WFH

Header image by NIAID Flickr link.

It’s an uncertain time for everyone, but one thing that has come into broad focus for many of us is the requirement to work from home for an indefinite period. As veteran home-workers, perhaps we can offer up a few pointers:

• Discipline can be difficult: plan your day either at the end of the previous day, or on the morning itself. Sketch out what you want to achieve, and roughly by when.
• Your workplace: make sure you have somewhere quiet-ish, and comfortable, in which to work.
• De-clutter: your working area needs to be usable, and clear!
• Ramp up the broadband. If you, like us, rely on being connected, consider upgrading your broadband connection if your contract and technology permit it.
• Take time out: be sure to give yourself plenty of breaks from screens (if applicable), and also from sitting in one position. Get some fresh air if you can, look at something else, drink plenty of water and wash your hands!
• Make use of online collaboration tools to connect with others. At LDC we use Slack all through the day for work stuff, and general chatter. As we all become a little more isolated, these connections are ever more important.
• Stop work. It’s too easy to just beaver away for hours on end. Ensure you have a hard stop time, and stick to it, putting things away for the next day.

Finally, people are making all kinds of things cheap or free to help us all. One pertinent addition in this regard is the book Take Control of Working From Home Temporarily, a free download.

Engage 2020!

It’s here, Engage is upon us! Our very own Woowar will be representing LDC Via this year, at the Engage event in Arnhem, at Burgers Zoo.

Do seek out Julian, and by all means have a chat – especially if you want to talk about application development services (node, Domino, .NET, Java, Google G Suite, etc.) or application and data migration. We deal with platforms like Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Quickr, HCL Domino, IBM Connections and more…

Have a great conference!

Another year!

It’s that time again, Christmas and the end of another year! Where do the days go… A year of extreme busy-ness at LDC Towers, we’ve had a lot of work on, and also a wedding! This all leads to general blog neglect. Shame on us.

Our venerable platform is happily serving up a multi-tenant web application for a big client, with more back-end changes afoot. Google apps script projects still abound, as do projects built using node. We’re still engaged with enterprise-scale migration projects, and we look after organisations from schools to insurance companies, finance outfits to consultancies. As ever, if you’re looking for assistance with your projects, by all means get in touch!

In March 2020, Engage 2020 comes to Arnhem, and I’m sure we will be there in some shape or form – have you registered yet?

For now, we wish you a peaceful, merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a splendid new year!

So that was Engage

Whilst we sponsored Engage this year, it was a slightly muted affair for LDC Via, as only one of the motley crew made it to the conference, alas. Theo and Hilde put on an excellent show at a stunning excellent venue: Autoworld, set in the beautiful Parc Du Cinquantenaire (AKA Jubelpark) in Brussels. Thank you Theo, you did it again!

Our diminution in numbers meant that we couldn’t run a stand this time round. Whilst that was a little disappointing, it did mean that for the first time in years, I could attend some sessions! The opening keynotes were interesting and well-presented: HCL and IBM both have a plan, and even some marketing! I particularly enjoyed the new format speed-sponsoring, ably wrangled by Mr. Tony Holder (and that has nothing to do with the fact that I won some beer. Cough).

From our perspective as a services organisation, it’s interesting to see other companies present their products. ISW’s commercial session on Kudos Boards was very good indeed; they’ve done a cracking job implementing this useful tool, and there are some interesting features in the pipeline too. Recommended!

Sadly we missed our friend Andrew with his session on Sphinx in favour of a DQL presentation from Tim Davis, but at least we can read the slides eh! (Danke für die Schokolade mein Freund!)

Update: here’s a link to Tim’s presentation on DQL.

In other news, hell froze over: I attended an administrators session… But not just any session, oh no! Gab ran through 60 Admin Tips in 60 Minutes which was fantastic, and sure to be useful as I flail around in the console.

Until next year.

Ben

Engage 2019

We are happy to announce that once again we have signed up as sponsors for the Engage user group conference in Brussels this year.

We have no idea whether — or how — we will get there, given the Brexit nonsense back here in Blighty, but we will try our best!

As a services organisation rather than “product vendors”, we feel it’s simpler just to attend and catch up with people, so we won’t be running a stand this time round.

The Engage conference takes place this year at Autoworld, which looks amazing. As ever, Theo chooses the most splendid venues.

Look forward to seeing you in May: come and find us, let’s talk!