Author: Paul Grenyer

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Last week we attended the Evolution: Journey into Industry 4.0 event and it was an illuminating experience! Not only did we get to hear from some of manufacturings leading lights in the region, we got to talk alongside them at Naame’s packed conference.

As well as having our exhibition stand, our Director Paul Grenyer spoke at the event, demonstrating the value of process automation within manufacturing and how it will support growth in the sector. No capital expenditure required! Paul was able to share the benefits our clients have already seen from automating processes, and have a little fun along the way too!

Other speakers included industry gurus from Loughborough University, the Department for International Trade, Knowledge Transfer Manager – KTN – Innovate UK, Cranfield University, Hethel Innovation and West Suffolk College. We were also fortunate enough to hear from companies already putting automation into practice to great effect, including Warren Services, asset intelligence group Pathfindr, telecoms giant Huawei UK and electric motors company MSF Technologies. We were also reassured that despite some reports claiming future tech would mean job losses, those at Industry 4.0 disagreed, saying job roles would simply evolve from manual tasks to monitoring and analysing. It was also interesting to discover that our region is leading the way in disruptive tech!

Henk Koopmans, chief executive of Huawei UK, encouraged business to ‘think big’ and focus on their market first, but the main takeaway message from the event was that engineering needed to play an important part of the New Anglia LEP economic strategy. The LEP is hoping for greater involvement from businesses to help define the skills needed in five years time so it can work with colleges to get those skills taught now in preparation.

For Naame’s part, it hopes to support manufacturers and introduce them to others who may be able to help with the challenges they face. They are also looking to create manufacturing groups in Suffolk – contact Naame if you are interested. The New Anglia Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering group are also looking to develop a strategic map and would like feedback on a consultation document being released onto their website this week.

The day proved to be a worthwhile investment, with genuinely interesting speakers and an intelligent audience keen to support and be involved in the next phase of industry in our region.

Interested in finding out what Naked Element can do to prepare your business for Industry 4.0? Get in touch for a cup of tea and a chat!

Originally published here.

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

Held by Inspired Youth Projects, My Tech 2018 was another successful meeting of tech employers and burgeoning tech talent.

Naked Element was proud to support the event, as always, and our developers really got a lot out of it too! "The MyTech Inspired Youth event brought together some of the great local tech companies and organisations including EposNow, Breakwater IT and Tech East” said our developer Henri Keeble, “It was was great talking to the students about what it is we do at Naked Element - the technically minded students showed a lot of interest. We were able to give some insight into what a career in software may look like, but also speak about the different routes we'd taken to get to where we are now, with my colleague Jack and myself having very different experiences. We were able to offer some advice we wish we'd known! It was also good to see those who were uncertain of their future career goals taking an interest in the various companies that were present.”

The day started with employability workshops and employer speed networking sessions, designed to help students get an idea of the variety of opportunities available to them.
For those who felt a little anxious at the idea of networking, there was a new ‘no pressure’ session for a more relaxed way to talk to employers. Our apprentice software developer Jack Rogers found it interesting to hear more about what students were considering after high school. “I enjoyed listening to students that were passionate about their future after finishing their GCSE's. Some of the students were also not certain what they were going to do, so it was very helpful to explain the decisions I made. It was interesting to see the diversity of career paths of the young people attending and the choices that each of them are making, as well as seeing how technology has advanced as more and more students are showing an interest towards it.”
The second half of the event was dedicated time for older students who had their sights set on career opportunities, training or apprenticeships within the tech industry and it as clear that those who attended found the day valuable. Supporting the new wave of techies in the region has long been a significant part of what Naked Element do. Director Paul Grenyer explains “It’s very important to inspire and encourage students to choose a career in tech in Norfolk, as there is increased demand for digital skills and this looks set to continue for a considerable time to come - Norfolk companies contact me weekly looking for developers and people with supporting digital skills.” Paul is also involved in a work group to help address the skills shortage in our local area. “TechNation has put Norwich firmly on the map when it comes to innovative tech companies” he says “and these companies will be looking to grow over the next 5+ years and will require a local workforce to support that growth. That’s why events like My Tech are so crucial.”

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

HELP KEEP NORWICH & NORFOLK ON THE TECH NATION MAP IN 2018

Tech Nation is a groundbreaking series of reports on the UK’s digital tech ecosystem. Over the last three years – it has captured the strength, depth and breadth of activity across the UK. It has revealed the scale of the digital tech sector, captured its growth, and – crucially – developed an understanding of the characteristics of the communities driving it.

We hope to make Tech Nation 2018 the best report yet.

To do this, we need your help. Last year the survey had 2,700 responses, this year we hope to reach 11,000 responses, and to hear from all tech communities in the UK to allow us to provide the most up to date and insightful data on the UK tech community in 2018.

If you work in or run a business in the technology, digital sector or any business that is related to or supports these sectors such as investors, legal, education etc. then we need your input.

We want to hear from you on topics such as diversity of the tech sector in your local area, on opportunities for high growth businesses and the quality of education and training.

Help keep Norwich & Norfolk at the forefront of peoples minds when they consider Tech Communities in the UK.

It only takes 5 minutes!


If you would like to join Tech Nation 2018 Community Partner please email details of your business along with your logo to technation@techcityuk.com. This will mean that you will be sent updates of completions in your area, and have the opportunity to contribute further to the report.

All community partners will have their logos featured in the report.

The survey will close on Friday 2nd of February.

TAKE THE SURVEY

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

What: Full Day Workshop: BDD with Cynefin - Liz Keogh

When: Wednesday, February 7, 2018, 9:00am to 4:45pm

Where: The King's Centre, King Street, Norwich, NR1 1PH

How much: £130.00

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/Norfolk-Developers-NorDev/events/245781564/

Behaviour-Driven Development is a practice in which we talk through different examples (scenarios) of how a system might work, from the perspective of its many users. In this unique tutorial we mix BDD with Cynefin, the sensemaking framework that helps makes sense of the world around you and the problems you encounter depending on their predictability.

The course provides thinking and conversational tools to enable teams, product owners and managers to address risk early, develop a deep understanding of requirements at different scales, shorten the time needed to reach that understanding, produce high-quality, innovative solutions, and create human-readable, relevant and memorable tests as a by-product… and it's not just applicable to software!

For each outcome, attendees will demonstrate the skill during interactive exercises in the course.

BDD

• Explain BDD and its practices
• Create well-formed scenarios which are relevant to your own domain
• Use conversational patterns to draw out new scenarios and explore scope
• Discuss how best to engage Developers, Testers and Analysts or Business Experts in conversations
• Identify and design mechanisms for quick feedback using single scenarios

Cynefin

• Explain the Cynefin model and how it relates to BDD and Specification by Example
• Estimate the level of complexity in different requirements phrased at different scales
• Predict when an unelaborated requirement is likely to cause conflict or excessive discussion
• Discuss shortcuts to apply to well-understood requirements to reduce analysis and planning time
• Differentiate between well-understood, domain-specific, and innovative / uncertain aspects of work through using scenarios in conversations

Capability Red

• Identify core and incidental stakeholders for a project
• Generate a map of desired capabilities from lower-level stories and scenarios
• Identify risk and uncertainty in capability maps
• Discuss prioritization of long-term plans accordingly
• Decide whether to engage stakeholders before or only after implementation (educators vs. gatekeepers / checklist)
• Phrase capability-level problems in problem-space language, without diving into solution-focused features
• Identify continuous capabilities to which BDD can be applied using monitoring (non-functionals and other non-discrete requirements)
• Discuss monitoring mechanisms, including manual processes and compliance / governance where applicable.

Please note that automation of scenarios will be mentioned in this course, but is out of scope; this course focuses on the conversational and analytical aspects of BDD.

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results
Stephen Guise  (Author)

ISBN-13: 978-1494882273

I’ve read quite a few self help books and while they always seem really good at the time, I’m not particularly good at following through. I guess I don’t necessarily have the willpower or the presence of mind to do what they recommend.

Mini Habits are different. They’re to small for failure.

There’s lots of repetition, which is slightly irritating until towards the end of the book the when the author hints as to why. As the author often says, you start with ridiculously small habits, the reoccuring examples are one pushup a day and writing 50 words a day, because it gets you into the habit, making it easier to do more. But you only have to achieve the small habit you set out to do. That’s what success looks like. So you can’t fail.

The book was recommended to me by my good friend Tom Bool. Soon after I started reading the book I started walking everyday right around the park. This took a good 30 minutes or more. Will power failed me some days. Now I make sure I walk for 15 minutes every day. Most days I do more as I walk to work. If I don’t walk to work I do 15 minutes or more in the park.

In addition to this my habits are drinking a pint of water a day and reading two pages of a book a day. Everyday I drink more than a pint of water and my incentive is that I don’t have a cup of tea until I’ve drunk my pint. I’m finding reading is enough reward in itself and I’m usually reading more than two pages a day. But if I haven’t found the time to read, I know I can read two pages just before bed.

I wish I’d read this book when I was still responsible for sales calls, because I could have done one a day which would be much easier than the 10 I’d often try and I could have been a success every day.

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

From the moment I walked into the refectory at the Cathedral, ahead of the Saturday night pitches, I felt there was something special going to happen. It wasn’t until the pitches actually began an hour or so later, that I realised exactly what it was.

I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been to Sync The City, despite it being in its fourth year. The idea behind the event it to build a tech based startup in just 54 hours and then pitch for funding at the end. It was these final pitches I had come to see.

Twelve startups waited anxiously for Fiona Lettice, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the UEA, SyncNorwich and Sync The City organiser, to make her introduction to this year's event. She described Sync The City as The Apprentice crossed with Dragon’s Den, with all the tension and hard work compressed into a little over two days. With this, and the prize of £3,000 in funding on their minds, the twelve groups began their pitches.

When I’d been in the refectory earlier there was clearly some concern about these pitches, but every single one was excellent. I was expecting lots of hesitation in the delivery, having been put together under the pressure of the time limit, but there was hardly any. The styles, methods, number of presenters, etc. for each pitch varied greatly, which helped keep my interest to the end.

By only the second pitch I knew what it was that felt special when I had arrived. It was the sense of comradery shared by everyone who was taking part - a real feeling that they were all in it together, regardless of who won at the end of it all.

There was a clear winner for me - a team called Footprint whose product helped individuals identify all of their data on the internet.


The People’s Prize, as voted for by the audience, went to Unwind, a chatbot intended to help with mental illness.



The official judges, Ian Watson (CEO Start-rite shoes), Chris Sargisson (CEO Norfolk Chamber), Kirsty Jarvis (CEO Luminus PR and Jazz Singer), Juliana Mayer (CEO SupaPass) and Wayne Taylor (CTO Thyngs) chose Lone Safe, a team who developed a system for keeping lone workers safe, as the overall winner.



The runners up were a team called ViaCab who were developing an app for hailing Black Cabs.



The explosion of excitement from the winning team and the audience alike was incredible! After Lone Safe were led off to sign the paperwork for their prize money, and Sean Clark brought the event to a close, they could be heard still celebrating in a side room, excited to be able to make their startup a reality.

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Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

My comfort zone had left the building.

Heading out on a cold, dark, Monday evening to yet another Norwich networking event is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s certainly not mine, and definitely not with the cream of the Norfolk tech sector midway through my first attack of a winter cold in I don’t know how long.

We all do things we think might help us to build relationships in business and gain favours with those people around us that might help to push us in the right direction. Accepting an invitation to the November nor(DEV):biz dinner at The Library Restaurant in Norwich was one of those such occasions.

I had worked opposite The Library for about 3 years and not actually made it into the building. Seeing as I have been known to travel many miles through the most challenging of conditions for some decent eats and beautiful architecture, I wrapped myself up and loaded with tissues, I braved the elements resolutely deciding to be back home and in bed by 9:30pm. I could get through this. I would dine and dash.

When I arrived just after 7pm, there were about 20 people gathered in the bar, discussing all manner of tech related topics I knew nothing about. A quick scan revealed that I didn’t know anyone in the room either. I hadn’t just stepped out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone had left the building, the locks had been changed and the eviction notice was nailed firmly to the front door. As my heart sank further into the 120-year old oak floor, one of the other attendees warmly introduced themselves. With that, so did another and third asked if I would like a drink. Result!

We moved upstairs to a private dining room for the main event where I got chatting to a number of people from various sectors, not just tech. We discussed work, families and life, as well as the issues people were facing in business. Which, it turns out, is the same whatever sector you’re in.

The energy in the room was very different to other ‘networking’ events I’ve been to. It felt more human and more open, more confident even. This was a group of some of the brightest minds in Norwich. Intelligent and engaging human beings who are passionate about what they do, enjoying dinner together in lovely surroundings. There was no agenda, no selling, just an unpretentious coming together of intelligent thoughts, ideas and the potential for collaboration with a genuine desire to help each other.

Between courses we listened to a personal account from Laura Flood, Lecturer in IT from City College Norwich, about her own journey into tech and how businesses can help and support new talent into the sector here in Norfolk. If Norfolk is going to be competitive, we need to build the right skills base and create the right jobs for our young people that also benefit the businesses that employ them.

Rather than being irritating, the lengthy delay before the dessert arrived at 10pm, provided a welcome opportunity to talk to even more people in the room. These included software engineers, branding specialists, digital agencies, senior business banking staff and even an accountant.

It seems that in the past, fear may have held me back from exploring the vibrant tech scene we have here in Norwich. If my experience of the nor(DEV)biz: dinner is anything to go by those fears are wholly unfounded. This is an area of business, with a culture, energy and group of individuals I would love to work with more.

I really enjoyed my evening. The food was great, the company fantastic and The Library Restaurant is a stunning location. I’m pleased to report that by the time I left, not only was I firmly reunited with my comfort zone, but we’re planning on attending the December nor(DEV)biz: dinner together.

Words: Lisa Vincent
Norfolk Developers: norfolkdevelopers.com

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

Defining what it is to be a machine is tricky to say the least. In everyday terms a machine is something man-made that performs an automated function. Computers are often referred to as machines but they are much more than the limited definition above. Perhaps, instead of trying to pin down exactly what a ‘machine’ is in the 21st century, it would be more pertinent to define what a machine is to us.

Isaac Asimov once described machines as ‘the true humanising influence’. In his mind machines would only be used to perform functions and carry out tasks that make life possible, leaving humans more time to do the things that make life worthwhile. Essentially through their ability to perform mundane but necessary actions, machines would allow us to indulge in every part of life outside basic functions, to allow us to enjoy what it is to be human. From a more modern writer’s point of view, machines have gone beyond their initial point of freeing us to taking us over. Stephen King focuses stories on machines gone mad in our increasingly automated world. In his film ‘Maximum Overdrive’, a classic Eighties trashy horror, any machine with moving parts becomes homicidal. Lawnmowers, Walkmans, vending machines and lorries are all affected by a passing comet’s radiation (don’t think about it too hard, it’s not meant to be taken seriously), come to life and start killing people. The only solution (spoiler alert) is to find a place where there are no machines, hide there and wait for the astrological phenomenon to pass. In the film our plucky heroes manage to find a sailing boat and a completely deserted island in the middle of a lake, but in reality finding a place without the presence of even the most basic machine would be practically impossible. In his book ‘Cell’, King uses the ubiquity of the mobile phone to reset the whole of humanity back to its animal instincts. Anyone who doesn’t have a cell phone at the time is soon killed and eaten by those that did. In his view technology and automation are so pervasive that they can plausibly (forgetting the green comet radiation) be used to cause global disasters affecting the whole of humanity. Not a virus or giant tidal waves, but machines we invented and built ourselves.

Conversely, anarchic cartoon South Park showed us that while we might think we don’t need machines, we still want them, especially when it comes to fulfilling mundane, everyday tasks. Characters in a recent episode complained that they were losing their jobs and being replaced by machines, but when given the chance to work as the electronic assistant ‘Alexa’ in the Amazon Dot device, they found the job so demeaning they quit. They realised that adding items to shopping lists and playing songs on demand were jobs that were beneath human beings and left Alexa to it. Who knew that technology would evolve to the point where an episode of South Park would prove a point made by Isaac Asimov nearly fifty years earlier?

Popular culture and plot devices aside, machines, of any kind, were created for a purpose – to make things better. Either to speed up processes, increase yield, reduce workload; to make things safer, quicker or more accurate. When we see a machine in this way, they become a tool to be used, rather than technology to be relied upon. We choose to use them, rather than to not be able to live without them. Rather than our future coming crashing down on us because of our reliance on our own creations, machines will hopefully become assistants to our way of life and give us more time to enjoy it. As Asimov said “It is machines that will do the work that makes life possible and that human beings will do all the other things that make life pleasant and worthwhile.”

Words: Lauren

Originally published: Naked Element

Paul Grenyer from Paul Grenyer

If I had to give someone an album which was an example of heavy hetal, The Crimson Idol would fulfil the criteria. It is the best heavy metal album by any band ever and the second best album by any band ever. It’s not thrash, progressive or power metal. It’s just heavy metal.

Right from the opening track it’s clear why WASP’s 1992 masterpiece is the ultimate heavy metal album. Line up changes have always plagued WASP and by the time of the Crimson Idol, long time guitarist Chris Holmes had left the band and only Blackie Lawless was left. Did it matter? No, Blackie writes everything anyway and on The Crimson Idol he played everything except drums and lead guitar.

The first thing you notice is the the drums. They’re different and significantly better and more intricate than on any other WASP album. Then there’s the lead guitar work. Chris Holmes is good, but he’s no Bob Kulick (brother of Bruce who played with KISS in the early 90s). Of course you’ve got that signature BC Rich guitar sound and when you combine all of this, Blackie Lawless's unmistakeable vocals and a heavy dose of the ‘higher you fly the further you fall’ concept album lyrics culminating in the The Idol, the best song with the best guitar solo ever, it makes for a magnificent album.
I’ve seen WASP several times, including them playing The Crimson Idol all the way through in Nottingham in 2007. The concern then was whether latest guitarist Doug Blair would be able to perform The Idol guitar solo live as well as Bob Kulick had on record. No worries there it turns out. So I was really looking forward to seeing it again in Norwich in 2017.

However, I’m increasingly of the opinion that Blackie Lawless and long time bass player Mike Duda are beyond giving a shit and just going through the motions. They barely move, Blackie spends quite a lot of time with his back to the audience and only speaks to us briefly in the encore which consists of just four songs. Neither smile. Blackie looks a mess. Mind you, so does most of the audience. Adding insult to injury and complete contempt for the audience, Blackie doesn’t switch to an acoustic guitar for The Idol. Playing those parts on electric guitar changes and degrades the song. Fortunately Doug Blair and new drummer Aquiles Priester are superb musicians and showmen throughout. The definition in the UEA LCR PA could have been better.

Doesn’t sound like I enjoyed it does? I did! It was fantastic. It was amazing to step back into my teenage years of 25 years ago. 2015’s Golgotha is the only good WASP album since 1995’s Still Not Black Enough and the title track was a fantastic bonus in the encore. WASP have consistently released albums over a long career. They don’t seem to be going anywhere soon, so if you get the chance, go and see them. You’re unlikely to be disappointed.