Bay Web Blog

A new  year and many hopes for success

I’m back at work properly now, when the children are at home set hours are difficult so I work when I can. My focus for January is to get more clients. I will be attending a Chamber of Commerce evening in a couple of weeks so hope to do some promotion then. I have ideas for offering seminars for local businesses too; not just for web sites but also for those about to blog (we will advise you).

I have a potential client in the shape of a woman who runs her local community hall and wants a site to promote it. It will be a small site with photos and the ability to update info as necessary.

I need to network some more, not just for business but also to keep in touch with the many people I have met over the last few months. I enjoy meeting people and chewing the fat, possibly over a nice cup of coffee and a slice of cake.

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I didn’t get to my appointment with Chartwell Coaching Thursday. Unfortunately my son had the sickness bug and so we were up all Wednesday night. I still worked Thursday but felt I shouldn’t be driving after only 2hrs sleep which is why I cancelled my appointment. Zoe was very understanding and I will be re-arranging for in the New Year.

Friday son was left in the care of my husband while I went to ‘Becoming Self Employed’; a course run by our local Inland Revenue office. I found the session very helpful in that it clarified a few things I was unsure about and we came away with a workbook that would help us come self-assessment time. There’s a fololow on course that deals with actually filling in your self assessment. I have put my name down for that but not sure yet when it will be.

I was (un)lucky enough to catch the sick bug this weekend so am back in the office Monday morning feeling a little better and a few pounds lighter

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I attended a seminar last night given by Zoe Dawes of Chartwell Coaching; sponsored by my local Prontaprint and organised by Michelle Tuson from The Specialist.

The seminar was focusing on how SMEs can ’survive and thrive’ in the current economic climate and beyond. I found it very useful as we weren’t talked to but encouraged to work in groups to discuss our current issues and how we could work together as a local business community to improve and stay buoyant.

I came away with a plan for what I can do, as the leader of my business, to survive and thrive. I also made some more contacts with local business people who, while they may not be primary in helping my business, will be nice to know and meet again at future events.

I was very grateful to win an hour of one-to-one coaching with Zoe when my business card was drawn out of the ‘hat’. I feel that she has many skills that will help me to focus more on what is required for my business. Our meeting is on 11th December so I’ll update you on what the outcome is.

One last point, the seminar was held at Rastelli Restaurant (formerly the Lancastrian). While I didn’t have chance to stay for the buffet I must say that the place looked lovely and the staff were very pleasant.

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I have been playing with a new design for my website; I would like to put a sidebar into the design. Anyway, I ended up creating a photoshop mock-up of an idea I had.

Bay Web Designs mock-up

I had so much fun doing it I carried on and did another. I like the colour purple and had been playing around with Illustrator a few days ago. This is something I may translate into a WordPress template for my personal blog.

Purple Butterfly

As you can tell, I like a clean and uncluttered design. I’m out of the office in meetings etc tomorrow but I will be playing more with designs on Friday. Let me know if there’s a particular style you think I should attempt.

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I recently went shopping for a new handbag. I have back problems and wanted one that I could carry in my hand rather than over my shoulder.

I had various criteria to consider:-

• What size? A biggish one that I could hold everything in or a smaller one for necessities then I could carry a briefcase for all the rest when require?
• The ubiquitous black or should I go for something more colourful, funkier?
• Shiny or matt?
• Leather-look or the real deal?

As I wandered around the many shops I realised that looking for a handbag could be analogous to the questions that you should ask when thinking about a website.

• What size should you have? A big site with every conceivable piece of information on it and loads of different pages and sub-pages? Or a smaller site with the basic relevant info and a form or contact page for any further questions?
• Should the site be plain and functional or bright and in your face?
• Lots of web applications and flash or keep it simple?
• Do you employ a professional or DIY?

That last comment I have already written an article on (see here) but the rest need further consideration.

First and foremost, you should be considering not what YOU want but what your CUSTOMER wants and needs.

Size doesn’t necessarily matter so think about whether your customer needs a full list of your products and services or is a rough idea more appropriate? Would your customer be prepared to search through the site for what they want or do they just want to make a quick visit for pertinent information? Would your customer like to have a place where they could give you feedback or leave a message 24/7?

Plain or pretty? What type of customer are you aiming for? Would they appreciate being faced with a colourful and funky site or do they really want just a way of getting information in a clear and concise manner?

Do they flash? Are your customers the type of up to the minute guys who like a few effects on a site or are they cautious when faced with anything too flashy?

If you have some idea of what you want when going into thinking about a website then you are more likely to come out feeling as though you have the ‘handbag’ you really wanted.

NB. If you’re interested I went for a smallish, matt-black bag with a bright pink lining.

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I bought a pink Asus Eee 4GB Surf a few months ago. I didn’t like the original OS, the gui was OK but updates were a pig and I couldn’t install anything else. I changed to the ‘windows-like’gui but it kept crashing.

So, I tried UbuntuEee which is a flavour of linux supposedly especially for the Eee. I downloaded it twice from different locations but neither seemed to install properly although others have got it working OK.

Eventually I put XP (a legal version I had but no longer used) on. Installation was looooong but it worked OK. However, I found that it had some problems after a while so waited with bated breath for the Intrepid Ibex version of Ubuntu to come out.

Initially I installed Hardy Heron and then upgraded from there. Wireless didn’t work out of the box for me on Hardy else I may have left it. Using the CD I upgraded to Ibex and damn, the wireless still wasn’t working. Anyway, after a bit of surfing I found a couple of solutions. The first one seems to be tailored to the 901 and newer Eees, the second was more directly for the 701.

Help #1

Help #2

Even though I followed the directions for #2 wireless still wasn’t there. I found I had two drivers to disable; the one mentioned and one that said ’support for 5xxx series of Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards’.

I disabled both, rebooted but still nothing. I then re-enabled the 5xxx driver and it worked.

The moral of the tale being - there’s plenty of help in the Ubuntu community but sometimes you just have to trial and error it yourself.

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I went to an interesting ‘bite-size’ session on Negotiation yesterday given by Joe at Create (Lancaster University). Looking forward to the possibility of a more in-depth session sometime. I know I would benefit from it even though I do negotiate unconsciously all the time with my kids - bedtime, homework etc

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Update #1 - I need to update wordpress. Evertime I log on to make an entry it reminds me but I always seem to be in the middle of something or not enough time so I haven’t done it yet. It’s on my ‘to-do’ list for next week.

Update #2 - yesterday was a very positive day. I had sent out some mail marketing the day before, I’d had a meeting with Joe at Create and came out very positive and then I did some email networking when I got back home. I followed up some ideas that Joe and I had and have some things to do in the next week or so to improve my contact list.

One thing that did arise was that I seem to have a good writing style; I have always enjoyed writing so I am making time this week to write more articles. These will be aimed at not only helping and informing my clients but also to raise my profile. If anyone has an idea for an article they’d like to see written leave a suggestion in the comments or email me directly.

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I joined my local Chamber of Commerce for advice and networking, unfortunately many of the meetings are in the evening so are difficult for me to attend. However, yesterday I went to a ‘Women in Business’ networking event.

There was a talk on NLP and its uses for building effective, useful working relationships followed by lunch and an opportunity to meet and talk with other local business women.

The NLP presentation by Sandy Marshall was extremely interesting - I am now trying to figure out whether I am a more ‘visual’, ‘auditory’ or ‘kinaesthetic’ person.  Both before the talk and during and after the lunch I managed to network with several people, one member even sought me out for a possible business relationship which I found very encouraging.

I am now going to use the information I gained from the event to continue my marketing goals; I intend to write to all those I didn’t get chance to meet and send them my flyer with an accompanying letter of introduction. Two hours seemed like enough time but once you get talking to one or two people then it just flies by.

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I blog for IT Pro online as a ‘reader blogger’. Through that I have met some great IT people. One person is Jason who has a blog which he recently asked me to do a guest post for.

Anyway, the post is live today and you can check it out at this link.

Jason’s site has some interesting posts (including mine of course) so don’t forget to RSS or sign up for his email updates.

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