Zeusblog

Right now there’s a man in a bank with (possibly) a bomb strapped to him in Watford. The bank is surrounded by armed police. BBC news story is here. What caught our eye was that the police are keeping local residents informed via twitter and facebook. What’s more the hashtag they are using on twitter is #watfordbomb. You really couldn’t make it up…

EDIT Apparently he’s just been arrested.

After ten years in the same office, our lease was up and so it seemed like the right time to take a step back and think long and hard about whether we still needed a West End address. Actually, unlike politicians who find every decision tough and every choice hard,  it was pretty obvious to us that we didn’t. The internet has changed our working practices quite significantly since we started Zeus nearly twelve years ago; approvals and proofs are now all done via PDFs in emails, and briefings too come in via email or conference call. It’s also less disruptive for our clients if we go to their premises for meetings, especially if there is more than one of them involved. The only exception was around Xmas time when late afternoon meetings near Oxford Street mysteriously became more popular. Strange that.

So we decided to set up home offices and invest in IT (mac-based of course) so that we could work together or apart in Finchley and Pinner, or anywhere else for that matter, without any detrimental effect on the quality and speed of our work. For years people have been saying technology would fundamentally change the way we do business and that’s exactly what we’ve done. Of course we were also told that we would have jet-packs by now, but we’re still waiting for those to arrive.

So what does it mean for our clients? Well apart from those Xmas shopping meetings, as the title of this post suggests, it makes no difference at all – we’ve already been working like this since mid December. Our phone number remains the same – 020 7255 2582 – wherever we happen to be working that day (we’ll usually be together in Pinner by the way), and our email and web addresses will be exactly as before. All that will change is our address for correspondence, which will now be the Finchley address you’ll find on the contact page of this website. We look forward to doing business with you as usual.

Last night, the Duke of Edinburgh’s design prize was awarded to Andrew Ritchie, the man who invented the Brompton folding bike. He thoroughly deserves his prize, and I think Phil should have got the missus to knight him too. Unlike James Dyson who made a big fuss about British ingenuity and then moved his manufacturing abroad, Andrew Ritchie manufactures these splendid little bikes here in London. Good for him!

You can read the news story here

After a recent triathlon I said that “I guess commuting on a Brompton isn’t
great training for a tri bike leg”. Well it turns out that it is good training for the Brompton World Championships – I am no longer a fat, middle of the pack cyclist who really ought to train more, I am now one of the top 75 Brompton riders in the world. That’s right – ONE OF THE TOP 75 BROMPTON RIDERS IN THE WORLD! Well 71st actually, 68th man, and 63rd in my class. It was against top class opposition too – Roberto Heras, three time Vuelta winner just pipped Michael Hutchinson (apparently Britain’s best time trialist) to first place.

The race was very hard work, two undulating laps around Blenheim Palace’s grounds, but it was all very good-natured competition, if you wanted to pass someone, you just rang your bicycle bell – an extremely civilised way of racing that I think should be introduced into triathlons immediately. Along with the attire – I for one look much better racing in a shirt, tie and jacket than I do in lycra.

The official write-up is here http://www.brompton.co.uk/bwc/2009/ and the
results are here
http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/brompton/BWC%20Individual%20Category%20Resu\
lts%202009.pdf

Chalky (ranked 68th in the world)

We’re not that bothered by Bob and Boris’s childish posturing. Honestly, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the tube was staffed by French farmers.  So thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we’re working from our Pinner office today, and no-one will even notice the difference. If anyone needs to get in touch with us, the office number will divert here and email will reach us too.

One of the best things about living in Britain is the weather. If we lived in Los Angeles we’d have 80 degrees sunshine for most of the year and we’d take no notice of the weather. A little bit of sunshine wouldn’t even be a talking point, let alone the cue for the whole country to start wearing inappropriate vests and shorts, and for every office worker in London to head for Soho Square and strip off to sunbathe.

Likewise, if we lived in mainland Europe or Scandinavia, one snowfall wouldn’t bring the country to a shuddering standstill. That’s what’s happened this morning. My trusty Brompton is no match for 6 inches of snow, the tube is mostly suspended, all buses have been removed from service and trying to drive is just asking for trouble. I live at the bottom of a hill and I remember last time it snowed watching a particularly stupid woman sliding all over the place as her wheels were whizzing round at about 50 mph while the car slid sideways. She gave up and we nearly crashed our car laughing when she gave up, climbed out, and stood – in her stilettos! – puzzled as to why her four wheel drive couldn’t get her up the hill. We sailed by in our front wheel drive car that we weren’t revving the nuts off.

View from my home office window

Which is a roundabout way of saying that our W1 office won’t be open today, and we’ll be working from our Pinner and Finchley branches i.e. from home. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we will be able to pick up and respond to email, and the office phone will put you through to one of our mobiles. So if you’re working today, you’ll still be able to reach us, and if you can get away with it, have fun sledging!

Finchley Wonderland

Chalky

Seems as though the whole world is trying to get on Barak Obama’s bandwagon, so can Zeus join in? Yes we can.

This picture, taken back in November, waaay before people were designing Run DC T-shirts, shows one of our point of sale posters in a local newsagents. I reckon Barry (he’ll be more popular in the UK as Barry than Barak) will need to read the Wall Street Journal Europe if he’s going to sort out the global financial crisis.

At long last, and after a mere nine years, we have revamped our site. We felt it was long overdue, after all, Julia had no kids when we launched the old site and now she’s got two; aged 3 and 5!

Gone is the silly little thing that followed your cursor round the screen. Gone is the test that booted Man U fans from the site (although this is still very much an Aston Villa-supporting company).

In with white space. In with the blog you’re reading now – which means in with an up-to-date-site. 

We hope you like our site and this blog, and we hope it gives you a reason to be a regular visitor. We’ll post news of projects we’re working on, and comment on ad-related things. We’ll also post random things that amuse us or catch our interest.  

Anyway that’s all sounding a bit corporate now, so I’ll stop. Enjoy the site and feel free to let us know what you think of it. Cheers.