2007 Graduate Apprentice Blog

As is probably quite clear to everyone reading the blog, the Apprentice programme is something that I am passionate about.  The opportunity it has given me is unrivaled and has put me in an incredible position to go on and achieve a lot within this great city.

As my time as the Apprentice draws to an end, its time to start reflecting on the fantastic year that I’ve had, and to start talking about the programme.  I had one such opportunity with Biz TV recently, part of the Aston University set-up.  They were kind enough to interview about how I got the role, my three placements and my plans going forward.  Please take a look at the link below to hear me talk about my time.

Jason Norris as the Graduate Apprentice

Playing with Andrew and Stef’s latest ’site in a day’, 5alist, I decided to make a list of the five people I would most like to meet.  Its one of those questions which people look at and attempt to define what sort of person you are… so what does that make me.  My five are as follows:

1. Al Gore

2. Sir Steve Redgrave

3. Nelson Mandela

4. Lance Armstrong

5. The Missing link between Ape & Man

My reasons are as follows:

1. I know that there are people that don’t like him, but I’m not one of them. I think that political motives aside, he is actually trying to raise awareness about some big issues, and he is known enough to get people to sit up and take notice.
2. My first sporting entry… rowing is at heart my sport of choice, and there is no greater rower than Sir Steve. In terms of shear tenacity and determination, no-one else gets close. Five olympic Gold Medals speak for themselves… and as a diabetic. Proof that if you want something badly enough, everything is possible.
3. A second political figure, but I would love to have dinner with him and hear his story first hand. He will no doubt go down as one of the key figures of the 21st century and I would to know what drives him.
4. Again a sporting theme, but again this guy has battled against the odds and won, again and again. He has become a bit more of a celebrity these days, but I admire him for using his profile to raise awareness about a disease which almost killed him, that takes courage.
5. The random one… I’m kind of interested in science, the kind of interest that extends to reading science articles on a Sunday afternoon and there is general acceptance that we still don’t know the full story of where we came from. If there is a missing link, I would love to meet him/her/it/them… knowing where we came from gives us a great impression of where we can go.

This list was created using 5alist, Stef and Andrew’s latest idea… why not make a list of your own here.

Last night I attended another event linked to my role as the Apprentice.  This one was however, a little more social.  A Birmingham Future friend of mine, David Neale, is soon to be climbing the Matterhorn, one of the toughest challenges that any human has ever undertaken.  David is doing this in aid of SENSE, the national deaf blind charity, who do fantastic work all over the country but are not that well known. 

Scary stats are that 1 in 10 people over the age of 60 are deaf-blind, with many of them not knowing it, so chances are that it affects someone in your family.  So last night David held a charity auction and raffle to raise some money for this fantastic cause, and it was a great evening to be part of. Laura and I even won a spa day at Hotel-Du-Vin as part of the business card raffle! To provide entertainment for the evening, David gave us a demonstration of his skills by abseiling through the open roof at Hotel-Du-Vin… photo below!

So take a look at David’s Blog, at the work that SENSE do, and maybe even donate a few pounds to help him raise as much as possible.  David starts his challenge in nine days time, and I wish him the very best of luck.

There are some points during my year as the Graduate Apprentice where I have had the opportunity to begin giving something back to the fantastic Birmingham Community that has welcomed me with such open arms.  This morning, I was invited to speak about my role as the Apprentice as part of a breakfast with Graduates and employers.  Its organised by Clarke Associates and Graduate Advantage, with breakfast provided this morning by the fantastic Hogarths Hotel.  It was a very rare occasion in-fact, the two groups mixing when neither of them were trying to recruit… a very refreshing alternative.

I had to follow Anthony McCourt, one of my mentors, and the current Birmingham Young Professional of the Year, and boy is he a tough act to follow.  Firstly, he is only a year older than me, but he has achieved an incredible amount, but secondly and importantly, he is a fantastic advocate of the city, and much like me, having moved to Birmingham from outside, is now a fully fledged ‘adopted Brummie’.

But this morning was all about the Graduates at the event, all of them who were keen to find out how they can begin to build their personal brand, and about how they can find a job within the city that they really enjoy.  Just by being there, they were already taking one step on this journey, and I was truly humbled to be there and talk about my journey so far.  I was delighted that they listened, and I hope that some of them found what I said useful.

So my year as the Apprentice is almost coming to an end… but there is a lot more I plan to do yet.  Its event’s like this morning make it all worthwhile, where I really feel proud to be part of this fantastic city.

Its been quite a journey with Stef, and only today we were talking about how much I have learnt in such a short space of time! I am still no-where near the level of technological knowledge of Web 2.0 that individuals such as Stef, but I do now have my own website.  I even set it up myself, made sure that my blog was pointing in the right direction, made sure that my URL is going to be found by search engines, and ensured that the servers were all in the right place (well, that took a little help from Stef).  But I have learnt a lot, and while jasonnorris.co.uk is actually only my blog, its a start.  I do plan to keep my record of my time as the Apprentice going after I complete my year and Mayur takes over the role, where it will become a more personal record of my time within Birmingham… and now I have the perfect place to do it.

The below appear no-where on my site, but it makes this post look a little easier on the eye, and means that I can play with Skitch, which I discovered last week!

Stef and Andrew are getting pretty good at the ‘start-up in a day‘ concept, so much so that the second appeared on the web on Friday.  After I So Wish, which took around a day from idea generation to actualy working site, 5ALIST took about 5 hours on Friday… which is pretty awesome in anyone’s book! 

The reason for the everything happening so quick is that the idea, and the site, are really simple.  The functionality of the site is really straight forward, meaning that all a user can do is sign up and make a top 5 list.  The choice of top 5 is completely up to them, and so far we have seen the top five dinosaurs, top five guitar solos and even the top five ways to cook a potato.

Its another experience to add to my year as the Apprentice, seeing an idea turn into an actual site.  I played some small part, helping to discuss domain names and giving my thoughts on the logo. In all, its another fantastic creation by the Stef & Dubber team, a really simple idea with a really simple site, but a great way for you to interact with the internet.

Go and make your own top five list now… anything you like.

From previous posts about the iPhone, you might have thought that I couldn’t manage one more, but here it is.  I finally have managed to go through the process needed to get my new toy working, and no its time to decide whether or not it was worth the hassle that has been today.

First Impressions

It looks good  straight out of the box (see below), but so did the old one.  I’m still not sold on the black case over the silver, I can see it getting scratched a lot easier.  Its lighter, slightly bigger (I’ll get to that) and has new silver buttons.  It feels pretty much the same in the hand, the screen is still the same size and buttons in the same place, so no need to learn new finger movements.

The Apps Store

Along with the 3G connectivity, this was ‘The Big Thing’ about iPhone 2.0.  I’ve not browsed through all of the apps as yet, but I’ve found some very useful ones.  Twitteriffic one is great as I’m new to Twitter and its easy to use.  Facebook and Myspace have additions, both similar to the specialist iPhone pages already developed.  I’ve also come to like the Itunes Remote app… I’ve managed to confuse Laura by changing what is on Itunes from the other room!  There are some organisation Apps on there which I can also see being of great use, but I’m going to spend a little time choosing the right one, as these cost.

3G

Useful - not really tested it as yet as I have WiFi, but this will come in really useful on the move.  I’ve seen some of the stats for how much more quickly it will load pages, so hopefully a time saver.

Bad Points?

There are a few actually… the process was a nightmare.  It seems that both Apple and O2 completely underestimated demand, which was surprising given the hype, the PR and the number of people who registered an interest.  The Dock (or lack of).  1st Gen iPhone came with a great dock to stand next to the computer or wherever you wanted.  2nd Gen didn’t.  And to make things worse, it wont even fit into the old dock, its just slightly too big.  There is still no voice dialing, no video calling (i’d like to see a Skype App), and its managed to forget most of my saved passwords after the restore from the old one.  I don’t remember a lot of passwords and its pretty annoying having to find them again.

Overall

4.5/5 stars, 9/10, pretty good…… almost the perfect phone for me, but not quite.  Probably worth the wait since 1st Gen, but not worth the hassle spent having to get it.  But I guess its more of a fashion statement than a phone.  I wanted to be one of the first, and now I am. 

The Old iPhone?

Well Laura didn’t want it… too geeky and difficult for her to use.  I don’t want to leave it hanging around so I’m selling it to MazumaMobile.com for £140… which will come in pretty handy, plus they recycle and re-use the phones in third world countries.

The photo is old iPhone moving aside for new iPhone…

After a rather unproductive call with 02 this morning, who throughout the week have given me at least five different answers as to when I could upgrade, I was not too sure that I would actually get my hands on my new toy today.  However, after chancing my luck and taking a slight detour on the walk to work, I found a Carphone Warehouse store with stock! Fantastic, after only an hour in the queue, massive problems finding me on the system, and a trip back I’m the proud owner of a 3G iPhone!

I would love to tell you all about it… but there is only one problem… Itunes wont let me activate it at the minute, which is frustrating to say the least.  I hope that I don’t see much more of the below screen… and perhaps by the end of the evening, I might be able to blog about what its like to use…

I’m an Apple Fan… I bought my first Mac around two years ago when my Windows based Dell decided that actually writing my dissertation was not where its fate dictated it would end up, and it was at this point after an afternoon in the Bullring Apple shop I bought the bullet and switched.  To say I was amazed was an understatement, and I never understood all those people that say its too difficult to swap operating systems.  I bought the Mac version of Word as I still had some of my dissertation notes left, and that was it. 

As soon as the iPhone came out, it was pretty much a sure bet that I would get one… I left it a little while, the finances didn’t quite allow for me to queue on the first day, but it was close.  However, there were of course problems with the first version, and like any decent company, of course Apple were holding back features to release as a second version, and cash in twice.  So when I heard about the 3G iPhone, I signed up, as it seems did thousands of other people!

Surely O2 would have released that it was going to be popular… they would have known how many people signed up so surely order at least that many! But today, at 8am after a text message to say its here… I attempted to sign up to get one on Friday.  I was greeted however, with countess error messages.  ”sorry you request has failed” “please re-enter your information”… and there was not even an Odadeo pleasant looking error message… just boring text! So tried again this evening… and was greeted with the below:

The truth is that I’m a little disappointed with O2.  I was really hoping to have the new iPhone on Friday, I’m like a little kid when it comes to gadgets and I can’t stand waiting… but I’m going to have to now, and it annoys me.  They surely must have expected such demand, and either ignored it, or just simply thought they have an PR opportunity here… we are selling more than ever expected…. we are the only place you can get it, so we know you will come back! Either way, I’m going to have to wait for 3G iPhone… not the anniversary I wanted really!

Making Wishes… for me its always something that has involved a lamp, a genie or a well, but this week, the process of making a wish has been at the forefront of my thinking.  For example, if you were asked to wish for one thing, absolutely anything in the world, money no object… what would it be? I’m not going to give you my answer, you have to think of your own! However, this week, Stef and Andrew Dubber have been working on the I So Wish Website, an idea which is still only a few days old, but is already up and running.  Its been fantastic to be involved, and through a curious twist of fate, it could be something that I could continue to be involved with after my time as the Apprentice is up.

On Saturday night, Laura and I were privilaged to be guests at the Midlands Corporate Finance Charity Ball, which was in aid of the Make A Wish Foundation.  The foundation basically grant wishes to terminally ill children, helping them and their families.  A child can wish for anything, from Playstations to holidays in Florida, and the Charity do all that they can to make their wish come true.  A fantastic cause as you will agree.

Well, mentioning this to Stef this morning, it turns out that he and Dubber have already been talking about a potential tie up with the charity, so I am spending my morning trying to link up with my contacts and see if we can get this moving! If you have not seen the site as yet, do take a look… its quite an experience looking at what other people wish for, and Dubber has even written an E-Book about how you can make your wishes come true.

So I hope to be writing more about the Foundation in the future, and the fantastic work that they do.  Perhaps I may have even found the charity I will be completing Lands End to John O’Groats for next year.