Dave the Dealer's November musings

Dave ponders channel insolvencies, name changes and the eternal life of the reseller

It's never nice to see a nearby competitor go out of business, even if it does open up the opportunity of adding a few extra quid to our own revenue, and adding trained IT professionals to our ranks at a time when trained IT staff are hard to come by.

Still, the channel lives on and we decided to help ex-Misco customers and employees by offering to take their money and skills, respectively.

I must admit, things haven't gone as well as expected. I thought ex-Misco employees would jump at the opportunity to work at Dodgi with our (near) central London location, competitive salaries and unrivalled staff benefits - including free parking and fried chicken Fridays.

Unfortunately, the majority of Misco staff seem to have gone elsewhere, particularly to channel firms adopting the more risky and as-yet-unproven solutions-led business model. I guess not everyone has what it takes to prosper in the fruitful factory seconds router market like Dodgi has for so many years.

In terms of customers, we're having varying degrees of success. We've noticed other resellers specifically targeting Misco customers with Google ads. Personally, I'm not sure that's commercially viable. Based on our margins, I imagine we'd make a loss if we did any paid advertising - which is why we stick to regularly updating our Myspace and Bebo with our latest offers. People underestimate the power of social media.

Automatic automobiles

Google has taken the lead in the race for automated vehicle dominance, launching an automated ride-hailing service that will see customers order through an app, and be taken to their destination in a driver-free vehicle.

Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, has been testing its service in the US and plans to launch the service in the next few months - initially with Waymo employees in the car and then eventually with no humans present other than the riders.

Based on recent press regarding Uber, particularly in the UK, perhaps ride-hailing services will ironically be safer without the drivers than they are with them.

However, if other forms of transport are anything to go by, we can expect years of strikes and disruption from traditional tech-free taxi drivers. Just look at the train networks - their staff strike once a week because of tech that means guards aren't needed to open and close the train doors. It'll be anarchy when driverless trains are created.

Still, the manufacturers of these vehicles are surely going to need access to tech equipment -HD screens, networking equipment, audio systems. Perhaps they'll be interested in the Sony minidisc players we have on offer.

Twitter triumph

In perhaps the biggest technology news of this decade, Twitter announced that it would be doubling the total number of characters users can tweet from 140 to 280.

I have to admit, I have in the past found the 140-character count slightly restrictive. I find Twitter a quick and effective way to discipline Dodgi sales staff - rather than going through the time-consuming verbal and written warnings process. It keeps them on their toes. Now I should be able to cram my thoughts into three or four tweets, rather than eight.

The biggest positive of this move however is clear as day: orange numpty Donald Trump will now have twice as much space to enlighten the western world with his progressive views.

Naming rights

BlackBerry CEO John Chen recently revealed that he was asked to rename the vendor after it stopped making the mobile phones that no one was buying and decided to focus solely on software instead. To be honest, I think if any business goes through such a traumatic period then a change of name can only be a good thing.

I once considered renaming Dodgi after we had some unfortunate press in the Barking and Dagenham Post. It was merely a misunderstanding with Cisco involving some kit we procured from the Democratic Republic of Congo - not worthy of an entire lawsuit in my opinion, but I've heard that Cisco loves a trip to court. Anyway, once we refinanced our HQ and my house we paid Cisco their compensation and that was the end of it.

Tentative alternative names were Computer Reselling and Programming (Crap) and Dagenham Integration and Computer Kings (Dick).

If I was Chen, I'd have jumped at the opportunity to ditch the BlackBerry name. In my experience not one technology firm with a fruity name has ever amounted to anything.

At Dodgi HQ we've still got a consignment of Orange-branded WAP phones that we're struggling to shift. They're top of the range Nokia handsets, so I can only assume that it is something in the branding that is not resonating with the market.

■ Dave Diamond-Geezer, director of Digital Online Deals and Global Integration (Dodgi) of Dagenham Ltd