Member Blog

Even before Uber made the headlines (for all the wrong reasons) by covering up a massive data breach, the imminent introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has made data protection a hot topic. The GDPR is a brand new regulation which will replace the Data Protection Act with effect from the 25 May 2018. You may have heard some chatter about the more sensational features of the new GDPR, such as more stringent consent requirements for processing of personal data and huge fining powers. We, at Leathes Prior, prefer to shut out the chatter and take a practical and prepared approach to these upcoming changes. We have therefore prepared a new GDPR-ready data protection clause, which will help employers comply with data protection law both before and after May 2018 in respect of their employees. The GDPR will introduce stringent new requirements on obtaining consent for processing personal data, and so a general clause in an employment contract requiring an employee to consent to all processing activities is unlikely to be effective. But fear not! Among general changes in terminology, this new clause highlights that, under the GDPR, consent should not be the legal basis used for the processing activities which employers are required to carry out in relation to their employees (such as payroll) – consent is not the only basis for legal processing of personal data when it comes to employees. Transparency and accountability in data processing are a central feature of the GDPR. Our new data protection clause highlights the need for employees to notify employers of any data breach immediately (such as a lost laptop, missing mobile or even an errant email) so that you can keep accurate records and safeguard your business in the event of a breach. Of course, employment contracts are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to complying with the new law. For our part, we are currently in the process of reviewing our Data Protection Policy which will be available soon – so watch this space! In the meantime, if you have any questions about amending your staff handbook or employment contracts, please contact the Employment Team on 01603 281142. If you would like advice on the GDPR in relation to your commercial transactions and activities, please contact our Commercial Team on 01603 281165, for a no obligation quote.  Note: the content of this article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific legal advice should be taken in any specific circumstance.

We are delighted to announce that we are working with The Wood Works, a leading provider of bespoke kitchen and furniture in the UK. Standing out in this crowded market is not easy, especially when you are based in London and there is a lot of choice available.

We were hired by The Wood Works as SEO and UX (user experience) specialists to help drive users and conversions to the site. The secret was to find the balance between letting people browse and also submit their details. 

User Experience

Giving users the opportunity to browse a full range of kitchens and furniture was key, so we implemented a simple flick through via mobile and tablet for anyone prospective customers. In addition, we have proactively compressed hundreds of images on the website to below 100kb to increase the speed, whilst still maintaining quality high res images.

We have opted for adding contact forms and calls-to-action within the web page and always on the footer of every page, creating a natural scroll down to get in touch and make an enquiry.

SEO

In terms of keywords, we have devised a strategy which targets local keywords around Hitchin and Hertfordshire and also Mill Hill, where their new branch will soon be based (in North London). We consider that location keywords should be easier to grab top spots for on Google since they are less competitive. We have achieved this via adding the location keywords into the meta-titles and descriptions and also acquiring links from local authorities such as the Herts Growth Hub and Watford Observer.

The organic searches we have generated have been maximised through an effective remarketing campaign via Google’s display network and facebook marketing. This is part of our strategy to help convert customers, believing that the first-time customers may not get in touch but once they have seen the brand several times on other channels, they will be inclined to take that next step.

Moving forward, we believe that a focused approach to add continuous content and strong links to the site will help achieve top spots for the shorter-tail, more competitive keywords such as ‘bespoke furniture’ and ‘bespoke kitchens.’ We acknowledge that for more competitive keywords, you must start ranking on page 10 to 9 to 8 etc and slowly make your way up.

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For over 5 years, Abate Pest Management has been servicing Bretts Transport’s 170,000ft2 ambient warehouse at its Guyhirn Distribution Centre in Cambridgeshire. Simon Brett, Managing Director has praised Abate for the services that they carry out to the required BRC requirement. He then asked if he could have some help at his private residence. Simon has had an issue with birds at his house for some time. Pigeons were roosting at various places and depositing pigeon guano over window ledges, brickwork and onto the drive. He had tried several different methods to resolve the situation but didn’t have much success. We advised that bird gel would be a great solution. Gel systems are a physical barrier to discourage birds from landing on buildings. The gel is applied to ledges and ridges in small pots. To the birds, the gel distorts their landing patterns and this discourages them from perching. It was later found that a gel solution had been tried before but not installed correctly making it ineffective. We also recommended a spike system for a certain area of the property which consisted of strips of plastic spikes that again provide a physical barrier preventing birds from landing. They are a cost effective and adaptable solution that can be used on a wide range of buildings. We cleaned down by soaking the affected areas with water and an anti-bacterial agent to prevent the creation of dust whilst cleaning all the guano. Our technicians then applied the gel and spike solutions throughout the necessary areas of the property. Simon said, “It was like magic.  The birds instantly disappeared and haven’t been seen since the work was carried out”.  Jon Blake of Abate said “Bird control isn’t just for commercial buildings. At Abate we create a bespoke solution for the type of bird problem and the property concerned. There are several solutions that we use to eradicate bird problems. Every property is different.  We conduct a detailed survey to identify the best solution to use which may be based upon the age of the property; if it is listed and where the bird problems are taking place. To see all of the different proofing solutions, check out the bird control page on our website.”

On the 24th November we saw the return of Norwich’s fourth Sync the City event, which took place in the beautiful setting of Norwich Cathedral. For those who have escaped the hype surrounding this event over the past few years, Sync the City, run by SyncNorwich, is a 54 hour event which brings together budding entrepreneurs with experienced business mentors and technology expertise. The lucky competitors start by taking part in a 1 minute pitchoff, where anybody can pitch an idea. The best ideas are taken forward and you hire a team on the spot! The teams then have from Thursday afternoon until Saturday evening (minus a few hours sleep) to make their ideas a reality. This is more than your average Hackathon. It’s a three day frenzy of start-up building where the winning team can potentially win £4,000 in cash prizes (£3,000 judges’ winner and £1,000 people’s choice), as well as sales training from Sandler Training and one year associate membership of Norfolk Network. Not only that, but last year’s winners, SenLab, who took their Sync the City idea forward, went on to secure around £300,000 worth of funding in their first round of pitches; turning 18 year old computer science student George Davis into Group Chief Executive.

I chatted to our one of our Software Developers, Henri, and Software Apprentice, Jack, who took part for the first time this year, to find out how they found the experience.

What were you expecting from Sync the City?

We were slightly apprehensive. We pictured a really tense environment with lots of serious people doing serious work. But we were also worried that our skill set might not match up to that of the rest of our team and we might not be able to contribute all that much.

What were your overall impressions of the event?

In the end it was really enjoyable. We ended up with a great team who were all really friendly and that meant that everything was very open. They were accepting of everyone’s different skill sets and everyone was given the chance to put their ideas forward. And, even though not everyone had experience of presenting, we were all asked if we’d like to give it a go when it came to doing the final pitch and given the opportunity to challenge ourselves.

Can you tell us what the idea behind your startup was?

Our idea was for a type of social network that encourages face-to-face meeting. We named it “Jolli Good” and it was actually tailored toward lonely people and encouraging community involvement. You start by posting the words “Who wants to…” followed by something like “start a community allotment” or “go and see x film”. So the focus was really on finding people near you who are free at the time and who aren’t already in your social network or Facebook friends list.

Who was on your team?

There were 9 people on our team from various backgrounds. Our Team Mentor, Brian, was a developer from Earthware, a digital consultancy who design apps and websites. And then there were 3 people from Liftshare, another aspiring developer from Norwich City Council and a Design student from the UEA.

What aspects of the project were you responsible for?

We were both responsible for developing a prototype for the frontend, but we had to focus on the elements which would make it easiest for the rest of the team to pitch and for people to understand the concept.

What was the most exciting / challenging aspect of the event?

When we had to scrap the original plan about 8pm on Friday night and start again with a whole new concept. We definitely had to work hard from then onwards to meet the deadline.

What would you do differently next time?

We probably could have driven our own ideas into it more from a developer perspective and managed the rest of the team’s expectations a bit better in terms of what we could get done in the timeframe. And never again will we try to shove new ideas into the build 15 minutes before the technical demo; only to mess up the code so that we were worried we weren’t going to have anything to show at all!

What did you think of LoneSafe’s winning project?

They had a great pitch and a really nice idea for a system for keeping workers safe, which would probably have a wide ranging social impact if it was developed.

Have you caught up on sleep yet?

Just about. We only had about 3 hours sleep one night.

Would you do it again?

Definitely!

Photos by Tim Stephenson Photography

Words by Hollie Shooter

Venue: The Maids Head Hotel, Tombland, Norwich, NR3 1LB

Price: £13.95 per person

Register: https://www.meetup.com/Norfolk-Developers-NorDev/events/245072685/

7.30 am Breakfast

7.50 am How Norfolk Chamber of Commerce can help digital business

8.30 am Finish

At the nor(Dev) breakfast, Chris will explain how Norfolk Chamber can help you to raise the profile of your digital business, highlight you as an expert in your sector and increase awareness of your brand. Chris will demonstrate how Norfolk Chamber can ensure your business content, press releases and promotions reach the maximum number of potential readers.

Free parking is available at the Maids Head, but make sure you give your car registration number to reception before you leave so as not to be charged.

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 by Lauren Gwynn

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.

Another year and another barrage of Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals have come and gone. We have no doubt that your inboxes were flooded by a deluge of offers to entice you to part with your hard-earned cash. But how about from a marketing perspective? Is the Black Friday weekend, Friday through to Monday as big an opportunity for retailers as it appears to be for consumers? Many retailers begrudgingly cut their margins and offer site-wide discounts that they typically wouldn’t want to offer. Is it a case of being left out in the cold if you don’t participate? I would put forward that the answer to that final question is no.

And just when you thought the Black Friday deals were over, some incredibly kind retailers extend their offers by a further 24 hours! Was this all part of the marketing strategy or is it a genuine act of kindness from the retailers? The answer is the former.

finding new ways of working together, tearing up the rule book and creating new structures that work for our people.

Agile Cambridge, I will be back!

Words by Emma Gooderham

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 a 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

If you’d like to attend nor(DEV):biz, please drop Paul an email on paul@norfolkdevelopers.com

Norfolk Developers: norfolkdevelopers.com

We fell silent at the weekend. Just momentarily, just brief pauses of remembrance. And yet, in those few minutes, I was struck by how much we said, how much we shared. I could feel it profoundly within my own home and I could see it clearly within the expressions of those whom we watched on television.

What I was left with was two thoughts. The first being how wonderful it felt to step outside the hustle and bustle, to lose the constant background echo of noise, just for a moment. And the second thing that I was reminded of was how incredibly powerful silence can be.

And yet, silence is something that we often seem to fear, diving in to fill gaps in conversation, in discussion, the weight of nothingness bearing down upon us heavily. Not least within the workplace. Meetings filled to bursting with comment and suggestions, participants barely pausing for breath, the verbal volley relentless. Or in management conversations, filling the space with talk. Often, as managers, we jump into the silence, our enthusiasm and commitment meaning that we are quick to offer support and guidance. But though we have good intentions, this can sometimes be disempowering. And perhaps too when speaking with a customer or a client, we may dive in with solutions, before we have fully heard what we are being told.

So often we act to stop gaps before they grow into a lingering silence which consumes us with its awkwardness. And yet, when there is silence, that is when we frequently do our best thinking. Unimpeded by words, unfettered by questions, unrestricted by others’ opinions, our thoughts and ideas are able to run free and develop. Which can be incredibly empowering.

I have seen how powerful the use of silence can be in coaching, and in facilitation, letting stops act like pauses for breath, allowing individuals to reflect and think. And I have also seen how it can support truly productive and engaging meetings, where people have time and space just to think. Building silence into the workplace and within conversations helps set thinking free, and it allows people breathing space – which is good for everyone’s wellbeing.

Silence is a powerful tool but the challenge is getting comfortable with its presence. And that comes with practice. Because, as someone once told me: ‘We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that proportion.’