A first time for everything...

Well it's been a month of firsts. This is the first blog entry for Orchard Grove IT Limited
Having decided to leave BT Global Services back in July, I have now started my own IT Consultancy company, Orchard Grove IT Limited. It's a bit scary, going from having a regular income, to well, nothing at the moment.
It's definitely the right thing for me - I am confident I'll thrive as an independent consultant, just as soon as the economy picks up. It has to be said that there isn't too much evidence of the fabled "green shoots" yet. It's just a case of being patient and taking work from any source.

My first attempts at getting public liability and professional indemnity insurance...some companies were great to deal with. Others wanted so much information that it just wasn't worth the effort to respond. Do they really want my business or not?

I attended my first conference today as a representative of Orchard Grove IT. It was the Swindon Strategic Economic Partnership conference, held in the Marriot Hotel in Swindon. I was very impressed with the organisation of the conference and above all, the very positive responses I got from the people I spoke to. I even managed to do a spot of networking and got a couple of business cards.

One thing that was especially exciting was the news that Swindon is going to have a borough-wide Wi-Fi network: the first of its kind I think anywhere. It's great to see such innovation in the town and I'm sure it will be a huge step forward for both individuals and businesses. I got quite excited when I started to think about the potential applications of such a network. Not least in the disaster recovery space, where this type of infrastructure could be a real boon, depending on the available bandwidth and coverage.

I'm just about to finish the content for my company website - which should go live in a day or two...