Boldacious Digital Consultant
Seamus Campbell helped me with my new site over the last few weeks, mostly on the IT side of things.
I am very satisfied with the service that he provided me with.
He is easy to work with, conveys technical information clearly (and understandable to lay-persons) and gives backup service with videos, which I found very useful.
His work for me was very good value for money and I would work with him again on any new project.
Thanx Seamus!
Sangit – Sangit Feltart
Soliloquy #653
Cloud Collaborative Software is software (or an app) that allows people to work together on documents or projects. The software lives on the cloud (remotely eg Google or Dropbox) and so is accessible to multiple people at the same time).
1. What hesitations did you have about working with me?
I had hesitations about engaging someone to work with me on my website who didn’t share my values and understand my vision for my business. After meeting Seamus, I realised he understood where I was coming from and could help support me from a basis of understanding why I was starting my business and from there, how a website could best support me in achieving my business goals.
2. What results have you achieved since we started working together?
Seamus persisted in working with me to try to get the right visual look and feel for my website – it was a mutual learning journey! Seamus took my lack of IT skills and language in his stride, and has empowered me to take ownership over the structure and content of my website, and equipped me with skills I need to manage my website – whilst taking care of all the technical and security issues I don’t need to deal with.
3. What did you like best about working with me?
Seamus is down to earth, generous with his time and advice, patient and persistent. He doesn’t leave any issues unresolved, and works with you and your learning style so you understand how to avoid and manage potential problems yourself.
4. How else have you benefited from our work together?
I’ve learnt a great deal about website architecture, security and content management, and also about how to use different tools and software to help streamline my business operations.
5. Would you recommend me and my services? If so, why and to whom?
I have recommended Seamus to other colleagues and friends who are contemplating setting up a website, or who need help with their online business tools and systems.
6. What’s the most important thing people should know about working with me?
That you are willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that a client is happy with the final outcome, and empowered to use the tools and programmes they need to make technology work for them.
7. If there anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks for being an all round champion, Seamus.
“I’m a digital dinosaur – I can’t stand tech people … But here was somebody [Seamus] who actually wanted to know how I think, and how he could make my computer work for me!”
Christine Doan
“you have probably saved me a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of stress”
Luan Murat – Humanity Co
Seamus is “very pleasant to work with, … stressless and you explain everything very well, too”
Jodie Middleton – Amazing Animals to you
I loved Airtable from the moment I saw it.
Clever software with a fantastic user interface, it is part spreadsheet, part database and all collaboration
It lives in the cloud (obviously) and is a beautifully elegant piece of software.
There are still bits about it that frustrate me, but usually they are on their roadmap.
The team are very responsive and react positively.
I was initially motivated to write this post after watching a video at https://angel.co/airtable by one of the co-founders, Andrew Ofstad
His interest is in sophisticated software with a simple user interface.
He says that a lot of modern software has simple functionality and simple user interface, for example, a push for pizza app – you push a button and then get a pizza.
Other software has sophisticated functionality but very complex UI, for instance, Photoshop – extremely powerful software but it takes you a long time to learn the interface to get the full benefit of the power of the software.
Before co-founding Airtable, Andrew had worked on Google Maps.
The video shows a fascinating story of how Google Maps progressed – we all get used to just how good Google Maps is now, and forget the iterations take him to get to today’s version.
One of Airtable’s design philosophies is based on a Google Map’s one, where they give themselves constraints limits and use just a few pieces of user interface.
With Google Maps this was very hard to do well – but we have all benefited from the work that has gone into it.
The Airtable team have excelled (pun intended) with this.
At Google Maps they thought “what if the map was the actual user interface”, they wanted people to interact with the map directly so the rule sort of became:
After he left Google Maps Andrew co-founded Airtable which he described as “basically a database if anyone can use”
Airtable has followed the “what if the map was the actual user interface” idea with “what if the spreadsheet was the actual user interface”.
The result is an easy, and spreadsheet-like way to build a powerful database.
In 2016 Airtable got $52 million in funding; Business Insider Australia said: “This Silicon Valley sleeper hit app just got $52 million to do for spreadsheets what Microsoft did for computers.”
They added: “The secret to Airtable’s success, according to its CEO, Howie Liu, is that it makes it easy to make a custom app. Every cell of an Airtable spreadsheet can store anything, including photos and lists. Adding an interface on top can turn it into a simple but powerful app – without coding.”
I use Airtable for a huge variety of tasks:
It also has a great many templates that anyone can use, the Airtable Universe to showcase great examples.
They state on their website that it “has built-in support for many popular apps, a robust API, and can be configured to work with over 450 websites and apps via Zapier.”
A very elegant piece of software run by clever people.
Loom is one of my favourite bits of software
It’s a really quick and easy way to make screencast videos
I use it:
Its beauty lies in its simplicity; it can be used for longer videos but I find it most useful for short (less than 5 minute) videos.
I use it for all my new clients now as well as my collaborative software show them how to do something eg Slack, Evernote, Airtable etc
They’ve just brought in simple editing so you can trim your videos now
All in all, it is an elegant, very useful piece of software.
The beta version is experimenting with public folders. This is my public Boldacious Digital folder.
I do have many other Loom (some on Boldacious Digital Youtube channel) videos but I find it’s so easy and quick to use that I do very focused videos for a specific client about a specific issue with their website or collaborative cloud software.
Boldacious ran a “Tame your computer Lunch & Learn” on 20th Feb 2018
Modern software allows you to customise how you view your information — to a greater degree than ever before.
You can now use it in a way that suits the way your brain works.
Evernote is one of the best information management systems currently available.
It allows you to collect, store and find your information quickly and easily.
But most of all, it is incredibly customisable, so you can setup your own system for filing and finding all your personal and business information you want at your fingertips.
Seamus is an Evernote Certified Consultant.
He and his second brain (Evernote) will show you how to TAME YOUR COMPUTER!
The event was a great success – 13 people attended
Much interest in Evernote, with a couple of attendees signing up.
It was a well presented informative workshop and I think most if not all got something out of it