One that caught my eye was this comment from yes future:

…It’s not the bloody furniture that makes them such successful innovators. IT’S THE PEOPLE, STUPID!

The lesson to take away…isn’t “oooh, we should have a water slide”, it’s “ooooh, we should give our engineers much greater control and autonomy over their work”.

That’s absolutely true. As I said in response, the office we’ve created is the embodiment of the control and autonomy that we give our staff. The space was designed by all of us, with our requirements in mind. It’s therefore a place that feels comfortable and homely to our team and isn’t just some homage to Google.

And in response to some other comments, I just wanted to say something about productivity. For us, customers are our first priority. Dealing with customers servers that often host business-critical sites can be stressful, challenging and definitely requires a hell of a lot of thinking.

All our staff understand this, I trust them to. And – as I said in the article – they hold each other to account if they needed. This is at the heart of how we run our business and that’s why we decided to create a workplace that fosters productivity by letting staff blow off steam on the pool table or get work done lying on the beanbags instead of in a cheap office chair if they want to.

And finally, I admit I am a big kid but Melbourne is ultimately a successful and profitable business that turned over £3 million last year. Our staff – or rather, our family – is talented, diverse and eager to do things right by our customers. So we must be doing something right…

Daniel K-F, head tea boy @ Melbourne.

His blog is an amazing source of pearls of wisdom about leading in the true sense and running a business or brand in a way that’s natural as a human being, but his stuff is actually quite unconventional to ‘the norm’.  If more business leaders took his advice, the business world would be a much nicer place.

He’s been quite a big influence to me on my Melbourne journey and his blog (which I get delivered to my email as I’m too lazy to go to a website) is like a daily drip-feed of reminders that we are right in trying to be different, especially on those bad days when it can feel like we’re swimming against the tide of the stoic and stuffy world of business.

Daniel K-F, head tea boy @ Melbourne.

Space 48 are a digital agency and Gold Magento Solutions partner based in Warrington since 2008 and they’re the ones responsible for putting this lovely item together (they’ve also written a very complimentary testimonial which we’ll pop on our site very soon):

Thanks guys!

Chris Marsh

1895 business card

I’m referring of course to our business cards: little rectangles of information that have been existed probably since Gutenberg was trying to sell his presses in the 14th century. I suspect the format has changed little too; this 1895 example bears a striking resemblance to some designs I’ve seen just recently.

But, just what is the purpose of a business card?
I suppose that during organised “networking” events they’re a part of the theatre practised during formal introductions. A well-designed business card should also act as an aide-memoir.

And given the fact that we’re a digital business, I’ve been wondering just how useful business cards really are? For me, they’re often bland, forgettable and filed away in a part of my drawer I rarely check. It doesn’t help that cards which try to “stand out of the crowd” often end up being examples of awkward “corporate quirk” or suffer from the deployment of gimmicks like QR codes.

At many of the events that I personally attend, a business card is rarely useful. Last week, I stuck my head into Northern Digitals which, to be honest, I go along to as a social event. A lot of my friends work in digital or creative industries and enjoy a pint or two. And a lot of our clients do as well. But because it’s such a social place, I always get chatting with someone new that’s turned up and want to keep in touch with them after the event.

But for me, rather than swapping a piece of paper, the best way to keep in touch is by exchanging Twitter usernames. I almost always follow new people that I’ve met in real life and it’s a far more interesting and useful way to keep in touch with someone you might end up doing business with. It also means you can dispense with the empty pleasantries associated with those staid post-networking emails and work with someone as a partner almost immediately.

This is just my opinion; I know many feel business cards still have a place in the right situation. But given the amount spent on printing cards and the impact that has on the environment, I’m unconvinced that they offer better value for me personally than simply swapping Twitter accounts with someone I meet over a pint. Others seem to agree. But, if we get the design of our new ones right, you might see me try them out…

What do you think? Do you have any examples of killer business cards or have you found you’ve done more business through your Twitter account? Drop a comment below or tweet us @MelbourneHost.

Josh R, Brand Manager, Serverlove.

Dan is on the phone. 24/7. And the iPad. And the MacBook.

Good news everyone! I’m pleased to announce that we now have 24/7 on-site support!

We’ve always had technical staff available 24 hours a day for emergency support requests, but now we have staff working on-site at our Manchester datacentres at all hours of the night and day.

Not only does this mean we can offer an even better service outside of office hours – but also that we’re ditching all out-of-hours callout charges!

You can get straight through to the on-site staff any time by calling our support number, 0161 232 0125 (freephone: 0800 915 8772) or by raising a ticket via our support centre as usual.

Over the next week, we’ll detail the specifics of how this affects each of our services by email to our customers, but in the meantime if you have any questions please contact your account manager (or drop a comment below)

Daniel Keighron-Foster

Our overriding goal at Serverlove is to make “cloud servers you’ll love!”. That’s not just marketing-speak – we mean it. So that’s why we’ve constantly been listening to your feedback and, over the last few months, planning this new update…

Read more about the new features coming to the Serverlove control panel at the Serverlove blog.

Following the release of CentOS 6.2 in late December 2011, you can now deploy cloud servers running the latest version of this popular Linux distribution in just a few seconds

CentOS 6.2 is based on the upstream release EL 6.2 and includes packages from all variants. Read the full release notes.

Importantly. CentOS 6.2 extends ‘end of life’ to November 2017, meaning it will continue to receive updates some three years beyond the previous version. CentOS 5.7 will stop receiving updates in May 2014.

If you’re not yet using Serverlove and interested in trying out a cloud server with CentOS 6.2, sign-up for a free trial now.

ISO 27001, which relates to information security demonstrates our commitment to providing a high quality and secure service to our clients.

Should you require any further information please contact your account manager who will relay your query to our information security officer.

What is ISO 27001?

ISO 27001 (formally known as ISO/IEC 27001:2005) is a specification for an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS is a framework of policies and procedures that includes all legal, physical and technical controls involved in an organisation’s information risk management processes.

According to its documentation, ISO 27001 was developed to “provide a model for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving an information security management system.”

More information on the standard is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_27001

[Edit]

A customer emailed us to point out that this does read a little like:

“friendly knowledgable hosting company takes final steps towards becoming faceless corporation”

I suppose the subject matter doesn’t lend itself very well to Melbourne’s usual friendly, chatty communication style to which you’ve become accustomed.  Rest assured that whilst we take data security very seriously (as achieving this standard shows) we’re still the same loving, caring bunch that we always were

Given that, we were interested to hear our customer Paul Stokes of The Daily Mash speak at last week’s #smc_mcr (Social Media Cafe) in Manchester. The Daily Mash is the UK’s “leading satirical news website” and is perhaps not suitable for readers of a nervous disposition. If you’ve heard of The Onion, you could say it’s a sort of British alternative and, by Paul’s own admission, attempts to be as outrageous and extreme as possible when it comes to satire and parody. After all, this, he says, is the key to avoiding litigation; the parody must be obvious to the reasonable person.

And the fact that they pride themselves on being “anti” social media is something of an enigma. But nonetheless, it works perfectly well for them. Despite being users of Twitter and Facebook – which they describe as their “free marketing tool” – The Daily Mash have no interest in engagement or conversation, which by accepted wisdom is seen a key part of any social media strategy.

The fact is though that they win on their content. Despite – or rather, because of – eyebrow-raising content, readers keep coming back day after day, enjoying the stories and sharing it across their networks of their own volition.

I guess this is a really a reminder that content is all important. You can share and engage and chit-chat as much as you want on social media, but if you’re just a lot of hot air, then maintaining those conversations or converting them into your desired outcome (be it sales, or otherwise) will be a challenge.

Here’s a documentary video about the thinking behind it:

We’re now based at Lovell House on the Manchester Technopark, just across the road from our datacentre facilities at Turing House and Reynolds House. So drop in for a cuppa and we’ll try to beat you at pool!

View Lovell House in a larger map