The more things change…

Back in 2016 I started working with panagenda and in April 2017 I went full time, putting my other interests on hold. Last month panagenda and I agreed to part company after 15 months as their Sales Manager North America. It’s completely amicable, we just couldn’t work out a way to make the logistics of running a territory in a different time zone work well for both of us. I’m still going to be recommending their products, ApplicationInsights and ConnectionsExpert are world beating solutions!

It’s been a privilege to work with the team at panagenda, particularly Franz Walder, who is behind AI and CE, and Stefan Fried, who’s behind GreenLight and OfficeExpert, two of the best software designers and data analytics experts I’ve worked with over the last 35 years and both with great customer communication skills too. The rest of the software development and consulting teams are no slouches either!

For now I have some vacation time, the World Cup, Wimbledon and Henley Royal Regatta to keep me busy. Oh, and CollabSphere/MWLUG in July!

Professionally I’ll be putting my HADSL colours back on while I look for the next challenge, but, in the meantime, here’s to a long hot summer!

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Time for a change of pace…

As you may have noticed on LinkedIn, I’ve taken up a new challenge as Sales Manager – North America for panagenda as a full time role. For those of you who don’t know panagenda they are a European based software company, specialising in management, control and administration products but adding extra vision by using data analytics to maximise value and return on investment. It’s all about the data at panagenda!

I’ve known Florian, the management team and most of the consultants for many years and started working with them in September  2016, leading up to this new opportunity starting on April 1st (no, it’s not an April Fool!) My task is to broaden the use of panagenda’s software products primarily in the USA and Canada but also to other international territories where needed.

Although based in the UK I’ll be available on East Coast time most days and will be in the US on a regular basis, starting this week, with other trips planned around the Social Connections user group conference in Chicago on June 1-2 and the MWLUG conference in Washington in August.

I’m looking forward to the challenges that panagenda is bringing to me and to working with a group of people who’s professionalism, product excellence and sense of family will be a great thing to be a part of every day.

So don’t phone me too early in the morning, UK time, but keep an eye out for some great customer stories from North America and you’ll still see me wearing my HADSL hat occasionally (e.g. engage in Antwerp)  just not during the US working day! 🙂

A sense of community.

I was on holiday last week (it was great but I could use a weeks holiday to recover now!) and got back to find a ‘we tried to deliver…’ card from the Royal Mail in my letterbox. Two minutes online and I’ve organised a redelivery for today but have no idea what time it might arrive, so I head to the coffee shop to catch up on emails as usual and bump into my postman on the way into town.

I’ve been saying good morning with a smile and exchanging thoughts on the weather with him for years and today that let me ask if he had a ‘signed for’ letter for me, he checked, no letter. We discussed the cold weather that has finally arrived and I let him get back to delivering letters. The good news for me is that I don’t have to wait in all morning for a letter that isn’t going to arrive.

Community is a strange thing. People seem to think it is difficult to develop a sense of community but I have to disagree. All it takes is a smile, a cheery greeting and a few seconds treating people like you want to be treated, as a human being.

I’m speaking at a conference in Milan in a couple of weeks (www.DominoPoint.it) , about the global business community that exists in the IBM software space where I work, which has grown and matured over the last 25 years. It was only as I was writing a script for the talk that I realised both how easy and how hard it can be to maintain a community that is changing because people don’t like change and it’s easy for them to become disenfranchised.

So what can we do to help? Well let’s start with a smile, a good morning and maybe a hug. Watching the faces change in a community doesn’t mean the sense of communiy has to be lost, it’s an opportunity for growth. Embrace change, embrace your community and smile, at everybody!

The world according to PhatTone is back! ðŸ˜Š

The world according to PhatTone is back! ðŸ˜Š

It’s been a long time since tonyholder.com was active, long before Apple invented iCloud but when they still hosted web sites, five years at least, I guess! So why have I decided to reactivate the site again? “Surely Facebook is a good enough platform to share your travels, Tone?” I hear you ask, and it is. I’ve reactivated tonyholder.com because there are things I want write about, things like the IBM conference I went to last week and the sneaky hidden price hike on BA.com that nearly cost me £400. I also take a lot of photos, so I might share some of those too. 😊

So here we are, I’ll write up a couple of blog posts, one on business and one on travel, and I’ll probably switch skins on the site a few times and we’ll see where it goes there…