End of Day: 20th November

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I think we might be in for a record for the shortest-ever end of day report from the Towers today folks. Isn't it just typical that on the first day for ages when I've volunteered to be the ‘Ed', that I've had no contributions lined up for editing.. not a one! Why's that you ask?  I surmise ‘tis mainly due to many of our regular contributors having taken part in a departmental ‘offsite' this afternoon.  I use the word offsite guardedly because it was actually held onsite.. here at Plusnet HQ on Ground Floor East. All the goodly folk from Development and QA were there to hear a departmental update from Director Fletch, a couple of useful management presentations and some workshop sessions.  Even Comms was there - well mostly - Bob, Matt and Mand kept slipping out surreptitiously to keep the motor running as it were. I myself ran a little ‘breakout' session on customer experience and how we try (and sometimes admitedly fail) to make sure that we keep that at the forefront of everything we do.  As software developers it's often the case that frequently the only feedback they get are problems to be fixed and, in the main, negative. We discussed ways that we can communicate better both internally and externally.  Whilst the session was only 30 mins out of the afternoon I found it interesting to be talking about a topic I live in every day and seeing how our developers feel about it - certainly something I'll be following up on. Tony and Ali gave a superb presentation about Project Management - no, honestly I'm not taking the whatsitsname.. it really was good. Maybe they could turn it into a blog and share it with you.  What do you think guys? Our Head of HR Amanda later brought our (by now overrunning) schedule back on track with a session on Time Management - how appropriate! I was a bit worried about having a departmental KISS session but let out a quiet sigh of relief once I realised it was simply a departmental discussion about what operationally we should Keep, Start and Stop.  It was, other than Fletch's update (obviously), probably the most interesting part of the afternoon - with many previously quiet folk getting all heated and involved.. great stuff. So.. have I padded out the end of day enough yet do you think?     Oh wait.. here's Dave Tomlinson with a last minute contribution.. Well time to chip in with an update from the Products Team. We've today opened up our 21CN Higher Speed Broadband Trial to our customers. We're taking things slow and steady to start with and so are asking for around 25 volunteers to give it a go. We've got 25 staff lines on already with a few more in progress and hope to get the total up to 50 by the beginning of next month. So have a read through the blog and are on an enabled exchange and fancy giving it a try pop over to the forums. What else have Products been doing today? A second rollout, we have now setup Direct Debit and single bill payments for PayAsYouHost, so customers that are PayAsYouHost customers and Plusnet broadband customers can now be charged via a single monthly bill. Rich has been conducting a full commercial audit of JustTheName and looking at pricing models with a view to updating some of the existing infrastructure to make it more resilient. He's also been working on the Broadband Code of Practice and looking at WLR feature bundles. Rich also has a headache and wishes there was a European market in town so he could drink some German beer. Maria's been involved in product modelling and plenty of meetings for most of the day today.  I've also been producing lots of reports, answering a few tickets and keeping an eye on the 21CN trial threads on the Community Site.     By the way, we've published some new support pages this week about high-speed broadband and 21CN over at the Plusnet support section..  take a look and let us know what you think.   P-j