Australian Financial Review

As I'm heading out the door for this weekend's SMBNation event in New Jersey, I heard about an article in the Australian Financial Review which mentioned CT. Here's a link:
http://www.afr.com/home/viewer.aspx?EDP://20080325000020460578&magsection=weekly-enterprise&title=Professional+geeks%2c+sensibly+priced&source=/_xmlfeeds/enterprise/feed.xml

Also I noticed our Aussie cousins are doing a better job keeping their website updated than we are - you can check it out at http://www.comptroub.com.au/html/home.

-Chip

Upcoming Opportunities to Learn about CT

Our excellent publicity team keeps on rolling - here are some upcoming opportunities to hear more about what Computer Troubleshooters can do for you:

Radio interviews:
WBT-AM 1110, Charlotte, NC, 3/23/2008 at 7:50am
WWBA-AM 1040, Tampa, FL, 4/26/08 (airs during the following week)
"This Week in America" (syndicated to 100 stations), 4/12 to 4/20

TV interviews:
WJW (Fox), Cleveland : April 16 during "That's Life"
WKYC (NBC), Cleveland: April 17 during "Good Company"
WJBK (Fox), Detroit: May 5 during "Fox 2 News Morning"

Online:
TFM blog: http://todaysfacilitymanager.com/facilityblog/2008/03/seven-steps-to-healthy-computer.html
Florida Weekly: http://www.floridaweekly.com/news/2008/0221/Top_News/010.html

In Person:
SMB Nation East conference: www.smbnation.com (March 29 & 30)

New Zealand

New Zealand was the second country Computer Troubleshooters ever operated in (beating the USA by a couple of months), and as such the CT-NZ team has always been very proud of their place in the CT family, and rightfully so. This was my first time ever attending a CT-NZ Conference, so I was looking forward to it.

The conference this year was in Christchurch, a nice, friendly city on the south island of New Zealand. I loved the downtown area - very walkable, lots of shops and restaurants and gathering areas, and very scenic too. Lots of local ads offer all sorts of day trips outside the city, whether you're looking for wine tasting or hiking or skiiing - there's plenty of opportunities. Tourism is obviously a huge industry here, and I can see why - it's a great place for a vacation.

And a great place for a conference. About 30 people attended the CT conference, hosted by our NZ National Director Dave Mudford:

(Here Dave explains his theories on time travel)

Like the conference that started my trip in South Africa, much of the focus here was on ways to work smarter and provide better support for our clients - namely through B.E.S.T., which came up in several sessions. We also had some great vendors participating in the event, including our global partners AVG, OnTrack, and Microsoft.

One of the more interesting parts of the conference was a new competition between Australia and New Zealand, christened the Trans-Tasman Cup. The competition this year was the best 10-minute sales pitch for BEST, and featured two very tough competitors. Representing the "home team" was Dennis Jones (CT-Hamilton North), who did a presentation based on the cost savings a typical small business customer would see by implementing a BEST plan. It was very compelling! But representing the "visitors" was Sonia Cuff, who was one of six Aussies to attend the conference. Sonia used a unique and creative detective story, "on the prowl to find the culprit robbing small business owners of their time and productivity". Very brilliant, very creative presentation, so you'll notice Sonia's husband Tony holding the Trans-Tasman Cup in the group photo below:

All in all I had a great time in Christchurch, and it was a great way to wrap up my 3-week round the world CT tour. I've had a great time and met some great people, but now it's time to start the 22-hour trip home to my own bed, my own shower, and a fresh change of clothes!

Meanwhile, Back at Home

It's an odd feeling to be thousands of miles from home and hear about serious problems in your city on the news. Atlanta has had some very unusual tornados and storms over the last 24 hours, which has caused extensive damage in the downtown area. Hotels, office buildings, and two stadiums (stadia?) are apparently in pretty bad shape, at least one smaller building has collapsed, and a state of emergency has been declared for the downtown and Cabbagetown areas. A small number of people are dead but thankfully the injuries overall are small considering the damage involved.

I called my brother to make sure they're all OK, and apart from spending some time in their basement as the tornadoes come through they're all fine. The weather report right now looks like the worst is over, which is good news for me since I hope to be landing at the Atlanta airport in about 48 hours.

For more storm news and photos see www.ajc.com.

Australia

Well, after visiting one of the newest CT countries (Malaysia), I traveled to the ancestral home of Computer Troubleshooters - Australia. My plans (which went awry) was to have an 8-hour stopover in Sydney to have lunch with my original business partners and dear friends, Wilson & Suzanne McOrist. Wilson & Suzanne are the founders of CT, and up until a few weeks ago they ran the global company while I handled operational support, program development, and the USA operations. At the end of January, after a lot of planning, Wilson & Suzanne decided the time was right to step down so we arranged a transaction where they essentially sold their shares to MerryMeeting (our partners here in the US) and my job changed to "Global CEO".

So I was looking forward to catching up with my friends and finding out how their "retirement" is going. Unfortunately I was so focused on the meeting that I neglected some important things - like verifying where my luggage was going, or confirming my next flight. This would cause problems later on!

But I arrived at Sydney's international terminal, took the bus to the domestic terminal, and found the McOrist's sitting an airport cafe'. We took a taxi to Coogi Beach and enjoyed a nice chat in the sun followed by lunch at a beach cafe. All very nice. Later we took another taxi to visit Steve Paino, the Regional Director for New South Wales and the oldest CT in Australia. Here's a photo of the five of us (including Steve's wife Lorraine) in Steve's retail shop:

Steve has a nice, highly visible shop for handling computer service requests in Botany (his territory). Its' on the corner of two main streets, and the green & orange CT logo stands out well.

Afterwards I spent some time with Wilson & Suzanne at the airport before they left on a 3:30 flight back home (they live in Coffs Harbour, a vacation spot in between Sydney and Brisbane). I sat around waiting on what I thought was a 10pm flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. However, long story short, it turns out my flight ARRIVED in Christchurch at 10pm, it actually DEPARTED Sydney at 5pm, which is about an hour before I actually bothered to check on the flight. So I realized I'd be spending an unexpected night in Australia!

The problem with unexpected overnight stays is finding accomodation. And it doesn't help that I'm a pretty cheap guy - until this cropped up I was proud of the fact that my 21-day, 7-country trip was going to cost less than $7000 total (mostly for the airfare). So after some internet research (because the airport hotels were more than I wanted to pay, or were full) I found a lovely run-down motel in Blakehurst for only $80/night. Plus $25 for the taxi ride out there. Plus whatever medications I'll need later on for whatever diseases I'm sure I caught from the lovely lopsided motel bed. Seriously, this place was bad - the TV got 7 channels of static, several light fixtures were missing, and there were many mysterious stains around the room in all sorts of intriguing colors and shapes. I didn't sleep well. BUT I've been in worse places, and I did meet some interesting people. One gentleman who was checking in behind me offered to give me a ride to the airport the next morning, which I accepted. Turns out he was driving a 23-seat bus, so there was no shortage of space. He and his wife do tours for visiting university students in Australia and New Zealand, and he'd just dropped off a group (along with his wife) that day so they could travel on to NZ. Very nice guy - we had a nice chat on the way to the airport at 6am, and it saved me $25 in taxi fare!

(my motel room was equipped with state-of-the-art 1974 technology,
including this handy bank of switches next to the bed, for switching on and off
some of the working lights, the TV with no reception, or the leaky air conditioner).

The benefit to my overnight detour is that I wound up on the same flight as Australia's CT Director, Nick Roche. Nick's a great guy, and so we were able to talk some business on the flight and share a taxi once we arrived in Christchurch.

The exciting thing for me though is that Christchurch is my last stop before I head home. Three weeks on the road is starting to wear on me a bit, and I admit I'm looking forward more and more to my own bed and a better selection of clothes!

Next Stop: Christchurch!

InsiderPages

John Goodman, our CT in Princeton, NJ recently received a great review on Insider Pages:
http://www.insiderpages.com/b/15240155154?notification=1

Great job John!

Chip

Malaysia!

(That's Yio on my right, Gerald on my left, and a very jetlagged me in the orange shirt)

Country number 5 on my trip is also one of Computer Troubleshooter's newest. Yio Lim Han and Gerald Oo converted their existing IT services business less than six months ago when they took over as our Master Franchise for Malaysia (operating in Kuala Lumpur), and they've recently been joined by Patrick Chan & Anthony Lim (operating in Petaling Jaya). Already the Malaysia CT team is making great progress, especially with B.E.S.T. (our managed services program).

BEST has been a common theme in my travels. South Africa is just launching their managed services initiative, building their BEST program along with a local remote monitoring company. Egypt is still mostly selling non-managed service plans (our CAP and VIP plans), but is looking at applying some BEST principles (mostly just remote monitoring and support) to improve profits and service. India is looking at combining BEST managed services with IT staffing to create a new managed staffing business model. But here in Malaysia, CT is finding that the BEST works just as designed.

Like Egypt & India though Malaysia has to work around some economic challenges. Because the typical income in Malaysia is lower than in the US, some things like hardware & software are proportionately more expensive than they are elsewhere. To help their customers CT-Malaysia implements a lot of thin-client solutions, where multiple users share the use of one PC. This reduces hardware expenditures and some software costs, although some software manufacturers require multiple licenses in thin-client situations so the savings is not always huge.

I had less than two days in Malaysia, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I arrived at 7am on Monday, where Yio & Gerald were kind enough to pick me up (KL's airport is over an hour outside the city itself). We had a quick breakfast then went straight to their offices to meet their staff and discuss plans. CT-Malaysia has been the first to adapt a new business plan format we introduced recently for local use, so we spent some time discussing that. Later Patrick Chan arrived and we went out to a local restaurant for lunch ("enjoying" a thick Malaysian rainshower along the way).

After lunch they dropped me at my hotel: The Prince Hotel & Residences. Best hotel I've stayed in on this trip, thanks in part to the very low cost of living in Malaysia. It's a 4-star hotel but was still one of the least expensive on my trip (I paid around $120 for my one night there). You just can't beat this view:

That's of course the famous Petronas twin towers in the center. The tower to the right is the Maxxis (local cell phone company) tower, which was helpful since it has a giant digital clock at the top. At night it was very easy for me to tell the time just by glancing out the window!

Monday night Yio, Gerald, Patrick and I ate dinner at a restaurant called Top Hat, which is also one of Gerald's clients. Great food, and great company. Afterwards we tried to go to KL tower, but it was late and the observation deck was closed, so we went to a bazaar in chinatown instead. It turns out Gerald is a fearsome negotiator when it comes to getting bargains! I purchased a famous-name watch (clearly counterfeit based on the price, but you couldn't tell by looking at it) as a souvenier. It was listed at $988 RM (Rinngit Malaysian, or about $320 US). The vendor offered it for 120RM, which seemed like a good deal to me. Gerald insisted 25 was a fair price. After considerable haggling we got the watch for 70RM (about $20), which Gerald insisted still left the vendor with a good profit. We did some similar bargaining for a few more souveniers, then we said our goodbyes and called it a night.

Tuesday I needed to catch up on some work, so I spent the morning doing that, then checked out of the hotel at noon. I got a much-needed haircut, then set out to walk around and maybe do some more shopping. I really wanted to get a nice shirt - for some reason I like to buy clothes as souveniers, since they'll be more use to me than just some trinket sitting on a shelf, so I have shirts from Las Vegas and Cairo, and a sportcoat from Bucharest. I figured adding a shirt from Kuala Lumpur would be a nice addition, plus it's as good a reason as any to walk around the city.

KL is a gorgeous city - clean, lush, modern, and safe. "Tehksi"s can take you almost anywhere for about $5US, but I prefer to walk. Having been told the Petronas Towers were too far to walk I started out at a local shopping district called Buket Bintang, but after a while I decided to see just how far the towers were so I started walking that way. It's not too bad, so in 30 minutes I was there. Underneath the towers is a huge mall called KL City Center, so I went into a local coffee shop in the mall for a liquid lunch of iced coffee. Outside the mall is a nice plaza area with ponds and waterfalls, so I wandered through there for a bit before deciding to head back. I took a tehksi to Buket Bintang, still in my quest to find a shirt. I did find a shirt, and bought the largest size they have (XXL), but later I learned that Malaysians are generally much smaller than Americans, so the shirt was nowhere close to fitting on my (and I normally wear XL back home). Ah well, it'll be a souvenier for someone else.

My last memory of KL was a visit to the KL tower with Yio and Gerald. Like similar towers in other cities, an observation deck high in the sky gives a clear view of the city and the surrounding countryside, so that was enjoyable. But all good things must come to an end, so Yio and Gerald drove me back to the airport where we had time to eat a quick dinner in the food court. There's something symmetrical about starting and ending my Malaysia trip with airport food. I said goodbye to my Malaysian hosts and teammates, and caught my flight on to my next destination - Australia!