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nor(DEV):con 2019 Call For Speakers Thursday 21st to Saturday 23rd February 2019 Kings Centre 63-75 King Street Norwich NR1 1PH   nor(DEV):con, the Norfolk Developers Conference is back for 2019 and stronger than ever with new tracks and an updated format. nor(DEV):con is Norfolk and Norwich’s premier and most well attended conference for everyone involved in software development and business.   Call for Speakers The call for speakers is open from now until Friday 28th of September 2018. To submit a proposal, please send an email to paul@norfolkdevelopers.com with the following:  

• Session Title
• Session abstract
• Session topics:
  • Pre-conference workshop
  • Tech
  • Process
  • Workshop
  • Stephen Fry
  • Business
  • Lightning talk
• Session length
  • 45 min presentation
  • 90 minute presentation
  • 90 minute hands on workshop
  • Full day hands on workshop
  • 5 minute Lightning talk
• Technical level
  • Beginner
  • Intermediate
  • Advanced
  • Business
• Speaker(s) Bio
• Availability for Thursday 21st (full day workshops only), Friday 22nd and Saturday 23rd February.

  Further information will be required if you proposal is accepted.   Conference Topics Pre-Conference Full Day Workshops We’re looking for three full day pre-conference hands on workshops. These should be on a software development or process theme and we’re looking for one beginner, one intermediate and one advanced workshop. Pre-conference workshops attract between 5 and 30 people.   Tech Track We’re looking for 45 minute and 90 minute beginners, intermediate and advanced presentations primarily on coding, techniques and libraries. This year we’re particularly keen to include a few Blockchain sessions.   Process Track Rather than just concentrating on Agile, this year we have a process track for any type of software development process. Yes, you can even propose a session on Waterfall if you’re feeling brave!   Stephen Fry Track Software Development is more than just code and practices. It’s about people. And people are not logical entities that follow easily understood rules. We’re illogical, irrational, and tend to shy away from difficult subjects like mental illness, inequality, and bias. This track looks at the softer side of Software Development, at the people, how they interact, and how we can work with the whole gamut of humanity, because it’s not just Stephen Fry who has  manic depression.   Workshop Track We’re looking for 90 minute hands on workshops for up to 20 people. These can be on any of the topics above and delegates bring their own laptops.   Business Track The business track is the track for everyone! We’re looking for business based sessions with a technical slant.   Lightning Talks On the Friday evening during the wine reception, which will be in the main hall, we’ll also be opening the floor to lightning talks. A lightning talk is a 5 minute presentation and we encourage new speakers as well as experienced speakers to present.   Speakers Package

• Free entry to the Friday and Saturday sessions at the conference
• Free entry to the Friday night speakers dinner
• Travel and accommodation at the discretion of the conference organise

When was the last time you made a decision to buy something significant without doing some investigation first? When did you last buy a ‘big thing’ without looking at the options or comparing the price? Before the internet this ‘research’ was done on the high street or maybe over the phone with a copy of the Yellow Pages to guide you. While I bet few people are calling bookshops asking for Fly Fishing by J R Hartley, it is searched for more than 200 times a month online. Just like people looking for fictional fishing books the first place you probably do your ‘research’ now is Google. You go there to type in either the name of the business/product you’re looking for, or if you haven’t yet chosen, the type of thing that you want. You are not alone. These two methods of search are the most common; they are sometimes referred to as known search or generic search. For example, if you want shoes you might search for ‘Big Dave’s Shoe Shop’ or ‘Shoe shops near me’. You either know Big Dave and want his shoes or you don’t know Big Dave but still want shoes. Both of these searches are crucial to Big Dave because he just wants to sell shoes. This kind of activity means a business needs a website and that website needs to be optimised to show up on a search engine… Search Engine Optimisation. If you already spend money on newspaper ads, radio ads, outdoor advertising and aren’t seeing that convert into customers then the first thing to look at is what happens when someone hears your ad on the radio… I bet they Google you. If they do, what do they see? SEO isn’t optional anymore – especially if most of your marketing is done offline. If you want people who see your offline advertising to reach your business you need SEO. If this has piqued your interest, and you want to know more, go and have a read of how we get SEO to drive results for small business on our website.

“It was an invaluable and pretty unique experience”   Here at Naked Element we’re big into supporting the future of tech, and that means young people. One work experience recruit was Chelsea, an ambitious school student who went on to be accepted at Oxford to study Computer Science. We couldn’t be more proud! Here she tells us a little about her journey and what inspired her to take up tech and join Naked Element for some real world experience.   How did you start your work experience with Naked Element? One of my teachers at school was friends with Paul Grenyer (MD of Naked Element), and I was looking around for any work experience in the tech/computing/software industry. I had begun thinking about what I wanted to do in the future and had begun thinking of going into a technology based career. I was introduced to Paul and he asked me what I wanted out of the experience and offered me work experience. After completing a week, he offered to let me come and do another week of paid work!   What skills did you bring to Naked Element do you think? Not sure I brought too many skills but I had some previous programming experience with python and a tiny bit in Java. I’d done my fair share of teamwork and group projects but this was definitely my first experience in a ‘work’ / ‘professional’ environment.   What did your work experience entail? I was really surprised when I arrived on my first day and was given a real project to work on, and actual code to edit. It was a vastly different experience to other placements I had done and I loved the hands on experience. I got to work on a couple of projects including one that would manage your social media posts. What was really interesting for me was seeing the difference between the theory we learn in class and how it’s actually implemented in real life, such as client and server side processing. When I came in I thought I would be completely out of my depth, but even though I didn’t understand Java to start with everyone at Naked Element was willing to take the time to explain to me how something worked and what it was doing. Even being given a task as simple as going through previous code and fixing mistakes or inefficient parts was a useful experience for me and has helped in me checking to make sure my A Level coursework is as efficient as possible!   Were there any stand out moments during your time with the company? Definitely the best part about the work experience was the hands on nature of it. I definitely had never had work experience that was so hands on, it would often just be tours of the departments etc. But with Naked Element I actually got to look and work on code for live projects.   What did you learn while at Naked Element? I learnt a lot on my work experience. I got a serious introduction to Java and experience with JavaScript and CSS as well as what a career in Software Development could entail. As well as the actual tech aspects of the experience. I learnt a lot about the business management side of things and it was interesting going to one of the talks and training sessions and learning how to better advertise the company. It was also brilliant being introduced to other tech companies around Norwich and seeing how they interact.   What made you choose Oxford? I’ve always been pretty ambitious, and I wanted to apply for Oxford on the chance I got in. The opportunities a degree from Oxford would provide would be almost unmatched and I adore the city. I’d also enjoyed looking round on the open days and the taster lectures I had. I currently hold an offer to study Computer Science at Jesus College, I just need to get the grades now!!   Do you think your time with Naked Element helped with your application? I definitely think it helped, it was an invaluable and pretty unique experience that helps make you stand out from the thousands of others who apply. I know a lot of people don’t have the opportunity to get work experience.   Do you have any plans for your career future yet? I’m not sure about a career future. After my work experience I’m definitely looking at software development. I also like the idea of working in cyber security or even AI. I think Computer Science opens up a vast field of job prospects and I haven’t quite got around to choosing one just yet. Luckily I don’t have to.   Do you have any advice for other young people interested in tech? Firstly go out and get experience. It’s not easy but there’s no harm in asking and you’re not going to find what you enjoy or what you’re good out without trying things out. I don’t think there is any harm in broadening your skills and any experience is good experience.

The future is within touching distance withh EE confirming that their 5G rollout could be available in late 2019. The general expectation is that 5G will be a reality for most of the UK by the mid 2020’s. What will this mean in reality? A 5G connection will allow you to download a full HD movie in 10 seconds, 4G would take 10 minutes. More significant is that this brings into reality driverless cars, drone delivery, a true Internet of Things with the ability to connect to all sorts of devices wherever you are. This will herald a new technology revolution with consequences we can only guess at

Most commecially run kitchens do not have the benefit of a bespoke suppresion system to protect the kitchen appliances, staff and ongoing business continuity. These notes are for the benefit of those in catering who run a commercial kitchen or for those management staff who are responsible for a business where a commercial kitchen is a key and fundamental part of the daily activites for the business

The dedicated system linked to the main house fire alarm will extinguish a canopy fire and orevent re-flash to minimise damage in the kitchen and reduce the risk to the staff working within

Canopy protection systems should be considered in all of the following environments as part of the overall fire safety program.

Hotels, Schools state and private, Care Homes, Pubs, larger Sports Centres , larger manufacturing plants with an in house catering provision for staff should all be assessed correctly to look at both the life safety and consequential loss issues for having canopy protection.

Whilst the building regulations are a little vague as to the use of a canopy packages and most risk assessors don’t request it as they defer to the BCO, the use of canopy protection must be given far more serious consideration for a variety of reasons. From a life safety position a canopy package for a commercial kitchen that carries as a typical layout x 2 chip fryers with 25L of fat, plus a 6 burner grill and griddle and salamander grill, an automated suppression system is far more appropriate than expecting staff to try and tackle a chip fire with a wet chemical extinguisher.

What do you do when the extinguisher is empty ? and what do you do if, after the extinguisher has been exhausted there is an issue of reflash.

From the position of the clients insurance provider, they will not want staff trying to put out anything more than a small bin fire due to the potential for an employers liability claim being made in the event that a member of staff tries to put out a fire and ends up with injuries.

Furthermore looking at things from the insurance providers position they will also look at the potential for a large and costly consequential loss claim for kitchen damage that prevents the kitchen being used for what might be several weeks following a relatively small fire.

For the client to consider the the potential costs of hiring in a portable kitchen, or trying to bring in food from an outside source will run into many thousands even for only a few weeks.

There is a clear life safety issue within a commercial kitchen environment for the use of automated suppression and that FRA’s do not make references to its application are really not giving the client the very best guidance.

Best practice and diligent design would have a canopy package included within whatever the L or P system was being installed with interface links for its connection to the main “house” system, not to do so is both weak in terms of the assessment and taking a to narrow view of the issues specific to the site in terms of both potential staff injury’s and a very large insurance claim in the event that the kitchen is written off before the brigade arrive and can deal with it.

Within the kitchen areas there are 2 other issues which will also need to be addressed 1. Enhanced escape lighting in what the assessment should deem a hazardous area 2. VAD units for the fire alarm under EN54 Part 23 with a validated DB test to assess the ambient noise

Cost effective and tax friendly funding is available to cover these types of projects (subject to the usual acceptance) so please feel free to contact me be you a contractor or end user to discuss in confidence where and how Veritas can help you

We don’t just create industry-changing software for big businesses, we can also pick up smaller jobs that need a quick result. Naked Element recently completed a minor job for Thyngs, a digital consumer engagement company based in Norwich. With our flexible team, experienced in development and design, we were able to turn the work around in a matter of hours.   Niall, head of marketing at Thyngs, said “we needed some urgent, short-term support with some updates we needed to make to our website. We know Paul and the team, and he was responsive and eager to help.”   Our designer/developer Shelley stepped in to get the job done. “Thyngs wanted some new pages added to their existing website, all in the same format, and they wanted their homepage amended slightly. Niall was lovely, easy to talk to and clear in what he wanted, which meant there were no snags or issues to worry about!”   Even though it was only a few hours work, Naked Element still have a reputation for quality. “Everyone was very professional and proactive” said Niall, “I would absolutely recommend Naked Element to companies in need of similar support”   Even the smallest job deserves dedication!

Norfolk-based creative office design company, Bluespace, have been working closely with Norwich City Football Club to transform their Player’s Lounge at the Colney Training Centre. When the company was approached by the football club, Bluespace were over the moon and snapped up the opportunity to work with the pride of Norwich and develop an area with the purpose of increasing team motivation and productivity. This is what the commercial interior design company in Norwich has to say about their experience:

The premises for Norwich City Football Club’s Player’s Lounge is a large conservatory. Our vision was to turn the space into a modern break out area where the team can rejuvenate after training. When planning this commercial interior design project, we had several ideas to achieve the homely, yet modern space they wanted to provide for the team. A soft colour palette to create a fresh look, warm lighting to increase the comfort levels and simple accessories to add a finishing touch, including; large televisions, mini fridges, and large drum light shades which draw the eye from the spacious conservatory roof.

By carefully selecting different pieces of luxury office furniture for the Player’s Lounge, we were able to incorporate a professional outlook for any team/business meetings that may be held here, as well as ensuring the room remained a communal and enjoyable area. With high-back gaming chairs, a staple corner sofa and a square picnic table; we’ve created a space where players can socialise and discuss match tactics, while letting off steam after an intense training session.

We already have plans to work with Norwich City Football Club again, as we start planning the design for the First Team’s restaurant and the administration offices at the training centre. We’re proud that Norwich City Football Club are happy with the work we have carried out for the training centre and look forward to continuing to build a professional relationship with them.

“It’s brilliant and Bluespace have done an extraordinary job. The lads now have a space to relax, and we’re really happy to have this opportunity. We want hard and professional work, but you have to keep in mind they are human beings. There is a lot of load and it’s important to have a familiar space where they can calm down that feels like home.” – Daniel Farke, Head Coach for Norwich City Football Club.

Tudor Lodge is pleased to be helped with the launch of Yu Life, a new innovative insurance tech company that aims to be the UK’s first ‘lifestyle insurance business.’ Companies are able to buy life insurance for their employees and promote their wellbeing by offering rewards through the Yu Life app. Employees will receive discounts and added benefits for keeping fit and completing a certain number of miles walked, helping employers demonstrate their care for their employees’ wellbeing.

What We Are Doing For Yu Life

The website Yu Life (https://www.yulife.com/) has launched in the UK this summer and the first priority is to help the company rank for its own brand name. With lots of PR generated, we have had to take a methodical approach to follow up each journalist and ensure that there is a link pointing to the site. This demonstrates to Google that the site is relevant and with good links from several sources, it shows that the site is worthy of ranking for its own name and indeed other relevant keywords.

In addition, we have aimed on bulking up the site with more content. Naturally, a site with 30 pages is going to perform better than a site with only 5 pages (generally speaking) and we have made sure that each page is optimised with the corrent meta-titles, descriptions, h tags and internal links to maximise SEO results.

Keyword Research and Content

With an overlap of life insurance, employee benefits and wellbeing, we have sat down with the Yu Life team to come up with a number of keywords that the website can target on Google. Specifically those that will help convert customers and employers to take out life insurance policies for their staff – not for the sake of just ranking on Google anyway.

Our keyword analysis has been achieved through a variety of tools including Keyword Research Tool and Keywords Everywhere and competitor analysis of other websites. Once we have determined the keywords to target, we then simply dedicate a landing page of around 500 pages specifically to target those phrases. One must be careful not to create too many landing pages or overlapping the keywords, but finding a very focused approached. 

Whilst it is still early days, the build up of links and content is starting to take place and no doubt we will be able to add value to Yu Life’s SEO and through their quest to becoming a household name.

Based on current trends, brand experience is expected to surpass price point and product as the key differentiator of brands by 2020. Contemporary markets have moved away from simply wanting a product or service, they want an experience. Claiming to be the ‘best’ or the ‘cheapest’ no longer has the same allure as offering genuine and immersive customer experience, whatever your industry. Cue experiential marketing, also known as engagement marketing or events marketing, this strategy directly involves clients and consumers in the development of a brand, products and the marketing itself. This strategy hinges on building genuine relationships between business and client, through connection. Proponents of this strategy suggest that it is in the live, shareable and intimate interactions with a business that clients develop this relationship, and when used effectively, it is this relationship that will drive brand loyalty and return business.

Live events lend themselves perfectly to this aim, providing a platform to cultivate relationships, share experiences and begin to nurture a three dimensional dialogue with clients. However as with any relationship, quality should be sough above quantity, with give and take a crucial aspect of engaging meaningfully with clients. A traditional sales approach may see a salesperson approach a client, inserting themselves into their experience often creating an intrusive and disruptive atmosphere. Experiential marketing is the opposite of this, it is understanding the experience of the client in a ‘customer-centric’ approach, communicating in meaningful, relevant and of course interesting way. By doing so, not only is the traditional 1D ‘shark attack’ style sales approach left behind, but the 2D dialogue has the potential to develop into a shared 3D experience which is less transactional and more about the journey for both provider & client.

In recent years there have been a growing number of great applications of the experiential marketing approach. As part of the Molson Red Leaf Project an illuminated sustainable dance floor was used to create an alluring spectacle which linked participants to a wider theme of sustainability. With each step generating 24 watts of electricity, crowds were encouraged to twist, tango and tap across the floor whilst branded digital energy meters tracked the energy generated and celebrated the achievement of targets. Jones Soda invites regular customers to send in photos which they feature on personalised packaging, or if particularly jaw-dropping can even make their way onto a limited run of mainstream packing too. Japanese snack company Tohato launched two competing snack flavours in an award-winning advertising campaign in 2007, calling on customers to engage in an online multiplayer game to decide the winning flavour. Experiential marketing strategy can clearly be implemented across many mediums, with technological advances increasing how far offline and online tools can be leveraged.

Live events have long formed the perfect touch-stone to consolidate relationships, with IoT and immersion technology bridging real and digital worlds simultaneously so no member of your growing community is left out. Since the 90s we have advocated strategies that are now recognised as experiential marketing. From the ‘terawatt challenge’ at The Energy Event to an award-winning build incorporating an ‘IT Disaster Recovery’ off-road safari at BCI World conference, we take pride in developing meaningful, inventive and relevant experiences for our clients. If you would like more information on how we can help you or how to bring experiential marketing into your events, let’s get in touch.

Do you want your Norfolk business to be commercially stronger and competitive?

Do you want to be an employer of choice who can both attract and retain talent?

There is copious evidence that businesses with high levels of employee engagement are more efficient and effective.  Employee engagement is about:

• Finding a deeper commitment from our employees so less leave, sick absence reduces, conflicts and grievances reduce, accident rates reduce and productivity and ultimately profit increase.
• Using our employees’ creativity, knowledge and ideas to improve customer service and products and the way we do business.
• Businesses behaving with integrity and acting in line with its company values.  

Surely this is what Norfolk needs to start addressing the skills gap and to retain and attract talent. As an employer located in a region with an above average aging population, how will you attract and retain the talented workforce you want? Are you offering what millennials want? Are you focussed on profits or process but not people? What happens when the people go elsewhere? 

We want everyone working in Norfolk to want, and be able, to give their best each day, so that each day is a great day at work, and that workplaces in Norfolk are thriving, growing and developing through the commitment, energy, and creativity of the people that work in them.

Join us on Norfolk Day for the launch of Engaging Norfolk, a new initiative linked to the Engage for Success movement.

This free event will:

• Kick start a movement in Norfolk  to address the skills gap by raising awareness of the benefits of an engaged workforce and through shared learning and practical insights from other Norfolk businesses help you make your business a great place to work.
• Share with you the four key drivers of employee engagement
• Demonstrate how engagement drives both sales and profit
• Offer the opportunity to network with like-minded Norfolk businesses.

Engaging Norfolk is being led by Cassandra Andrews, a Norfolk employee engagement specialist and is generously supported by Norfolk Chamber of Commerce, Birketts LLP and Pure Resourcing.

We are incredibly fortunate to have David Macleod OBE as our Key note speaker

In 2007 David co-authored ‘The Extra Mile: How to engage your people to win’. In 2008, David was invited with Nita Clarke to report on Engagement in the UK, resulting in the publication of Engaging For Success (also known as the MacLeod Report) in 2009 and the setting up of the Engage for Success Movement. David is co-chair of the government sponsored, employer led Employee Engagement Task Force launched by the Prime Minister at Number 10 in March 2011.  This follows an early career in marketing followed by becoming a CEO of a global business formed through the merger of an ICI and a Unilever business. He has worked at senior levels in manufacturing and in the services sectors. He has been an NED of three Government Departments and has worked for a year and a half in the Cabinet Office.

For more information or to secure your free ticket: https://www.cassandraandrews.com/engaging-norfolk

As a business owner, your ultimate goal is highly likely to be to have more people spending money with you – this means you need to start by building a customer base. To do this you will have to work hard to build awareness of your business with your target audience. By building brand awareness and letting customers know who you are, more people will know about you and what you do. I know this sounds like stating the obvious – that’s because it is, but it’s often overlooked. With a plethora of products in the market that offer ‘instant wins’ it can seem like investment in longer-term, brand-building advertising doesn’t stack up. In the long term, a business of any size needs loyal brand advocates. It is these people who become repeat customers and the financial base of your business. You can always find the odd quick win but a stable, loyal customer base takes focus, time and effort. Let’s imagine that your business sells garden furniture. It’s unlikely that the audience you want to target (probably homeowners, who live in properties with a garden) are all actively looking to purchase garden furniture on a constant basis. It is most likely that the majority of your audience are actually not buying, searching or researching garden furniture at all right now. This means avenues like AdWords/pay per click (although effective when people are active) won’t reach them. Simply put, if I’m not searching for garden furniture today I will never see your ad on Google. Don’t get me wrong, Mrs Garden Furniture Seller, your business probably does need ads on Google, but to reach the biggest part of your relevant audience and to get some of them to come to you before they get all the options that a search on Google can bring, you need ads or content in the gardening section of the magazine they read every month and a big poster outside the garden centre they visit in the spring. By putting the right message in front of relevant people you can make your Google pay per click ads work harder. Did you know firms with significant brand awareness get a higher click-to-conversion rate from Google? It makes sense, as we are more likely to buy from a business we know and trust. There’s more on how this works on our website. Find out more at www.archantlocalimpact.co.uk

Search engine optimisation (SEO) has in recent years become a fundamental part of countless business’ marketing strategy. There are a great deal of businesses whose entire business model relies on their SEO and organic search positioning and performance.

However, whilst almost every business up and down the country needs a comprehensive SEO strategy many simply do not know where to actually start. This can prove to be difficult though as not knowing where to start often leads to further problems in the implementation of an effective SEO strategy.

Your Industry and Company

Before you even begin to consider what the details o f the strategy required will be, it is crucial to take your industry into account as practices in SEO vary to some extent from industry to industry. For example, if a company works in financial planning and wealth planning, their industry will differ from for example a payday loans provider.

Ensuring Search Engines Understand

Critically, and before any new content or links can be worked on, a website needs to be made ‘friendly’ towards search engines and their basic and then more complex rankings criteria. For example, in the case of Google, heavy emphasis is placed by their algorithm on relevancy and originality of content. On a more basic level though, the content needs to be offered up to the search engine accordingly.

‘Crawling’ of a website refers to the reading and parsing of the site in question by the appropriate search engine. There are some basic rules and practices that all sites should follow here:

• Ensure none of the code making up the website are ‘hidden’
• Meta data; comprising titles and descriptions are a fundamental SEO factor that provide the initial details for search engines and these snippets of data should always be optimised
• URL structures for all pages should be relevant, natural and clean to ensure it is clear to search engines and users alike, what the page content entails

Focusing on Content and Users

As well as what most would term the ‘technical SEO,’ there are many other elements that make up the puzzle that is a fully optimised website. Principally, once the site is set up to be able to properly crawled by search engines, what is crawled becomes more and more important. There are numerous considerations here:

• Do not write content for the sake of it; each page and content piece should have a function and a clear purpose. No search engine likes pointless, thin content
• Websites should be fully optimised for mobile and tablet devices. With Google in particular operating a ‘mobile-first’ ranking algorithm, ensuring a site scales properly for mobile devices and can be properly interacted with by these devices is increasingly important
• Website speed is key. Ultimately, a slow website is more likely to end up causing users to leave due to impatience and an inability to properly access what they are in fact looking for and wishing to interact with