Entrepreneurial Geekiness

Ian is a London-based independent Chief Data Scientist who coaches teams, teaches and creates data products. More about Ian here.
Entrepreneurial Geekiness
Ian is a London-based independent Chief Data Scientist who coaches teams, teaches and creates data products.
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£5 App tonight – live video stream from 8pm

BNM, £5 App Meet June 11, 2009

All going well we’ll be broadcasting tonight’s £5 App event via this uStream page.  Any last minute changes will be posted here.

I gave details last week for the 3 speakers (possibly 4 now with Ben), we’re starting from 8pm @ The Skiff in the North Laines.

Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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New ProCasts screencast for Orchestrate

ProCasts, Screencasting June 8, 2009

Over in ProCasts we’ve just delivered a sales screencast production to Andy Wright (CEO) at Orchestrate to demonstrate their workforce scheduling software.  Andy and I first spoke after he created his own screencast for Orchestrate’s launch, you can see some more details and our critique of his earlier screencast here.  Andy’s blogged a very supportive entry too.

Our solution shows you ‘a day in the life of Orchestrate’, it shows you how easy it is to schedule jobs and see that they’re completed.

Thanks to Richard for the logo and concept work and Ellen for script re-writing.  My team rocks.

Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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Starting work on a ‘How to Screencast’ eBook

Screencasting, ShowMeDo June 6, 2009

Having learned an awful lot about screencasting in the last 4 years, I’m starting work in ProCasts on developing an eBook that teaches How to Screencast.  With over 3 years of tutorial screencasting in ShowMeDo and 2 years of commercial screencasting for marketing, tech-support and training that led to ProCasts, I feel rather well-qualified to write the book on the subject.

Right now the book is in the design stages, I’ve posted a survey in SurveyMonkey that asks 10 easy questions about your current screencasting knowledge and what you want to learn about.  If you want to learn more about screencasting – please fill in the survey.  It doesn’t require registration and if you put in your email address for the first question you’ll be in the draw for 2 free licenses (one for you, one for a friend).

If you don’t want to fill in the survey but you do want to be notified about the release, sign-up to our eBook notification list.

Topics that I’ll probably cover include:

  • Using screencasts for Sales, Training and Technical Support
  • Story-boarding to explain all your benefits and features
  • Writing a short, powerful script that really grabs the viewer’s attention
  • Techniques for converting your viewer into a user of your software
  • The best software packages to use when recording and editing a screencast
  • Editing competently so you have a short, polished video
  • Using annotations, fades and high-lights to focus the viewer’s attention on the key points
  • Improving your audio recording
  • Critiques of existing screencasts including ways of improving them
  • Check-lists for each step of the process so you can quickly complete each phase confidently
Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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£5 App next week – Darren Fell (Crunch), Andy Gill (ChatBadge), Richard Dallaway (Taykt)

projectbrightonblogs, sussexdigital, £5 App Meet June 5, 2009

Our next £5 App night is next Thursday 8pm at The Skiff.  For our 17th event we have three speakers each talking about their new start-ups.  As usual beer and cake are provided, beer is now kindly provided by Jon and The Skiff rather than out of my pocket, co-founder John will bake the cake.

Darren Fell will be talking about founding Pure and his new venture Crunch, which is a web service that offers: “Ridiculously Easy Accounting for Freelancers, Contractors and Consultants”

Andrew Gill will also be along to talk about ChatBadge: “… a new web-based chat service purpose-built to help convert website visitors into customers and support existing customers better”

Richard Dallaway will be talking about Taykt, a web site that let’s you use SMS short codes for…well, whatever you like, really. He’ll explain what it is, why it was built, and what they’ve discovered from building a product for themselves, rather than a client.

Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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OpenOffice Writer tutorials at ShowMeDo

Screencasting, ShowMeDo June 4, 2009

I’ve just finished a new series for OpenOffice users entitled OpenOffice 3.1 Writer for Microsoft Word users.  This series is a part of ShowMeDo’s Club, in 45 minutes I cover 11 topics for the new Writer user aimed at easing their transition across from MS Office:

  1. Series Overview in 4 minutes (OpenOffice 3.1 for Word users)
  2. Installing OpenOffice 3.1 on Windows XP
  3. Working with Word (.doc) files
  4. Working with an OpenDocument Format (.odt) file
  5. Help! Manuals, Forums and Mail lists
  6. Basic Formatting (bold, italic etc)
  7. Exporting to PDF, HTML, MediaWiki
  8. Printing
  9. Word-completion
  10. Find and Replace, Undo
  11. Spell Checker

We have plans to cover more OOo topics, right now I’m looking for feedback.  It feels a bit odd to have one OpenOffice series in amongst all the Python series but we need to start this new tutorial thread somehow!  I created this series whilst wearing my ProCasts screencast production hat.

Ian is a Chief Interim Data Scientist via his Mor Consulting. Sign-up for Data Science tutorials in London and to hear about his data science thoughts and jobs. He lives in London, is walked by his high energy Springer Spaniel and is a consumer of fine coffees.
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