Virtua Team Talk

I was interested to see that a news report this week commented that online advertising is currently growing faster than any other traditional medium of advertising. It’s clearly a huge step forward from the man with a huge paintbrush pasting a paper poster on a piece of wooden boarding – but is it just the same old ads being digitalised?

The CEO of advertising giant J C Decaux, Jeremy Male, obviously believes there are huge opportunities for digital screens: “The great thing about outdoor advertising is that you can’t turn the page, you can’t switch it off – it’s just there” he said, adding that, “We now have the ability to reach a much broader audience than online can.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here at Virtua we are renowned for being quite a sporty lot and some days, we must confess, the office looks like a cyclist’s convention. A recent news report though referred to a survey of sports activity relating to children and the findings were both surprising and a little alarming.

The survey of 1,500 children aged from six to fifteen found that almost a quarter (22%) of those surveyed had never run a distance of 400 metres. A third of the children questioned also said they did not own a bike, while three quarters (77%) had a games console and 68% had a mobile phone of their own. The survey concluded that in general terms a generation of British children are simply turning their backs on sport and physical activity in favour of ‘couch potato’ style living.

The survey, conducted by British Triathlon and Tata Steel, suggests 10% of children cannot ride a bike and 15% cannot swim. In the week before the poll was conducted in March, just 46% had ridden their bikes and 34% had swam the length of a pool, but 73% had played a video game. 15% of the children also said they had never played sport with their parents. Read the rest of this entry »

As someone who works in the mobile phone industry I’m always amused by some of the stories I hear about how these wonders of modern technology are being used – or misused! Take the News this week for example. There was a feature about an aquarium in the Ukraine where a visitor accidentally dropped her phone while trying to photograph a crocodile.

Apparently visitor Rimma Golovko had stretched out her arm over the enclosure whilst trying to take a photograph of a large crocodile called Gena opening his mouth, but the phone slipped from her hand. Obviously Gena thought the falling mobile phone was a tasty titbit because quick as a flash (if you pardon the pun) he’d swallowed it.

According to the news report the aquarium staff did not believe Mrs Golovko’s complaint that her phone had been eaten – until it began ringing! Since the incident the fourteen year old crocodile has been refusing food and has become listless which has been causing concern for the aquarium. “He moves very little and swims much less than he used to” a staff member told the Associated Press news agency. Oleksandr Shushlenko, the aquarium’s chief vet, said that if Gena continues to refuse food he will be given an X-ray next week and could face surgery. Experts have tried to tempt Gena with live quail injected with a laxative, but he still would not eat. An operation would be a last resort though as the procedure would be difficult and operating on crocodiles is neither common practice or easy.

As for Mrs Golovko she is very upset about losing her new mobile. “It could have been a very dramatic shot” she said “But things didn’t work out as planned and now my lovely new phone is in the belly of a crocodile.” Mrs Golovko then added that she really does want her SIM card back as it contains other photographs and important contacts.

In my view I think it’s never a good idea to reach you arm out over the edge of an enclosure full of crocodiles – and certainly not if you are clutching a prized new mobile phone. The hapless visitor probably only wanted to take a quick photo but it now looks like Gena is the one with a real bellyache.

I wonder what Mrs Golovko told her friends when they tried to call her and got no answer. “Sorry I didn’t get your call. My mobile has been eaten by a crocodile.” Yeah, right.

I guess some people will now feel sorry for Mrs Golovko and no doubt others will feel sorry for the crocodile. Whatever the outcome of this rather strange state of affairs one thing is certain. The one thing they both have in common is that they were both obviously looking for the perfect snap!

Involving the family in your work might not be for everybody, but in my view responsible companies should recognise the importance of ensuring that their employees enjoy a good work-life balance. Also, the more other family members, including children, understand about the breadwinner’s workplace and responsibilities the better they will appreciate what ‘work’ means.

Here at Virtua our motto is People. Passion. Performance.  And the ‘People’ bit is critical to our success. It’s all about developing individuals by giving them respect, encouragement and recognising their wider needs in the family context.

That being said however, I’m still not quite sure about this ‘take your children to work day’ that seems so popular in the USA. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the idea is a great one in principle, but I think it needs some careful preparation if it is to be of real value.

Taking your children into the office for a day gives them an insight into where ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ goes each day and not only gives them a better understanding of something they might find hard to visualise, but it is also an education in itself. Teachers and educational bodies obviously think it’s a great, positive thing to do and are encouraging responsible organisations to take the idea more seriously. I’m all for that.    In the USA I’m not surprised it’s become all the rage but then the yanks do have a knack of taking a great idea and then getting it completely wrong as evidenced in this recent news report:

“Three US prison officers have been dismissed after 40 children in Florida were deliberately shocked with Stun guns. The incident happened at a prison during national ‘take your children to work day’. Fortunately none of the children were seriously hurt after a group of children were told to hold hands before one of them was shocked with a stun gun sending the shock around the circle. The children, between five and sixteen were all sons and daughters of employees at the Florida department of Criminal Correction. A spokesman said that a shock demonstration was ‘common practice during training classes for prison officers’”

So, I really think it needs some thought about the nature of your work before you decide to take your little darlings into work with you. A day in the office can be stressful enough but a day looking after the kids as well? My advice is plan the day thoroughly so both you and your offspring get the most out of the experience.

Not that my kids would be any problem you understand, they are always impeccably well behaved. But as for what I’ve heard about my colleague’s kids, that’s a different matter…

Now where can I get hold of one of those stun guns?

Did you happen to read the news report this week about banning mobile phones from pub quizzes? According to a reporter from the BBC “The integrity of pub quizzes used to be beyond question, but the advent of text messaging in the late 1990s has heralded an era of cheating. Otherwise honest people, corrupted by a combination of alcohol and the desire to win promotional t-shirts, are now reduced to seeking outside help from friends”

So, I’m not really bothered about the rights and wrongs of the rules around pub quizzes, but it is interesting to see how people react to it and what it tells us about business.

One pub landlord who has run popular quiz nights for many years has now resorted to placing large signs both inside and outside his pub saying ‘No mobile phones’ and ‘No Googling’. Interviewed by a BBC reporter the landlord, Stephen Duffy, commented: “Some of the crowd are a bit older and can remember a time before mobile phones, and their phones are not as advanced as the ones owned by younger people. Somebody was telling me they’re bringing out face-recognition software so you’ll even be able to cheat in the picture round. There’s even an iPhone app called Shazam which recognises what song is playing – it could be the death of the pub quiz as we know it.” Mr Duffy added that he tries to come up with questions which can’t be found quickly on the internet but it’s getting harder all the time.

Of course being in telecoms for many years I’m not surprised by the way innovation is changing the way we communicate. Some people resist it, longing for the “good old days”. Others embrace it and the changes on our culture it brings. I’m not at all surprised that a lot of wily pub goers are winning quizzes by using their mobiles and iPhones. The phone is the ideal resource to get information quickly and in many ways this is just another example of exploiting the phone’s capabilities to gain advantage. I don’t think this is necessarily the end of the pub quiz, but I think it will undoubtedly change the format and the way we think about quizzes in the future. For example, given the inevitability of punters bringing their mobile devices to the pub, the organisers of the “Hive Mind Challenge” in London may have hit upon the future of pub quizzing. Billed as “the quiz where you are meant to cheat”, it actually encourages participants to use mobile technology, search engines and Twitter to find answers to obscure questions, such as the height of the Eiffel Tower (324 metres according to my quick search!) So winning the quiz is about how quick and skilled you are at using the technology rather than personal knowledge.

I’ve often held the view that you’re better to embrace change than to fight it. I, like many of you have used a mobile phone as my primary phone for quite some time. I don’t bother with my desk phone; the mobile is just way too easy and familiar. It used to be thought that people using mobiles to call other people in the same office was odd, now it’s natural, and with new network technology it can also be just as cheap.

Anyway, back to pub quizzes. I wonder whether the technophobes have forgotten the point in having pub quizzes? For the most part they don’t exist in order to find the smartest person in the village. They are there to get more people into the pub and create a social atmosphere.  Besides, I somehow think a little bit of cheating in pub quizzes went on long before the advent of mobile technology!