In my professional life: I am a Managing Consultant with Trinity (MS Gold Partner in the UK) and head up the Information Worker Solutions practice, specialising in helping clients maximise benefit from effective use of technology, thought leadership and solution architecture. I am passionate about "Web2.0" and using social media in the enterprise. The Microsoft stack is of primary interest and I am focussed on the IW platforms, also interested in Federation and Virtualisation.
In my personal life: I enjoy spending time with my family (I have 2 small children) and have a wide range of hobbies that I no longer have much time for including Fishing, Golf, DIY and Photography...
Matt will be speaking at the European SharePoint best practices Conference 2001.
[More details]
Matt spoke at the inaugural SharePoint Saturday (UK) event.
[More details]
Matt Groves spoke at the SharePoint Evolution Conference:
Matt Groves is a Managing Consultant at Trinity Expert Systems Ltd
Trinity are recruiting for exceptional Consultants, Architects and SharePoint Specialists.
Further role information is available here: www.tesl.com/TESL/Careers
If you would like to discuss any of these opportunities with me please get in touch using the options below (or on the About Me page).
Matt Groves was at the SharePoint Conference 2009:
As many of you who know me, or follow me on the social media platforms, will be aware - I am passionate about Carp Fishing. To me, it's escapism, it's gets me away from the pressures of work and gives me some "me" time.
I've been taking it reasonably seriously for the last couple of years (seriously in terms of time, effort and money) and am now pleased to announce that I am officially associated with Berkley Gulp Carp baits!!!!
I will be field testing the baits, providing feedback for them and promoting the bait through their blog.
This marks a significant step in the evolution of my fishing, one that I'm particularly pleased about, and I’m really looking forward to being involved with Berkley.
Berkley Gulp Carp is a range of baits including boilies (a boilie is a bait made from a high nutritional value powders and flavours, mixed with egg then boiled to form a hard skin), particles (seeds, nuts and pulses) and pellets. They may well the most scientifically advanced bait on the market today, the thinking and research behind them is quite phenomenal (see:Video1, Video2, Video3), I hope to using it to best effect in the coming months!
I’ll be starting on the Irish Cream and the Squid&Liver boilies, along with a mix of the particles.
I’m hoping the new bait will enable me to catch through the winter and bag a few more lumps like the one below:
Hopefully tales of my success on the Berkley Gulp Carp Bait will inspire you to get on it yourself, in which case I can recommend getting your bait from Fosters of Birmingham, I’m not affiliated with them in anyway but I rate them really highly for first class service and the store in Birmingham is one of the best in the country (if not THE best!). Order online here: http://www.fostersofbirmingham.co.uk/carp-and-barbel/bait/berkley
Please note: these images are subject to a Creative Commons Licence meaning you may use/display these images with attribution, you may not use these images for commercial purposes or alter/transform them.
If you’d like to use these images for commercial purposes please get in touch.
If, for whatever reason, you’d like something removed from this album, or would like a high-res copy of any of the pictures please drop me a line…
Please note: these images are subject to a Creative Commons Licence meaning you may use/display these images with attribution, you may not use these images for commercial purposes or alter/transform them.
If you’d like to use these images for commercial purposes please get in touch.
If, for whatever reason, you’d like something removed from this album please drop me a line…
The conference got off to a great start with Steve Smith kicking off with a keynote that set the scene for what the guys are doing with the format for this year, they’ve certainly set themselves a big challenge!!
From the conversations I’ve had as I’m been mingling the feedback so far is excellent!
Andrew Woodward's Business track is certainly generating a lot of interaction and there is a real community feel in the room!
Please note: these images are subject to a Creative Commons Licence meaning you may use/display these images with attribution, you may not use these images for commercial purposes or alter/transform them.
If you’d like to use these images for commercial purposes please get in touch.
Many of you will have noticed that earlier this year I dropped off the face of the social planet, someone even emailed me to ask if I was still alive!! [and mentioned that DM’ing me on Twitter seemed pointless as I hadn’t been there in weeks!!]
Basically, I needed some time away from things, my employer (Trinity) generously offered to support me and gave me some time off, I took this time to focus on what matters and to realign my priorities…
Elvis sang:
A little less conversation, a little more action please All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me A little more bite and a little less bark A little less fight and a little more spark Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Also thought that this article on ‘The laws of Productivity’ was excellent:
[opens a PDF in a new tab]
I am still struggling with balance, but I’m getting there, it isn’t something you achieve overnight, or by flipping a switch, it’s taking effort every day.
I am now back at work (have been for a few weeks) and engaging more in social media, but with a better balance and (hopefully) not to the determent of things more important…
I bought a Chromebook last week. A lot of people have asked: why?
So, I’ll tell you, and offer my initial thoughts and comments.
Why?
I used to have my personal email server and file storage running on a beefy server in my own personal datacentre garage. This is now in the cloud. To be precise it’s in Google Apps, with some local file storage on external disk (soon to be replaced by a QNAP NAS). The topic of Google Apps vs BPOS (as it was at the time) is a post for another day (I have one in draft that I never finished!).
Part of the rationale was (in Microsoft parlance) to eat my own dogfood – I was advocating the Cloud, but I wasn’t there myself, well, not really…
So, the point is: for the last couple of years my personal email, files, photos, etc have been in the cloud.
I have a laptop provisioned for me by my employer. I used to use this for some personal web surfing (etc) in the evenings/weekends but this meant that OCS/Lync, email, tasks etc were intruding on personal time, which, along with a few other factors, was contributing to the work-life balance tipping in the wrong direction.
So, the point is: I wanted something I could use entirely for personal use and avoid work intrusions.
So, I needed a device (laptop, tablet, netbook, whatever – I didn’t care) that allowed me access to my cloud data. So, I started looking for something to meet the following criteria:
Must
Should
Could
Won’t
Have a proper keyboard
Have a pointing device of some sort
Be portable
Have wifi
Allow access to Google Apps
Have audio capability (speakers/mic or headphones/mic)
Allow me to use Chrome (by far my favourite browser)
Have speakers
Look good
Allow some work system/data access (just in case)
Have 3G
Have a webcam
Play HD video
Allow me to connect it to a TV
Have an ethernet port
Have massive local storage
Be expensive
Be a PITA to use/manage
Replace my Win7 laptop or Win7 Media Center
Be my ‘main’ PC/Laptop
So, a few of my ‘must have’ requirements ruled out the iPad (shame – I quite like them), others ruled out tablets (really didn’t want to have to mess around with docking stations just to have a keyboard) which left laptops and netbooks.
I really like the idea of the Dell Duo – it runs Windows (which I know and like, and can generally fix when it goes wrong) and is in a very cool form factor. But running an OS like Win7 on 2GB of RAM (with no option for upgrade) troubled me. They are also above my budget (circa £250), even on ebay they fetch around £350 second hand.
This is a shame – it would have fitted the bill nicely…
This left a raft of rather ‘samey’ netbooks and small laptops… Until I remembered the CR-48 and Google's plans to release a mass-market consumer device running Chrome. So I looked into this further.
The hardware was indeed available now in the UK (Samsung Series 5 or Acer AC700, see Amazon for details) and the OS was available in a pre-built VM to play with evaluate (which I did).
Although the performance of the VM could have been better (it isn’t optimised for the VMWare ‘hardware’ and you can’t (easily) get the VMWare Tools installed) I liked it, quick boot, easy to use, and just the web…
The Samsung looked better, but the Acer has a better spec, but the Samsung was available, the Acer will hit the market later in the year……
So I bought the Samsung:
I have the 3G and WiFi version, although can’t see me using much WiFi as it will be mainly used at home (or the homes of friends/family) and occasionally when out and about, but not much…
Thoughts and comments
It’s a great device, I’m loving it so far, there are a couple of minor niggles, but all-in-all I’m impressed.
As it uses my Google account for login it knew my Chrome preferences as soon as I logged in, and seconds later it had all my apps/extensions installed to! I have had several PC’s/Laptop’s/etc over the years and this is the only one that felt that it was mine within seconds, I usually have to install/configure loads of ‘stuff’ to get to this point, not so here
I have played around with the beta builds and even ventured as far the unstable dev build, and was VERY impressed with the OS re-installation routine. On my laptop, downloaded a small executable and plugged in a USB stick, the program created a bootable image on the stick, turned the Chromebook on (while holding down a reset button on the back) and it re-installed the latest stable build in around 5 minutes – and then (even with a clean build OS) i was back up and running with my settings/apps/etc a minute later. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
As someone who’s done their fair share of Windows installs over the years I was genuinely impressed…
The browser itself runs fine, can be a bit sluggish if you have loads of tabs open (esp if the sites/pages you’re opening are full of Flash and high res images), but it’s well within realms of acceptability.
I haven’t had any need to use my Win7 laptop in the evenings since having the Chromebook…
Pro
-boots in under 7 seconds
-resumes from sleep in ~1 second
-gives me web access
-gives me access to my data in the cloud
-gives me access to my local data (as in local NAS)
-synchronises my preferences/settings/apps/extensions between all my computers running Chrome
-felt “personal” from the first time I turned it on
-plays SD video fine
-plays ITV coverage of the RWC fine!
Cons
-struggles with HD video
-perceivable slowing down when you have lots of tabs open (with ‘busy’ web sites/pages)
I did a quick comparison of boot time (and more importantly ‘time until usable’) between my work laptop (Dell Latitude E6500 with: Intel Core2 Duo @ 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM, 7200RPM SATA Disk, 64bit Windows 7 Enterprise) and the Chromebook (Samsung Series 5 with: Intel ATOM @ 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, ChromeOS) the difference is staggering:
-Win7 took 55 seconds longer to get to the login screen
-Win7 took a 3.5 minutes longer to get to the point of being usable (although was still loading stuff)
-Win7 takes (on average) 30 seconds longer to resume from sleep (although on one test took over a minute)
Conclusion
The Chromebook is a great bit of kit and does exactly what I need it to do, and does it very well.
It isn’t for everyone, and certainly isn’t a main/primary PC choice, but as a second device I can’t find a major fault with it. I don’t care much about watching HD films/programs on it, so that doesn’t really bother me, and I can live with it being a bit slower if I have loads of tabs open (it’s still better than IE8/9 on Win7 in that regard though).
I think they are priced wrongly, I paid £240 for mine off Ebay, this is the price point they should be at, £400/£450 puts them into a price bracket that they can’t compete in.
“…we’re thrashing everybody then we go and lose to France…”
#Brilliant!!!
I think the Blacks stand as good a chance as ever this time around, but playing the tournament at home (and “after 24 years” of expectation) the pressure on the team must be immense…
Wonder if they’ll be another popular fashion accessory in Auckland this year??
I struggled for years with several issues, but I'm now well on the road to better play, all thanks to Pete Styles (web | twitter) and his amazing online program.
.jpg)
'
' but I’ve picked it again, hopefully to understand more about how I got where i was…
.png)
