Hertfordshire Branch
Past Meetings - Descriptions and Summaries
Programme
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2011 - 2012 |
Thursday 16 May 2013
8:00pm. at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7AH
Experience for yourself NLP Techniques to get better Business Results from your Projects.
Rob Harley, Principal Consultant, Steria, and Linda Marshall, NLP Trainer.
Do you and your clients get the business results and the personal outcomes you want and need?
Join in a practical exploration of two NLP* techniques to get better results from the people aspects of your projects - and have fun in the process.
The first technique will take you to a different place. The second will help you know where you want to go and help you get there.
* Neuro-Linguistic Programming
By putting all the audience through a number of interactive sessions, Rob and Linda demonstrated some of the underlying principles behind NLP. Further study would, however, be required to make practical use of it, references for which are in the slides (0.3 Mbyte pdf file) and two further documents What is NLP and Well formed outcomes - PACER.
(There have been a number of other approaches to improving the outcome of projects. Students could try Googling the ETHICS method developed by Enid Mumford, and reading Checkland, P. and Scholes, J., 1990, 'Soft Systems Methodology in Action', Chichester, John Wiley & Sons.)
Wednesday 17 April 2013
7:30pm. at the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
How business can learn from the cloud: building value from a Service Strategy
Tony Rogers, Service Marketing Professional, and Laurie Young, Marketing & Selling Services Specialist.
This talk will cover the key strategies for migrating from products to services and how to get that message across using thought leadership.
This process, known as Servitisation, presents business with new opportunities, new growth strategies, and creates value by adding services to existing products or even replacing them with services. As these challenging economic times continue, it is becoming increasingly hard to rely on products alone to deliver business growth. Today, services are increasingly being deployed as profitable and stable revenue streams to enhance existing product offerings and the technology sector is at the forefront of this trend.
Laurie Young, author of "Thought Leadership: Effective Use of Influential Marketing Techniques", will cover how "thought leadership" can be used to get your message across to managers and relevant stakeholders in the often difficult, yet proven development of a servitisation strategy.
The slides from the interesting and informative presentation may be found here (2.4 Mbyte pdf file).
Thursday 21 March 2013
8:00pm. at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7AH
Building Effective Problem Solving Groups
Paul Offord, Development Director, Advance7.
The demand for increasingly sophisticated IT applications is leading to complex systems that are interconnected with other complex systems. This in turn is driving an increase in the number of difficult performance and stability problems. The cause of such problems is frequently obscure, which makes it difficult to allocate the problem to the correct technology team. Consequently the problem bounces from team to team, as each in turn 'proves' that their technology is not to blame. Many organisations are aware of this issue and are tackling it by creating a service-orientated Problem Solving Group (PSG). In this presentation we cover the need for PSGs, the benefits they deliver, their structure and strategies to optimise their effectiveness.
Many of us will have experienced the situation of contending groups of developers/engineers claiming that their area of responsibility is faultless, when trying to sort out overall system problems. I have. Paul Offord's explanation of how a simple change in the direction of the investigation of the problem can produce quick results, was both informative and entertaining. This talk (643 Kbytes pdf file) was a development of the earlier talk he gave in January 2008.
Wednesday 20 February 2013
7:30pm. at the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
The Power of Mobile Commerce
Hajrë Hyseni, Senior Lecturer in Digital Business, University of Hertfordshire.
In today's digital age, mobile phones have become an integral part of daily life used by millions of people and businesses around the world. Increasingly sophisticated technologies from Apple, Google and Blackberry in both the hardware and the software, are turning mobile phones into communications devices that are taking over from the desktop PC as the most important piece of business equipment. However, over 83% of brands have not made accessible their website for mobile platforms. Therefore, this talk aims to cover essential elements that businesses need to consider when designing or improving a mobile presence.
The slides from Hajrë's challenging presentation may be found here. If you click the icon near the bottom right hand corner of the slides, the slides will be displayed full screen.
Tuesday 22 January 2013
8:00pm. at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7AH
Faster than a Speeding Bolt: How the card in your pocket works
Lewis Graham, Lead Business Analyst, Visa Europe.
It's one of the 100 objects that changed history, there are hundreds of millions of them worldwide and can be used anywhere from the island of Spitsbergen near the North Pole to the South Pole itself. Yet behind the scenes, how do millions of merchants and thousands of banks co-operate to provide a safe and secure service? This presentation explains how one card scheme, Visa, allows this remarkable process to work, the challenges it faces and how it overcomes them.
The slides from Lewis's informative presentation may be found here (1 Mbyte pdf file).
Wednesday 12 December 2012
7:30pm. at the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
The German Enigma, the Turing British Bombe and the Bombe Rebuild
Alan Wray, retired ex-BTM, ICT, ICL, now Fujitsu.
The breaking of Enigma was critical to the outcome of WW2. Alan's talk will cover the development, adoption and operation of the Enigma; the outstanding contribution of the Polish Cipher Bureau; the basic design and operation of the Bombe and how it fitted into the overall breaking of Enigma at Bletchley Park. He will cover key dates and players in this fascinating story and include a little about the Bombe Rebuild, now complete and working at Bletchley Park.
Alan Wray spent much of his working life in various managerial roles in BTM, ICT, ICL (now Fujitsu). In his retirement he was a volunteer on the Bombe rebuild. He made all the electrical coils and non-inductive resistors, helped with relay assembly, commissioning and testing and occasionally fielded inquisitive visitors.
It was clear from Alan's fascinating talk that much mental effort was required in addition to the use of the Turing Bombe, to decrypt every Enigma message. Alan's slides may be found here (11.5 Mbytes pdf file).
Thursday 15 November 2012
8:00pm. at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7AH
Is Information Security Really Hard?
Mike Barwise, Holistic Information Assurance Consultant, Integrated InfoSec.
The public commonly perceive information security as a running hi-tech battle between brilliant "bad guys" - hybrids of Darth Vader (dark side of the Force and all) and Ernst Stavro Blofeld's cat, and amazing "good guys" - clones of the Man with No Name in a white Stetson but imbued with the smarts of Einstein. Sadly, this is rather far from the reality.
The speaker will review a selection of real security breaches and try to identify what's really going on and why the defence often seems to be so inadequate in the face of quite basic threats.
Wednesday 10 October 2012
7:30pm. at the Lindop Building, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB
The Perfect Storm: Population, Development & Climate Change
Professor Mark Maslin, Professor of Climatology, University College London.
In the near future we face the perfect storm; where the combination of climate change and population growth is set to increase the numbers of people affected by 'natural' disasters. By 2030 globally we will need 50% more energy, with much of this energy generated through fossil fuels, accelerating climate change. By 2030 we will need 50% more food and 30% more water to feed our expanding population. Professor Maslin looks at these dire predictions for the future and discusses how we, as a global society, can deal with these problems and ultimately reduce society's vulnerability and save lives.
This was a most successful event. Judging by the number who signed in on the attendance sheet, we had 100 attendees - a mixture of BCS members, University lecturers and students, and some others.
The slides of Mark's well-argued and thought-provoking presentation may be found here (6.3 Mbytes pdf file).
A video of the event can be seen here - PC users will need to have both QuickTime and iTunes installed in order to have both sound and vision.
The inset picture shows this event as it was taking place in the largest of the Lindop Building auditoria. Click the picture to enlarge.
