Competition - 10 photographers SmugMug Pro for Life

Make your photos happy - @photowhoa is giving 10 photographers SmugMug Pro for Life! Enter here. http://www.photowhoa.com/c/CQcYvRD #photography

Shoot and Share, Simply.

Want an easy method for Colloborating, Documenting and communicating in your large company offices- Give them all a Digital camera (with a rechargeable battery). Sounds expensive but some cameras just do not allow the average Jo to take good photos easily, they are either slow to focus, grainy as hell (not enough light) or washed out with too much flash. Why? The subject matter. This can be a simple means of recording how you did something to allow you to follow a process to make it repeatable next time you do it. or for someone else to repeat the process, without been shown. You might want to show a colleague a progress update every week and they are on the other side of the world. Photos are easier than writing down a description of what you are taking a photo of. The image provides a memory jog as well. The justification can come from a better outcome, an improved product or service, less downtime, less training and retraining. Of course if you do not have a grasp of just how much you spend on these aspects, there is not a lot to compare to. Next. send some Key staff on a course to take better photos, they need to be taught how to keep the camera steady, when to use the flash or not and basic composure. Those people should be advocates for the Camera idea and that will embrace it. Get them to retrain the other staff. Once your team can do this adequatly, write down a simple step by step process, that allows them to upload the photos to your server. This could be giving everyone a USB cable (that came with the camera) or a docking station (Kodak were big on that). Or better yet an Eye-Fi card that allows the upload of images as the camera shoots, straight to your server via wirelss network. (Avoid the 4in1 multi-card readers and USB SD card readers, these are notoriusly flaky whatever OS you have). Once people have uploaded photos onto the server, make sure they get into the habit of completing some appropriate tags, descriptions and titles to allow others to find them. Set a policy about whether they can or cannot upload images to the internet and social media websites. If you are a funky creative design house and want to build your brand and show off your relaxed workspaces or new projects then you maybe fairly open. If you are constanatly developing projects in a competive market you might be more restrictive with your policy. To be truly collaborative, make it easy for people to see what's new in your business, or what others are working on. Index your servers photos using something like Picassa. Although designed for home, it is powerful enough to support a small enterprise and has some useful features such as face-recognition. Shoot and Share.

Dummies guide to waiter/waitress service in the UK in 8 steps.

At the entrance to the dining area of a restaurant, place a sign which says “Please wait to be seated” or some restaurants such as Gastro pubs allow to sit down, the menus are already on the table, and have instructions about ordering food at the bar, noting your table number. However this post is about receiving table service, rather than informing people by non-verbal means.

1. Sit the customers down at their table, give them a choice of where to suit if you wish. Hand them the menus drinks section, explain any specials or soup of the day for example.
Having a specials board is not ideal because inevitably it cannot be seen from every seat, some people can have bad eyesight and if they have to remember the choice they will not remember the details and not be able to sell it to their fellow diners for you.

2. Come back within five minutes and take their drinks order. Offer table water to all diners. You should have a basic knowledge of sommelier skills and have tried some of the wines on a staff training night. Remove any wine glasses that are not going to be used (if they didn’t order wine) and place these on a side table within the dining area. (minimise time it takes to reset a table).

3. When you return with the drinks, be prepared to take their food order. Write down the order with the starters first. Up sell any side orders such as potatoes, vegetables or salads. If the portions are too big, than food will go to waste with no up selling. It should be a question of quality over quantity, agreed with the Chef and restaurant owner.
Take the order on an electronic device similar to a PDQ machine, this will save you having to go back to the kitchen to drop an order check off, with your messy handwriting. This also means your bill is made up correctly on the computer ahead of time.
After taking the food order, take the menus with you, so that your colleagues do not ask to take the food order again. If you take a note of which dish was ordered for which table place on a seating plan, this will allow you to deliver the food faster, hotter and more professionally, with no dithering of who ordered what!

Fancy restaurants or corporate functions with silver service have a team of waiters that deliver an entire tables food in one go. They stand behind the diners, look at each other, 3-2-1 then place the food on the table at exactly the same time.

4. When the food is ready at the hot plate, deliver it efficiently as possible, keeping tally of dishes still left to be served, because you will be asked. Have a colleague help you serve up as described above, this way no single diners are left with an empty place setting. Offer to take any more drinks order at this stage, wish your diners a enjoyable meal “Enjoy”.

5. Within a few minutes, ask the diners if everything is OK with their meal. This is instant feedback and gives you a chance to fix something that is not right for the customer, before they complain or not pay you a tip. Top up their wine if this is the sort of restaurant that warrants it, you maybe able to sell them another bottle where normally they would have had just one.
Keep an eye on the diners, make it easy for them to ask for something because it will invariably add to the bill and therefore your tip. When you move from the kitchen to table you hands will be taking food out, likewise when returning to the kitchen clean away glasses or empty plates – look busy and efficient. Its the small details that add value to a dining-out experience and make you look even better at your job.

6. Return when all the diners look like they have finished, ask if they are finished and start to remove plates and clear the table. Ask them again if everything was OK with their meal. Return with the desserts menu/hot drinks or leave it with them before clearing.

7. Come back to take any dessert or hot drinks orders. If they don't want anything, ask if they would like the bill as your table is not going to earn anymore money tonight, and could be filled with new paying customers.

8. Return with the bill and deliver to the top of the table, or the one who looks like they are most likely to pay (to give this person the satisfaction of the buying/ treating of other diners experience). Come back quickly with the PDQ machine to take credit card payments.
The tip...
An increasing trend is for Restaurants, typically chains to add a service charge by default. This can be around 10%+ and more often applies to table of six or more. Not being America, it is not always customary for English diners to tip their servers, and hence it is discretionary. If a company adds a service charge as standard, the staff see it as part of their wages (even though this is legally not the case, and the restaurant does not benefit). The problem with this is complacency by the staff, who continually provide poor service. This is unfortunate for the catering industry in this country, which employs a majority of students, without any aspirations to make the work into a career where you can master the art of service, such as in France. The flip side where no discretionary service charge is added to the bill and, and the diners do not add a percentage themselves, can cause some good staff can lose out. The bottom line is through your dining experience and skills as a cook/host in your own home you will decide yourself what is good and what is not so good, and tip accordingly.

Different credit card machines vary, some allow the server to add the bill, hand the machine over to the paying customer, who has the option of a gratuity. Other machines just allow the input of one figure and it is deemed impolite to ask for a tip. One method of getting round this maybe to ask “how much the diner would like to pay for on the card”, in the hope they would round the bill up by 10% and excusable in that the server may believe the bill is being split or paid in part by cash.

3 tips to Survive in a modern business world?

1) Find new ways to generate new sales 2) Reduce time to market 3) Increase Profitability

How do they provide fresh, cool and pressurised air in passenger Aircraft?

I pondered about this issue because it seems like a difficult thing to do at 35,000feet. The 3 elements which are all critical to the comfort of passengers ability to live and breath at altitude inside the cabin of a passenger jet are:

Fresh air: Yes lots of germs circulate inside the cabin, but if the air is not changed to fresh air (m3 per person) then condensation may occur on the heavily glazed windows and more importantly the carbon dioxide rich, second hand air that humans expel must be replaced with oxygen rich air at a rate faster that it is consumed, otherwise we will full unconscious.

The Temperature of the air outside at 35,000 feet is a lot cooler then at sea level, so this needs to be warmed* for comfortable inhalation.

The Pressure of air at altitude is a lot thinner than at sea level, and this also needs to be increased in pressure to allow our lungs to work at normal capacity.

The answer to all of these 3 factors was solved many years ago and understandably involves lots of engineering to provide what is abundant at sea level and unavailable in the correct form at altitude. The following is an explanation from a passenger jet Captain.

"The air is tapped from the engine compressors and then ducted to the air conditioning units for cooling if required. As the air from the engines is very *hot it and so needs to be cooled via heat exchangers that use ambient air for cooling or air cycle machines that operate like turbo compressors. The tapped air drives the turbine, the compressor pumps the air into the cabin. At altitude where the outside air temp. can be 56 deg. C below, the hot air is not cooled as much. The pressurisation is achieved by controlling outflow valves to regulate the outgoing air. On the 747 they maintain 8.6 PSI differential which gives a 5000ft' cabin at 35,000ft. If just one cabin window blew out of a 747, cabin pressure would be lost." and a rapid descent would follow. This is a continuous process and a system with inputs (fresh air) and outputs (old air) and a process (humans breathing).

I found more information available at Boeing www.boeing.com/commercial/cabinair/ or at Lufthansa
www.lufthansa-technik.com/aircraft cabin air

How to get a great deal at Halfords

How to get a great deal at Halfords.

I am into cycling and wanted to buy some padded cycling shorts and these Azure branded ones came up on the Google shopping results at Halfords. They were the right size and reduced on the website from £19.99 to £12.99. Being a hardworking individual I am never in the house during working hours and so daytime deliveries are not conveniently for me. I checked the stock in my local store and planned to visit the store the next day.

I cycled to the store and found the bike section. I then found the exact shorts that I was after and took them to the counter. "Excuse me, can you check the price on these please?" I said "Yep" replied the spotty teenager, "they are £19.99" Playing naivety to the behemoth of shopping experiences that is the Internet...."But they are £12.99 on your website" "Well you could have them delivered from the website" "But I am never in to receive the item" "Ok, you can have them reserved for in-store collection" I said, "Ok can you give me 5 minutes" Sure, "Ill put these shorts aside for you"

I moved to the side of the counter and got out my Smartphone. I navigated to the Halfords website, found the item and was able to reserve them for collection, without paying anything, at my local store, which was conveniently where i was!!! I then went back to the counter and said smugly "Hello, I have reserved a pair of shorts for collection, do you have them set aside for me" "Sure they are right here!" He took some details, and presumably checked an email confirming the reservation, with a discount code. No only did the shorts go through at the reduced price but a further 25% was taken off and I managed to unbelievably pay just £10.39!!! So for 5 minutes work I basically paid just about 1/2 price.

From what I can see, Halfords have not realised this would be possible to do in store with a Smartphone for many items. The staff member did not question or refuse the transaction (he was more interested in assembling bikes). The thing is these stores need to compete with the internet to some degree or at least provide a means to encourage people to visit the store (foot-fall) especially at 7pm on a weeknight. Whilst at the store they then hope that I would buy something else as an impulse purchase. Most of the prices of items are at a super-inflated price in store and so hope to take advantage of people that have already made the trip to the store, which is a sign that those customers are almost guaranteed to make a purchase. However if you are keen to get a discount very easily you can repeat the steps above whilst being able to check the produce in store before payment is taken.

China's bubble about to burst?

"THINK back to when you were a child. You blew a bubble, it grew and eventually it burst. That’s how some of my former colleagues in Hong Kong are feeling about China’s prospects at the moment. There has been very little economic news to get excited about over the past two weeks. Britain is officially back in recession, Spain is on the brink of disaster, and a shrinking manufacturing sector and slowing growth in China are making economists I know ever so twitchy. During a visit to some of my old haunts from the 1990s, I was astonished to find that the shop where I used to buy newspapers (and the occasional cigar) now sold Dior and Fendi. “China’s going to hell in a handbag shop,” quipped one bearish friend." quote from twitter #cityinsider

Royal Mail still hanging on in there?

I've recently started looking more closely at the activities I do at work, to identify patterns of similarity and streamline repetitive tasks. I try to implement some Japanese methodologies such as Total Quality Management (TQM), the 5s and root cause analysis. Above all else I try to learn from my mistakes at a faster rate, this is one of human's greatest talents compared to Neanderthal chimps. One thing I find myself doing almost on a regular business and I will try hard to refrain my blog becoming a rant. When returning home from work I find more post for other people than there is for me. I’m sure its fairly typical of living in a rental property but is frustrating. I use to right neatly on the front of the envelopes, "Return to sender, not know at this address" and stick it back in the post box. Now I just write "RTS - NKATA" sod it! But what happens to that persons new credit card and bank details that they care about less than I do. The return address is on the reverse and I presume it is sent back to the sender. I question whether it is possible for the Royal Mail to process returned mail to a greater level of detail and certainly record the failed recipients address, as well as the return senders address. If this were to happen over a period of weeks a database can be accessed where it can be assumed the recipient really does not live at that address. This would certainly solve my repeated attempts to flush out all mail with no recipient. In the interest of a balanced argument I suggest that the Royal Mail would say they have a duty of care to deliver the mail in which they have been trusted to deliver. But is is possible they could feedback to the sender a history of undeliverable mail. Its also possible that the Royal Mail gets paid twice, once for delivering the mail and the second time, charging a fee for returning the mail. If the sender has an inability to get hold of their customer by another method and stop sending mail, is of no concern to the Royal Mail. In fact it is possible to suggest that Royal Mail benefits from this inefficiency. Of course the Royal Mail also provide their own redirection service for a handsome fee, but does not catch all. Until the Royal Mail develop, evolve and stop selling profitable parts of their business they may never improve from their position now. They may also not deteriorate any further???