficit” which is the amount of money being ADDED to the public debt every year. This makes politicians feel much happier, because it’s smaller (in the same way you might feel happier about being eaten by a piranha rather than a killer whale. It takes longer but the end result is similar).

The Numbers (from 2010. Source: Wikipedia and others)

Country	Population (m)	Public Deficit (% of GDP)	GDP (Billion US$)	Annual National Increase (Billion US$)	Annual increase per person (US$)	Burn rate ($ per person, per day)
Greece	12	12.70%	$305	$39	$3,227	$8.84
Germany	82	5.50%	$3,315	182	$2,223	$6.09
United Kingdom	60	12.70%	$2,247	$285	$4,756	$13.03
Spain	47	11.40%	$1,409	$161	$3,417	$9.36
Portugal	11	9.30%	$229	$21	$1,936	$5.30
Italy	60	5.30%	$2,055	$109	$1,815	$4.97
Ireland	4	14.70%	$204	$30	$7,497	$20.54
France	64	8.20%	$2,582	$212	$3,308	$9.06

If I’m correct, this means that the UK national debt is increasing at approx $13 (approx £8) per person per day. Or £24 per household per day, which is second only to Ireland. Would you be happy to be losing this much personally? I hope so, because arguably you are!

Note that some of this deficit is exceptional due to lending to the banks and other unusual interventions. However, it still brings the numbers to life in a more meaningful fashion than we usually hear.

So why isn’t the UK worried? Well maybe we should be. I think it’s because these numbers are always represented as a percentage of the GDP of the country. We have a very large GDP, which ironically means that we can get into more debt than small countries like Ireland. A bit like an investment banker can borrow more than a teacher.

Food for thought…

Let’s just strip the software down…

One of the most popular items on this blog is “No User-Serviceable Parts Inside“, which is about how nice it would be for a user to take a program and pull it to pieces to find out how it works (just as is possible with a washing machine or a car engine). Anyway, I’ve been mulling over this for a while, and I realised something the other day.

View Source

All internet browsers contain a command called “View Source” which allows the user to see the details behind a web page (try it – you can probably right-click on this article and see something like “View Page Source”. Select it and a new window will open containing HTML – the language of the web page you were viewing).

About 20 years ago  I was involved in research into programming languages and tools. One of the ideas I was working on (along with many others) was called “Reflection” – which means the ability for software to answer “questions” about itself. So you could ask a”component” simple things like “what’s your name?”, “What colour are you?” and so on. An extreme form of “reflection” is to answer the question “Show me your source code”.

In principle (and also in practice in a few cases), it would be possible to “click” on a programming component such as a button, and ask the component to tell you about itself, including what happens when it’s “clicked”. A new window would open up, displaying a diagram or real source code in the original programming language (or a different one of your choice).

Students Rarely Build Big Things

For someone trying to learn how to build complex systems, one of the best ways of learning is “modelling” something which already exists. Sadly, very few text books have real examples of production-quality source text, rather than just tiny examples. There is a HUGE difference between a well-designed component which forms part of 100,000+ line project and the sort of 20-line example which is usually shown in books. Developers generally only get to experience this is as part of a team working on a large project. Which is difficult if you don’t already have a job as a developer on a large project.

Watching the Wheels Go Round

Wouldn't it be great to be able to watch what's going on inside?

Another possibility would be the ability to “step” through the source, just as is possible with modern debuggers. This way the user could step in and out of different components (and even go back up to do something again!). This “dynamic” understanding is often easier than static understanding. Colours could be used to show the “hottest” (i.e. most called) elements.

Is this Doable?

Well, most of the technology for doing this has been around for 20 years or more. The increase in processor speed and memory now means it’s a realistic proposition for many pieces of real software.

Doesn’t Open Source Let us Do this Anyway?

One of my readers commented that open source answers some of these requirements. However, just as learning to write is harder than learning to read, so writing programs is much harder than reading them, and acquiring the basic knowledge to get started can put many people off. Before writing a line of source text, a budding developer has to learn a lot of “additional” skills, such as downloading and installing compilers, source code control systems and other such tools.

This would let anyone see what’s going on with minimal investment of time to get started. If they like the idea, they could then spend time getting set up.

“Look Inside”

Also, I’d love to look at snippets of code in other people’s software (a bit like Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature). A few minutes examination would either give me increased confidence or scare the living daylights out of me. Clean, well written software should be at least partially legible by anyone, even non-programmers.

I’m thinking of implementing this in a feature in one of our products for fun. Watch this space…

A Flannel-Free e-book

I don’t usually promote our products on this blog, but you might be interested in a small e-book I wrote recently – “7 ways to Sell Conservatories for Higher Prices”. A bit specialised, I know. And it is small.

Flannel-Free

I read quite  few business books, and I find it very frustrating that many of them contain a single idea, which can often be expressed in a page or two, but then proceed to wrap it in a couple of hundred pages of flannel. So I decided to put a lot of information into a small space. Fifteen pages to be precise.

That’s not many pages, but it is an awful lot of information in that space, which some people will love and some people will hate.

How to Get It

If you’re interested in learning more simply visit the link below (it costs £29.99). You’ll be able to download it instantly.

http://www.roofwright.com/products/publications/7-ways-to-sell-conservatories-at-higher-prices

Or You Could Just Cut Your Prices

I found this sign in the Anson Engine Museum near to where I live (well worth a visit if you like that sort of thing). It sums up the perils of buying on price alone beautifully:

John Ruskin's view of price cutting