Just a quick post to let you know that I’ll be speaking at Google’s Devfest event today in Sydney.

I’m giving a half hour presentation on our experiences integrating AffinityLive with Google’s App Marketplace, and will be following Don Dodge and the team from Atlassian.

If you’re coming along today, come over and say hi, and if you’re keen to follow along, there’s a live Wave as well as a uStream channel at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/devfest-au.

That’s right, we’re back! The Webciety section last year was perfect for us – being a web startup with a lot of questions to answer about our product direction, market choice and our ambitions – it fostered some critical discussions and learning.

CeBIT Sydney opens next week – 24th to 26th May!

This year we’ve scored a spot on the Industry and Investment NSW Stand – which gives us a fresh opportunity to showcase Affinity, our web-based service automation software for creative and consulting businesses.

In terms of finding us, you could either follow the trail of honeycomb, or use the map you get on registration. We’ll be right in the middle of Hall 5 (stand S40, its huge) – with 11 other companies who are exhibiting as part of the showcase.

If you haven’t registered, you can still do so for free. We have a special promo code to help you out, just click here.

OK, now to wotif.com to find a hotel! Hope to see you next week!

If you’ve ever had trouble encoding media files with MP3 audio, particularly using Camtasia, I hope this helps you out

For a while now we’ve been intending to expand on our range of short help videos, aimed at new users to Affinity. We’ve produced a handful of videos, but they haven’t been fully published either because their content quickly became out-dated or (and this is the reason for this post) there were technical issues in production.

Our software of choice for producing help videos and other screen/audio capture is Camtasia Studio (we’re still with version 3.1.1). It’s pretty neat, but has a few quirks to get used to. A major roadblock for us was wanting to create flash content and working out which audio codec to use. There weren’t a lof of options:
- uncompressed (need to reduce file size, so this is no good…)
- ADPCM (the sound quality is poor)
- MP3 (I trust mp3, lets do this one!)

The trouble is, and I tried this with Windows Vista and 7, when you’ve installed Camtasia, it didn’t actually manage to update your registry to point to the PROFESSIONAL Fraunhofer mp3 codec which lets you encode mp3. So you spend hours trying to work out why your lovely flash screencasts (they do look good) have no sound!

This article “Installing Fraunhofer MP3 Codec” finally gave me the answer I needed. The fact is you’ve probably already got the professional mp3 codec in your drivers, its just not in use, so Step 1 is likely unnecessary.

Happy screencasting everyone.

In late October, we presented at Tech23, held in Sydney, Australia. We had a great day, and appreciated the many conversations about the state of the market we’re targeting at with our software, and the kinds of features which professional service directors are hoping to see in an integrated web-based suite.

If you didn’t catch all of Geoff’s presentation we’ve embedded it below. Thanks to the IPitch guys for making it available. The camera follows Geoff rather than the presentation (slides can be viewed here) + you might need to boost your volume.

If you were still thinking about seeing Affinity in action, you’re welcome to join us for an online demo. We run webinars regularly to varying audiences of journos, industry peers, prospects and potential partners, and it’s great to show people what we’ve got, as well as hear your feedback.

We were lucky enough to be chosen to present at the inaugural Tech23 event held in Sydney yesterday. Geoff took to the stage during the enterprise section of the day, with a focus on why running a professional service business sucks so much, and how our Affinity product helps to solve the problems created by manual processes, spreadsheets and managing by crisis.

The feedback from the Enterprise panel of experts was broadly supportive, with a question from the founder of TOWER Software about the appropriateness and validity of our SaaS offering, compared to the traditional approach of building, perpetually licencing, and making money off services. While this approach certainly has cash flow benefits and suits the bigger enterprise and government markets (the types that TOWER has a big footprint in) very well, we’re focusing more on the 5-50 employees SME space for our offering, a sector that values cost effectiveness and capital restraint more highly.

Our panel also had a challenge from a member of the audience – specifically in response to our provocative “Technology has left professional services behind” argument – that basically called us out as being ignorant or deliberately lying, which certainly spiced things up a bit. Unfortunately, the 4 minute limit on presentations – which is a great idea – meant we were limited to making fairly high level, general statements when describing the problems experienced by our sector. More time would have allowed for a more nuanced presentation and more specifics, but the thing we really want to emphasise is that our target market (size and industry) is predominantly still using a mixture of unintegrated point software, home grown spreadsheets and lots of meetings to manage their workloads and businesses. Even though there are other technology solutions out there, they haven’t achieved the commonplace, “you need to have this to succeed” levels of adoption that you see in other types of businesses such as manufacturing, logistics and so forth, and this is something we think we can achieve.

A big thanks to Rachel Slattery and her team at SlatteryIT for a fantastic and almost flawless  inaugural event (WiFi is any events Achilles Heel), and especially for selecting such high powered panelists. A big thankyou to the high-powered panelists who gave their time and their excellent advice, and finally a big thankyou to the NSW Department of Industry and Investment and the Australian Technology Showcase for making it possible.

We’re excited to be exhibiting for the next two days at Web Directions South, the leading web conference in Australia each year.

If you’re one of the hundreds of web professionals attending this year’s event, please drop by to find out a bit more about how Affinity can help you spend more time working and less time on admin – oh, and get a bit of our delicious honeycomb!

While we might seem like just a bunch of computer loving geeks, the team here at Hiive Systems also has a big heart, especially for great causes like the upcoming Illawarra Relay for Life.

Did you know that 50% of men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer before the age of 85? It is estimated that 111,000 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in Australia this year alone, touching people of all ages.

Relay for Life is an annual event run by the Cancer Council involving teams – and sometimes even individuals – walking for 24 hours, from 10am on Saturday, through the night, and finishing up at 10am on Sunday. Monies raised from the event are spent on cancer research, education, support services and advocacy towards the common goal of defeating cancer. Our local event is being held this weekend, and we’re hoping you can support us.

Our whole crew here at Hiive – and a few friends we’ve been able to talk into joining us – are going to be participating in the relay this weekend in Wollongong, and we’d love your support. You can make a tax-deductible donation online in just 2 minutes using your credit card – to do so, just visit http://www.relay.cancercouncil.com.au/?2009/illawarra_2009/team_hiive/ and click on the “donate” button on the bottom right of the page.

We’re planning to dress in theme and other activities to make it a bit more fun, and if you’re going to be around Wollongong this weekend and want to say hi, get some yummy honeycomb, and join us for a few special guest laps, we’d love to see you – just drop me an email at geoff [dot] mcqueen [at] hiivesystems [dot] com.

On a more serious note, cancer has touched many of us already. During Relay we like to take a moment to remember loved ones we’ve lost to cancer; if you have someone you’d like us to light a candle for during the Saturday evening remembrance ceremony, please reply to this email and we’ll be more than happy to do so.

Thanks for your support if you’re able to give it, and we’ll update our blog after the weekend with some of the best photos!

Hiive Systems are making headway with a lot of new initiatives – our latest being a support and help website aimed at our clients: help.hiivesystems.com!

It's our new help website!

The website is part blog, part user guide, part TV channel, and we’ve got even more plans in store. There’s product info, tips on using advanced features, software update notifications and even a forum for informal discussion & casual support interaction.

Whilst this site is intended to be a first point of call for clients with non-urgent questions or curiosities about our products, its also going to be a great reference for our service team – we know where we’re at with support documentation, training resources and notifying clients of new releases from an overall client point of view.

Feel free to check out the site, and if you’ve got a few minutes, tell us what you think with a quick email to feedback@hiivesystems.com.

Brad Howarth‘s new Cover Story for CIO Magazine includes a great reference of the work we’ve been doing with the NSW Department of Planning and their use of Affinity to track the billions of dollars a year in their Major Projects Tracking System.

It was great that John Ross from the Department was able to be to frank and honest with Brad, and we’re looking forward to being able to announce another important intiative we’re in the middle of working on with the Department now…

Following our success at CeBIT, we’re running a couple of Webinars this week and next to allow people interested in Affinity to have a closer look.

These Webinars allow you to log in via your web browser from the convenience of your own desk, and see an interactive demonstration of Affinity’s features and a discussion of its benefits. You’ll be able to ask questions through this webinar, and with both VoIP (headphone) support as well as support to dial in using your phone, it couldn’t be easier to join us.

If you are interested in seeing a bit more of Affinity, our flagship product and the winner of the CeBIT Early Innovator award, click here and register your participation.