I don't know what I don't know

It's been an interesting and busy week.

Monday started by putting together a slide-show designed to take users through the install of the ProAct client. This was triggered by a request from one of our reference sites who had recently updated their office hardware. I suspect it took much longer to write up the presentation than it did for them to actually do the install and set up but at least we have another useful document in our library for other such eventualities.

Tuesday was spent talking with representatives of the Council investigating how our products can support complimentary projects they are working on. Early days but lots of positive points to move forward with.

Wednesday was really good. Nelsons Solicitors hosted a Education Conference drawing in a number of delegates from local schools with or looking to move to Academy status. It is not till someone lays out the many issues in front of you that you realise, to coin a phrase, you actually don't know what you don't know. 

When Michael Gove announced recently that 

"Improving education is central to our reform agenda and we are committed to giving governors, headteachers and teachers more control over how they run their schools. We know they are best placed to decide how to give their pupils the best possible education and that is why we are encouraging more schools to become academies.

Many more schools will now be able to become academies and I am pleased they will be able to enjoy the additional freedoms, responsibility and empowerment that comes with academy status..

I suspect the use of the word 'enjoy' may not have been the most appropriate verb to use judging by the frowns on the faces of the delegates in the room. Still no pain no gain and if we can step in and help reduce some of the burden through our software, let us move forward together. It also helps that many of the new responsibilities have been engrained in commercial practice. Audit and accountability, Business Continuity Management, Data Protection and Freedom of Information etc etc all of which have been an integral part of our working life for many years.

Thursday was another useful learning opportunity. I joined in the #UKedchat twitter  hat in the evening discussing tips on supporting disengaged children. It was really nice to see how the teaching staff were embracing digital media to motivate children. Phone calls, e-mails and SMS messages home to parents to highlight exceptional performance seemed a nice, quick and personal touch that appears to return a really positive response from parents and pupils a like. It's a suggestion we are going to take to and try at our school reference site seeing as they have the facility at their fingertips and the benefit of being able to track and record such events against the child.

Hello Again!

It has been a long while since I posted my last blog. There's lots of reasons for this. The principal reason being my lack of knowledge around social media and more specifically blogging. It has taken a long time to craft the social media structure for the company as well as develop the content and branding.

During the intervening period, we have been working with the University of Nottingham. We are one of the fish in the in a fishbowl project. This is a soap opera for small businesses such as ours. Fundamentally we share our experience as we develop the business and experts comment and provide guidance. It's really pushing the use of social media as a business collaboration tool, which has certainly helped focus our social media strategy. Hence today's update.

The guidance from the experts has also helped shape our business and marketing strategy and we are now very focused on developing our core business in the education sector.

Rather than fill in the gaps here, visit the in a fishbowl portal and have a read.

The plan now, now that I've got my act together is to post an update here at least once a week.

You can also follow us on twitter using @ProGenitorMan the hashtag #UoNFishbowl.

Our web-site address is www.progenitorsolutions.com. We also have a Linkedin site, It would be great if you could follow us. 

Darren Gent