Goodness me, how time flies when you’re enjoying yourself - yes, it’s another R.E.D. newsletter in your post! Now we’ve got lots of important information here, so keep reading!
Firstly, well done again to the EB team who won the chocolate anagram, and to Helen of Build It who was a close runner-up. The answer for those of you who struggled was Circulation.
Many congratulations too to Collect It magazine for being short-listed for an award by the PPA.
Welcome back to John Barry (whom a few of you may remember
when he worked with us at R.E.D. in the early 90’s). John
is working on a contract basis on some of that low-level computer
code that is best left to the experts! It is great to have him
back - although very confusing to have an office with three Johns
again!
We are moving offices very soon, - well on the 25 June to be precise! We’re really pleased that we’ve found the perfect place. It’s not far from here at the end of a quiet residential street, next to a stream surrounded by trees. Because it’s much larger than here at the Outback, there’s even plans for a sitting room and meeting room! (Also - but don’t tell everybody - Helen and Emma have their eyes on what might be a potential garden - currently a car-park!)
Anyway, as we say, 25 June is D-Day, so if you can possibly avoid ringing us on 25 and 26 June, it would really help our sanity and nerves and we’d be most grateful (the phone lines themselves are to move on 25 June and we will follow).
Happily the telephone and fax numbers are not changing! The new address, however, is:
Remember, remember - this is the date for the next user group meeting - read on for information about the June one just gone. Why not stick this date in your diary now, while you think about it?
It will be in central London again, and fortunately, because
more and more users want to come, our next volunteer has an exceptionally
large function room! Details next letter.
After the extraordinary success of last year, we’ll be
there again on 7 and 8 July. We’ve enclosed a couple of tickets,
and we do hope that you’ll come and see us on Stand D in
the Specialist Pavilion. We had such fun last year seeing you
all, so come and say hello. If you want more tickets, let us know,
we’ve plenty. We heard that some of the free seminars were
very interesting last time too.
No, nothing to do with Emma and her accordion (thank goodness,
I hear you say!) No, this is where we do something quite out of
R.E.D. character - we’re going to blow our own trumpet! Each
year the UK Press Gazette publish a list of what they consider
to be the leading 85 business publishers in the UK and we were
so pleased to see that over 14% of them are R.E.D. users, some
newly so, of course, but some who have been with us many years
and who have climbed from quite small beginnings to great heights.
Well done, everybody!
We heard an extremely interesting talk from Christine Saunders at the User Group Meeting about the Euro. Christine has done huge amounts of reading and research (most of which she claimed was horribly boring!) about how it will effect us all and what we should be doing about it. Christine says that there is a really good web site written for the layman by the Treasury at www.euro.gov.uk and she’s right! Christine also passed on information about one way of printing the Euro symbol.
We are using this information ourselves to make sure our multi-currency
accounting uses the Euro triangulation rules, well before this
becomes mandatory.
It became clear at the User Group Meeting that there’s a place for two new special interest groups. One is for those where many of their subs come via subscription agents (don’t forget, EDI transfer is already available - call for details). The other is for those who wish to use a third party interface to get authorisation and bank batches of credit card payments via a modem. The authorisation numbers could then be slotted back into the R.E.D. database, with any rejections, etc, dealt with appropriately.
A number of people put their name on the ‘interested’ list, so if you weren’t at the meeting, but would like to be kept informed, please let us know.
We have already started investigating the possibilities and
are looking at some third party modem software which we feel would
be suitable for overnight batch authorisations. We’ll keep
you posted.
The ABC is introducing new rules this Autumn so if you are
audited, or are considering becoming so, it would be prudent to
make sure that you’ve read and understood them. Contact the
ABC if you need information. Their number is 01442 870800.
Firstly, out thanks must go to our hosts, and particularly Nicola, for the wonderful hospitality and the care with which it was prepared. Also to our speakers, Christine Allan and Christine Saunders.
More people than ever wanted to come, but because of sickness, holidays and other quirks of fate, a number who were keenly interested could not make the meeting. About 40 souls arrived on the day. We were so pleased to see you all, and almost everybody who came has rung us to say how much they enjoyed it and to pass on their thanks.
The format was much the same as the previous meeting, and the atmosphere took no time at all to be warm and friendly, probably because so many people had met before.
It kicked off with a welcome from Helen and a re-cap that the idea of these meetings is for everybody to meet others in the industry and to grow professionally and personally in terms of expertise, knowledge and experience. Helen did re-iterate that it was important to find a happy level of discussion and that non-discussion and confidentiality must be respected too.
Each company then gave a very brief overview of their business and this was followed by shows of hands on various subjects such as how many people regularly clean their databases, how many gather subs from the Internet, etc. Both these helped give everybody an idea of who they might particularly like to make contact with later on.
The Welcome Pack was chatted about and so too were the boxes of information around the room - there were many more of these than last time covering more subjects. On the whole there seemed to be a lot of interest in them.
There were three short talks - the first was an update from the last meeting - with results figures - of one company’s experience using a clearing house. They had used the data well and to maximum benefit in terms of cross selling and renewals, and the figures were good.
Then came the Euro talk, which we mentioned earlier, and finally Helen explained about some of the developments to the subs program and what is going on here at R.E.D. The subject she picked was the exciting extensions underway for more detailed, more intricate source and renewal analysis for paids, frees and everything in between!
This type of analysis is one of the areas in which every company seems to have very strong feelings about how it should be done, and Helen also explained some of the hurdles and difficulties facing programmers producing fully flexible, configurable software which can be used to meet nearly every requirement. It was most interesting.
Then came the noisy but fun bit where everyone moved from special interest group to special interest group! Much chatting was chatted, much tea was drunk and many biscuits consumed!
The close of play was ‘any other business’ and thanks, and a vote for the next meeting to be on 5 November 1998 - ‘Remember, remember the 5th of November’, and the meeting finished almost promptly at 4.00.
What we would say, is that some people seemed to want to carry
on, so we will investigate suitable tea-rooms or pubs for after
the next meeting for those who want to miss the rush-hour!
This bit is really for your technical people, so do make sure they get a copy of it, or at least let them read you copy:
JB attended a seminar in London by Pervasive Software (the suppliers of the Btrieve Database Engine). This was a product launch for Btrieve 7/SQL which is now known as ‘Pervasive.SQL’. From our point of view, the interesting claims made about the new product were;
If you want to find out more you can access the Pervasive website on
http://www.pervasive.com
Also:
As the holiday season approaches please, please make sure that the colleague who will be looking after your database whilst you are away has had sufficient training and has clear instructions on what will need to be done whilst you are away. That way you can relax with a clear conscience.
Similarly, if your IT support is disappearing into the sunset
for a few weeks make sure you know where to get system support
if you should need it (hint - ‘JB’ is the wrong answer!).