Here’s the next extract from my talk at the Holy Family School Enterprise Day – this time focusing on something I am extremely passionate about – entrepreneurship.
I cover the need to focus on what you enjoy and are best at, finding a problem which is under-served and solving it – and the truth in the Tortoise and the Hare fable!
Here is a snippet from my recent talk at the Holy Family School Enterprise Day. A visit to my old school is always inspiring, and a great chance share entrepreneurial tips with the business owners of tomorrow.
In this extract I share my experience as a late blooming Primary school pupil, discovering the infinite possibilities presented by the computer, and working my way from the bottom to the top of class with good old fashioned hard work!
I also cover how I got started in web design and online technology, and the story behind the founding of Webanywhere – and how it has grown from my bedroom to an international business. It is my hope that I can pass on what I have learned on this journey to the next generation, for whom entrepreneurial acumen is more essential than ever.
As an ex-pupil of Holy Family School in Keighley, I was delighted to be invited back to speak at their Enterprise Day today.
A group of Year 9 pupils were given an “Apprentice” style challenge to identify a business opportunity within the school and come up with a proposal to address it.
I was really impressed with the creativity and business acumen displayed by the 18 teams involved, and their confidence in presenting their ideas to a panel of their teachers.
Once the staff had scored each group out of 10 (Strictly Come Dancing style), a clear winner emerged – team “8 Minds” with their proposal for a swipe-card payment system to replace cash throughout school.
I’m sure that among those students there will be a few future business leaders, project managers and entrepreneurs – who might one day give me a run for my money!
I was joined by one of our media team on the day to film the occasion, so I’ll share the finished videos with you soon.
I would like to share with you a video I filmed recently for Invest in Bradford, an organisation that we are proud to work with as a fast growing business in our local community.
Here I outline some of the reasons for Webanywhere’s growth, and the role of local community community support in that growth.
From organisations such as Invest in Bradford and The Bradford University School of Management to individuals such as Tony Reeves, CEO of Bradford Council, and local MP Chris Hopkins, Webanywhere has benefited tremendously from the energy, resources and knowledge contained within our local area, and are proud to repay that support by creating high value jobs and opportunities.
As I mention in the video, we are fast approaching our 10th Anniversary – watch out for upcoming announcements on our birthday celebrations!
I have written in the past about our fruitful relationship with the Bradford University School of Management, and would like to let you know about a fantastic project we have collaborated on recently.
Webanywhere linked up with a group of students at the School of Management looking at entrepreneurship. As part of their final project the students met with business leaders in the Bradford area to look at the real life challenges facing their organisations, and were tasked with creating solutions.
A major issue for Webanywhere at the moment is managing recruitment. We are growing fast with new vacancies being created all the time (check out our Careers page to see our current vacancies – as you can see there are plenty of opportunities for the best and brightest!). As a result, we set the students the challenge of how to recruit and retain employees who are aligned with our company values.
I hosted a visit from the group to our offices in Keighley, providing them with an overview of our history, our culture and values, and our goals for the future. Our HR team then worked closely with the group on the specifics of our recruitment process: the type of people we look for and the issues we face in ensuring we recruit those able to drive growth and innovation
The students interviewed staff face to face, sent out staff surveys, and compiled an incredibly insightful report featuring several eminently practical solutions to the challenges we face.
I was incredibly impressed with the results of our collaboration, and I was not the only one! This Telegraph and Argus article details the positive impact another group of students from the Bradford School of Management had on this year Positive Bradford campaign.
We will be keeping in touch with the group, as it contains some exceptional individuals with bright futures, who would fit right in here at Webanywhere. We are already working on a new project with web development students at the University on an interactive online recruitment tool – watch this space!
This morning I paid a visit to Whitehill Academy in Halifax. Whitehill were one of the first schools who signed up with Webanywhere so I thought it would be great to go there and see them making use of our products and other great tools in the classroom. I was blown away by the quality of what I saw at the school. 2 ICT suites were fully kitted out with Apple Macs; iMacs were on view in all of the classrooms and in every classroom there were pupils making use of ICT to support their learning.
The staff at Whitehill Academy are really enthusiastic about their use of ICT and demand a lot of the products they use to enhance their pupils learning experience. Mr Sayles, the Deputy Headteacher, was particularly keen to find out how Webanywhere could support the development of use of ICT at the school. We looked at the way that the pupils are currently using a range of products and quickly identified a few areas where we could help out.
The issues that came up are quite common ones but we think we’ve found some solutions to them:
Parents are unsure how to help pupils doing homework: We’re helping the school create a series of guidance videos which parents can watch to see examples of similar tasks being done in school.
Building courses for Learnanywhere: We want to make sure our VLE for Primary schools is really well used so we’ve agreed to send our Education Advisor in to help them build some really effective courses.
Training and CPD: Whitehill have run some great training events in the past and are planning some more. We’ve promised to help organise and promote these and we’ve started planning a training event based on the creation and use of rapid content creation games to enhance teaching and learning.
One thing that surprised me whilst in the school was that a lot of the pupils are doing the Digital Creator course. I’ve seen this course in a lot of secondary schools before but to see Year 5 and 6 pupils engaging in a course that is normally studied by 14 to 16 year olds was inspiring!
