Paul Grenyer

Today I had a review with Ermine Amies . Naked Element have been training the Sandler way with Ermine for some time now and reviews are an incredibly useful part of the process. We discussed a lot of aspects of Naked Element’s business in detail and Ermine offered great help and advice. As is often the case we got to talking about calling prospects (or potential clients). I don’t like calling it cold calling, because that is something which Naked Element doesn’t usually do. In most cases a prospect will be ‘warmed up’ with a LinkedIn connection and message, a brochure in the post or through meeting at a networking event. Nobody really likes calling to speak to a prospect for the first time. Ok, so someone is going to put their hand up and say “I do! I just love talking to people.” and that’s fine, of course. Today, speaking to Ermine made me think how calling a prospect is like riding my bike to work. I don’t like doing it. The anticipation of getting on my bike can be crippling....

“Thrash metal” is what the uninitiated always assume I’m into. I’m sure most of them aren’t even really sure what that is. Either way, I’ve never been a huge thrash metal fan. I like lots of different types of heavy metal, but progressive death metal is probably my favorite. I also like the regular death metal too. Wikipedia described death metal as “...an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking, deep growling vocals and screams, aggressive, powerful drumming featuring double kick or blast beat techniques, minor keys or atonality, abrupt tempo, key, and time signature changes and chromatic chord progressions.“ and that’s a good, technical description. The stereotypical view of death metal is that it’s tuneless noise and shouting. Nothing could be further from the truth and I’m going to walk you through my top ten favorite death metal bands, in no particular or...

Sports for Schools run athlete-led physical activities events to inspire children to participate in more sport, raise money for PE equipment in schools (over £1.75m to date), and support GB and Olympic athletes financially. They partner school groups with athletes to motivate and encourage children to enjoy being active and boost confidence. The company’s current system was labour intensive and needed a smoother, more integrated booking system.  Naked Element ’s developer Matt Wells explained “staff had to schedule the time-table for the whole of the following term manually, relying on their knowledge of athlete & school locations and resolving any issues raised by changes in availability and double bookings etc. As the following term approached this would eventually lead to a very labour intensive, ‘big-bang’ scheduling activity.” “Naked Element implemented a brand new event scheduling system to automate and improve what was originally a manpower intensive, spreadsheet...

  Tech Nation 2016 is the most comprehensive analysis of the UK’s Digital Tech Economy to date, showing how the Digital Tech Industries are driving economic growth, employment and regional development. Norwich feature for the 2nd year showing even further growth in its digital economy. 22% GVA Growth from 2010-2014 £148m Total GVA Output http://www.techcityuk.com/technation/

I enjoyed reading Ben Walpole ’s piece on Linkedin, In Defence of OOP . Ben is absolutely right, object oriented programming (OOP) is getting a bad press in the shadow of the latest golden hammer, functional programming. What I believe Ben is really saying is that you should use the right tool for the right job. When you have a new golden hammer everything may look like a nail, but it isn’t. Often you need more than one tool for a job. Programming languages are just tools and many of them complement each other when used together. Furthermore, OOP and functional programming work together on both the JVM (Java Virtual Machine) and the .Net platform in the form of Java and Scala and C# and F# respectively. The JVM and .Net allow you to run OOP code and functional code in the same program. The C# language has traditionally been an object oriented language and is gradually adopting more and more functional features. This got me thinking back to where my career began with C++. A lot of...

One of the goals for Naked Element in 2016 is to make more of their Norfolk Chamber of Commerce membership . We’re doing well so far, it’s early February and we’ve already attended our second event. Both events have yielded interesting new contacts with plenty of potential for both Naked Element and Norfolk Developers. The venue for this year’s annual Norfolk Chamber MPs event was a marquee in the grounds of the Marriott hotel. Unfortunately they were experiencing a few technical problems with a crackly PA, although this didn’t really impede the event at all. To add insult to injury, during the address by sponsors Abellio Greater Anglia, their speaker narrowly missed colliding with a falling projector screen. Despite gasps from the audience, he was fine and it generated plenty of amusement. Following an introduction by chamber CEO Caroline Williams, Emma Hutchinson, Political Correspondent at ITV Anglia, took over introducing the MPs and chairing the event. The format was differ...

Norwich’s first ever health hackathon will take place on Saturday 12 March 2016 at the Norwich Research Park. The 12-hour collaborative event will see the region’s leading health and technology professionals come together to generate innovative solutions to some of the most pressing problems faced by the sector. Running from 8am to 8pm, the day will start with local health practitioners presenting some of their key challenges, before forming multi-disciplinary teams to brainstorm and develop solutions. Later in the day teams will present their solutions, hoping to catch the eye of the judging panel – and potential customers or investors! The event, officially known as Hacking Health , is being organised by postgraduate entrepreneurship students at the University of East Anglia , as part of an Entrepreneurship in Global Health and Social Care module. Members of the local health, digital and technology communities can register for free at http://www.hackinghealth.org.uk . Potent...

Naked Element are proud to be part of the forthcoming  Digital City Walk . Held over five days, the trail aims to encourage young people to visit Norwich tech businesses to find out more about what they do and what it might be like to work in the tech industry. Norwich is a Tech City and younger people should be made aware of the opportunities available in our Fine City. We are at No. 1 on the map, along with  Axon Vibe ,  Sean Clark Ltd  and  Applin Skinner . Our colleagues  Rainbird AI  are at No. 7 and  Neon Tribe  are at No. 11. The walk takes place during half term between the 15th and 19th of February and we will be available every day except Thursday. Come and say hi and find out what we're all about!

Images and Words was a huge part of my teenage years. I also enjoyed Awake, A Change of Seasons and the first half of Falling Into Infinity. I don’t know what happened to Dream Theater after that. The following albums, right up until the eponymous Dream Theater album in 2013 were listenable, but boring and spent most of their time on the shelf for me. However, the eponymous album was a real return to form and I played and enjoyed it a lot. Now it’s 2016 and Dream Theater have releases a 2 hour concept album called The Astonishing. It’s a dystopian science fiction theme and I love long albums (like the new Swallow The Sun album at 3 hours) so it should have been perfect for me. From the second listen I was struggling. My feeling all the way through was where are the riffs, where is the metal? I bought the new Axel Rudy Pell, Avantasia and Primal Fear albums at the same time and all were instantly more listenable, enjoyable and digestible. Hopefully Dream Theater will get their ac...