Work From Anywhere (guest blog)
A week ago I spent a day working in a great workspace in Whitechapel courtesy of the Microsoft SMB Team. For all of last week (12th - 16th Jan 2015) they were offering the opportunity of a free desk along with access to wifi, printing facilities, free workshops, tea, coffee and some company whilst working away. The facilities at the Central Working Club including the Foxcraft and Ginger Cafe were excellent. In the afternoon there was a great session from Mark Johnson on Modern Marketing. Mark is the Head of Digital for Microsoft UK and started out by sharing his views on modern marketing and that Marketing has to deliver value for the customer before you can even think about selling something. He shared the example of Slims Kitchen in Belfast who operate restaurants and a delivery service. They give away recipes in their marketing which may sound counter intuitive when they sell food, but it works in creating inbound interest much more effectively than the old fashioned outbound advertising and shouting for attention.
One of the key benefits of the day was spending time with the team from Microsoft and the other businesses taking advantage of the facilities. At the Future Decoded Event in London last year the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, talked about Microsoft reinventing productivity for the mobile-first and cloud-first world so last week was a great opportunity to see that in action from the Microsoft folks. They gave some great demonstrations on using different apps and devices.
Some of the other businesses there were using some of these and other technologies, but some of the benefits that large enterprises are gaining from technology are still out of reach for many smaller and midsize businesses. It is this market that we aim at with our enterprise level communication tools for small and midsized business.
I am used to working anywhere and equipped for it so I was able to make use of the wifi last week to make and receive phone calls using voice enabled Microsoft Lync on my laptop via my own company network. I even organised and took part in a conference call with a new potential customer and colleagues in Sweden and Finland.
If you would like to pick my brains about mobility and working anywhere then get in touch with me, Dave Clarke, via this link and I'll be in touch.