Blog posts in Staff and IT training

Four brilliant free tools to help you learn something new

You don't need to be in a classroom to learn. (Image: Flickr user Cali4beach.)

If you're planning to learn something new this year, there are lots of free online resources that can help you.

Actually, there are so many places to learn online for free that it can get a little overwhelming. That's why we've identified four of the best places to gain knowledge that you can use in your business. Our list focuses on technology and IT resources, but you'll find lots of other subjects covered too.

To get lunchtime inspiration

TED has become an online phenomenon. This non-profit organisation is dedicated to 'ideas worth spreading', and it runs annual conferences that bring together leading thinkers from across disciplines.

It costs a lot to attend these conferences, but you can view the talks online for free. They feature some of the best speakers in the world and can be a first-rate source of new ideas and knowledge.

See the most popular TED talks >>

To learn little and often

Can you learn how to write computer code by spending a little time on it every day?

Over at Codecademy, they reckon you can, so they've created an online course that's easy to follow and sends you weekly emails to keep you motivated.

It starts from the absolute basics, so it's perfect for beginners. At the end of it you'll understand how to use JavaScript - a beginner-friendly programming language - and have an idea of how to build interactive websites.

See the Code Year course >>

To learn new software tips and tricks

Over at Think Tutorial, they have thousands of tutorials that show you how to do things using common software like Microsoft Office.

Each tutorial is brief and to the point, but if you've ever spent 20+ minutes working out how to insert a caption into a document or trying stop your computer making annoying sounds then this site could be a godsend.

Visit the Think Tutorial website >>

To learn almost anything

The Khan Academy aims to provide free education to anyone. That includes you!

There are over 3,800 videos to watch and exercises to follow - including a large section on computer science which starts with a reassuring reminder that you are smarter than a computer.

Khan Academy is geared to more academic subjects, but that doesn't mean it can't benefit your business.

Visit Khan Academy >>

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Why graduates should look to tech start-ups

Sam England of PostDesk recently caught up with Songkick founder Pete Smith to ask him about start-ups recruiting new graduates:

I’m co-founder of east London-based startup Songkick, the company behind Silicon Milkroundabout, which brings together over 100 UK start-ups offering more than 500 tech jobs. We held our first event back in May and our second in October.

The idea came about over a pint with Ian, one of my co-founders. We were discussing a common problem. When recruiting graduates, many start-ups, say, looking for a graduate to fill a software developer post, struggle to compete against large employers, such as the big banks.

It’s good for graduates to think smaller

Silicon Milkroundabout encourages graduates to think about working for start-ups rather than a bank or other large corporate. I’m not totally against working for a large bank or corporate, of course. For some, it can be the right decision.

But graduates should know other options exist and that start-ups can be the answer when making important career decisions. Often people can get the wrong idea about working for a start-up, that it’s risky, for example, or that they’d need to waste loads of time visiting hundreds of offices until they find somewhere they really want to work.

In many cases, working for a start-up can be more rewarding. Often you get more choice about whom you work with and what you work on. I meet a lot of people who work in start-up engineering teams and usually they love the product they work on.

And whether they have business or consumer users, they know what their users do with their products and receive feedback immediately after release. That’s extremely rewarding when you’re building something you actually care about.

You learn how to run a company

Ultimately, if you have ambitions one day to start your own company, there’s no better way to learn the ropes than to spend a few years at a small company, so you can see how it is run and grown.

Things have changed. Tech start-ups now have the DNA of product and engineering teams. No longer are they two MBA guys raising a bit of money and getting some dude in Eastern Europe to build the website, as was often the case five years ago in London.

Just as you can go into a tech job at a bank thinking it’s going to be pretty secure (and you’ll make a bit of money), you can go into a start-up knowing 18 months or two years will go by before the next funding round is needed.

You may think it will get profitable in that time (and you’ll make a bit of money). Go into it with your eyes open and it’s a nice period of time to work with people you like, on a product you enjoy.

I don’t believe in the natural attrition rate of start-ups. Make wise decisions and your business shouldn’t fail.

My advice to graduates? Be smart. Choose a start-up with a plan you feel comfortable with. Ask yourself – “Do I trust the founders, the CTO and the developers?” If you can truly trust them to make smart decisions, there’s a very good chance you’ll make the right career move.

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Pete Smith founded Songkick, a website and mobile app which lets people track concerts happening in their area.

This is an edited version of an interview that first appeared on the PostDesk blog.

20 inspiring and insightful Steve Jobs quotes

1 “What made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world”

2 “Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.”

3 It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

4 “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

5 “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”

6 “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me. Going to bed at night saying ‘we've done something wonderful’, that's what matters to me.”

7 “We don’t do market research. We don’t hire consultants. We just want to make great products.”

8 “The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people – as remarkable as the telephone.” (speaking in 1985)

9 “Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple, but it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

10 “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”

11 “What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

12 “I'm the only person I know that's lost a quarter of a billion dollars in one year. It's very character-building.”

13 “You can’t just ask the customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

14 “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.”

15 “You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

16 “When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You'll know it's there, so you're going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

17 “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

18 “Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem. It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.”

19 "I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours anymore. When we finally presented it at the shareholders' meeting, everyone in the auditorium stood up and gave it a five-minute ovation. What was incredible to me was that I could see the Mac team in the first few rows. It was as though none of us could believe that we'd actually finished it. Everyone started crying.''

20 “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”

Could telecommuting get more out of your staff?

Research conducted at Brigham Young University has delved into data from over 20,000 IBM employees across 75 countries, with surprising results.

Employees who telecommute (or work from home) not only balance work and personal life better than ‘standard’ office workers, but they manage to work more hours too.

The researchers identified the point where 25% of employees report their work to be interfering with personal or family life.

In some cases, workers who utilised a mix of flexitime and telecommuting were able to work 50% more hours per week before hitting that point. That amounts to a whopping 19 extra hours work over the same seven-day period. Aggregate this over a year and you’ll run out of work for your staff!

So what is telecommuting?

Telecommuting is an arrangement which gives your employees the freedom to work where and when they please. This gives them big flexibility in their working lives, can remove the daily commute and ditches the idea of having a centralised place of work. It's all reliant on a technology network which allows an employee to work anywhere, at any time.

As a business owner, not only can you get more out of each of your employees, but you can also enjoy significant cost savings. Here are just a few benefits of telecommuting:

• Diminished office costs
• Lower travel costs
• A larger talent pool to pick from (telecommuting enable carers, parents and disabled people to be employed more easily)
• Reduced absenteeism.

Couple these benefits with higher employee satisfaction and it is hard to see any downsides to telecommuting. However, they do exist.

Telecommuting caveats

If your employees are to really benefit from telecommuting, they need flexi-time too. Because without some flexibility in working hours, most of the benefits of telecommuting are removed. You simply replace the effort of getting to work at a set hour with the effort of getting to a place of your choosing on time.

You also need to think through how to handle management and performance reviews. To assuage fears that employees would simply abuse the power to work remotely, a results-based system needs to be in place. Instead of individually monitoring employees, their work and goals must be measured solely by results.

You have to trust your staff. Any mistakes in implementing this kind of management style could have an adverse effect on employee productivity. After all, what is the point of getting 19 hours more work a week if they get half as much done?

Have you tried telecommuting?

Implemented correctly, telecommuting can be positive both for you and your team. As someone once summed up: 'work is something you do, not something you travel to'.

So how about it? Do you know of any companies or people that enjoy a telecommuting system? Or do you know someone who struggles and would prosper more in a structured office environment?

John Sollars is MD of Stinkyink.com