Barclaycard PayTag is coming...

Always fancied the idea of using your mobile phone as a way to pay for your morning coffee? Well Barclays have announced that the PayTag is on it's way... not got an NFC enabled mobile? Not a problem, as they say on the site:

"PayTag can turn any mobile into a contactless way to pay, in seconds."

At the moment they are looking for people to register interest in using it and once you sign up to the interest form it's 6-8 weeks before you'd receive your tag. A really interesting move by Barclays and this could tie in very well with the Visa Olympic sponsorship deal.

The only issue would be that moment when you hold your phone over the contactless payment point and the cashier stares at you like you're mad... it's bad enough when you use a normal credit card!

If you fancy leading the pack in contactless then follow the link below to sign up:

• Barclaycard PayTag

Life as a newbie...

So, week two at the University of Hertfordshire and i'm already starting to see some very similar patterns that must run through all Universities. Similar issues around content maintenance, faculty demands and the oncoming deluge of paperwork! One huge plus point though is that fact that this project looks like it's going to be brilliant, lots of things I can bring to it from my previous role, a huge number of quick wins and some stability that I can put in place that should last us for a number of years.

Thankfully my new team appear to be exceptional and I have a great mix of technical support to throw into the mix as well. Interesting times ahead but for now it's down to shaking hands and putting my face about as much as possible! Luckily life as a newbie involves a lot of coffee...

Go back a little to leap further...

Well, this is embarrassing, after an 8 month project it looks like we're going to need another 11 days to sort out our new website! Having run into some rather serious hardware & DB issues I have decided to delay the launch of the website for a few days to allow us all to put those finishing touches in place.

So, to all you IWMW 11 attendees that I was speaking to keep your eyes peeled a little longer!

Don't worry, it'll be worth the wait... ;)

"One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again."
Henry Ford

Agile? Just call me twinkle toes...

Brace yourself... it's a mini bragging session this one!

So after a four day intensive course in Agile Project Management I finally got the call with the results this morning and... i'm now a certified Agile Project Manager!

Agile started life as a development methodology for software development and has progressed to a very powerful way to manage virtually any project. Ideal for me as we're right in the starting stages of our CMS project and luckily they're using Agile & Waterfall.

The course is well worth thinking about if you are a PRINCE2 PM and are looking to add to your skill set. As a taster, if you can get the idea of the diagram above you're half way there and if you want to know more, check out this entry on Wikipedia.

Congratulations to Julia & Ash who also passed with flying colours, now it's time to apply the methodology to our projects!