It seemed more like it was the Partner Correct Conference, as it had all the large players in operating platforms and infrastructure – including Google, HP, IBM and Microsoft all having their say, but apart from Amazon, Apple, Oracle and any one from the Open Source side of things, of course.  The latter seem to be in the “out group” or their own world (a cloud?) away from this set of players - so where’s the IT conference or exhibition that includes everyone in the industry nowadays?

Nevertheless, the grouping at this event did give me a good insight into how most of “the old” and/or big proprietary players position their local resellers for life with new and big corporates, and it’s the best event I’ve found yet for walking (or sitting) around and getting an overall view on what’s new infrastructure-wise, as well as ways of comparing and proselytising one’s position if one is a reseller in the marketplace for IT (and now digital telecoms).

The Scene From The Seminars

There was still an element of these big players being cats circling one another from what I gleaned from the seminars with key reps (and quiet words with a few afterwards).  Judge for yourself from this short summary of sound bytes from the ones I attended:

• Cloud computing is a business model, not an IT one, as nearly everyone espoused.
• Google originates from the cloud – yet I did challenge  its partners’ positioning on its service offerings, as I had found from independent consulting work earlier this year that these are not clear – and hard to know how to find and compare one partner. Even Googling them does not help with knowing who’s best!  
• IBM sells business services now, not IT – however it is looking beyond the cloud and sees Smart Cities as being what’s on its horizon, and so living in a world where energy, telecoms and IT are sold and supported as one small box that sits in a corner somewhere in the house, as well as everything being auto-responsive in turning power up and down as maybe asking or telling you what to do in various operating scenarios.  Somehow I kept thinking of that movie “Transformers” throughout the presentation by Simon Baker (but “Space Odyssey – 2001“ now, as I write this). Still, it was good not to have anything more said on the cloud by the time I attended that one!
• Microsoft thinks its in the cloud – but all other vendors think that it has no idea, other than Hotmail, about what the cloud is. That said, buying Skype may have changed that…
• the Chrome netbook starts up in six seconds and all its apps are resident in the cloud (sorry, web?). This advice on a device came from the presentation by the President and CEO of CompTIA, who had brought every one of over a dozen different tablet and mobile devices with him and is not linked in with anyone in saying this…. 

In summary, the future’s not bright, its cloudy. Indeed, so the Google Partner rep advised, only they talked about the cloud three years ago – and now everyone wants (to offer) one. Really it was only IBM that seemed to have anything different and farsighted to talk about than the others – but then they are about business services now, right, and not just infrastructure!

The Scene from the Sidelines

Besides the big players, the outsider in this in-group was an organisation called CompTIA which positions itself as supporting no one vendor in particular, but being there for the IT professional in general. 

CompTIA is an international not-for-profit organisation that is a mix of an independent training company and vendor-independent technical certification authority that IT professionals can use for working with principles and concepts of any infrastructure. They also offer networking events for bringing IT professionals together who work in supporting  IT infrastructure.  

From my brief look into their offerings, ComTIA’s certifications do appear to be neutral as far as software is concerned – and are in things like project management, networking, etc – however, perhaps naively since they are new to operating here in the UK and Europe, their certifications are geared more to working in an American corporate world as they ignore best practice defined by organisations like the OGC such as PRINCE2, ITIL, etc. When I attended their drinks later I got a chance to query this in talking direct with their President and CEO, Todd Thibodeaux. Todd advised that their certification aligns more with PMI. So why not just offer PMI certification, I thought?  Oh, yeah, that’s because they are vendor-independent….

The thing is, I did happen to meet a fellow independent contractor there from the IT backup world who had used their services and sat through Todd’s presentation with me. Even Todd’s lead-in to the presentation clearly showed that the UK was new to him from not having brought an adapter for UK power supplies, and so being faced with power from over half of his devices running down until he could find one – as he promptly demonstrated by using this dilemma as an excuse to pull each one of his dozen devices out to show us all how much of a gadget junkie he is.   

The CompTIA courses are not totally new though, as my insider told me that he had found CompTIA’s training and certifications to be very expensive for what you can leverage from them – which is rather strange for an organisation that touts itself as being not-for-profit. So maybe a local reality check is in order for CompTIA before claiming to be open to one and all IT professionals?

Still, I appreciated being able to attend CompTIA networking drinks at the end of the conference and how their President and CEO said he would be happy to get someone to host an event for us to attend and form our own opinions of them in supporting the IT professional.  Maybe we in the OPTN can educate them at a networking event, as much them us, about what UK and European IT professionals really need to help support us in doing IT work here, as well as advise them on where they can buy a power supply for adapting U.S. IT networking and sales people’s devices for working here in the UK and Europe….

Following publication of the Office of Tax Simplification’s review of small business tax, the government has decided to retain IR35 as abolition would apparently put substantial tax revenues at risk. The government promises improvements in the way IR35 is administered.

These proposed improvements will apparently include guidance on those types of cases HMRC view as outside the scope of IR35. This will make an interesting read. In my opinion it’s what the law says that counts, and with the greatest respect, not HMRC whereby it often appears that no two status inspectors can agree on which factors to ignore. How many times have contractors had to overcome HMRC employment status perceptions and had to prove a negative when confronted by an HMRC IR35 Enquiry?

IR35 is now 11 years old and such a thorny subject even the OTS can’t decide what to do with this issue – more sticking plaster is surely not the remedy to cover spotty legislation.

How about HMRC gaining a basic understanding of work breakdown structures, concepts such as project management of labour and materials with Gantt terminal time lines and delivery of work to budget and so forth. When exploring genuine arrangements between client and contractor, everyone would gain a greater appreciation of contextual factors and apply the key status tests/principles of mutuality of obligation, control, personal service, financial risk, etc, etc.

I would suggest HMRC publishing the obvious guidance would be too simplistic and futile – a bit like HMRC status officers hearing hourly rate and assuming employment status without considering the genuine arrangements?

Chris Leslie
Director, Qubic Associates Ltd
(DD) 0191 493 4940 (e) cleslie@qubictax.com

1. What’s the most effective way to control staff use of social media at work?
2. How can we best manage corporate use of mobile devices?
3. I’ve heard about the recent implementation of £500,000 fines for leaking personal data. How can our organisation most effectively cover the risk?
4. What’s the best way to prevent corporate data loss?
5. Our organisation has a huge number of security policies. How can we rationalise and reduce this volume to something more manageable?
6. How can we be sure our security policies are working?
7. What’s the best way get the security message across to our staff?
8. How can we put a value on our business information?
9. How can our business keep up with constantly changing internet security threats?
10. How can we ensure the quality of our information security risk decisions?

Please contact Mike for answers to these questions, and more about information security, by email to mbarwise@intinfosec.com or by phone to 0845 463 1624

A talk on information and IT security is also being planned through OPTN London for February 2011. This is where you can meet Mike and find out more about information security as well as meet other members of OPTN London in person. Please register your interest for this event now by email to register@7c-alliance.com or by phone to 7C Alliance Events team on 0844 844 2470.

For finding details about other OPTN events in London, or for networking online and in person with OPTN members in London, please join the OPTN London UK on LinkedIn.

About the Open Practice Technology Network (OPTN)

The Open Practice Technology Network is the first business network created by the 7C Alliance and is for anyone who is generally interested or involved with managing information online for business purposes as well as for those interested or involved with managing, supporting and using information and telecommunications technology (ICT). The group is open to anyone joining who is not restrained in discussions about ICT for trade reasons (i.e. it is for those who are able to openly discuss effectiveness and efficiency of a particular vendor’s technology for doing business)

Everyone seemed to LOVE the magic and charm of the world music performer we’d discovered over the course of 2008 to 2009 in getting out to discover live music around London. Milli Moonstone is that performer and we hope to see more great gigs by her, as well as perhaps hear her and her songs on the radio (and we all agreed that songs from her album, “Lose Myself” sound great on an iPod!)

Thursday night’s crowd also said how they loved the idea behind the London Charm networking concept.

The idea of London Charm is to provide a place online to meet others in London with similar tastes in music, as well as specific bands and venues that each other likes. From learning what each other likes online (and marked with the Facebook “Like” feature at a minimum), the members are then given opportunities to meet up and go out to discover those great acts with others who like them, or simply to discover places to see great music performed live around London.

The numbers in the group have now been boosted by 20 in only a few days after the intimate gig (which was limited to 50 guests only and had 20 existing members attend with a friend).

The night was also a good test to see whether we could apply 7C Alliance’s structured networking concept to social networking events, as much as we have done to business ones (as developed and trialed last year with the London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup group – which has now been aligned with the online group, the Open Practice Technology Network, to include anyone with an interest or involvement with technology).

The structured networking concept works based on the event coordinator preparing a summary profile of guests attending based on what they can glean from the guests’ profiles shown on the host networking tool that they use (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, etc).

This summary guest profile list is then printed and made available to everyone at the event so that they can check it, and see who they want to network with on arrival, as well as having a few details as hooks for conversation starters with those people.

The idea is to beat having to go through the standard: “What is your name, what do you do, what are your hobbies, etc” as well as having some details to hand for the networker that are targetted towards a more specific focus and purpose for the networking event.

For instance, last Thursday’s event was not just about meeting and seeing Milli perform but also about people’s interests in live music around London – and so the Guest Profile List showed people’s music interests as well as what other interests they had, where known or shown on Facebook or LinkedIn. People could update their details on the night too, and so this is then available in the networking group’s registration database for use at future events.

If you would like more like more details about the 7C Alliance’s structured networking, and assistance with building a business and social network, then email contact@7c-alliance.com .

Oh, and please feel free to join London Charm, the first social network that the 7C Alliance has created on Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=148304341899 , or otherwise the Open Practice Technology Network – the first online business network it has created on LinkedIn for independent technology professionals in finding work and the lifestyle they want to go with it.

Members of the 7C Alliance firstly set up a simple web-site (created by Steve Foster) and, later, a Facebook Group was created and built up with help of friends from Patrick Whelan’s and several others’ networks. Matt Miller then tested out promotion of the group through different social networks such as Secret London, a Facebook Group with over 200,000 members in it, as well as people on MySpace and myvillage.com. He then also shared details about it by word of mouth at gigs at a few places that people said they liked.

From doing all this, numbers have begun to build up and so we are now looking to find people interested to help us work out bands and venues to see, as well as get people out to gigs together – including making a few gigs happen like the one on Thursday, 11/11 @ The Tabernacle in Notting Hill.

The gigs we will look to make happen will, for now, be at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill, a venue that has a performance space in it that can hold up to 250 or more people and has had the likes of Take That, Lily Allen and others play exclusive gigs there.

We have also reserved the Conservatory at The Tabernacle on Thursday, 11th November for people to come together before the performance and meet each other as well as discover what each other has to offer in bringing online business networks like those typically managed or participated in by members of the 7C Alliance, together with social networks such as London Charm, Secret London, MyVillage and others on Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.

Later on, we will celebrate these new beginnings with music from Milli Moonstone, one of the acts discovered by London Charm, playing music from her new album, “Lose Myself” with relevant lyrics from the number, “New Day”.

So we look forward to seeing you there at what we expect to be a unique night for both business and social networking, as well as enjoying good live music! Tickets are £15/head and include price of canapes and performer. They can be bought online at http://www.wegottickets.com/event/97497

Please note that numbers of tickets are strictly limited to 50 – and so please get in quick to not miss out!

If you are based in London and want to join London Charm to meet others interested in live original music and share your sense of style then click on the following: London Charm social network.

Why are we doing this?
The next level is to look at ways to ensure consistency within IT practices so that it is easier for 7C Alliance members to market themselves for work in them. This can otherwise take considerable time for an individual contractor to keep up-to-date with or work out when operating independently in an industry which is constantly evolving – and especially when there is not much opportunity to interact with colleagues and clients outside of the immediate contract that a contractor is working on.

The 7C Alliance are looking to overcome this challenge in the IT contractor marketplace by better understanding the practice(s) that an IT contractor’s services relate to, as well as the supply chain for them at large, by having various 7C Alliance members take responsibility as leaders in different practice areas. These leaders will act as a single point of contact (SPOC) for a practice and help to clarify any misunderstanding about what a practice involves as well as analyse how a particular practice can be developed and improved. The latter can include facilitating engagement of relevant 7C Alliance members where it is determined necessary to mitigate a risk or resolve an issue arising from a lack of clarity or support for a particular practice for a particular business.

What will be the focus?
The lead will be in areas where there are already numbers of 7C Alliance members operating and in practice areas where there is known interest and support for such practices from businesses interested in procuring such contractors’ services for helping them manage and support IT effectively end-to-end.

How will it work?
The practice leaders will review and analyse interest in response to queries about their designated practice area. They will help with determining what works best for the practice to improve for not only the benefit of 7C Alliance members operating in that area but also for businesses who need to understand what people operating in these practices can do for meeting their needs.

How can you engage with the 7C Alliance Practice Leads?

1. A generic email address will be provided for a practice.
2. Members and businesses wanting to participate in discussions or events about a practice will engage with the 7C Alliance through that email address.
3. The practice lead will determine engagement and support required by analysing emails received.
4. The practice lead will determine what discussions, events and other forms of communication are best for making sure that the supply chain for services in an area are understood and managed effectively for members of the 7C Alliance operating in that area – but also for helping businesses who need support in that practice too.
5. FAQ for IT contractors, as well as industry support for their services, will be managed through social media that is being built by the 7C Alliance and will be available in the near future.

What are the next steps?
As a first start we are looking to have three practice areas where members who have proven themselves will act as coordinators in the following areas:

We are also going to be providing a mix of business, life, recruitment coaching services to assist those who are not sure which direction they are going in.

Please join the UK and European Open Practice Technology Network in the first instance for discussing this initiative.

The 7C Alliance is also looking for sponsors of practices – however as the intention is for focus on the practice and not products for managing the practice, sponsors cannot be suppliers of practice management tools.

It is therefore not enough to be able to “walk the walk” when you want to be the best – you must be able to “talk the walk” too.

The 7C Alliance has recognised this and, in the interests of its top Senior Associates and Principal Associates being able to be the best they can be at walking AND talking, we have formed an alliance with St Paul’s Speakers.

St Paul’s Speakers is one of the clubs of Toastmasters International , a global organisation with a long history of success in developing successful public speakers. Some businesses, such as McGraw Hill (who the 7C Alliance has also established a relationship with in reselling its technical books at a discount to its members), have their own club that they use to develop the public speaking and leadership skills of their senior employees.

However it goes well beyond that. Toastmasters has a tried and tested way to develop public speaking skills that has led to it having over 250,000 members in more than 12,500 clubs in 106 countries. Each club works to the same formula of being voluntary and non-profit, allowing members to use a self-paced format with clear stages to development. This begins with an Ice Breaker speech, at the first stage, through to how to fully structure delivery of a speech that might be expected of an industry leader at a conference or even a politician on a podium for election.

The beauty of Toastmasters is that it can be seen as a fun night out too, as they allow guests to come and observe – and even participate too! For instance, some of the more amusing topics in the past include:

The topics can also be highly personal and intellectual at the same time, such as dealing with the condition of “Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity” (adverse medical symptoms caused through exposure to electromagnetic fields) or abstract and highly scientific, such as one recently given by a friendly local physicist on his work with data from the Large Hadron Collider – a device based in Switzerland that is being used to test scientist’s theories about the origins of The Universe. They can also be personal and personable, as well as highly amusing too – such as one member’s James Bond addiction that left the audience both shaken and a little stirred….

Hopefully this gives you an idea that it could be anybody, from all walks of life, on anything. It could even be you, a member of the guest audience, as every club night there are a set of impromptu table topics where anyone in the audience can be invited to talk.

The 7C Alliance is looking forward to a long and happy association with Toastmasters and to some amazing members amazing others with how they well they can talk – and walk the walk too!

The 7C Alliance has organised for an introduction to the St Paul’s Speakers Toastmasters club in London for members of the London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup (LITCAM) group for Wednesday, 12th May. If based in London and interested to attend, then please register for LITCAM using the form at the bottom of the page before 1st May.

For those wishing to learn more about Toastmasters, and its educational programme, please visit the main Toastmaster’s site for further details.

Subscribe!

Enter your email to join LITCAM today!

See the posting by Philip Fanthom from Jenrick IT in the 7C Alliance – Open Practice Technology Network for details and registration of interest.

When:

Thursday 11th March

6pm onwards
>

Where:

West London

Featuring:

SOME Project

of the 7C Alliance

and

Art on “Life”

by Ron Best

with

Complimentary Wine

Selected By Members

Register for LITCAM to receive details

Background
Mark Compton, from Fisher King Associates, was engaged as an Alliance Partner by the 7C Alliance last year to provide advice and assistance to those 7C Alliance members who are independent contractors, aka freelancers, on good recruitment practice both by and in using recruitment agencies. This draws on his background of 20+ years in IT and technical recruitment as well as reputation for high integrity and value as a recruiter.

Mark’s and other Alliance Partners’ engagement, and introduction of Trusted Recruitment Agencies to members of the 7C Alliance’s Open Practice Technology Network, are all part of an “open practice” approach that the 7C Alliance initiated in 2009 to enable greater awareness and understanding of how the recruitment marketplace operates from the contractor’s perspective. This includes professional support and advice for the wider local UK community of independent IT and Telecom (ICT) contractors on how to engage and best manage the supply chain for their services end-to-end, using the 7C Alliance concept of there being “7 C’s to consider for survival and success on contract“.

As part of this initiative, Mark and the 7C Alliance started doing live events and trialed two presentations in West London last year that are now to be presented again on March 18th, 2010, but this time in Central London.

Overview of CV WorkShop
This will be a panel-based workshop on CV Writing and Marketing Tips. It will include techniques for both writing your CV for agencies to pick up on in the current market but also for following up and getting agencies to read and submit it.

Mark will give us his advice on what agencies expect and how they use your CV, if it is accepted.

Matt Miller, Director and Founder of the 7C Alliance, will share 7C Alliance Members’ understanding based on experience gained from his coaching as well as 7C Alliance Limited’s independent research into the UK contract recruitment market over 5 years. This reprises the highly successful workshop that we trialed in September last year as shown on 7C Alliance’s blog at the following link: http://bit.ly/8RDo5v

This workshop will be from 2.30 to 4 pm.

Seminar: How Agencies Work
This seminar will reprise the presentation that Mark gave to members of the London IT Contractor Alliance Meetup (LITCAM) group at a meetup at the London Chamber of Commerce in July last year.

This seminar will be from 4.30 – 5.30pm and include advising how contractors can leverage understanding of how agencies work in sourcing and applying for contract work through them.

Mark will also give advance notice at that workshop of what contracting management structures contractors are best to use in line with new legislation on the Agency Worker Directive (AWD), aka Temporary Worker’s Directive, which is now due to be introduced following the UK Elections and most likely in 2011.

Registration and Fees
Unlike the trials of this workshop and seminar last year, there will be a fee for each of £55 to members of the general public – or £100 to attend both.

A discounted offer of £45 each per seminar / workshop is available for members of the OPTN group or LITCAM list.

Please note that spaces ARE limited on both of these – and we will hold more if they prove as popular as they were last year.

Other Workshops
On the same day there will also be two workshops on Interview Techniques held by Lindsay Maclean from ielevate.

These will be held earlier in the day and be 1 hour each, with one at 11am (Workshop A) and the other at 12.30pm (Workshop B). They are the same workshop but just geared to allow for the fact that some contractors may want to attend in their lunch-hour – and as much get a few tips on what they can do to improve their presentation as much as their interview techniques from Lindsay in the 12.30pm time-slot.

A separate blog post on this will feature shortly.