So we’ve been quiet over the summer but for good reason, our new chairman has been driving us forward hard and as a result we have a number of amazing things to shout about.

Firstly we should tell you the five big goals we now have in place for the next two years, they’re ambitious but we think we can achieve at least two out of  five.  In fact, we have already achieved our first goal of opening office space in London:

1. Open office space in London – done!
2. Rebrand Atlas starting with our logo – done, we have a new website too
3. Hit the £2m per year turnover mark in the next two years – yes we know turnover is vanity but it’s a nice round target to aim for
4. Position ourselves as the Software as a Service (SaaS) development company in the UK, Europe and maybe the world
5. Get Atlas certified with Microsoft - done, see the blog post on our experience here

So we now have offices in London, the exact address you’ll find on our contact page.  Over the last couple of years we have been working on larger projects for bigger customers and we want to locate ourselves so that we’re easily accessible.  We’ll keep our offices in Essex as there’s no real benefit in relocating all of the staff to London.

To coincide with our new business aims it was decided that it is high time for a rebrand.  We’re already working on our new logo and can’t wait to show off the new website when that’s ready around December time.

So what’s with the turnover target I hear you ask?  Well KPIs as I’ve come to know them, or in other words numbers you can review every day/week/month to get a feel for your business, are in my opinion fun and exciting to watch.  The turnover is an obvious target, and I’m also monitoring our turnover in conjunction with our net profit, cost of sales, revenue per customer/industry and a few other internal metrics to ensure that we focus on the most profitable areas of the company.  On a more personal note, large goals such as the £2m turnover mark in two years are also incredibly important for me as CEO to keep me focused on the bigger picture.

Our final target is slightly less tangible but nonetheless still very important.  We genuinely feel that there is a lack of SaaS development taking place in the UK and Europe.  Yes we have a number of SaaS applications but there aren’t any software development companies out there saying  “If you want SaaS application development, come to us”.  So as nobody else has bothered to go for it, we’ve decided we’re going to fill that position.  We want the name Atlas to be synonymous with that of SaaS application development.

Finally, we’re now Microsoft Silver partners.  This Microsoft level of accreditation was formerly known as certified which this week they have scrapped.  Because of this we have to wait until November to retrieve our shiny new logo for our website.  We’re now working towards gold partnership, only 65 partner points to go!!

To help forum administrators we’ve written a free forum rules and moderators handbook guide.

You’re free to take it, adapt, pass it on and use it however you wish. All we ask is that you link back to us if you do use the document.

If you make any improvements to the guide please send them back and we’ll update our version.

Moderator and forum rules handbook (Microsoft Word Document)

The one thing that motivates a programmer more than anything else is being told that their code is rubbish, a bit of friendly competition never hurt anyone.

Cue cheesy photo…

Justin won’t mind, we pinched this from his site!

Justin has a long history of programming in ASP and more recently ASP.Net including LINQ and AJAX.  He’s already part of the Atlas furniture and eager to get to grips with the wide range of projects we’re working on for our customers.  Welcome aboard Justin   Oh and he recently celebrated his birthday although we won’t be so cruel as to give his age away!

The event aims to highlight the academic achievements of students from a number of colleges and sixth form schools.

The presentation I’m giving on the two nights will focus on two key areas.  The first of which is “well done kids, you made it through your education!”.  I’m delighted that students are being rewarded for their efforts on such a large scale.  However the second area I’ll focus on will be to inform them how much of an uphill struggle they still have ahead of them.

Obviously I won’t want to put a downer on the evening so I’ll have to be careful in my approach.  However it’s important in my view for students to understand that their grade ‘A’ qualifications are not going to generate them an income.  Jobs offering a six figure salary will not magically appear and unfortunately they still have many thousands of hard working hours ahead of them before they will reap any kind of serious reward.

I know this because I left college six years ago and even now don’t like to use the word ‘successful’ and Atlas in the same sentence.  We ‘do okay’ is as positive a response as you would get out of me.  This isn’t because Atlas isn’t successful; I just believe that we’re only half way up Everest.  If I were to start throwing words like successful around this would indicate to the outside world that Atlas has achieved everything it is capable of and this simply is not true.

I hope by applying this logic to the students at the presentation it will make them realise that although they are successful on an academic basis there is still much more for them to achieve.

The LSC press release regarding the finalists.

More information and photos coming soon!

Since winning the award good things are starting to come of it.  For example:

• e-Skills UK has invited Simon to speak at an apprenticeship seminar on the 14th July
• The Federation of Small Businesses are looking to put us in touch with the Region Skills & Competiveness Partnership to allow us to show case how we invest in our staff
• We’re also now entered in to the national finals for this award, to be held in London on the 10th July
• A press release has been distributed to a number of press contacts, some of whom are interested in picking up and running a story on us and the award

So as you can see, so far so good!  We certainly know how to stretch a single award in to a number of good opportunities!

It’s a live feed from Twitter dressed up with a pretty interface.  You select an option on the side and it filters the Twitters you get to see.

For example, select hate and you’ll see all Twitter postings containing the word hate.  A neat insight in to the world of Twitter

Personally I like the wish filter.  Makes us all look a bit spoilt.

Details here:

http://www.rochford.gov.uk/rdc/main.asp?page=1408

We hope that you all found the presentation useful and below is a link to the PowerPoint file:

WEB 4 U PowerPoint Presentation