So over the past few days I have been at the FoWA expo supporting Flexiscale. I have to say, it is the first time I have been to a tech expo for a company I have been working for and it was an eye opening experience!

On Tuesday we all got down there to get the stand setup. We got to the airport at around 10 which was much nicer than the usual early morning starts when I am heading down south going to our data centres So all of the usual boring stuff happened, we dropped off our bags at the hotel and got to ExCeL. We then got the stand setup and I have to say I was very impressed not just with the new Flexiscale website but the stand as well, all very clean and professional (then again design is not really my thing, I don’t think I ever got past that using crayons stage ) We did have a few things missing and it turns out that DHL have decided to black list E16 (despite have a depo there) so I guess we were luck to get everything we needed….the MySQL guys were not, but more on them in a later post.

So we all went back to the hotel, Phil (COO), Tony (CEO) and Christine (Marketing, Gupta Partnership) all went to a few of the parties happening that night however Gavin and I decided to have a quiet one in the hotel bar and have an early night to be ready for the busy day ahead (well that was the intent anyhoo, I ended up until the bar closed, but that is another story). I have to say I am glad we did take it easy as we really did have no idea what was about to come next!

So we got to the expo nice and early in the morning, we had the plasma display to get up and running and I still had some video editing for the demos to do which we all got finished in plenty of time for the very sudden rush we had. It turns out that listening to your customers really does pay off, everyone really does appear to love the concept of Flexiscale and the facilities we are not able to offer them with the platform we have built. That morning we got on Techcrunch (also Techcrunch UK) and everyone has been talking about Flexiscale every since.

That night we went back to the hotel to grab some dinner and have a chat about what had happened. Everyone had been so busy up until that point that they did not notice they were on their feet all day and their feet were aching, however with my wonderful new rock boots I have to say I really did not have this problem While they might not be what everyone goes to the office in they are amazingly comfy. Then we decided to head over to the FoWA party that night and that all went really well we had some drinks chatted to some good people and I even met and existing xcalibre customer who was extremely happy with the existing service we provide and was also very excited about Flexiscale. Now I think at this point I should mention, xcalibre has been doing web hosting for 10 years now, while Flexiscale is an amazingly exciting new product for us, it is not a startup and we are not going anywhere.

So some of us made it to bed later than others (I know I had a last drink in the hotel bar) we all got up in the morning and were not sure if we would be any where near as busy as we were on the launch day. Well FoWA had quietened down a little and so did we but not by much, I was still on my feet all day, still talking to people about the product and some people even came to FoWA just to see us, it was excellent…ah yea, and I did manage to make it to a few talks over the course of things

• Day One: Matt Mullenweg (WordPress)
  The Architecture Behind WordPress.com

This talk was kinda surprising because I expected it to just be about how Matt had managed to scale out the wordpress.com site, however it was so much more. Before I go any further let me say how much I liked loved his presentation style, the black slides with just one or two words in white were excellent as they were just heading for what was he talking about, all substance which was really easy to focus on. Matt talked mostly about how he managed to scale the business, things to consider when hiring people and the important things to focus on if you are doing a start up…very edcuational.

• Day Two: Simon Wardley,
  Short on Cycles, Long on Storage

Now I have to confess I really did not know much about Simon before I went to his talk, however Phil was able to fill me in (no Pun intended at all, not even close……those jokes are for the office only ). It was in total contrast to Matt’s minimalist style, all the pictures were slides were pictures from around the internet and very fast paced. However that really did carry across his point that new products quickly become commodity and it is important to focus your business on developing products on top of your existing solutions and knowledge or be left behind with no growth opportunities (which I hear is good for ducks some how).

Finally came day three, we did on day two go out to a hotel at the other side of ExCeL hoping to be able to thank the Carson Systems guys and girls for the excellent work they had done however sadly they were very tired from all of that hard work and went to have a quiet night. On the final day I did make it to two of the workshops which were both interesting, the first on securing web applications and the second on scaling the LAMP stack. On the second one I had someone ask “should you really be here, don’t you know this stuff already”. Well yes, I did know most of it however I am really not that arrogant to think I cannot learn from other people doing the same thing as I and I had met Daniel in the hotel the night before so I knew it was going to be a fascinating talk (he also knows Pi to far more places that my boss ).

Over all it was an excellent time and I was very glad I went, Carson Systems really worked hard and it paid off, I did not speak to anyone who was not having a good worthwhile time at the event. I think everyone learned something. Once again, thanks guys (and girls!).

Now on to the hard (but enjoyable) work of getting all the additional capacity added to Flexiscale and helping everyone use it to help them with there new ideas and existing businesses……speaking of which I really need to be at at data centre in about an hour.

Take care

We have recently at XCalibre been given new company branded clothing. While in previous jobs I have totally resisted any attempt to change any way of how I dress, as I figure if I am having to go to the effort of not being naked in front of my work colleges then I should get to choose how, I think I like it this time.

The reason I believe it is different this time is for a start no one is being forced to wear them, you either do or don’t, everyone is more than welcome to come in with the same baggy jeans and rock t-shirts they always have.

I have noticed that it has managed to create a company atmosphere as well which is nice, even on the first day when one person was not waring them you could instantly see that they were not a part of ‘the group’ which while excluding people could be a bad thing before now there was nothing to exclude anyone from. Everyone working here does love the company however I would say at times there could have been more ‘company spirit’ and while it should not take a t-shirt for there to be that connection between a business and its employees, I believe it is one of the small things that help.

Now of course the final benefit, this morning, I came into work having not been home…..I had some spare stuff at Soph’s place but not a clean t-shirt…..but the company had spares

Anyhoo, just some thoughts, I will update my gallery soon and add a pic of me in company pimping outfit

I have been (ab)using SiteBar for a while now and for me it really has become the answer to the question of how to track all of the useful sites you visit, ever.

They have a hosted version of their software that anyone can sign-up for or you can download the software as I have done and have your own installation (My SiteBar).

By far the most useful features are the firefox plugin (or integrate with your browser here) and the ability to email bookmarks to friends…someone asks you for a site, a quick click and they have the link

The only improvement I could add to this program is automatically checking the links to see if there is a broken link in the collection and emailing you to inform you of this, but I may write some code for this if someone has not.

Take it easy

Download festival is almost here!!!

As long as all goes to plan I should be leaving with Soph, Nicola, Claire and Gordon some time on Thursday to go to the festival. Will be the first long drive I have had in the new car (car number 3 ) lets hope nothing goes boom……..

With luck I should be able to do a little posting from the festival about the bands, when I am not watching them all of course. There is also a cinema at this festival, I think I noticed one at T in the park when I last went but never really took any notice, seems like a strange thing to have, but the movies sounded good so I might drop past.

Take it easy.

Ok, well I have managed to install wordpress and download a theme, well done me.

I previously had a more personal ‘journal’ that lived on LiveJournal, this has now been closed to the world and this is the replacement. I selected wordpress because everyone else did…..well done everyone else, this seems kinda nice.

Take care