Axis Geeks steal the plaudits

Posted on 3 Sep 2008 at 5:07pm

“Dude, for geeks you guys rock…”

A survey into the effectiveness, quality and impact of the UCPD Commercial Impact of the web programme at AxisCentre, commissioned by de Montfort University in Spring 2008 has recently been released.

The survey, led by De Montfort University’s Academic Quality department, asked delegates drawn from a variety of businesses who attended AxisCentre courses during the 07-08 period to assess the quality and impact of the training on their careers and businesses.

Cutting to the chase we scored overall 4.6 out of 5, and 5.0 in the personal development category, making us amongst the highest rated or regarded of all DMUs course programmes (and they’ve got a fair few).

Many thanks for the feedback for those who took part. If the courses are working then its down to everyone’s enthusiasm and sharing, from trainers to delegates who in turn return to share their experiences in implementing the skills and help others (that’s how community functions surely).

Here’s to a successful new year of new courses at AxisCentre, and fun and informative evenings at AxisCommunity.

Important course prices update

Posted on 27 Aug 2008 at 3:43pm

Where have we been?
The more observant among us will have noticed that we have been missing from the forums and from the centre, in fact AWOL altogether.

The reason for this Marie Celesete style disappearance is that we have been on holiday, and on our annual Axis team holiday. This time our quest to bond, plot and scheme the future of AxisCentre/Community at the surfing mecca of sunny Croyde in Devon. Pictures of the typhoon conditions that saw our awning disintegrate during the fourth night in inclement typhoon conditions will be posted on AxisCommunity in due course.

Course prices update…
Onto maters more pressing. Those similarly observant people noticing our absence will have noticed some confusion over pricing of courses, and on whether the AxisPassport has or has not launched. This hiatus has been caused by the funding subsidies we had planned for you to take advantage of apparently being withdrawn abruptly by the government for all applicants who already had level 4 (degree or HND) qualifications (probably the the majority of you).

We are now close to resolving this favourably for all concerned and aim to announce the prices for the next 12 months on before 22 September, the day before the first of the new courses starts for this academic year.

One price option we are likely to still have is our HEFCE subsidised AxisPassport deal (20 day course bundle full UCPD qualification) which we are attempting to protect for you at all costs. Using this funding/deal training works out at a cost of approx £30/day to you.

For those wishing to attend individual courses, costs the prices will depend on whether funders will support you just attending the odd module. If their definitive position is ‘no way to part qualifications’ then individual courses may have to be £100/day.

And just to throw in a wild card, Train to Gain, government backed business training initiative is indicating it may like and accept our programme as eligible for up to 100% funding for businesses employing 5 or more staff.

Our gut feel…
Our gut feel has now shifted to us being able to probably resolve this favourably. Our recommendation is to push ahead and reserve places on all courses you need, and we will pull out all the stops to announce prices on or before 22 September. If you can’t stomach the funding/pricing deal we manage to do on your behalf then you can withdraw from courses, no hard feelings.

Calculating traffic, position and your share. With the help of the king...

Posted on 15 Jul 2008 at 4:41pm

Do you know your actual Google.co.uk traffic levels?

This article tells you how to find out search levels in Google.co.uk for any word or phrase, then how to calculate what share you are going to get...

Getting a handle on the traffic levels for search terms you want to be found under has been for some time, equally vital and at the same time largely unfathomable, at least to the uniniated…

Are you really the King?
Firstly, why do you need to know how many searches are going on for particular words or phrases in Google? Why is it that this is so important to your business, website and strategy? It's simply that you need to know what words and phrases to feature throughout your site and ultimately whether it’s worth all the graft to get to the top of a page or not.

In short if you are not confident of your numbers, you may be chasing visibility for a word or phrase with huge numbers that’s possibly unfeasible to position on the first page, or even worse, chasing a search term that has an audience of practically zero (or to put it another way, you are king of a very tiny kingdom indeed).

All smoke and mirrors…
OK so you need to know. Problem is will anyone tell you? Er no not exactly.

Word tracker will tell you for £160 or so. Problem with this is that is takes dogpile.co.uk results, and dogpile only have max 1% of the UK search market. To get round this they basically take figures there and multiply them massively, by up to 85 times, meaning that any discrepancy, weirdness or different behaviour at dogpile compared to Google and the error is compounded massively. The other way we used to do it was take Yahoo’s UK results and scale these up as well, just to a lesser level. This would be OK (ish) except that our own SEO guru Gavin Walker from Optillion, AxisCommunity, and our own Adv SEO course, reliably informs me that Yahoo is used or ‘scraped’ by whole host of SEO people and automated tools, making its figures inaccurate as well.

Is it a mirage? No it’s real!....
This huge news is that Google have just done what they have threatened to do for a while, namely just as Yahoo withdraw their transparency on figures, Google have revealed theirs. For the first time Google are now giving us apparently full access to traffic levels for average monthly and last month volumes for any particular key phrase.

Here’s how to do it…

1. Login or create an account at Google Adwords. NB the free external traffic estimator tool outside an Adwords account doesn’t appear to give you these actual traffic figures.

2. Make sure you choose UK traffic figures and hey presto discover the search levels for your search word or phrase

3. Work out your likely share of the pie. If you are on page 1 in google.co.uk, award yourself a percentage of this total figure. Position 1: Your site in this position? You get 42.1% of the total traffic figure, position 2: 11.9%, position 3: 8.5%, position 4: 6.1%, position 5, 4.9%, position 6: 4.1%, position 7: 3.4 % position 8: 3%, position 9:2.8%, and position 10: 3.0%

If you are below page 1, particularly page 3 or below, award your self an absolute max of 1% of the total traffic. The results drop off radically and I mean radically once you move below page 1.

What’s the verdict? Are you the real king of the search, or just a pretender to the throne?

eCommunity, a new future for AxisCentre and AxisCommunity?

Posted on 11 Jul 2008 at 8:21am

‘eCentre and eCommunity’ Nottingham

For some time at AxisCommunity Informals and within AxisCentre we have been discussing the idea of a collaborative shared centre where citizens can be based from, work from, visit and use to benefit their business, learn, collaborate and share ideas as suits their business, objectives and circumstances.

Today we will be presenting a vision of this, the 'eCentre', plus eCommunity, an expansion of AxisCommunity concept, with Nottingham City Council to explore the possibility of securing funding under the ERDF Priority Axis 2 fund. If this looks promising we will look to hold a special meeting of AxisCommunity for all those who would like to contribute to shaping the vision for this exciting possibility.

The proposal suggests the establishment of

‘An entrepreneurial business community and collaboration hub, designed to help grow Nottingham’s capacity to exploit the commercial potential of the web.’

Individual business success in this new era will be based on innovation, creativity, and above all collaboration, sharing and interaction within a community of entrepreneurs, practitioners and businesses from all sectors within the region. This project seeks to create the ideal physical and virtual environment for business creation and growth, through a unifying theme of the business engagement with, and commercial exploitation of, the web.

It proposes the establishment of the ‘eCentre’, an incubation, collaboration and broadcast hub or centre where participating ‘citizen’ businesses will flexibly work, meet, exchange, collaborate, peer-produce and create in an open, sharing and supportive environment.

It also proposes that the ‘eCommunity’, an interconnected community of technology and digital creative practitioners, independent entrepreneurs and all other businesses sectors be developed, all based on sharing the opportunities for business application of the web.

AxisCommunity summer events and the future...

Posted on 8 Jul 2008 at 1:19pm

AxisCommunity Summer Informals and the future of the community…

This summer AxisCommunity changes format, switching from the learning events to two nice lower key chilled Informal socials in July and August.

It’s perhaps a good time to reflect on the last 18 months, on how far we’ve come, what we’ve got right and wrong, and where we’d like to go in the next couple of years as a community.

For the uniniated, AxisCommunity is the social network of entrepreneurs, businesses, digital creatives and all those interested in making a living on and from the web. It mainly (though not entirely) consists of those studying for professional development web qualifications at AxisCentre. It’s open to anyone interested in the web.

The origins…
It was originally set up in October 2007, as a chance for delegates on Drive Higher, the forerunner to the funky and expanding UCPD programme we are developing with De Montfort, to meet socially. It’s quickly turned into a social, chance to learn insider techniques, share ideas, collaborate on projects, and something that has the feel of potentially being quite special.

The events so far…
We’ve held 9 events in total (I think), attempting to combine networking, sharing, learning into a social and informal environment, and experimented with various different formats and themes with varying success.

Informal 1 kicked off with yours truly doing Silios, the ‘next big thing’ in Search Engine Optimisation, or as Bjorn sagely referred to it, ‘just sticking things in folders’. Along the way we’ve had a Second Life theme, looked at the creative ecology of businesses, done a beating Google session, a creative web thinking, a grandly titled ‘future of the web’, and the latest, an ‘Open Mic night’. In and around this we’ve also held four larger additional meal events at Scruffys and CAST restaurant.

The original invitation…
One of the original invitations was issued via a Youtube video and featured a joke invitation by my two sons (then just two and four years old). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIP6LY2PcaU  To produce this video I just told them what AxisCommunity was and left it to them to try to explain it in their language.

Its very interesting look back that relatively ‘un-coached’ they drew on the social and supportive nature of the idea, proclaiming that ‘Axis is your new family’ and that is would be great fun, although their promise of pass-the-parcel at every event has yet to materialise.

What’s also interesting for me is that that fun and family vibe has remained and is probably the strongest feature that defines us. It has interested and intrigued almost every body that has looked at including the people at Becta, DMU, NTI, Castle College and more.

Where from here?
If this first era of AxisCommunity has been about consulting with the communities needs, this next one will be about a much more significant role for AxisCommunity in everything from events, to premises, courses, grants, management and everything else along the way.

For example…
Lots of great new ideas are starting to emerge, from new events right through to the serious bidding for funding for a shared office and working space where citizens can work from, use, meet at, and work alongside the AxisCentre trainers on projects, as well as study.

It’s a genuine honour to be involved in AxisCommunity, we extend an invitation for everyone to get involved ‘in your new family’ at whatever level you want, and together we look forward to creating something, that might just be, well, quite beautiful.

Review of Axis Community event - Open Mic Night 26/06/08

Posted on 4 Jul 2008 at 4:36pm

Review of AxisCommunity Informal 6 - the 'Open Mic Night'

Last Thursday (26th June) we held our sixth informal and (I think) tenth AxisCommunity event in all.

We have been aware from recent events that our experimentation to find the ultimate community event that combined informal learning, networking and social into a 2 hour drinking opportunity once a month, still needed further work.

This event came as a suggestion from citizen Graeme who suggested a rowdy open format used by music and comedy venues where anyone with anything to say could contribute. Although we didnt quite hit the prfect event formula, the event had a lot of the basics that I think we should be aiming for.

The 4 essential values of a top AxisCommunity event
1. It is social, spirited, amusing and good fun (and there's a bar)
2. You get to informally network, mix and share ideas
3. You actually learn useful tips, insights to help your web career and business

It had a lot of interaction and people sharing and presenting ideas, and generally delivered a mix of the essentials highlighted. It also featured a big reduction in the time anyone was formally presenting (evidence 3 shortish highlight videos as opposed to up to 8 which we have had in the past).

The 4 REAL characteristics of a good AxisCommunity Informal
1. There is free food
2. There is a jolly good attendance
3. An implausibly clever and entertaining theme with catchy names
4. The wole event shows me to be clever, insightful and attractive

This is where we really scored some success. Firstly, free food. From this one we decided to switch to free food at every event from now on, and the pizza and misc posh nibles that you would expect from CAST went down a treat.

Second attendance. Not so great as the food. We had approx 15 in attenance, well off our peaks of 40-60. The open mic title was in retrospect a bit scarey as it appeared to suggest we expect ed eveyone to do public speaking or that it there might nopt be any business value in coming. It was supposed to actually communicate our new vision where we all harness the talent and specialist skills in the room to push our businesses on, collaborate share, learn etc.

Third the great theme. For this one we split into the Socialites (social media people), Geeks (led by deputy geek PaulG), Marketers (SEO and business ideas led by Gavin), and finally the Misfits, a leftfield think-tank led by Oceangoer). This produced a lot of ideas for the size of the group.

Random amusing points
This one was both insightful and amusing. It was Paul doing his Patch Kucha moment (look this up, this is a cool simple Japanese idea to explain what motivates and inspires you). Look out for the bleep that blanks some rude language, see video 3...

In conclusion, and being semi serious, I think it managed to get quite close to being genuinely useful and produced a lot of ideas. Watch the videos and see what you think...

Intro, Socialites and Marketers, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxI4h8mRcOY&feature=related  
Misfits http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlbGQD_slM&feature=related  
Geeks, Paul, closing comments, closing comments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K42W1Ls1qfM