Neil Lathwood’s blog on the world :)
I’ll be down at the internet world show next week exhibiting on behalf of the company I work for - UKFast.net
If you were planning to come down anyway then come and say hi, if you weren’t why not pop in and say hi. We’re on stand E142 and should have a pretty decent setup with a few things going on.
After watching the Google video for their new office in Zurich and thinking that looked like it had to be one of the best physical places to work - well until UKFast.net get bigger and our pool room quadruples in size :D, then I arrived at the Cisco office in Bedfont Lakes, London!!
They didn’t just have the one sizable office that you might imagine, they had 3 all next to one another in a U shape, each building was a pretty decent size and comparable to a full size football pitch with 2-3 floors. We were there for a seminar day on the Cisco WAE and the Cisco ACE but expecting more of a sales pitch than anything else. From the moment you walk in and sign the guest book, your shown where you need to go by a receptionist as they had around 2 or 3 at the desk! The seminar was really technical and turned out to be one of the better ones I’ve been on as for once, it didn’t turn into a sales pitch 
Lunch was brought round to us with a mixture of sandwiches, pies and free drinks from a fridge stocked with a variety of different soft drinks and bottled water. During lunch I bumped into our what I suppose you would call account manager for Cisco who spent 10 minutes seeing how business was going before HAVING to show me one of their teleconference rooms which he described before we got in as 24 like 
He wasn’t wrong and looking back I wish I had asked to take a photo just to show you how this hasn’t been done by half. 3 40″+ plasma screens surrounded a bank of cameras for viewing who you would be on a conference call with, speakers placed around the desks would have enabled around 6-8 people to participate in a conference call from this office alone. It was truly amazing and we chatted briefly about possibly ripping out our new phone system to go Cisco……
After the seminar I promptly headed to reception to book a taxi to take us back to Heathrow T1 (which I’m currently still sat in :(), reception kindly informed me that a free taxi would be around in 10 minutes to take us back and pointed me in the direction we needed to wait - the only bad thing I had to say about the experience was that it would have been nicer to wait inside as it was freezing out 
Me being chuffed at being at the Cisco office.
For those who don’t know, I’m the IT Director over at UKFast.net, for the past 3 years we have won an award at the ISPA Awards hosted down in London. This year seemed to be no exception and we won the title of Best Dedicated Hosting 2008, this was a bit of a shock as you sort of expect, that no matter how good you are as a company, the judges will have a bit of worry about crowning you again for another year.
Either this wasn’t the case and I was being a bit paranoid, or we really are that good - for those of you who are customers of ours then I will let you decide that but I definitely would like to think the way the company is run, the support that we offer and the way we are always striving to improve and take on criticism as a growing business has a lot to do with it. Obviously I am going to be biased towards where I work but that also means I have first hand experience of the work and dedication that the staff put in, especially the support team who do go above and beyond the call of duty to help clients get to where is needed.
Our MD, Lawrence Jones accepted the award and thanked the team behind making things happen but I do have to say - couldn’t wish for a better person to work for. The amount I have learned as time has gone on with regards to performing the role I have within the company is amazing, having come from pretty much a full technical background with a bit of management experience has meant it’s been a strange but interesting learning curve which I’m sure is going to continue……..
