Paul Grenyer

5 years ago today, on the 26th April 2012 Naked Element was incorporated by Matthew Wells , Chris Wright and our CEO Paul Grenyer . Over the 5 years Naked Element has successfully developed software for a wide variety of clients, helping them to improve their business processes and to increase their efficiency, saving them both time and money. A couple of most recent projects that we’re proud of: Fountain Partnership - An online marketing agency. “Naked Element’s software for Fountain reduces processing time by 95%.” Naked Element were chosen to build a script which would allow Fountain to manage one of their largest clients in Google AdWords. In simple terms a script was created that allowed the user to specify AdWords accounts, campaigns and ad groups and then to enter a search, replacing each with a phrase or word. IDSystems - Suppliers and installers of doors and windows. Naked Element developed a bespoke web application for IDSystems. The new application is designed ...

Cities, by their very nature, aren't small (unless of course you're a pretend city like Ely). According to Wikipedia there are over 141,000 people in Norwich and over 370,000 people in the ‘travel to work’ area. I've got a lot of contacts on LinkedIn, but these numbers of people are large by anyones’s standards! Since I came back to work in Norwich for the third time in 2011, I've been expanding my professional network at an exponential rate. From time to time, and more frequently as time goes on, I encounter people I was at school with and Rebecca White was one of those people (although she was a year or two above me at Notre Dame High School). Rebecca is a social entrepreneur and CEO of the social enterprise Your Own Place .  Your Own Place equips young people with the skills, confidence and knowledge to live safely and securely. They achieve this by continually developing innovative and entrepreneurial solutions as well as collaborating for the benefit of  you...

Despite growing up and spending the vast majority of my life living in Norwich, I haven’t really been to the seaside town of Great Yarmouth that many times, despite it being only 20 miles away. I certainly never imagined finding work there. I’ve visited Yarmouth for business three times since Christmas this year, secured one piece of business with a local company and now it’s looking like Naked Element could be securing some more. I’ve been fascinated by engineering since a young age. From the differential which helped drive the Lego car I had as a child, to internal combustion engines, power stations and large ships and planes, I like to know how things, big and small, work. When I was younger I even wrote to the BBC’s Playschool programme to find out how their clock worked and received a photo and a full explanation in response (I wish I still had them now). So when a Norfolk Chamber breakfast offered the  opportunity to hear from a senior member of Seajacks, who own and ...

By Alastair Reynolds ISBN-13: 978-1910935309 This book is quick and easy to read at only 98 pages. It’s a long way from being Reynold’s best work, but it’s enjoyable enough. Often I struggle to put books down, but not so with the Iron Tactician, not until the last 30% anyway, which I read in a couple of hours one afternoon. Possibly the smallest number of characters Reynolds has ever had in a story I’ve read of his, each of them is likable and easy to relate to. A couple could have been explored in more detail. It was clear there was a twist coming, but if the clues were there to what it was, I missed them and was oblivious right up until it was revealed, which is how I like it! Sometimes nothing spoils a book like a predictable ending and in fact there were two surprises for me! I’m looking forward to Revenger which is released in just over a month (18th May), but I’ll be reading the next book in Peter Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga first, so it may be a while until I ...

“Speaking at nor(DEV):con  is a good indicator that people know what they’re talking about” If anyone knows the truth of that sentence, it’s Dom Davis . People in the tech industry know him for many different reasons – as CTO of TechMarionette , providing consultations through Somewhere Random, or perhaps even his YouTube gaming channels – but his speaking career was launched by nor(DEV):. “I started doing the local talks for the Norfolk Developers evening sessions, then speaking at nor(DEV):con , eventually graduating to larger and larger rooms at the conference. That eventually led to offers to speak from outside Norfolk.” ‘Outside Norfolk’ ended up being Israel. A conference over there was looking for interesting international speakers and found Dom’s talk from nor(DEV):con on YouTube. After negotiating travel arrangements, they flew him out to give the closing keynote. “Off the back of that I got to speak at Foundercon in Berlin. So now I can say I’m an international key...

by George R.R. Martin ISBN: 978-0007548231 This is an epic story. The breadth of George R.R. Martin’s imagination and attention to detail is incredible. Of course I’ve seen the HBO TV series, which is what inspired me to read the book, but that’s a doubled edged sword. Having seen the series it helped me to understand what was going on, but also it spoils it as I generally remembered what was going to happen, removing some of the mystery and excitement. Having said that, I did spend a lot of the book hoping things would turn out differently. My biggest frustration is, why didn’t Syrio Forel pick up one of the Lannister swords and defeat Meryn Trant? The book is ambiguous, so maybe he did survive and will be back? There’s time and my fingers are crossed. Catelyn Stark is an excellent character. However, I really don’t like her. She is proud, stubborn and ultimately causes her husband's death and the downfall of her house. Although, Eddard Stark does a pretty good job of th...