Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category

Much as you might think that video production was for film studios in fact there are a number of small production companies which target the corporate video production market.

Of these, 522 Productions confines itself broadly to the Washington DC area along with those neighbouring it of course. As it’s in the capital area many of the productions that it has created are for non-profit organisations and there’s a surprisingly wide range of work in it’s portfolio already.

They even run to quite an interesting blog which looks at many of the issues concerning video production these days as, of course, it’s rarely as straightforward as producing a video tape since people will often want a flash version for online distribution along with the possibility of running streaming videos and distribution via YouTube. Naturally that range of outlets makes it important to consider just what outlets you are likely to be using before you start shooting: the grand production that you originally thought you needed might not be suitable if many people will be watching the quite small video sizes that are generally available online for example.

School administration used to be a fairly simple affair but it has become more and more complex over the years with additional tasks added tacked on as time as gone on.

Many of these additional tasks fall under the remit of management of the school rather than the educational side of things which has traditionally been where school principals have come from and schools are pretty complex beasts to manage as well. It’s therefore becoming more and more necessary to call into play software that can keep a handle on what’s going on.

For example, the organisation of school trips used to be quite straightforward but these days they’re logistical nightmares involving negotiations with overseas accommodation, transport and entertainment. All that before you even consider the business of keeping track of who is actually going on the trip!

Fees are more and more common of course too and with fees comes the need to draw on marketing resources which in turn leads you down the path of contact management and following up of leads. Naturally these days that may entail e-mail marketing programmes in addition to the calling of bygone days.

Management and allocation of resources from teachers to classrooms, transport, etc. is of course still part of the normal school activity but no less easy to do simply because it’s better known by those involved in it. And, of course, you need to keep track of how everyone is doing so that the various performance statistics demanded by the educational authorities can be presented in the appropriate format.

However, with all those complications it’s perhaps surprising to know that there aren’t a lot of integrated school management systems around. One of those that seems to be doing quite well internationally is TEAMS which is produced by a relatively small Australian company.

Blogging reviews seem to come in two basic flavours: 1) nice ones just to get the link and 2) proper ones that are actually useful.

Much as the first type serve their purpose in getting you a link to your site and they’re the safest ones to go for, they’re pretty much useless except for the linkback that they provide. In practice, they’re not overlly useful for that link either as, for the most part, bloggers with really high PR rarely review those with much lower PR who could benefit most.

The second type can be pretty scary though. After all, who among us has a “perfect” blog? Probably 99% of us have just picked the first reasonable looking template and ran with that so there’s usually a lot of scope for criticism on that front (my current one has been described as “Kermit the frog” for instance). Likewise, sod’s law applying as always chances are that they’ll look at your blog when you’ve just written a bunch of posts that are “less than your best” at best and more than likely they’ll be “total ****” even if all your other posts have been Pulitzer material.

But, that second type is far and away the most useful type to get. Sure, there’ll be things that you disagree with either partially or even entirely, but so what? You’re hardly likely to be writing stuff that people will agree with all the time, are you? On the other hand you’ll almost certainly get some useful ideas that you can implement to improve things. For example, about a year ago one one of the “type 2 reviews” that I got pointed out that it was a pain to have to page through endless posts on how to move to France and that I should collect them in one place, so there’s now a link to a compilation of them under “Series Collections” as you can see.

What a “type 2” review doesn’t have to be is nasty. Yes, you may well get a review where someone basically criticises everything on your blog (unlikely, but possible) but they don’t have to be nasty about it and I’ve yet to see one where they were out and out nasty.

Anyway, if anyone’s interested in a review from me, and will review this blog in return, let me know!

Camera technology is moving so fast these days that it’s getting to be pretty much a lottery as to when is the best time to buy a camera.

For instance, I’d pretty much come to the conclusion that the Pentax Option S10 was the perfect camera to be my next “take it everywhere” camera. Launched in August 2007 it offers good quality 10mp images in a very small package.

However, when I did a search for some more information on it, what did I come across but that yesterday Pentax announced the launch of the S12 which is basically the same camera but with a 12mp sensor. Note that the launch has been announced but not actually happened (it’s due in March) so Pentax have delayed (and possibly lost) a sale to me.

After all, why buy the S10 now when I can get a much better camera in two months time for, probably, the same price? Sure, if I was just about to go on holiday I’d buy the S10 now, but I’m not so I’ll wait.

If you’re selling property outside your home country it’s easy to fall into the trap of pricing it in the local currency and then forgetting about it.

That usually works fine if property sales in the foreign country move at a fairly brisk pace but often they move at a much more sedate pace than you are accustomed to. Whilst exchange rates between the major currencies rarely move quickly they do move and over a period of many months the price translated back into your home currency can change quite substantially.

For example, take a property that you wanted to sell for £60,000 at the start of 2007 and you therefore priced it at EUR 90,000 (£60,641). By the start of 2008 you could sell that property for EUR 85,000 and pick up £62,553. You might think that a year is a long time to have a property on sale but in many European markets property sales proceed at a very sedate pace and it’s not unusual to have a house for sale for quite an extended period before you find a buyer.

If you are counting in your home currency it can often pay to check whether or not you can lower the local price but still collect the same amount of money as obviously it can speed up the sale of the property.