October saw leading Aylesbury based IT specialist, Active Technology, win three awards from the prestigious Aylesbury Business Excellence Awards (ABEA) 2003.
After a somewhat efficient entry into the awards, all the staff members at Active were delighted with the news late September that the company had been nominated in three out of ten categories.
As the weeks followed the individual award sponsors visited the premises of Active Technology to chat with the staff informally about various aspects of their jobs. Photographs were taken for the press and the team waited patiently looking forward to a splendid black tie award ceremony in the weeks to come.
On Wednesday, October 29th 2003, a grand ceremony took place in Aylesbury Civic Centre; The 7th Annual Aylesbury Business Excellence Awards. Master of Ceremonies, Dez Kay, opened the event and everyone tucked in to a hearty meal. Sponsoring companies then announced their respective awards and excitement mounted among the Active staff.
The first award of the evening went to Active Technology, the Team of the Year, sponsored by Friars Square Shopping Centre, and they praised:
“It is the passion of this team that really shines through. They share a common set of goals and values, and a true belief in achieving the best for the benefit of all. They concentrate on a team approach to all aspects of the business and all team members offer contributions and take ownership of their thoughts and ideas. The dynamics of the team help to find strengths and weaknesses in new propositions. They have a unique and pro-active approach to maintaining the very high level of team spirit and motivation including role-play, dream boards and their own concept called ‘The Active Way.’ The founder of the company is really inspirational and this feeds its way throughout the whole team. Well done to you all.”
The jubilant team were welcomed on to the stage to collect their award and be photographed with World Champion Snooker player, Steve Davis.
The team were then overwhelmed as the second award of the night went again to Active Technology, for its Performance Through People, sponsored by the Learning Skills Council, who commended:
“We were impressed by their clever sense of direction and focus on staff to ensure that the company objectives are being achieved. Their induction and training programmes, in particular, are exemplary as is the way the company places staff at the centre of its business in order to achieve business success.”
And in its final nomination, Active Technology came runner up in Company of the Year award, sponsored by Parrott & Coales, who wrote:
“Active Technology showed that the ability to identify changes in the IT market place can lead to a growing and thriving business. Focusing on your key strengths and looking after your customers and employees makes Active Technology a business which clearly has a bright future.”
The staff were overjoyed by their achievement and they celebrated as the evening’s partying continued into the early hours with celebrity guest speaker, Steve Davis and some entertainment from DJ Phil Gomm.
10 November, 2003 written by James Weston
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In its first month, 20 Schools have already enrolled onto Active Technology’s Computers for Schools Initiative, with one local school already being just points away from its first free state-of-the-art computer.
Bell Lane Combined School & Nursery in Little Chalfont looks like it will be the first school to receive its free computing equipment, as the school is just a few points away from the total since lease purchasing several A2 Interactive Smart Boards from Active.
Active’s initiative donates computing equipment to schools on the back of IT purchases from the school itself or those of the pupil’s parents. Bell Lane, which only has 120 pupils, decided to buy the boards itself to quickly take advantage of the free IT equipment.
Comments Bell Lane Head Teacher, Carol Stewart: “This scheme is much more focused than some of the national campaigns and also has very reachable targets. We are always looking to introduce more IT solutions into the school as it enhances learning so much for the children.”
Active Technology Director, Debbie Hamer, who is in charge of the scheme says: “We only have a few schools left to enrol from our initial test sample of 25 and this successful uptake means that we will be rolling out the initiative to all 265 schools in the area, later in the year.”
For more information on the scheme which roughly equates to one free computer for every ten purchased, contact Debbie Hamer at Active Technology on (01296) 398 561.
This year Active Technology celebrates 10 years of providing IT service, support and hardware to local businesses, organisations and consumers.
1 October, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
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Aylesbury based IT company, Active Technology has launched a new IT service programme which will empower small businesses with what will effectively be, their own IT departments.
The scheme will allow a limited number of companies to sign up to a service contract with Active, which will cover all of the day to day maintenance of their IT resource.
Companies that enquire quickly enough will have their own engineer who will visit each week to ensure that everything is maintained and running correctly. As well as keeping IT systems running, the engineer will also carry out PC upgrades, deal with any networking issues, install any software and ensure that all machines are continually protected from viruses such as the recent ‘Sobig’ epidemic.
Active Technology has made provision for 25 companies to join the scheme, and these will be allotted on a first come/first served basis to the first companies to enquire.
Darran Hamer, Active Technology’s Founder, says of the scheme:
“Many small firms pay huge sums of money, several times a year for IT specialists to come out and fix relatively small problems with computers.”
“Our scheme will deal with any small problems as and when they happen, and the regular maintenance and correct installation of software will help companies to avoid the larger IT problems that often cause them to grind to a halt.”
Active’s new service package is available for less than £40 per week and any companies who are interested in finding out more can contact Debbie Hamer at Active Technology on (01296) 398 561.
3 September, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
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A new worm virus commonly referred to as MSBlast is spreading rapidly around the world by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows NT / 2000 / XP systems. Security experts predict that the spread will accelerate when hackers refine its code - there have been two new variants discovered at the time of writing this report.
Also known as Lovsan, the worm infiltrates systems through a hole left open in Windows instructing it to download and run the MSBLAST.EXE file (unlike most worms which spread via e-mail). The most common symptom noticed is the constant crashing and rebooting of the machine it has infected. This all demonstrates to computer administrators that they need to patch their systems regularly, security experts said on Monday.
By mid-afternoon on Monday 11th August, the worm had infected at least 7,000 computers in a matter of hours, according to data provided by security company Symantec.
Locally, several of Active's clients have already been affected and
it looks like attacks are on the increase. Our Support Team is working
fast and furious to have our Maintenance Clients up and running as
quickly as possible. All clients holding
and/or a
Preventative Support package can rest assured that Active
Technology has acted
proactively and already remotely accessed their servers to install the
latest patch issued by Microsoft to prevent infection.
Whether you're an existing client of Active or a company in or around Aylesbury Vale - in the event that your computer starts acting strangely, call us immediately so that we can put you in the queue for servicing. Non-support customers will be logged, however we're predicting a backlog so unusually you may have to wait around 4 days for attention!
14 August, 2003 written by James Weston
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The Active Team celebrate 10 years!
Leading Aylesbury based IT specialist, Active Technology has celebrated its 10th birthday with a prestigious black tie event for its clients and suppliers, which also included an ‘Oscar’ style awards ceremony for the winners of its recent ‘Gobbledegook Competition’.
Over 60 guests from the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire regions
enjoyed an evening of champagne, fine foods and entertainment, held in
the converted church premises of the
TomorrowClub in Bierton.
Eagle trophies, in keeping with Active’s logo, were presented by founder Darran Hamer, to the four Gobbledegook competition winners who provided the most laughable examples of IT technobabble. This competition was launched earlier this year to find and expose the most absurdly technical language which is often used to confuse customers and keep them in the dark about their own IT systems.
The overall winner of the evening, with the accolade of finding the finest example of the “Most Complete and Utter Gobbledegook” was Linda Nicholls of Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Rural Transport Partnership. Her entry read:
“An unhandled exception of type 'System.Runtime. InteropServices.COMException' occured in mscorlib.dll. Additional information: Member not found.”
For which Active Technology provided the following ‘tongue in cheek’ translation: “The person sitting next to you just deleted your entire database. Furthermore, your last backup was 2 and a half years ago!”
The winners of the other three award categories were:
Most Verbally Challenging – won by James Lawler of Digital Alchemist Consulting Services Limited.
Most Nonsensical – won by Liz Baker of Buckinghamshire Community Action.
Most Inappropriate but We'll Tell You Anyway – won by Graham Bartlett of Lecter Associates Limited.
Active’s founder and Technical Director, Darran Hamer gave a warming speech in which he described how he first envisaged Active Technology at the age of 16, and how the company’s 10th birthday marked the anniversary of its first sale.
He went on to discuss how Active must continually evolve to enable it to stay abreast of and respond to, new technologies and client needs in areas such as web based information and wireless networks. He also touched upon the major challenge faced by any IT company - that of providing the highest levels of security for the technical solutions that they provide for clients – ensuring that hackers and viruses are kept at bay.
Says Darran: “The evening was a great success, not only did we get the chance to give our heartfelt thanks our clients and suppliers, but we also delivered a message on the importance of speaking plain English to clients, even when discussing the most technical issues.”
“It was a nice opportunity to reflect on ten successful years and fully introduce our talented team that will ensure that the next ten years are twice as successful.”
To see the winning entries in their entirety, visit the Active's Talking You Language mini-site for the Gobbledegook Awards winners.
30 June, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
Appearances:
Bucks Herald, In Business supplement - 30 July 2003
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As an employer in the IT industry, I am continually impressed by the technical skill levels of most of the graduates that I meet but also equally appalled by their apparent lack of people skills!
To make it in today's IT industry, it is often not enough to simply be a good programmer or technician, as many of the jobs on offer require graduates to deal with people at least as well as they deal with computers.
Many students on IT courses can almost bypass any aspect of the more
socially interactive arts and business courses, in favour of many hours
spent working alone in front of a VDU. As a result of this, they pick up
far fewer of the basic people skills required for the IT service
industry.
Universities are doing very little to address this problem with IT courses only preparing students to be technically competent and ignoring the essential people skills that they will require to cope in the working environment.
Whilst at University, IT undergraduates should be learning 'soft skills' such as how to deal with difficult customers and how to ask the right questions to get quickly to the route of a customer's problems. If universities aren't providing this training, then it is down to the students themselves to resolve the problem.
The irony of this skills shortage is that the required skills are not difficult to track down. Local Business Links offer free consultations to students looking to learn new skills, with some actually holding free, ad hock seminars on communication skills in business. Learndirect also offer a number of free online courses in this area, but the best way by far to learn these skills is to actually spend some work experience or work shadowing time with a real business that will be dealing with customers all the time.
When we recruit, our first stage is to obviously look for the right technical skills, but even the most highly skilled person would not be offered a job unless they also had the right communication skills.
Any service provider's business depends on its ability to communicate with customers and understand their needs, and any person who could not be called upon to deal with a customer inquiry wouldn't really fit into our structure.
There will be graduates reading this who will still assume that they don't need people skills as they will be working in-house or in a job that involves nothing but programming. This will be the case for those 5% of graduates who are so talented and indispensable that they will be left alone for solid programming – but no so for the 95% of graduates who will have to deal with people as well as computers every single day. This is especially the case in-house as IT departments act as support teams for the company and therefore perhaps deal with more enquiries per day than external IT suppliers.
The days of IT arrogance are well and truly over and although people with the right skills are still in demand, they are realising that communication skills are as important as programming skills.
Active is renowned for its insistence on the use of plain English when dealing with customers – so much so that it is currently running a competition to find the worst example of misleading, IT Gobbledegook that exists in the UK.
11 June, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
Appearances:
Guardian (Rise section) - 14 June 2003
Guardian Unlimited (Rise section):
Viewpoint: People skills essential in world of IT - 14 June 2003
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Aylesbury based IT company, Active Technology has launched a new initiative which will help to provide free computer equipment for schools.
All parents buying selected computing equipment from Active Technology will build up points with their purchases, which their children's school will then be able to trade in for computing equipment.
The Initiative, which roughly equates to one free computer for every ten purchased, has so far been introduced to a test number of 25 schools in the Aylesbury district. Active Technology will then roll out the scheme to all of the 265 schools in the area.
Active Technology's Schools' Projects Co-ordinator, Debbie Hamer, comments: “There are a lot of computers for schools schemes out there, but the majority of them have unfeasible targets, meaning that the parents remain unmotivated to get involved with the programme and the schools see very little return in IT equipment.”
“This Initiative has realistic targets and it will reap more rewards as it involves all parents, from those buying in bulk for their businesses to those just buying a new scanner for the home.”
“The initiative makes sense to our company on a business level, but it is also our way of saying thank you to a region that has helped Active Technology to become one of the area's leading IT companies.”
Active Technology's 'Computers for Schools Initiative' is run through the administration of schools, so any parents who would like to get involved must first ensure that the scheme has been established at their child's school.
For more information on the scheme, contact Debbie Hamer at Active Technology on (01296) 398561.
This year Active Technology celebrates 10 years of providing IT service, support and hardware to local businesses, organisations and consumers.
23 May, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
Appearances:
Bucks Herald, In Business supplement - 25 June 2003
Aylesbury In Business - Issue 4, June 2003
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Aylesbury based IT specialists, Active Technology are so fed up with IT firms blinding businesses with computing gobbledegook that they have decided to stage a hunt for the worst examples!
To be held from March onwards, Active are inviting all business people in the region to send in the worst examples of gobbledegook, technobabble or computer speak that they have encountered, be this written in brochures or told to them verbally.
The winning example will be announced at a special event later this year, and the supplier of the winning gobbledegook will be presented with champagne.
There is a serious issue behind the competition, as Darran Hamer, Active Technology’s Technical Director explains: “In today’s business environment, there are cowboy operators, exploiting business’ lack of understanding of computers or anything IT related. This is breeding a distrust of genuine companies in this sector.”
“IT can be a very expensive area for businesses, and the truth is that when specifying new PCs or even complete computer networks, many business people are completely in the dark, regarding what they actually need. This lack of knowledge is commonly exploited by so called “experts”, who will attempt to sell businesses more equipment than they actually need to do the job properly, or sometimes cover up their own lack of knowledge with confusing terminology.
“By holding this competition, we will help to highlight the types of incidents that business people will encounter at the hands of the ‘IT Cowboys’ and make them aware that any professional company should be able to speak to them in plain English when discussing IT products and solutions.”
Despite his search for gobbledegook, Darran Hamer is working with manufacturers and other computer industry specialists to produce a ‘Plain English’ guide to all aspects of his computer company and the service that it provides.
All gobbledegook quotes should be entered through our special mini-site at www.activetechnology.co.uk/talkingyourlanguage
1 March, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
Appearances:
Business Voice - May 2003
AccountingWEB: IT company launches technobabble competition - 11
April 2003
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Aylesbury based IT specialists, Active Technology, have donated a personal computer worth over £1500 to the children and young adults of the Thomley Activity Centre.
The Centre, which provides recreational and educational facilities to young people with special needs throughout Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, intends for the PC to form the centre of its new ICT (Information Communication Technology) computer suite.
Decked out with the latest Windows XP operating system, state-of-the-art processor and monitor, the computer will run software which has been especially designed for the use of people with special needs.
Andrew Grimley, curriculum co-ordinator at Thomley Activity Centre says of the donation: “Our ICT room will not only be used by children and young adults visiting from all over the region but also by groups from special schools in the surrounding counties.”
“We are most grateful to the team at Active Technology for helping the ICT room to become a real, working facility.”
Comments Darran Hamer, Founder of Active Technology: “We received a letter from the Centre, asking us whether or not we could help them and we felt that it would be a good project for us to get involved in, as our expertise would really help them to get the PC that they required.”
“At Active Technology we design and construct our own computers, using the highest specification components, so rather than supplying a computer that roughly matched the Centre's requirements, we designed and built one to 'exactly' match what they wanted!”
“It is very important to us to take an active role in helping local community projects, and we would encourage other companies to give their products, time and expertise to charities as it can often be much more rewarding this way for both groups.”
The Thomley Activity Centre is a registered charity and its new ICT Room, which is located at its Worminghall premises, is expected to be in use from Easter 2003. Anyone who would like to know more about how to support the work of the Thomley Hall Centre can contact them on 01844 338380.
1 February, 2003 written by Trevor Palmer (Public Relations Manager, Rock Kitchen Harris)
Appearances:
Bucks Herald
Thame Gazette
Mix 96 News
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