It was a creative place for me and whilst it was mid holidays and the majority of students were on vacation, I really got a sense that I was in a special place. I had a great summer and made some lifelong friends and although I considered moving there, I was fundamentally a musician and back then, wild horses would have not dragged me from my vocation.

I never realised just how important Palo Alto was going to be in the technical revolution that followed. With Stanford University on its doorstep too, the area is steeped in history in the same way people look upon Manchester as a central point for the Industrial Revolution, Palo Alto and Silicon Valley have to carry similar weight.

Since then we’ve seen meteoric rises from a number of the worlds largest technical giants, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, who house their head offices there.

One of the most recent of the dominant players is Facebook who moved to Palo Alto in 2003. They have had an interesting rise to fame and good fortune, although the fortune is a little more recent.

With traffic volumes exceeding Google, Facebook has more than 830 million users, and as a result has to be the world’s most high profile website.

In recent years it has entered everyones homes and hearts, linking families, businesses, long lost relatives, school mates, it has done the impossible. It is doing the unimaginable. It crosses borders as easily as water and it knows no boundaries. There is no culture that has rejected it. It works in every language. Fundamentally it feeds the needs of all humans, whatever creed or continent.

The billion dollar question is how far can it go?

There is no point trying to work out how Mark Zuckerberg created such a masterpiece as I doubt he really knows. There was evidently a gap in our social lives that none of us knew about and Facebook filled it. What Zuckerberg has done extraordinarily well is exploit that gap and give us exactly what was needed.

So with talks of the Facebook IPO, is it worth the $100 billion that they are hoping to raise? It sounds like a lot of money and with economies all over the world facing tougher times around the corner, it seems crazy that a website that allows us to communicate with each other can be worth so much.

Yet, if you put it into perspective, $100 billion is only 27 times the annual revenue of $3.71billion, when Apple went public in 1980 it was valued at $1.19 billion 25 times its earnings. It is moderate in comparison to Googles who went for 218 times earning back in 2004. Yet Google delivered and in the last 8 years changed the face of advertising. Facebook would have to be the world’s first $700 billion dollar company to replicate Google’s rise.

When you consider Facebook grew 88% last year, it is a tempting gamble, yet a great many brokers are warning against investing in the rising giant. Personally I can see it going for a great deal more than 27 times even though the market currently dictates around 12 times. There is an emotional attachment that people have with the site and that sometimes carries a great deal of weight, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial entering is particularly high.

If you scrape away all the hype though and compare it to Apple who grew its profit 85% to $25.92 billion, Apple trades at a modest 13 times its price to earnings.

If you apply the Facebook multiple, UKFast would be valued at almost $1.0 billion.  ($939 million to be exact.)

Maybe I should have stayed in Palo Alto after all, especially when you apply the Google multiple, UKFast would be worth $7.5838 billion. Now even my wife couldn’t spend that much.

Whatever the outcome, you have to hand it to Zuckerberg, he’s done well. And inspite of a great many people all professing to have either come up with the idea or influenced it, he has hung on to the lions share getting credible people in around him who have track records in designing large scale corporates, enabling him to remain creative.

This is the thing I admire the most in any business. Its the first thing that suffers usually. Demands on the entrepreneur dictate new pressures and larger responsibilities as businesses sky rocket, so much so they often suck out the life and fun of most founders. Yet in spite of this and some pretty stupid gaffs, Zuckerberg enters the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame as one of the youngest internet billionaires.

On the subject of gaffs Zuckerberg paid David Chloe a graffiti artist who decorated a wall of his first office in Palo Alto offering him shares instead of a few thousand dollars. Those shares are now worth an estimated $200,000,000.

Ironically, the fee for the picture David Chloe painted is more than the cost of the building that they left. I am not sure I’d want to paper over that mistake.

So as Facebook move to Menlo Park Campus to their new HQ, I cant help thinking of the neglected piano. I do hope with all that money sloshing around someone takes the trouble to give her a tune and a tinkle every now and again.

The line up consisted of 3 politicians, myself and another business person. One of the big topics concentrated around university fees and whether or not the £9,000 is fair.

There seems to have been a massive cultural change over the last 10 or 15 years. Blair popularised the idea that everyone should go to University and whilst headline grabbing “right-on,” or “perfect world” scenario sounds great, it actually left the country in a bit of a pickle years later,  suddenly Great Britain was short of plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen.

No worries though we had a few million Lawyers coming through the system!

The way Tony Blair portrayed university made it such that if you didn’t go you were a second class citizen. Suddenly every parent in the country was busy competing with their next door neighbours and their family members to send all their children to Uni.

Is it any wonder so many families end up in debt. I was shocked to find out how expensive university is. This coupled with Student Loans are in my opinion big enough reasons NOT to go on to higher education, unless you are learning a specific trade for a particular vocation.

People forget, a university is a business. They generate money, pay salaries and report profits just like other businesses. But are our universities in danger of focussing too much on their own profits rather than the education they are providing?

There are other ways to learn, a university degree doesn’t give you an iron clad guarantee that you are going to be successful. Sir Gerald Kauffman the labour politician there mentioned a story of a girl who he’d known who’d gone on an apprentice scheme, ending up “carry a polythene bag walking up and down a train picking up rubbish.” Whether he meant to or not (and I am sure he did not) he spoke as if this person was a second class citizen as a result of her failing the scheme. Every job has merit and never underestimate a person by the clothes they wear or their vocation.

Its interesting when asked for a show of hands how many people wanted to go to university, everyone stretched for the ceiling but there was silence. I asked the question, what is it about University that you are looking forward to? Is it the freedom? Is it the fact that you get away from your parents and you have an abundance of parties?

Now I got a reaction. I got a unanimous resounding response.

Once I’d explained that you don’t have to go to University to have a blast. I had their attention. They had not considered this option.

I never went to university, I not only had my first 4 bedroom house at 19 years old, I also had an income greater than my mother who had been teaching for 20 years.

And all from just playing the piano and being resourceful.

I must have touched a nerve or said something that the kids related to because as  soon as we’d finished the 30 or so students all gathered round me to shake my hand.  It was an overwhelming moment as I realised that in amongst all the adversity and uncertainty, I somehow represented some sort of beacon of hope. I must have been the first bit of positivity they had seen in some time.

Talking with the kids, I could see passion tempered with an air of desperation of which way they should turn.

What sort of world are we creating for the next generation? We are so busy worrying about the now, the future is being overlooked.

John Moulton is the only one who put it in a simple enough way for me to understand. “For every £3 the government earns, it spends £4.”

It doesn’t matter if you hate the conservatives, the labour government set that ball rolling. And if you hate labour, there are a plethora of indiscretions the conservatives have made. Both parties are equal in their indifference and their desire to share the blame. The world is changing quicker than our political system can deal with.

Can you imagine a simple questionnaire going out, “Do we invade Iraq?”  and “Do we invade Syria?”

The people of Britain could answer that question very simply via the internet and there would be no need for the lies and time wasting debates that precede and follow.

This would have been an administrative impossibility a decade ago. Now it would be simple and you could have an answer back on a any question in hours.

Anyway its not going to happen. I can’t see politicians voting themselves out of the control they currently have. Something has to change though. The quality of the decisions being made and the management of the diminishing funds isn’t at a high enough level to propel us forward.

So it’s no wonder that the 6th formers are looking anxious.

What are the options?

Well whatever the economy, if you are wanting to set up a business, there is no right or wrong time. There were 2 of the 17 or 18 year olds, who told me they were already making money running their own little businesses. One a cake / confectioners, the other buying shrimp. (A bit random for Manchester – mind you if you can make money trading shrimp in Manchester, my money is on this kid being an entrepreneurial superstar.) Ironically, both these 2 young people told me they were being forced to go to university by parents who already run small businesses, yet they feel that their kids need qualifications to fall back on.

Crazy really. We dont look at qualifications when assessing candidates at UKFast. We look for great people and we don’t prejudice a person based on their ability to do well in an exam environment.

As my A level Music examiner said to me after I crucified Sonata in A, “If Mozart could have heard that, he’d have turned in his grave.”

"If Mozart could have heard that, he'd have turned in his grave!"

I failed my A level, and that same examiner ended up working for me a few years later. He often said, if he’d known what I was capable of on the piano, he’d have marked me very differently. But the system wasn’t and still isn’t built for the odd ones out.

It’s a good job I failed really, I think University would have been the death of me. It would have given me the confidence to write a CV and go for interviews. It was this lack of confidence in my ability to get a job that forced me to set up my own business. Ironic really, especially as you can set up a business without a single qualification. You just need the passion and the determination and a bit of belief. The rest will come as I am finding.

I got the impression these kids just wanted to be told that they could succeed, but no one tells them that. No one wants to build up their hopes for fear they might get knocked down. The economy doesn’t help, it discourages entrepreneurialism and whilst I don’t think this is a deliberate act, I do think it’s an inevitability from the constant doom and gloom that surrounds modern politics today.

Bloxham was selling posters in Afflecks Palace, Ferguson had just arrived at United, Tony Wilson was giving the Factory a whole new meaning. Tim Bacon was a barman in JWJohnsons, Oglesby was at Cheadle Hulme where only weeks earlier I’d been playing against him on the great British rugby fields.

Bruno was holding centre stage at the French Restaurant, at the then Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Midland Hotel. I was the cheeky piano player busking my way through life.

I had never been so poor, but I had certainty that something good was just over the horizon.

I learnt pretty early on that it was never going to be that simple. I took a hundred wrong roads and although I had the belief that “one day” I’d be successful, I had not found my direction.

That direction came after a trip to New York when I realised that the next era had to involve the internet. I was now 30. I had tried and failed in so many areas, and I knew my venture had to be the right one. Without time on my side there was no margin for error.

There is a saying that behind every successful man is a good woman.

That could not be truer than in my case. My chance meeting with my now wife Gail Jones was undoubtedly a great Manchester partnership. 200 yards away from where Rolls met Royce in Albert Square, we instantly hit it off.

Many people ask me, “how do you work with your wife?” I have never had an issue with it. We both focus on different areas of the business and whilst it is sometimes hard to switch off when you live with your business partner, I have had the benefit of a soundboard for every major decision that has ever been part of the shaping of UKFast.

Has the last 10 years been an easy ride? There is no such thing! Every week there is something new. That’s the nature of business and life in general. It’s full of ups and downs. 3 days ago I had the first of 2 operations on my thumb after trapping it in a door and slicing clean through the bone. I was told that they were going to amputate it the next morning.

Not the holiday on Necker I was hoping for. But after another operation and a great deal of determination, I am told now that it will survive! And whilst the holiday has been somewhat interrupted with emergency hospital trips, the kids are oblivious to any disruptions thanks to Danielle, PA come Mary Poppins.

So I’m sat here on Turtle Beach where my daughters found 2 baby turtles yesterday fighting for survival, less than 10 minutes from hatching. Today Charlie, one of the Necker team has just helped dig out another 72 other turtles that would not have made it. And what about my thumb? Well I am managing to type, and inspired by just hearing the news that I have been very kindly awarded the EN Entrepreneur of the Year title for 2011, I am reminded that around every corner is another exciting challenge and the only pain you feel gives you a bench mark to truly appreciate the great moments in our lives.

I know my children will never forget today and the freeing of what seems like hundreds of turtles as they swim for safety around the girls ankles. I will never forget this day for very different reasons.

I haven’t won many things in my life and its typical that I am not there to celebrate with my colleagues and friends without whom I’d be average at best. However to be awarded this is just one of those moments in my life where I stopped, took a sharp intake of breath, filled my lungs and had to brace myself.

I am honoured to accept such a title. Do I deserve it? Not in a month of Sundays.  What does it mean to me now? If I thought there was any let up on the road ahead, I was mistaken. I now have an added responsibility to live up to all those kind people who have belief in me. Thank you I am truly honoured.

It seems doubly special that I find out on Necker Island, home of a great inspiration, friend and in my opinion Britain’s greatest living Entrepreneur.

If you don’t mind I have some turtles to attend to.

Lawrence Jones holding baby turtle on Necker Island

Even to a man considered by Forbes as 13th most powerful man in the world as recently as 2010. It looks as though Murdoch’s luck is running out. And the “unlucky for some”  placing will be difficult to hold on to, with people queuing up to enact revenge.

One of the problems Murdoch faces, is his empire in the UK holds people accountable irrespective of whether you are rich, powerful or popular. He was one of the untouchables. With his TV channels and Newspaper coverage he is a powerhouse, a man who set standards and invariably changed the world.

But then along came the Internet.

I got some friendly stick last year at a round-table discussion held at UKFast’s offices in City Tower. The subject was “Pay-walls” and I predicted the collapse of The Times Online and other newspapers who chose to charge readers to use their site.

Although the Times is still online, one year on, its a shadow of its former self with traffic down to record lows. After instigating the Paywall, the publishers predicted a temporary slump. Experts were confident it would bounce back once people saw sense.

Well they’ve seen sense alright. Its just from a different perspective and it never bounced back.

Murdoch never really got the Internet. He loved newspapers and he saw them at their height when the corridors of power linked like veins pumping headlines in a coordinated fashion across the globe. Who could have predicted the fibres being laid under our pavements would one day destabilise the newspaper empire. The internet is gathering momentum and the new found power is in the lap of the consumer. It is the consumers who are now able to communicate in their masses, coordinating opinions as a collective. When Branson chose not to advertise in the News of the World and other businesses followed with their coordinated effort, there was no other alternative.

But looking at the traffic to the News of the World site before it closed, it took a similar slump to the Times, the News of the World was already floundering. It wasn’t the first time Murdoch has come unstuck on the Internet. On 20 July 2005, News Corp. bought MySpace.com and other popular social networking-themed websites, for $580 million USD. Only last month it sold off Myspace for US$35 million in a much lower key affair.

It looked at the time as a panic buy, however I think the decline of the once mighty MySpace is more down to the lack of understanding from the Murdoch boardroom of what users expect on the Internet.  In the same way Facebooks meteroric rise to fame and fortune is their obsession on giving their users everything they want quicker than everyone else.

In Murdoch’s world, the newspaper controlled the reader. It fed the news very much one way. On the internet there is a dynamic relationship between the reader and the source, so the user contributes to the source and expands the feed, creating more news.

Nowadays people dont care where news comes from, as long as its accurate and transportable.

When giants like Google take their customers into consideration when making changes to their model, you’d think other established businesses would follow suit with some simple market research. This is a lesson to us all that “listening to our customers” is the single most important rule in business.

I called Murdoch a dinosaur, not out of disrespect. As a young boy the dinosaur  was the marvel of all creatures that have been on the planet. But they are a great example of what happens when something so large is unable to adapt to rapidly changing environments.

And that is exactly what is happening here. Its nature teaching us all a lesson. After Spring comes Summer, after Autumn comes Winter. The fall invariably comes at a price. Its how you prepare for the eventualities and unforeseen circumstances that separate the good from the great.

Yet there are plenty of examples of businesses who have defied the laws of nature and ridden the economic storms of time. Sometimes business owners and people forget the disciplines that got them to the top of their game. They believe the hype and enjoy the glamour and rich pickings. This is usually the start of a slippery decline which is difficult to recover from. Good entrepreneurs bounce back, great ones learn from other peoples mistakes and whilst no one can go through business with a  perfect 10, its imperative that you never make the same mistake twice.

And a year on from the Paywall going live, how is Murdochs empire now? Well its not going well as you know as he prepares to answer to the Select Committee this week.

Was the catastrophic decline of TheTimes.co.uk and then the News Of The World a clear marker for the rest of fleet street that “Murdoch is fallible.”  With readership leaving in their droves Murdoch’s once powerful hold on Britain showed cracks. Big cracks.

These cracks never went away, they just got bigger. MySpace being a good example. The sacrifice of  the News of the World is actually a very small concession, as the 168 year old newspaper was already dying, it just needed humanely putting down.

The phone hacking incidents have certainly put a few extra nails in the coffin and all the friends he once courted are unable to throw him a life line, as what his business has done is simply appalling. With Police and Politicians likely involved, rival journalists dine out on the greatest revenge story of the past 100 years, whilst his own news channels are forced to cover the headlines that condemn their leader adding insult to injury.

The modern media is a frightening place when things go wrong. Guilty by association. The ex-leader of the IMF, in line for the President of France, singled out and arrested only to have the charges dropped once the overly sensationalised story loses stamina and fizzles out. The victim is the man who lost his job and reputation. The victor the press who profit from salacious scandals.

Back in the UK we don’t tolerate people who attack an underdog, so experts are predicting Murdoch is pretty much finished in Britain, but that should be the least of his worries. On the other side of the Atlantic, the politicians are lining up on Capital Hill. The laws are very clear in the US and it is highly likely that they will make an example of Murdoch or his  son. If there is any knowledge that these practises were going on, he could face jail sentences.

Robert Maxwell who used his sons to help him run his empire made some hefty mistakes that Murdoch might have learned from.

Maxwell’s untimely and rather strange death triggered a flood of instability with banks frantically calling in their massive loans. His two young sons desperately tried to hold the empire together, but it collapsed nevertheless. It emerged that Maxwell had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies’ pension funds without permission to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group, to save his companies from bankruptcy. Eventually, the pension funds were replenished with monies from investment banks and the British government.

The Maxwell companies filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992. His son, Kevin Maxwell was declared bankrupt with debts of £400 million. In 1995 Maxwell’s sons and two other former directors went on trial for conspiracy to defraud, but were unanimously acquitted by a twelve man jury in 1996. But again, guilty by association their lives were pretty much ruined.

The difference is that Maxwell had both John Majors support and Neil Kinnocks. Very different to the situatiom today that Murdoch faces where everyone has fled the scene and politicians unite in parliament against the man who they once feared.

Whatever your views on the subject, whether guilty or not, he’s guilty of underestimating the Internet and the people of Great Britain.  Incredibly a year on the £1 paywall still remains in place, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it is killing yet another of his online businesses. Mind you, he has a little bit more to worry about at present.

Just minutes ago, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigned.

Imogen Thomas on top of Ryan Giggs

The irony is, even though no one is allowed to publish information about the football player, the whole world seems pretty confident of who it is thanks to the Internet. Tonight a Scottish newspaper effectively ended the anonymous court order by publishing a picture  of one of United’s superstars, flagrantly writing “Censored” over his eyes. The Scottish Herald’s editor reported that the “English legal system doesn’t prevent them from publishing the information.”

And here lies the problem. The internet is a vast territory. It spans continents, it knows no boundaries, no borders it has no dedicated policing system. We flick from site to site in seconds, yet the sites might be hosted on the other side of the globe.

Whoever the footballer is, he may have bitten off more than he can chew. To put a global gagging order on every site on the internet would require deeper pockets than even those of a premiership footballer.

You have to wonder what went on during the alleged affair as there is a great deal of work being invested in keeping the news quiet, or is the player trying simply to protect his wife and family from embarrassment as no wife deserves adverse publicity.  The irony in all this though, is that he has done much more harm and created much more noise, by trying to bury something that quite frankly isn’t half as interesting as watching a grown man play “whack a mole” with the British Press. Just as he thinks he is getting on top, “International Whack A Mole” begins.

Before you start taking on the likes of Twitter, you need to take advice on the depth of your competitors pockets and the appetite for publicity these huge US Corporations hunger for. Whether the Premiership footballer wins or loses, Twitter wins the publicity game and really thats all its about.

With search volumes at an all time high for Ryan Giggs it does look like people are rightly or wrongly assuming it is him. There have been other instances of people being incorrectly named by the “offending Twitter site” too, so its important not to jump to conclusions.

Personally I couldn’t care less which footballer it is. What is fascinating, is peoples behaviour. In the same way Google has become the most successful and talked about business through the mystique of its “secret algorithm” it is clear that people want what they can’t have, even when its drilled down to news or information. Its the not knowing that is causing the snowballing effect here, and it is a lesson that all us marketeers should try and learn from.

Whoever is fuelling the rumours, gives Giggs the last laugh, as he is currently 2000% more popular than David Beckham and 300% more popular than Manchester United. His publicist could not have dreamt for such an outcome. If this was planned it was a stroke of genius. If it was not, then it still is genius and certainly a good time to get a book out. Being a fellow Welshman, I’d buy it.

And what about Imogen Thomas? The picture above clearly demonstrates she has come out on top. Her figures dwarf even those of Ryan Giggs for current search terms according to the latest internet traffic figures. She is being represented by Max Clifford and I think is getting the sympathy vote. She has dated Russell Brand and a string of celebrities and never felt the need to publicise the intimate details, so why the sudden panic and the need to put out a gagging order? It seems less about the event and more about strategic publicity.

But the last word is definitely left to the internet user on the chat rooms and the social networking sites. What is extraordinary and even more evident in cases like this, is that the Internet is here to stay. It has a mind of its own. Its unstoppable in many ways. It has defeated the music industry. It has destroyed the high street as we once knew it, it punished the broadsheets for underestimating it and even TV now settles in second.

The internet is a place where news will eventually get out. We have seen news from countries where camera crews have been banned, yet through a simple mobile device, the world can listen and learn. Long may it reign in my opinion. Super Injunctions currently cover the newspaper industry and as yet they do not extend to the wider audience. As a result it is very difficult to suppress information on something as vast as the network that makes up the internet. Yes you can shut down a site, however, you can’t shut down every site. I found hundreds of reports of the footballer in question supposedly naming the United legend, but who really knows and does anyone really really care? All this publicity doesn’t make anyone guilty, however unless someone stands tall and publicly states “it wasn’t me” there is a danger you come across as guilty by association.

Does information out in the public domain really do harm if a person does come clean? Andrew Marr is a good example of someone who put out a Super Injunction and then removed it a few years later. Marr decided that it was hypocritical and prevented him as a journalist from being objective. I think he got a fair amount of stick from his colleagues too. I don’t think people will be judgemental over the footballers behaviour if it turns out to be him. People make mistakes. She is an attractive woman. At the moment I dont even think that’s what people are interested in. I believe that currently the “not knowing” is making the story far more intriguing and as a result it is on the tip of everyones tongues. As soon as it is confirmed, it will be tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper or pushed down and buried on the search engines.

Looking at Andrew Marr, it hasn’t done him any long term damage, his interview of President Obama this week reinforces this. Whatever the outcome, Giggs will always be remembered as one of Manchester’s finest assets, whether you are a Red or a Blue.

I am ever the optimist and I have been wrong more times than I have been right on most subjects, however it does feel as if the mood in the board rooms of businesses is continuing to lift.

It is difficult to ignore the politics in other parts of the world, there are so many countries and people fighting for a myriad of causes. It certainly is a reminder to us all how fortunate we are in the UK. Yet back here in Westminster, politicians argue on the idea of AV (The Alternative Vote.) Whether it is right or wrong, can we afford this debate? Has the current system not served us well enough in the past?

My idea of a utopia would see the country run as businesses do. In a well run business, I can’t imagine people sat around debating a process of electing board members. It cost huge sums of money and diverts the attention from important life changing agendas.

I don’t have an opinion on The AV system, however I do think its a waste of resources and time. I rather like Winston Churchill’s comment. “The most worthless votes go to the most worthless candidates.”

Back to business, it does look like things are on the up. I was speaking to a friend who operates an amazing commercial property business called Bruntwood. I am always keen to hear Chris’s opinion. We sit at opposite ends of the spectrum in business terms, yet we both get to see early signs of activity in the economy at ground level.

Bruntwood rent commercial office space. It is safe to say they are the market leaders by a country mile in Manchester. I am proud to be one of their customers and we occupy the top floor of City Tower in Piccadilly. As a business renting out office space, Bruntwood see first hand and feel the immediate effects of businesses in trouble. At the same time when things pick up, they are able to spot this early on their radar.

Talking with Chris at the opening night of the Grill On New York Street in Piccadilly, it definitely sounds like things are on the up.

And for us at UKFast, it feels so too and I have blogged before about the number of business owners beginning to invest again in R&D and technology. Outsourcing is becoming fashionable, not only for the cost savings, but also for the convenience and technological advantages it brings.

The result within UKFast is very noticeable, with a massive surge in devices sold in the first quarter of this year, with March breaking every record in the company’s history. I’d like to put it down to clever marketing, however I can assure you its not, it’s literally a change in attitude.

It appears to be across sectors too. During the early part of the recession, we were fortunate to continue to grow along with many other businesses in IT, whilst other sectors were hit very hard indeed. It feels more balanced now, and its great to see such a wide variety of businesses flourishing.

Sat amongst friends at the bar in the Grill, there was talk of Apps, Cloud and Outsourcing from just about every business person I spoke with. Its just mind blowing when you consider these words didn’t exist in the capacity we know them now, 5 years ago.

And what’s around the corner?

I couldn’t even begin to accurately predict the future and I am at the helm of a technology company helping to drive change. But driving and encouraging change is different to being a visionary.

I believe the internet has changed more in the past 12 months than it has in the past 12 years.

The same people who just a few years ago firmly said, “the internet is of no interest to my customers,” are now ambassadors of the revolution taking place.

It is extraordinary to think that Gail and I set up UKFast in a tiny office in the spare bedroom. It only seems like yesterday  when we risked everything by moving to our first office on Fountain Street and employing our first team member Neil Lathwood, our IT director. When I look back, the process to sell our services was very different to today. No one really used the internet for business as such. It was a “nice to have,” it was a tough thing to sell for many years.

If you compare the 2 eras in technology terms, we were in the dark ages a decade ago. Although a great many people had the appetite and the imagination, it was untried and untested. The internet at that time was the great gamble. Back then, there was no Google and the designers of Facebook were still in school. None of us had any real idea of what lay ahead.

Regardless of this, it was new and I was addicted. And that addiction grows stronger and never subsides. It brings with it a huge amount of variety and satisfaction. Being a heart of an industry that dedicates its existence to helping others grow and trade around the clock,  across the globe in the blink of an eye, is extremely rewarding.

And 12 years after incorporating UKFast, I am in exactly the same position. I still have no idea what lies ahead.

What I am certain of, is change. Expect change always. Be nimble, listen with big ears and never take anything for granted.

I am often asked for advice because of our good fortune in the IT sector. We have seen the dotcom boom, although we were too small to enjoy that era. We saw the bubble burst and luckily for us, we were still too small to feel the effects of this era too. We have seen the economy rise and fall and rise again, so what is it that keeps us on track?

Actually its very simple.

My philosophy is based on enjoyment. If people enjoy coming to work and doing what they do, the results they deliver are far more impressive than someone who is disengaged. The challenge to make everyone enjoy their career is much more difficult. People seldom tell you they are disengaged. You usually find out when they leave, when its too late.

I am a great believer in spending as much time as I can with people in our business. By hanging around the team and being part of it, I am able to find out a great deal more than if I leave it to others. Middle managers are often very good at reporting what you want to hear and hiding things that make them unpopular. Its important to create a channel of communication that flows freely through our organisation.

Friday is a good example, about 40 or 50 of us went for a drink after work. I got my ear chewed off by a couple of people on a something that was infuriating them. It’s no surprise my first job after pressing send on this blog, is to go and support them and make the necessary changes required to make their lives easier.

If you have opinions on what works for you, I’d love to hear them.

Have a great week.

Loz

Back in 2001 after the bubble burst, no one could have predicted how technology would evolve at such a pace.

In a decade everyone’s lives have changed. The internet is bigger than TV, Radio and Press put together and it’s just the beginning.

Google came out of nowhere, (or rather a garage in San Francisco)  to challenge Microsoft with alternative ways to search the net providing innovative ways to advertise and attract customers. It facilitated the long awaited revolution and in the process lost its “cool” status and became a corporate giant.

Google was so successful it was difficult to imagine a challenger. But then along came Facebook and although the ranking for Top Performing sites looks like this:

1   Google         9.16% of internet traffic

2   Facebook    7.69%

3   You Tube    2.48%

Google has to be worried, because unlike many other sites that rely on Google’s ranking system to attract clients, Facebook doesn’t.

Facebook grew from the dormitories of Harvard University and permeated  through the university networks before entering the real world. It is the ultimate viral marketing machine and works on a referral basis and it literally is mapping the entire world.

It is too big for Google to influence now and it has done something far cleverer. It knows its audience far greater than Google does. Although Google pioneered very clever technology recognising IP addresses to predict your searches and preferences, it is limited as it cannot determine who is behind the IP address. So when different users in the same household search the internet or at work, Google tars everyone with the same brush. It can be really frustrating when it makes inaccurate assumptions about your searching and buying habits, whereas Facebook knows you inside and out.

Facebook knows everything. It knows who the most popular people in every corner of the globe are. It knows where you go, what you like, your birthday, your sex, your girlfriend, your spouse. Whether or not it is far more sophisticated than Google remains to be seen. In my opinion it is a great deal simpler and this maybe why it is so popular.

What is proven about Facebook, is the fact that everyone in the Google head-office corridors must realise the threat to the myth and their domination they created.

If you have any doubt, check out the latest figures tracking popularity and visitors to their websites. Whilst Google grows less than 15% over the past 3 years, Facebook grows in excess of 300%.

Facebook climbs faster than Google. And meanwhile the Internet is on the move again, with Mobile Apps making everything possible from wherever you are. Apple is helping, making user experiences a far cry from the pain created with setting up programs via a floppy disk back in the 90′s. I watch my 4 year old manoeuvre around an ipad with the ease of someone who is growing up in a new era, yet my Uncle Phil who is still alive remembers being taken to hospital as a child on the back of a horse drawn ambulance.

It is safe to say, the world we live in is an extraordinary place, made so by a few extraordinary people. It is an industry I love being a part of. I’d love to think that I had the foresight to have predicted all of this, but it was not part of a larger strategic plan. One thing I have learned since setting up and running UKFast, is think on your feet, be nimble. Never assume what works today will work tomorrow. If its not growing its dying. You have to keep evolving with one eye firmly on the future.

So whats next?

That’s a good question. It was one a friend asked me minutes before going on stage in front of the world’s press with Al Gore in Frankfurt last year.

It has to be virtualisation and although its a 15 year old technology, it is only just beginning to work and if I am honest, it still isn’t quite there yet. Dedicated servers have dominated the hosting world for the past 5 years and are essential when trying to compete on the internet with e-commerce and lead generating websites. However, if you are looking at cost savings and consolidating a large number of machines, there is new technology available that offer some amazing solutions to what traditionally have been very expensive problems. (If you are interested you might want to check out VMWare and HyperV for virtualisation and cloud hosting solutions)

Where it will stop ? You can rest assured it wont! You embrace it and ride it like the raging bull it is, holding on for dear life. Its a good analogy because that’s how UKFast feels and we are only a tiny part of the internet as a whole, yet we are accelerating to a new level(*). And with hundreds of thousands of websites on our network , it’s a wonderful responsibility and one I take very seriously. And round the corner, I have no idea what is next.

I host thousands of businesses and anyone of them could have a break-though moment at anytime. Thats part of the fun of what I do. I get to help people grow their businesses far quicker than they could ordinarily do themselves. It’s something that is bone deep in UKFast and is embedded in Lighting our purpose. Watching and helping businesses succeed and compete is incredibly rewarding and I cant imagine doing anything else. It’s become a way of life. Somewhere on our network lives the next Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page just waiting to light the fibres of future.

Can you imagine the internet 10 years from now?

Go create.

Loz

(*) UKFast has a new DC coming live in May 2011. It’s large enough to host 12,500 dedicated servers and is the first of an extra 100,000 sq ft we are intending to bring to the UK market in the next couple of years.

You dont have to make mistakes to learn, the smartest amongst us learn very quickly to avoid pitfalls, however there is no better way to solidify in your mind, when you get that inevitable thought, “well I never want to do that again.”

Yet even though it is a tried and tested method of learning and an important part of our evolution process, I know as a business person we live in fear of making mistakes, both our own and others around us.

An an MD of a company depending on the severity of an error,  mistakes can cost huge sums of money and even worse. How you deal with people making mistakes in my opinion determines your character and your integrity as a leader or manager? I have had to question my antics at times when I reflect over my career. Nowadays  I am deliberately adopting a much more relaxed style, I believe as your ability to deal with adversity develops, so does your character.

For me personally 2010 has been an amazing year. Not for the financial results of UKFast, we’ve done well, but we could have done a great deal better, but that’s hindsight. If I know even a year ago what I know now, I’d be in a much better place financially, but the lessons I have learned far outweigh any financial disposition. The lessons I have learned in 2010 shaped me as a man both at home and at work.

Warren Buffet took 18 years to make his first million. Now I am not comparing myself to Buffet. He is a one of kind genuis, however it does give us all hope. Think about it.

What went wrong for the first 18 years of Buffets business life? Probably a bit of everything. Its not easy generating cash from a zero start. I know, UKFast started with just Gail and myself in a spare bedroom with a telephone and plain good old fashioned British ambition. One of the lessons I learned then was to get an office quickly, or I’d have ended up with 8 children and very little of anything else.

Back on Buffet’s journey something inside of him must have changed. A light bulb moment, because after those 18 years of practicing, he switched into overdrive and damn near everything from then on in turned to gold. Suddenly he had an understanding.

This sort of magic doesn’t happen very often and sadly if it does, it is usually in people’s twilight years. I remember driving my first Ferrari thinking, why didn’t I have this when I was 20?

The simple truth is that I’d not got the experience, knowledge and confidence to take control of my life. I’d not made enough mistakes! Maybe that’s not quite true. I’d made plenty of mistakes, I just hadn’t started learning from them at this stage in my life.

Nowadays with everything I have learnt so far from both my own experiences and those of my friends, it is so much easier. What I am learning is that we over-complicate everything. The simplest formulas often produce the greatest return on investment.

I have also identified that making money and living your life to the full are directly linked and actually most people don’t fulfill their ambition for fear of making mistakes which is ironic when you consider its the people who just plunge in head first that learn the quickest whether its the hard way or not.

Schools and bureaucracy discourage people from making mistakes and actually its the one thing that is absolutely essential if you want to reach the heights of success. By having too many rules we inhibit growth. Rules result in punishment, punishment removes the fun and freedom to make mistakes, and this directly inhibits growth.

I have learnt that the more freedom you give people, the harder they seem to work and the faster they develop. And if they make mistakes, (because they will) what do you do?

There is only one answer to this question, give people support, give them a hug, but never criticize. The size of the cock up will be directly linked to the feeling of pain and remorse they will be experiencing regardless of whether you mention it or chastise them or not. In fact this is something worth investing real effort in. I have seen my team develop far quicker than before and actually this is true of my 2 little girls too. A friend of mine who works in the same office commented on our team “bouncing” and that they stood out a mile from others in the building. The only thing I have consciously changed is deliberately giving people more freedom.

Now I am not saying completely throw caution to the wind and take your eye off the ball and remove all controls. Merely encourage your team to think things through and ask for help on the tricky decisions. This will help minimise the risk of error and when people mess up, remind them of all the great stuff they have done and bite your tongue and not the hand that feeds you.

Ghandi famously said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

As your team develops, if you are doing a good job you will wake up one day and you will be surrounded by awesome people who genuinely care about your every need and your sense of responsibility is suddenly extended to the lives of not only colleagues but the wives, girlfriends, husbands, kids and suddenly you are rich, but not necessarily in the way you might have planned at the outset of your journey. Rich from all the experiences, you will need a lifetime to pass on. And here lies the problem, with only half my life left, I have an impossible task ahead.

So inevitably we all have to learn a great deal of our lessons ourselves, which makes sense really. Its nice to hear opinions, yet how many times have you gone and made the mistake anyway. Its that freedom that Ghandi talks about that is truly inspiring. If you can have the courage to let go or rather let things go, you will ultimately get the greatest freedom of all.

I went to learn about business and the “next step.” Every year Gail and I go to the place where we spent our honey-moon. Rangalli Island in the Maldives. It is a 3 week break, the first 2 weeks as a family adventure with our 2 daughters, and the last week really having a focus on ourselves and the business. It is a time when we look at the skills we are going to need to bring into the business to continue to help it develop and also the skills we personally need to develop. Running a business of 200 people requires very different skills of one of 50.

The reason so many businesses fail to grow their revenues over the £1,000,000 per annum mark, is they fail in this area. But every year we have gone away and found answers. This year we broke the habit and spent time in the Caribbean and then in the British Virgin Islands. It was undoubtedly the right move and it opened our eyes in so many ways.

I met some amazing people and made some life long friends. I learnt a great deal about the “bigger picture” on this holiday and was given so much great advice. This last break was no different. Yet although we went to learn about the business, I can confidently say we learnt more about ourselves.

There was one evening when we meditated. Gail does yoga at home and previously I always declined the offer to join the ladies as I consider a good workout to involve a huge amount of sweat and pain. I have to say the experience I had was nothing short of extraordinary.

No one has ever explained to me the feeling you can get from meditating and so I suppose I simply view it as a waste of time. Boy, how wrong can I be. And for those of you who know me really well, don’t worry you’ll still see me on the squash court, this is something I am just going to add to my life from now on.

It didn’t affect everyone in the same way. However if you can imagine a place where you were taken back to a life changing event in your past, where you are able to visualise and revisit that time with absolute clarity and observe all the emotions that you experienced as if you were outside looking in, then you are beginning to understand.

For me, I went to my avalanche accident. Yet I can now say with certainty, that was no accident.

I focussed on all the coincidences surrounding the avalanche event. The people I was with that day, 2 doctors in a group of 7, is this possible? A thoracic heart surgeon and a casualty doctor?  An officer from the British Army, a man who’d rowed across the atlantic for fun, Lee a salesmen like me who was the first to start assembling a shovel whilst everyone looked on in horror and disbelief as I was sucked deep underground. Just amazing guys. If any one of them hadn’t have been there, I’d have surely died that day.

So this is where I went. Deep below the snow. I watched the boys waving to me as they tried to warn me of the impending danger. This is a visual I have never seen before as it had previously been wiped from my memory. I relived every tumble and every last gasp of air before plunging below the surface to my grave.

Whilst in this place I got the opportunity to say thank you again. 9 years ago in the same place I said thank you to God for all the amazing people in my life. My girlfriend Gail, my parents, sister, family, friends I was able to list many people in the few minutes before loosing consciousness. I am now convinced that even after my bodily functions started to shut down and I stopped breathing, I am 100% certain, my thoughts carried on as I saw things this time that I do not remember the first time around.

Whilst meditating with my eyes tightly shut, a tear rolled down each cheek. Sage put her hands on my forehead and my entire body felt electric. I felt every nerve end tingling as if there was pure electricity running throughout my veins. I can’t explain all the coincidences in my life, I don’t want to understand them. I can’t explain what happened during that meditation and I don’t want to understand it. For me it was simply an opportunity to say thank you for all the amazing things in my life.

Don’t worry I am not going to start getting all religious on you. My experience was within me. And this is what I think I have learnt the most. It is so easy to start chasing rainbows when actually, happiness and fulfillment are here at home, deep inside you.

My job now is an interesting one because there is no doubt in my mind that everything has changed. When you get a second chance it does make you look at things in a different way. I am regarded by my friends as a highly motivated individual, but what I am feeling now is just off the scale. The only challenge now is “time.”  There is so much to do and so little of it. And if time is of the essence, focussing on the right outcome has to be the biggest priority.

Never a truer word for me here at home in Wales. The rain is pelting down outside and the wind is beating at the door. I enjoyed the heat of Fiji, but nothing beats the mountain air.

I asked a couple of members of the BA staff, does BA stand for Bloody Awful, after the worst experience I have ever encountered of substandard behaviour by representatives of BA.

I was checking in proudly to my first class seats at the BA counter in Manchester, when I met the second rudest woman I have ever had the misfortune to meet. We had telephoned the night before just to ask advice on the recently introduced ESTA. (An official government document required if you are flying to or through America.) The advice we were given by BA was “don’t worry about it, arrive at check-in in the morning and we will deal with it then as technically you don’t need one as you are not staying in the US.”

We trusted the advice and when checking in, told the lady at the First Class counter why we had not filled out the ESTA as per our instructions from the BA staff the previous night. At this point she categorically refused to check us onto the flight and promptly blanked us. I asked for help, and pleaded with her for someone more senior who could assist.

Enter (stage right) the rudest woman I have ever met. She arrived with a plastic smile that she maintained for the best part of 45 seconds before laying into my wife who was beautiful in her calmness. The BA official told us we should have filled out the ESTA online and that we should have and I quote, “put that you are staying in Miami in the destination box.” I explained that our final destination was the British Virgin Islands, I didn’t dare tell her it was Necker. “we advise people who are traveling through the US to the Caribbean to put down they are staying in the Continental in Miami.”

I explained that this would be incorrect and that this was a US official immigration department document!

Without another word the 2 rude BA staff disappeared.

We were kept waiting 40 minutes. Powerless and no other members of BA staff were prepared to help. When we asked for help, they said, “we are not getting involved.”

It really was like a farce. And if she hadn’t made my 6 year old burst into tears I’d have have been laughing in disbelief. We had turned up to enjoy the first class experience.

Enter Simon, a scruffily dressed man in jeans and a creased polo shirt.  ”Because of the delay at check in and that my staff members had not known how to deal with the ESTA, we are able to board this flight to Heathrow, but unfortunately it was now too late to attach the luggage to the connecting flight.”

He advised us that he had personally seen to it that the plane to Miami would wait for us. He apologised for the behavior of the 2 staff and he assured me we would be met by ground staff and hurried through at the other end.

It was clear this man just wanted rid of the situation. He was working on the principal, Out of Sight Out of mind. (perhaps a new management course BA are running)

My 6 year old asked me , “Daddy, why was that lady so rude?” and I was unable to defend her.

This farce had actually delayed the plane leaving Manchester and stressed 100 or so other people also connecting to Miami and other destinations.

On arrival at Heathrow, there were no ground staff waiting to assist us between the planes. Luckily everyone else just managed to get their flight to Miami, but no surprise, we missed ours waiting for our luggage.

I saw the striking BA logo with the words CUSTOMER SERVICE in massive letters. Fantastic I thought. I’ll pop over and get some help.  The 2 ladies (who reminded me of Les Dawson’s characters) with folded arms grunted back at me when I politely said, “I don’t suppose you can help and tell me where to go, we have missed our flight.”

“We’re baggage.” I continued and the other one piped up, “have you a problem with your baggage?” “No” I replied, “well we can’t help you then. Like my friend told you we are baggage” They carried on talking and I couldn’t help pointing out the irony in how they described themselves.

Walking away I pondered, does BA stand for Bloody Awful. It should do!

Eventually after a series of equally idiotic encounters with various Bloody Awful staff I found someone who was lovely. She was kind and called Jeanette. However the damage was done. The brand was dead in my eyes.

She did start quite hard like the first Bloody Awful staff in Manchester, telling us that as we had missed the flight and it was more than likely non refundable. First class tickets can be as much as £9000 each I didn’t dare ask Gail how much she had paid. I must have turned white with the sick feeling. 4 tickets wasted. 3 demoralised girls, 2 hours extra waiting and 1 missed flight! Jeanette quickly realised what had happened.

She explained the check in staff in Manchester were all agency staff. She fixed the ESTA issue in a few minutes putting “IN TRANSIT” in the destination box.

She went on to explain they had not had a pay rise in 2 years and that they had no idea if their jobs would even be here tomorrow. “The spirit is dead, and I am so sorry you have had all this trouble.”

Every cloud has a silver lining. And thank God, Jeanette booked us on to a Virgin Atlantic seat. One of our daughters, the 3 year old had some sort of anaphylactic reaction on the plane and needed emergency care. 2 doctors on board helped out giving her adrenalin injections, oxygen and salbutamol. Nikki, the Upper Class Senior Cabin Crew team leader was amazing, along with her team particularly Ross and Sacha.

We sat on the floor of the cabin outside the cockpit. The captain regularly came out to check on our 3 year olds well-being and after nearly the entire flight she recovered miraculously as kids do!

So how does something so great, become so Bloody Awful? Fancy not rewarding your staff and undermining them so they don’t know if their jobs are safe. I can’t imagine the people at the top have had similar pay problems?

British Airways is overweight in some areas and anorexic in others.

In our business if you have a potential weakness in an area you invest in it, and you allocate the best, strongest most aligned individuals. You certainly don’t cut back.  The problem with BA is they have multiple areas of weakness, so as fast as you build relations with the likes of Jeanette you have sledge hammer Customer Services or disconnected agency staff with their own challenges. Invariably you destroy the brand value.

I think one of the issues BA also has is whilst they are busy infighting, arguing over pay and bureaucracy, the Virgin Atlantic team is taking conflict very seriously indeed. Going about their business with the Sun Tzu approach.

“He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.”

Well, in my mind BA does stand for Bloody Awful and although I have enough free airmiles to fly around the world 7 times, I’d sooner pay to fly a proper airline. Britain’s best airline Virgin.  And I wouldn’t swap our seat on the floor next to the loo for a BA Experience.

Lawrence Jones
UKFast

The 3 circles. You may have come across Jim Collins a lecturer at Stamford University, he is an authority on the study of successful businesses. He predicted and charted the growth of some of Americas biggest businesses and when challenged as a young lecturer by a student not much older than himself on the success of Apple (a then unknown) he decided to put his formula down on paper and test it amongst other great fortune 500 businesses.

One of the things he found with his research is that all of the businesses which grew at a faster rate than everyone else, did some things in common. One of these was called the 3 circles principal, adopted by the likes of Walmart, Sony, Apple, Microsoft.

The 3 circles are:

Can you be the best at something?
What are you passionate about?
What drives your economic engine?

If you answer YES to all of these when venturing into new unchartered territory you cant go far wrong.

Can you be the best at something?

There is no point setting up a business if you cant genuinely create a better company that those which already dominate an industry. It make years of trying, but ultimately you have to aim high and keep focussed on the end game, to provide a consistently better service or product offering than already exists. But just believing it isn’t enough, you have to have a scientific plan and competitive edge which separates you and existing competitors.

Ask yourself, what things have I already which help enable us to be the best?

What are you passionate about? Is this new business going to make you incredibly satisfied? If it is purely a vehicle to make you money, I guarantee it will not work. You have to have enjoyment first, which comes from passion and determination, long before the success and the financial gains.

Mohammed Ali said, “I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights.”  Although he became incredibly successful and rich through his boxing, he focussed on his training and the outcome of each fight, never on the purse.
What drives the economic engine? Is it sensible to make this investment? Do we have a competitive advantage with cost savings if we enter a particular industry?

For example, UKFast entering the world of Cloud Hosting makes perfect sense. Although the investment of £500,000 seems on the steep side, we already have the technical know how and infrastructure in place to run this type of business. It therefore becomes very easy to bolt on this sort of new venture.

Data centre space is another good one. We already have the expertise to be the best at it. We are incredibly passionate about the thought of improving resilience and customer care and does it make financial sense? Absolutely, we will save £1.5m to £2m each year as a direct result.

Do we venture into data centres? Already have done is the answer.

Using the same principal, on ideas that have not gone so well. The mobile phone division of UKFast.

Can you be the best at it? Yes absolutely and we were.
Are you passionate about it? Not really, driven by the fact that we were making money.
Was it financially the best thing to do? Although it made good sense to go into this venture at the time, on hind sight, yes we had a competitive advantage writing the software that made this company immensely successful, the business model was too far removed from UKFast’s hosting model.

Business to consumer vs. business to business. This one fundamental difference made it impossible to be financially viable. Our entire existing infrastructure was designed to manage the business to business relationship. We underestimated the amount of work involved in the change management.

The same applies to UKFast’s entry into the broadband arena.

Can we be the best? Yes and we were undoubtedly. We were too good and the strain this put on the existing support team was not sustainable.

Was it financially viable? NO! It was a disaster. BT had designed a business model from hell. The only winner was BT, the customer, the supplier, everyone lost out.

Were we passionate about it? No, we love hosting and we love the fact that people appreciate what we do. Supplying broadband which was effectively turned into a commodity by the telco’s (BT, Pipex, AOL) was not fun and we were too small to roll out a business model that was incredibly niche.

The result: Doomed! Luckily we were able to foresee this and we sold off our connections to a small business who specialised in this area. We were very careful not just to “ditch” customers as they also had hosting with us and they were incredibly important.

So the 3 circles principal is key to tackling the unknown. And if it is good enough for the businesses like Gillette, Nike and the others I mentioned earlier, it is a good enough litmus test for me too. Try it with your business ventures past, present and of course the import ones, the future ones!

Go have fun.

He is a worthy winner and the rapturous response he received when his name was announced reaffirms that he is a great entrepreneur and has the popular vote amongst the business community.

UKFast was a sponsor of the awards this year and I have to say I was pleased with the result. It is difficult to find another organisation that has done as much for Manchester as Bruntwood.

There are many awards nowadays and some people think that the sentiment behind the ceremony has been diluted. But personally I like to view them very positively.

I am honoured to have won a couple of awards. Most recently in 2007 I was happy to receive the IOD’s Young Director of the Year title. Plus this year, my company, UKFast, has won its fourth Best Hosting award in as many years at the ISPAs.

I’m currently a finalist for the Ernst & Young award, something I’m incredibly happy to have been nominated for.

But in a world where you can blindly beaver away for years, often the only reminder of your success comes from painfully increasing tax demands. I believe that to achieve an award is not just a pat on your back from your peers, but a reinforcement that you are doing something right.

In this period of time, the internet has grown and changed considerably. There is much more offered by way of interactive and dynamic content now, making internet usage undeniably better than it was back in 2001.

When I look back over the years at how the UKFast website has grown, it is barely recognisable as the site of 2001. It wasn’t that it was a poor site back then, just that the internet has moved on so much.

The speed and reliability of new internet technology – broadband, quadcore web servers, innovative applications, etc, etc – offers the ability to host so much more content that I’m surprised the government hasn’t invested more into its websites. Especially with the quality of web content that can be offered online these days and the functions it can perform.

The government’s website were criticised for their lack of feedback options, poor search facilities, accessibility and usability.

This interested me greatly because it highlighted that the government (and probably businesses and organisations all over the world) still isn’t taking its online presence seriously enough.

The internet is intrinsic in the growth of UKFast. Our marketing strategy for example, was for many years based only online.

Through the growth of the UKFast website, so has the company increased size, in its successes and in its profits.

This is largely due to us moving with the times. We make sure we learn and implement the latest online techniques, from new SEO methods to incorporating more dynamic content with the introduction of video to our website. I’ve mentioned in previous blogs the success of the new UKFast videocasting department.

I simply cannot stress enough the importance of the internet to organisations in every sector. Make sure you’re using it to its fullest extent.

Welcome to the world of human interfacing.

Last week I had the immense pleasure of meeting several hundred interesting people at the Internet World exhibition, in London’s Earls Court. And I met them face to face.

As truly amazing as technology is in its new styles of communication, there is no substitute for the personal approach of physically meeting people.

There’s a buzz at Internet World which is contagious, and despite the aching feet and bodies of the UKFast team, I know every one of them felt exhilarated. It’s exciting to get out of the office and escape from behind the computer screen.

We always put a huge amount of effort into our offline presence and this year at Internet World was certainly no exception.

A champagne bar, plasma screens, models, a Ducati racing bike and dual levelled stand with an inbuilt video studio complimented our hands-on customer approach. We won the award for Best Exhibition Stand which I’m extremely proud of.

In an internet-oriented world, email, SEO and PPC are all fabulous manners in which to promote your business and communicate. But there’s nothing like the excitement of face to face contact.

My advice is to make an effort to meet more people. Get your brand seen in its full fleshy glory. And make sure the world knows that your business is not just a picture on a screen.