Urbankiwi

Scam Alert

Apparently people are calling claiming to be from @telecomnz and @vodafonenz and saying your bill is overdue.

Be warned… Never ever trust someone calling you asking to pay a bill, hand over credit card details or asking for information about you.

If you are a customer of the company calling you, tell them you will call them back. Most companies understand the trust issue and if they have a system that works then they can handle you calling the official numbers and processing any overdue bills.

Never ever hand out any personal details, credit card details or comply with instructions of someone who has just cold called you. Play it safe and call back via the official and publicly listed phone numbers.

That one time in 1987….

I love where random conversations can end up on Skype…

[7:22:13 p.m.] Skip Parker: i understood it was more jan/feb

[7:22:21 p.m.] Skip Parker: i could be wrong

[7:22:27 p.m.] Skip Parker: i often am

[7:23:18 p.m.] Andrew Feldon: there was only that once in 87 wasnt it? but even that was only on a technicality….

[7:23:55 p.m.] Skip Parker: … sheesh im never going to live that one down…

[7:24:59 p.m.] Andrew Feldon: yeah, but hey, true friends see beyond that and respect your reasoning..

[7:25:18 p.m.] Skip Parker: im just lucky pizza hut didnt sue…

[7:25:33 p.m.] Skip Parker: and i am very very lucky the horse survived

[7:25:37 p.m.] Andrew Feldon: haha…

[7:26:23 p.m.] Andrew Feldon: but im still confused as to why David Hasslehoff had to get involved.. it just blew it waaaay out of proportion

[7:27:08 p.m.] Skip Parker: i know… i know…

#WP7 - Revolutionising My Day

For the last year i’ve been challenged to think about how the Information Systems at Rhema Broadcasting Group interface with the wide generational make up of our staff & volunteers. The organisation is staffed with many people who have been involved since the late 70’s right through to our young interns.

Its fair to say that the demands and needs across the board has been difficult to manage as the older guys are not necessarily engaging in the new social media based communications models that our younger interns live and breath.

To this end we are investing time and money in a system that allows the wide generation gap to engage with day to day business on their terms. We are still a way off, however are close to field testing a few ideas. Until last night I didn’t quite realise the full challenge of communicating across the gap was becoming.

Yesterday our technical team went above and beyond the call of duty in an office fit out. Afterwards I thought i should send a series of messages to the team thanking them for throwing the kitchen sink at making the day happen. Of course like the rest of the office our team has a reasonable communications gap with some on traditional SMS devices and others on Social Network spaces.

For me i think the challenge here is to communicate in the spaces they live in, so the oppourtunity to send this message of thanks to their communications platform of choice seemed to be a good idea.

Now this is where i can begin to rant about how well smart phone designers are starting to address this type of communication. My current weapon of choice is the new Microsoft Windows Phone 7, in my case loaded with a beta of the new Mango OS. With this device i was able to easily and from one interface quickly communicate this message to the relevant spaces:  SMS, Facebook & MSN Live Messenger.

It was just so smooth and simple.

This is when it dawned on me. In my role communication needs to be constant and celebrating success in the team is vitial. I’ve often missed the opportunity to appreciate how much hard work our team puts into their daily tasks. But by having tools that speed up that process helps me to make that a more intentional part of my job.

The lessoned learned was that often the tools we deploy to help our staff to better work also need to be the tools that leaders use to better communicate to our staff in whichever space they inhabit.

The tight integration i’ve seen on Windows Phone 7 Mango has revolutionised the way that i do business and communicate to my teams.