| Sam Young Newsletter |
Issue 98, June 2005
Hi guys,
Coming to a municipality, university, school or hospital near you; check out Partnership Comms Programmes below.
While times have changed, we can all do with a reminder how to graciously do the Meeting & Introducing thing.
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.
| Partnership Comms Programmes |
In the UK, schools have been partnering with commercial interests and private organisations for quite some time in order to provide the services that they would like to their students. While this is not yet happening often in New Zealand, there are signs of joint venture programmes where both the private interest and the public good are served.
Now there is a slightly more specialised style of private/public partnership for assisting public organisations obtain broadband access, called MUSH (Municipal, University, School & Hospital). Developed in Canada, the MUSH networks are also called "condominium fibre", in part because the companies that build them are typically providers of utilities to the building market; water, sewerage or electricity companies, interested in digging trenches, not running a telecommunications company.
The New Zealand Government announced that, as part of its Digital Strategy, it will spend tens of millions of dollars building 15 MUSH networks in cities and towns nationwide.
The MUSH network principle has worked extremely well in Canada and is likely to work well here. First you find an "anchor" tenant (school, university or hospital), and offer to build them a fibre optic network centred on their grounds. Once they sign up, the MUSH network is built connecting to local peering exchanges, if they exist, or via the exchange to their telco's network.
The school gets two or three strands of fibre in the pipe. The rest - six or seven strands plus - are then on-sold to commercial users. Once the building company has reached a pre-determined income level, the school will usually receive a rebate on their network costs. Schools find it hard to understand that (a) they're getting broadband access at rates much faster than they've previously been offered and then (b) they're offered cost rebates in addition to their improved access.
The New Zealand government aims to help build 15 open access fibre networks in partnership with local and regional councils by 2009. This year's Digital Strategy budget will see $24 million allocated to the project. None of this government funding can be picked up by Kiwi Telcos, as MUSH networks are designed to allow non-profit organisations to become the fibre network hubs on-selling network capacity for commercial use.
Just for a change, Telecom need not apply. That's xtra good!
| Meeting & Introducing |
Learning how to make smooth introductions is of great benefit in doing business. A well done introduction ensures that the newly introduced parties are more relaxed in each other's company and therefore that much more likely to hit it off.
There are still some 'rules'. They are:
- Introduce the person of lesser rank to the person of higher rank by saying the name of the more important person first, followed by the words “I'd like to introduce...” and then give the other person's name
- With regard to ranking, rather than obey blindly, use good manners. Try to generally introduce the younger person to the older person. It shows more respect towards the older person, and a client or potential client is more important than your General Manager
- If you can, a brief comment can be very helpful in breaking the ice between strangers and provides some information on which to develop a dialogue. However, be careful about making long personal comments can create embarrassment rather than establish the topic of conversation. "Mrs Wilson, may I present Mrs Smith? She worked with your husband on the relocation project in Wellington."
- Hosts should cordially greet a guest's friend who is a stranger by saying, "I am so pleased you could come."
- Married couples should always be presented singly in their own right, such as: "May I introduce Harry Happy. This is Jim Granger. And this is Sabrina Happy, Harry's wife. Jim Granger" (or Sabrina Silly, if she has kept her own name - never assume!)
- When introducing someone to a member of your own family, make the nature of the relationship clear by saying "I don't believe you have met my sister, Caroline Clever."
Practice it, every chance that you get.
| Sorting Fields in Excel |
In their last newsletter, TechRepublic had a very good tip for sorting four fields in Excel, as follows:
"Microsoft Excel's sort command lets you sort three fields at once. But what if you need to sort four or more fields at one time? For example, suppose you want to sort your customers in this order (the customers’ first names, last names, addresses, and cities are in columns A, B, C, and D, respectively):
- Region (column E)
- State (column F)
- Zip Code (column G)
- Sales (column H) within each zip code
To do this, you will need to run the sort function twice in reverse order, as shown in the following steps:
- Select the data you want to sort
- Go to Data | Sort
- Select Sales from the Sort By drop-down box
- Select Zip Code from the Then By drop-down box
- Select State from the second Then By drop-down box
- Click OK
- With the data still selected, go to Data | Sort
- Select Region from the Sort By drop-down box
- Click OK."
All done! To join TechRepublic go to http://techrepublic.com.com/1300-22-20.html?tag=header
| TLAs for SMEs |
Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;
- VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol. In general, this means sending voice information in digital form in discrete packets rather than in the traditional circuit-committed protocols of the public switched telephone network (PSTN). A major advantage of VoIP and Internet telephony is that it avoids the tolls charged by ordinary telephone service.
Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.
| Short+Hot Keys... and now tips |
Over the next few newsletters, we are going to look at all you can do with hotkeys in Outlook. This time we look at Alt and some other keys;
- Outlook "Close the visible menu and submenu at the same time; works with menu commands" Alt
- Outlook "Copy the active window to Windows Clipboard" Alt & Print Screen
- Outlook "Move to the next open window" Alt & Shift & Esc
- Outlook "Select a menu, or select or clear the check box by the letter underlined in the menu, dialog box or option" Alt & Underlined Character
| Hot Linx |
NZ's White Pages have had a facelift. For those of you who don't go there often, check it out at http://www.whitepages.co.nz/ (this free service should be an important bookmark for you)
Want to see how the US sees lil' ol' Noo Zeelund? Then go no further than the CIA's own page of Kiwi stats at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/nz.html
If you are interested in Bluephone technology, check out the latest on BT's progress at http://www.technewsworld.com/story/8hzFEWV6We0tpY/BT-Readies-Fusion-Brand-for-Combination-Phones.xhtml
And for those of you who don't store time zones accurately in their head, the World Clock is a good site to bookmark at http://www.worldtravelguide.net/worldclock/worldclock.htm
Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here
