Posts by Mike

If you got a nasty tummy bug back in the Spring then there is a pretty good chance that it was caused by a bacteria called Campylobacter. In 2010 there were more than 700,000 cases in the UK and it costs the UK more than £600m a year - that's more than Salmonella, Listeria and E.Coli combined. Campylobacter kills around 200 people a year.

I've read a few things recently about Tin Can and it's got me thinking about what happens when new specifications like Tin Can begin to emerge and how you decide when or if to dive in and start developing bespoke e-learning that supports it.

Taylor, our star work experience student from Westfield Sports College in Sheffield, has developed a fully working online version of his work experience booklet. It uses the jQuery Mobile framework so it works across platforms - it looks good on an iPad.

Tom McLellan joins our Sheffield software development team.

Tom's just graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a First Class Honours degree in Interactive Media with Animation. We're lucky because we get a great PHP developer who can also do front end design - skills that are always in demand on our projects.

What's the difference between ‘waterfall' and ‘agile' software development? And why should you care if you're thinking about buying or commissioning some bespoke software?

Another article about recruitment, data and HR, this time at Google:

How Google became such a great place to work

The Google HR department - or People Operations (POPS for short) - collects and analyses data about employee behaviour and job satisfaction, everything from optimal lunch queue size to the shape of tables in the cafeteria (long narrow tables encourage people who don't know each other to talk together).

I read a couple of articles this week about data mining and recruitment. There are companies that mine large amounts of recruitment data, do some analysis and then discover interesting things.

For example, recruiters typically don't want to employ people with criminal records but it turns out that the data suggests that in customer call centres at least, the people with criminal records perform better. Another one was staff who apply for jobs online - the data suggests that applicants who've installed alternative browsers - Chrome or Firefox - perform better than their colleagues who still use Internet Explorer.

The Sheffield College is now using our Skills Matrix online tutor management system to recruit and manage hourly-paid associate teaching staff.

Associates apply online through Skills Matrix and the college HR team then use Skills Matrix to manage the application workflow. Pending applications are forwarded by the system to Heads of Department who then review the application and confirm that they'd be willing to use the associate. Once confirmed, an associate is added to the pool, can be found in searches and can be given commissions.

EQUAL, The Skills Network's new learning management system has been designed and built by SkillsLogic.

The EQUAL platform delivers high quality e-learning courses while at the same time providing The Skills Network with a full back office management information solution - it's a complete end-to-end solution that spans initial customer relationship management (CRM) through induction and enrolment to learning delivery and assessment.

We're looking for a full-time analyst developer to work as part of our development team here in Sheffield.

The successful candidate would be involved in the design and development of both our project based solutions and our own products. There's also an opportunity to be client facing - we're keen to find someone who'd like to meet customers and who can be involved right from the start in the design of new applications.