Dave the Dealer misses out at CRN SMAs
Occasional CRN columnist ponders human need for WiFi, football shenanigans, robot workers and deference
Despite leaving the evening empty handed (our viral social media campaign on factory-second routers failed to impress the judges), Gordon, Shirl and I enjoyed a convivial evening at the seventh CRN Sales and Marketing awards.
Host for the evening, comedienne Tiff Stevenson, induced several belly laughs from me and my colleagues as she sent up the industry and unleashed her wry observational comedy on the 300-strong crowd.
However, the awards were in my opinion marred by a lack of WiFi, with attendees trying in vain to chart the evening's events on Twitter, update their LinkedIn statuses, and use Google to resolve disputes with their dinner companions about how tall various celebrities really are.
Just like the WiFi, we hope to come back stronger next year.
Pay the penalty
Every four years, a curious phenomenon arises where (to be fair, mainly male) workers across the UK feel they can drink beer all day, turn up late to work and pull sickies with utter impunity.
I'm talking about the World Cup, of course, which, despite putting a smile on the face of the nation, was the scourge of bosses everywhere.
According to the Evening Standard, five million England fans pulled a sickie the day after the Three Lions beat Colombia on penalties.
Due to CRN's yawning print deadlines, I write this ahead of England's semi-final clash with Croatia, but I'm willing to bet Dodgi's office will be emptier than a pay toilet for journalists on Thursday morning, win or lose.
I had my own fun knock-out style contest in place for those who have followed England's progress through the tournament to the detriment of their work, with the worst offenders competing for formal warnings from HR and a p45.
Respect-able
As someone who pines for the days of National Service and subscribes to the good old-fashioned value of deference, I only wish I engendered the same degree of fear and respect in my employees as Ginni Rometty does.
She may be the queen of all she surveys at IBM, but it seems the Big Blue bigwig has a great deal in common with our own monarch, judging from a leaked memo telling staff how to act around her.
According to The Register (sorry, CRN - I know they're a competitor, but what can I do?), IBM staff in Austin were told not to approach Rometty or her group during a two-day visit to their office, unless approached first. Selfies, water cooler chats and bathroom run-ins were also prohibited.
When I recently visited our satellite office, I was horrified to discover that someone had parked in my space, most of the sales goons addressed me as ‘mate', and my office had been turned into a huddle room.
And based on the state of the gents' toilet, I only wished I'd taken a leaf from the House of Windsor and brought along my own loo seat.
Doll parts
As if further evidence of our imminent enslavement by metal overlords were needed, I read recently about the launch of a new "Robotics Engineer Barbie".
Accompanied by a robot she presumably pogrammed, the new, stick-thin plastic doll is designed to encourage women into STEM, a field in which the male of the species currently holds 76 per cent of the jobs.
And hats off to Barbie manufacturer Mattel for partnering with kids' coding platform Tynker to launch six free Barbie-inspired coding experiences.
However, looking at Robotic Engineer Barbie's innocent expression, it's clear she doesn't realise that her human owners will soon be doing the bidding of the very master race of shiny automatons she is helping to create. Who knew that proof of the impending apocalypse would be delivered by an unrealistically slender children's figurine?
Automation nation
On this note, recent research by RS Components, found that nearly a third of Brits are worried about robots taking over everyday life.
According to the survey, the top 10 things Brits would let a robot do include household chores (40 per cent), cook food (17 per cent) and look after a pet (10 per cent).
"We've seen robots depicted in cinema as evil machines with the potential to take over and wipe out humanity as we know it, but in reality they are being constructed to assist us by picking up smaller and less important tasks," said RS Components' Vishal Chhatralia.
To be fair, you could probably replace most of Dodgi's finance team with drones without anyone noticing.
■ Dave Diamond-Geezer, director of Digital Online Deals and Global Integration (Dodgi) of Dagenham Ltd