Gordon Hudson: Scottish Business Professional

Quote of the Day - Steve Purdham of We7

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 07:30:00 +0000

"Nobody has yet made a business [of this type] that will generate cash. But I don't think we're far away from that. Eventually somebody did climb Everest. Eventually somebody did run the four-minute mile. Eventually somebody will start making money out of digital music." (Steve Purdham, CEO We7)

Full article here.

Rejuvenating this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:10:00 +0000

Those in the know will already be aware that I earn (a small) part of my living from blogging over at www.ecalpemos.org, a blog that has no particular theme, but for some reason has individual articles that do well enough in Google search results to generate reasonable amounts of traffic and Adsense revenue.

The success of my main blog has meant that this blog - gordonhudson.com - which was meant to reflect my business and professional interests has failed to come to very much. Well, this is hopefully going to change. A couple of events have caused me to come out of my shell a bit:

I have sold my holdings in Ultraspeed which has released me from any confidentiality or non compete clauses in the contract enforced when I sold them Hostroute.com Ltd in 2008. The original clauses had long since expired anyway, but I still felt a moral obligation not to advise or do work for any competitors while I had money tied up in the business. Now that I don't I feel much happier commenting on and being involved in Internet industry issues.
I am taking part in a Common Purpose course and it has been suggested that participants blog about issues raised during it (subject to Chatham House rules).

To start the process I am going to start posting business and civic society material over here and keep my other blog for my musical activities and more controversial material.

Is email dead?

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:56:00 +0000

An interesting article from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/business-15856116

Lee Bryant is co-founder of Headshift, the world's biggest social business consultancy. He believes email's dominance over business communications is coming to an end.
"When email was first developed it was an excellent point-to-point communication tool when nothing else existed," says Mr Bryant.
"I think we've reached the stage where email as means of communicating is overloaded. I think we will see what happens on email today transitioning towards various kinds of both internal and consumer facing social tools."

The line in bold is the main issue that I currently see with email. In my work we have members who definitely want to receive newsletters by email but never read them (we closely track this to monitor our communication effectiveness).

People feel that their in-boxes have become overloaded. The email inbox has become the to-do list that anybody can add to. Google have addressed this through their priority inbox feature in Gmail, but it only works via their web interface and it does not seem to learn what should be given priority. Using a system like this also means accepting that not every email will be replied to. Having returned from a few days away to 130 emails at work I found that about 30 were internal practical issues that could be deleted as they had passed; about 50 were forwarded information from people and the other 50 were people looking for decisions from me or to arrange meetings. If the 50 people passing me information had not got into a priority inbox then I might have not responded to them or actioned what needed done. One of them was about funding for a new project and it would have been very bad form to not have acted on the copied in email.

The issue of spam seems to be lessening as time goes on. I have had the same personal email address for 13 years and I get about 230 spams a month filtered out by gmail (I forward my email from my web hosts servers to a gmail account so it synchronises with my android phone and iPad). I get about one spam per week hitting my inbox. Three years ago i was getting 1200 spams filtered out per month and was struggling to keep on top of it all. However, not everyone is as savvy at spam filtering and I know many people who are overwhelmed with spam. Moving to a closed system like Facebook, where you only receive emails from known friends solves this problem, but means that outsiders can't contact you. Previous attempts at applying this to email accounts has meant people not being contactable at all even when they have written their email address on a form as contact details.

I don't know what the answer to these email problems is, but the current system is not working adequately as a communication tool.

Update 7th December 2011

An article on a similar them from the BBC
Thierry Breton caused a sensation last week when he told an interviewer that he planned to ban internal email at the information technology services giant, Atos.

I am reminded of the saying that "the email inbox is the to-do list that anyone can add to".

The Apple of Web Hosting

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:09:00 +0000

Sitting here typing on my iPad I am forcefully made aware of what makes Apple products so successful - they work as expected and provide a great user experience. This is primarily because, unlike windows, Apple are able to control the hardware platform and ensure that all the software will run on it. They also put a lot of work into the user interfaces - making them simple to use, intuitive (usually) and replicating the same style across different devices. This got me thinking about why there is no web hosting service that achieves these objectives. I think one of the reasons is that, like Microsoft, web hosts can't control what software is being run on their platform. If they did there would be a huge fall out from customers. In fact, in the world of shared web hosting customers really want the same privileges as a root user without having to be concerned about the effects their activities have on other customers. Then there is the issue of user interfaces - usually designed by engineers or developers and rarely simple to follow.

Here is what I think would need to happen in order for a web hosting service to give the same end user experience as an apple product:

- Each user needs to be on a virtual machine so they can't affect any other customers access to the system.
- This needs to be cloud based with continuous back up.
- The host needs to supply and update all the scripts permitted on the system - possibly charging for each one in the way apps are charged for on ios devices.
- The user interfaces need to be stripped down to a very simple front end. I had some experience of doing this with cPanel and it worked quite well at reducing customer support enquiries.
- Faults need to be fixed proactively so that users rarely see them.

At the same time customers will need to become used to paying a bit more for hosting. I don't think it's possible to run a viable service like this for less than £10 a month, £15 if it involves multiple domains.

If somebody did set up such a service and aimed it at people looking for reliable simple hosting I think it could make money. Whether it would ever get enough traction to become the Apple of web hosting is another question entirely.

SCVO Increasing Membership fees

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 14:18:00 +0000

I see that the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations is proposing to increase its membership fees from between 8 and 20%. There is still a free membership for organisations with a turnover of less than £25,000. Other fees will range from £135 to £600 per year. This needs to be decided by the AGM on 23rd November.

An organisation with a turnover of under £50,000 and one employee will typically pay £135. An organisation with a turnover of more than £5 million will pay £600. This hardly seems a fair relationship of fees to size. Presumably SCVO doesn't want to risk bigger players leaving if their fees are proportionate with size. Also, when the average pay increase this year in the voluntary sector has been 0% and grants are frozen or being removed an increase in fees is somewhat shocking.

In my view they should be restricting increases to no more than the rate of inflation, or better still no more than the average increase in statutory sector grants and pay awards. Then they should start a five year fees escalator with larger organisations gradually paying fees proportionate to their size.

[Please file under: "friends, how not to make them or influence people".]

Should you send mass mailing appeals to trusts?

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 06:35:00 +0000

This is a question that gets asked rather a lot by people new to fundraising.

The perceived wisdom is:
Don't do it. Tailor all the applications seperately.

The real world situation is:
You will probably find that when you start off you are tailoring each one till you get to five or six then you will find that number seven or eight are actually the same as number one or three i.e. for 100 applications you will probably have less than ten variations. This means the process speeds up as you go through them. In fact you can group them together into ones that are very similar.

Having said this, I never send them out en masse. I do a few a day and post them out as they are done. I also personalise them slightly with PS's of highly relevant or connected issues, and I always top and tail with a fountain pen.

I just think that the idea that you would ever do 100 completely different applications because there were 100 trusts to apply to for the same project is a bit misleading. I don't think anybody would write fresh applications to each of them.

In my experience as a fundraiser appeals to smaller trusts brought in about 10% of my fundraising target so it was worthwhile, buit not worth spending any more than 10% of my time on.

The changing use of the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 07:43:00 +0000

According to the latest Google Benchmarking report, people's usage of web sites has reduced slightly over the past year:

Click on image for larger version.

Am I reading this correctly? It appears that The depth of visits to web sites is decreasing, as is the time spent on any one page.

News about Hostroute

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:52:00 +0000

So the rumour is confirmed. My "baby" has been sold on:

UK hosting provider Paragon Internet Group Limited is delighted to announce its acquisition of the well-respected hosting provider, Hostroute. Founded in 1998, Hostroute has been a name synonymous with quality for over a decade and provides thousands of clients with excellent shared hosting and domain registration services through its website, Hostroute.com. http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=214346

For those who don't know, I founded the business in 2000 before selling it to Ultraspeed UK Ltd in 2007. It was a highly profitable business with no debts and I am very proud of what I achieved in those seven years.

ACOSVO

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:29:00 +0000

I am now a member of ACOSVO - the Association of Chief Officers of Scottish Voluntary Organisations.

Change of job

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 10:16:00 +0000

I have recently been appointed as manager of Eco-Congregation Scotland with the task of developing the organisation and making sure it meets its targets. The contract is until March 2012.

My mobile number and personal email remains the same.

Looking for new opportunities

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 11:21:00 +0000

I am considering a possible change of job so if anyone has any suggestions do let me know.

The obvious types of work for me are ISP, Internet or voluntary sector management, but at the moment finding something interesting is more important regardless of what it is.

The difficulty of progressing a career in fundraising.

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 07:57:00 +0000

An interesting letter in Third Sector magazine published 17th August 2010 pointing out that the recently advertised post of Chief Executive's at the Institute of Fundraising does not mention fundraising experience as necessary for the role. Its an interesting point, but there is a bit more to it which I would like to tease out.

Firstly, if you look at the current role of Chief Executive and the job description its clear that the current incumbent did not have those skills or experience when he was first appointed. The role has grown with him and it has become more about quasi regulation and lobbying while less about certification and professional development (that process already being well developed). Secondly, very few airlines have a chief executive who can fly a plane. That may be a moot point, but when I was in business I had no direct experience of the work done by our staff. I just made sure I employed people who did and that seemed to work quite well.

This reminds me of my early days in fundraising where it was almost the de facto standard that the head of fundraising would be an ex military officer with no experience of actually raising money. I think this was the result of lots of redundancies in the army and the fact that trustees were often ex military themselves, knew that officers would be good at taking instruction, good at issuing orders, and would not be averse to "kicking ass", as our American cousins would say. Its still the case that quite a number of fundraising directors in large charities have come from outside the sector, but have experience of managing and motivating large staff teams.

I think the silent issue raised by the letter in Third Sector, and something that lurks in the back of all fundraisers minds, is that there does appear to be a career glass ceiling beyond which we cannot aspire. With so many people from outside fundraising getting the top jobs (or in the alumni fundraising world so many Americans apparently getting them) the statistical likelihood of getting beyond middle management is slim. If you are not willing to relocate to London as a middle grade fundraiser and get involved in a lot of networking there, then the chances of senior promotion have to be close to zero.

Sorry this is not more cheery, but we are all standing in a career landscape the foothills of which most of us are never likely to progress beyond. We just need to accept that this is the way things are, and that the Chief Executive's role at the Institute is just another mountain near the horizon which we can only gaze on longingly.

Registering an Internet domain name for a charity.

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:31:00 +0000

Having worked in the Internet industry as a domain name registrar I am always surprised by how many charities had quite un-memorable web site addresses. Also how many smaller organisations have no web presence at all. I am going to write a few articles which will cover these issues, but the first thing I would like to address is the choice of domain name. The cost of registering one of these is usually less than £20 for a 2 year period and it can be considerably less.

Which extension?
According to research carried out by Nominet (the central registry for most domains ending in .uk) British consumers are more likely to trust a web site that has an address ending in .uk. Its safe to assume that charity supports will behave similarly to consumers so charities registered in the UK should normally choose a domain name ending in .org.uk rather than the international extension .org. Another advantage of this is that there are fewer .org.uk domain names registered so it is more likely that you will find your first choice of name. And as I know you are thinking this, the reason this web site ends in .com is that I have a history of doing business in the USA and .com makes sense for international commercial work.

Chicken or egg?
Which came first, the organisation name or the domain name? If it is a new charity I would recommend developing the charities name and brand identity while keeping an eye on available domain names. if you can choose a memorable name and obtain the exact matching .org.uk domain name then this is the ideal outcome. If your organisation already exists then you need to think about whether to use the organisations full name, some contraction of it, or some unrelated terms. My recommendation would be for the full name if it is short enough to be displayed on printed material. if it is very long then you could consider using the intials or a contraction, but if you choose a contraction please make sure it is a logical one.

Hyphen or not hyphen?
This web site is www.gordonhudson.com. It could easily have been www.gordon-hudson.com. It is considered by some experts that a domain name with hyphens between words will rank better in search results, but I have not found this to be the case. Search engines are mainly interested in content and links back to the site. Consumers also don't expect to type in hyphens so I would recommend not using them. However, you might want to protect your brand by registering the hyphenated version of the domain name and redirecting it to your main web site. The same might also go for misspellings. In my previous business about 5% of our web traffic came from mistypings of our web address. If the mistyped addresses were unregistered its possible they could have found us anyway as many web browsers will try to correct errors, but someone else might have bought the misspelled versions. This is a tricky area, and one where you need to weigh up the risks of protecting your brand against the costs. Large multinationals routinely buy up all product names under all domain extensions and all misspellings, but I can't see this being necessary for many charities.

Ownership, ownership!
In ten years in the domain registration business the biggest problem we had was web designers obtaining domain names on behalf of customers, but registering the domain in their name not their clients. At worst this can lead to lengthy legal action to recover the domain or even having to change the organisations email addresses and web address with the inevitable loss of profile and exposure that this brings. if you take one thing from this article let it be this: even if you are not planning to set up a web site in the near future secure your choice of domain name now and make sure it is registered in the charity's name at their registered address. The domain name can then be parked for use later on by any web designer you choose. The domain name of this site gordonhudson.com was registered in 2003 and parked until I decided to use it in 2010. if I had waited till 2010 its unlikely it would still have been available.

Finally
I will be writing articles on setting up simple web sites (like this one) with tips and useful information on making the most of the internet for fundraising and campaigning so please check back regularly.

If you need help securing a domain name I can help you find and register one then park it for you for later use. Please contact me for details.

Twibbon claim custom campaigns boost fundraising.

noreply@blogger.com (Gordon) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:36:00 +0000

Twibbon, the twitter awareness raising add-on claimed today that Charities can use their graphical ribbon to raise funds. In the example given the charity Dogs Trust raised £1,074 from a $99 campaign linking twitter users who took part back to the Dogs Trust donation page. Whilst this might be true, the charity had 1,800 Twitter users sign up to the campaign to achieve this result. This suggests that a smaller charity without the Dogs Trust's huge individual donor base might find it hard to get enough sign ups to make it viable. The Dogs Trust also would have staff costs associated with this campaign and its unclear of they have included this in their profit calculation.

Whilst Twibbon is a very good awareness raising tool, I am not convinced of its effectiveness as a way of raising money.