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Sorry, the website is under construction.

Issues with the CMS. Foolishly I generated a new API key. The result was that it stopped working on the one machie that it had previously been working on:

I have recently obtained a TESOL Trinity College Certificate, and I also hold a diploma of Teacher of Spanish language from the Belgrade University’s Faculty of Philology, Dept. of Spanish Language and Literature, and I would very much like to start pursuing a career in teaching.

In Serbia, I obtained a 10-year experience in teaching English and Spanish to children and adults in the beginner and intermediate levels. In Spain, I worked occasionally as a substitute English teacher and I gave some private English lessons. I have some experience in teaching business English, too. I am also experienced in translation from Spanish to English and vice versa, as well as from Spanish and English to Serbian. I am fluent in spoken and written English, Spanish and Serbian, my mother tongue. I can be available on afternoons and on Saturdays, but I am open to new full-time job possibilities.

Education

July 2010
TESOL Trinity College Certificate Course (grade B)
Oxford TEFL, Barcelona, Spain.

1996
Teacher of Spanish Language and Literature.
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philology, Serbia.

Working experience

IN SPAIN 2000 - now

IN SERBIA 1990 – 2000

References

Contact

http://tlipsum.appspot.com/

calibri.ttf

This page explaines how a Wikidot wiki works.

1) What is a Wiki on Wikidot?

A wiki on Wikidot is a collection of pages under a sitename. For example the sitename of this site is http://community.wikidot.com which is the url you see in your browser's address bar.

This sitename is what is found by search engines like Google and Bing although individual pages are often indexed by the search engines as well.

2) The structure of a Wikidot page

When wikidot has found the site you want it will display it to you in the way as any other website. What you get is as follows:

• by default the homepage of a wikidot site is named start. If you need to you can change this later to home or another name. The name of a page can be a maximum of 60 characters.

• a theme. Wikidot has several default themes and variants for a side bar or no side bar. See section 4) below for more information about this.

• However you can use other themes from http://themes.wikidot.com or create your own custom theme using CSS (cascading style sheets) which changes the default CSS provided by Wikdiot.

• the name of the site. This appears in the header area at the top of every page and is clickable to the start page of the site. This is defined in the general settings in the admin:manage page.

• the tagline of the site. This is displayed under the title the header area at the top. This is also defined in the general settings in the admin:manage page.

• a top menu bar. This is the horizontal navigation menu that is under the title and tagline. The menu items are held on a page called nav:top.

• a side menu. This is the vertical navigation menu down the side of the page. The menu items are held on a page called nav:side.

• You then have the page title. You can change this to anything you like but do note that it doesn't change the page name (the url of the page as shown in the address bar).

• Under that is the content of the page. This content is what you enter into the page editor using Wikidot wiki syntax and plain text. It is read, or "parsed" by the Wikidot engine and rendered on the page in browser-readable format. A the time of writing this it is not possible just to import wiki syntax from another wiki without changing it to Wikidot wiki syntax. This means that a wikimedia source code cannot be rendered and is left as it is.

• Under the content area are the options buttons. These enable you to rename a page, delete a page, add meta data for your site and many other functions.

• A the bottom of the page is the footer which contains licence and copyright information and more links.

3) Categories of Pages

If you look at your browser address bar you will see that this page is called wiki-explained. There is no : colon in the pagename which means that the page is in the default category.

But it is possible for you to divide your pages into logical categories. For example if you have a site about cars you might have a category called Audi and within that pages for the different models called A4, A6, Q7. You might then have another category called Seat with pages Alhambra, Leon etc.

To create a new category and a new page you would either use the newpage module in the side bar of one of the default WIkidot themes, or you could enter it into the address bar of your browser, for example http://xyz.wikidot.com/seat:leon. The first part of the pagename before the : colon is the category, the part after the : colon is the page.

As you become more familiar with Wikidot you will see that using categories when combined with a module called the ListPages module is very powerful as it allows you to list pages and do other functions for pages within a specific category. For example you might have a table just of your Audi cars anc clicking on each one in the list will take you to that page:

Audi:A4
Audi:A6
Audi:Q7

4) What are "Themes"?

Every site has a layout which formats your content on your screen in a way that is set up by Wikidot or by you.

There are different layouts used on the wikis:

Some people prefer not to change the theme and stay with the default Wikidot themes. This is fine but if you want to be a bit more unique you can also use different fonts, different colors, different sizes, custom background images etc. You are not restricted to using the theme that Wikidot gives you by default. By using CSS (custom style sheets) you can design your site in exactly the way you want, building up from the default Wikidot CSS. Many sites built on Wikidot don't look anything like the default themes! More information is available at http://community.wikidot.com/help:theme and
http://community.wikidot.com/howto:themes-an-idiots-guide - the best guide I ever found (thanks Phil)!

5) Access Policy

Every Wikidot site has an access policy which is either Open, Closed or Private. It is really a definition of whether a user needs to join the site to view the content, to edit the content and is based on who who decides if you can get membership of the site.

5a) Open

An Open site means that there are no special restrictions set up and all visitors can read every page unless specific pages or categories of pages have been made private, admin pages for example.

There will usually be a "join" button on a open site and pressing the "join this site" button is enough to get a visitor membership of the site.

However, just by joining a site it does not mean that member is able to create and edit content. This is set separately by the administrator of the site.

5b) Private

A private site is only readable by the site members and nobody else. Even Google, Bing and internet spider engines cannot reach this wiki. But this needs some definitions where the admins can explain to "unexpected" visitors that this site is private and therefore they are not allowed to read any further. This is normally written on a page named "system:join" ( by default). On this page the admins can :

• offer (if they wish to) the possibility to reach the site admins by email or private message, or
• offer (if they wish to) an application button to join the site - by password or by text application.

As an example the "community" admins here at Wikidot have a parallel forum on a "private" site where they can discuss anything.

5c) Closed

This is not a mix between open & private; a closed site is a normal "open" site but where in general a distinction is made in the permissions between "anonymous" or "Wikidot-registered" visitors and "site members". A simple example might be that site members are allowed to write a new article but anonymous or registered users can only post messages in the forum.

The system:join page would show whether a visitor can join the site and how they can do that (application by password or in writing).

6) Live Templates

You can set up your site and administer it without ever using live templates - but the more categories you use, and the bigger your site gets, the more you will like it!

Every time a page is called Wikidot tries to find an existing live template for the category the page is in. This is always a page called "_template".

What live templates do is to allow you to define content that will appear on every page in a category. Using the example of Audi cars earlier, you might have a link to Audi's website or some standard information about Audis which needs to appear on every Audi page. You do not want to be typing this into every page or copying and pasting it each time as this is a very time-consuming process and would need to be changed on every page if the text, link or other standard content changed. If you put it into the live template page, in this example it would be called audi:_template, then you only need to changte the content on that live template page and every other page in the audi category will reflect the change instantly.

Even the default category can have a _template page which will affect all pages not in another category. This default category live template page would just have the name _template.

Live template pages can get quite complex with place holders used where the content is mixed up with the live template source: the page content is inserted at given place holders like %%content%% ( which is a "variable" ) or - if different content-blocks are used - in "%%content{1}%%", %%content{2}%%" etc.

Important: if you omit the placeholder variable, for example %%content%%, on the live template then the content of the page is not inserted* and therefore not shown! This has frequently been the subject of questions on the forum (why can't I see my content…?).

7) Private Categories

Every admin can define in the "Site Manager" (the page named admin:manage) for selected categories a special "view" permission for a level of users where the complete category is "readable" only for:

• anonymous (all visitors) (this is the default if no extra permission is given)
• registered wikidot accounts,
• site members or
• site admins,

If you use private categories you can create a special page named "category-xyz:_public" which displays a message or special content to visitors who don't have permission to view pages in that category. For example you can put a polite message on that page like "Sorry but this area of the site is private. If you think you need access to this page please contact one of the administrators".

This means that if you want to have an area of your site for members only, like a "no-comment" forum (threads and postings only done with standard pages without any "per page discussions allowed), then this is a good way to do it. But be aware that some wikidot gurus can find a tricky way to read the source code anyway.

If you really want to "hide" a forum or all other pages only for a special group of members than you should make the site "private".

Some really interesting points here to generate some discussion.

WYSIWYG: yes, I agree that for new users the wikidot syntax can be slightly intimidating although the basics are really no harder than Word. But it has caused one of my projects to come very near to failure so the site is about to be re-designed and completely re-engineered to use solidly data forms to get over this problem. If Wikidot is to compete with TWiki, Mindtouch and others I think there has to be some way of having both manual wikidot syntax editing and a wysiwyg editor. But the points made by Richard (rurwin) abiut his experience with this need to be factored in as well.

Wikidot is not fit for the enterprise (where the money is)

For larger enterprises and intranets I agree, mainly becausealthough for smaller businesses the functionality Wikidot provides makes it attractive and I am working with several businesses (http://www.rfpg.org.uk for example) who say that it gives them much more functionality and flexibility than a "normal" website or something like Sharepoint.

With the exception of Localize my personal view is that the default themes are not at all attractive. and most of the themes at the themes site are geared (not surprisingly) for purely wiki sites rather than standard websites. It would be good to have a wide range of professionally-designed free templates although that would cost quite a lot of money and is not something Wikidot would pgive a high priority. SO as we have complete control over the CSS, taking the time to learn it is, I think, very satisying and means you don't have to go down the professional designer route. Helmuti's comments are very kind but I am not a graphic designer, but even a basic site like one I am completing at http://ww.la-chapelle.co.uk looks better than it would do if it used a default theme, and it didn't take much work with the CSS. Yola and other website creation sites can produce nice looking sites but often you can't do too much with the design and you won't be able to do half the things a Wikidot site can do. If you learn CSS then you get the best of both worlds.

But then, maybe, Wikidot is the perfect platform for professional coders, the next thing to beat Joomla in popularity? Obviously, that is not the case.

Not necessarily, I do see the potential for Wikidot to become more like a standard CMS and rival other platforms like Joomla in time.

Feature requests lingering for years

Yes, one of my criticisms over the last couple of years is the lack of any sort of progress report on wishes. It is something Wikidot has been poor at although it demonstrates something very common which is a developer's natural reluctance to say when something will be ready. Of the 14 wishes that have been accepted the average time from acceptance to now is 135 working days (Monday to Friday) with no indication on any accepted wish what the progress is or what the expected completion date is.

PRESCIENCE – connected, detached, common sense based ground truth for investors

Standard due diligence firms provide large quantities of information, primarily on the financial aspects of a target company. The problem is not that the potential buyer has too little information or that they are not close enough to the project in hand – it is that they have too much information and are too close.

Investors can spend many months of their time on a deal, accumulate a bewildering amount of data, but as a result not see important other factors that should have a significant bearing on their investment decision.

To extend a metaphor – they see every tree: but sometimes not the wood itself, the surrounding landscape, the sky above, the earth below.

Prescience only promises to provide a fresh, very well connected outsiders view of the target business, its market place and strategic context in order to help investment managers make rational decisions.

Decision makers often invest very large amounts of money without the balance of detached, simple common sense based ground truth gained through talking to very large numbers of people. Prescience’s network of contacts is extensive and often unrivalled.

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guards colours: dark blue/dark scarlet

Create a new page to upload your assignment. Only you and the teacher can view the page ad the uploaded assignment.

Assignment List

Create your own page by entering your name in the box below and pressing Enter:

The list of users and their sub-pages is shown below:

The full "tree" of users and their pages is:

• BJH
  • John Lees
  • Les Holroyd
  • Mel Pritchard
• Dire Straits
  • Alan Clarke
  • John Illsley
  • Mark Knopfler
• Elton John Band
  • Bob Birch
  • Davey Johnstone
  • John Mahon
  • Kim Bullard
  • Nigel Olsson

This is a message.

A page to show the dataform functionality and also the use of the extended newpage snippet.

Enter the title of the new page then press Enter:

That uses the syntax:
[[include :snippets:newpage
|category=testdata
|name=testdata
|parent=testdata
]]

This behaviour is a bug.

If you already have a wiki, website or intranet that you think would benefit from a new layout and colour scheme please Victoria at Strathview Consultants via the contact form or by telephone on ++44 (0)1997 421 164.

We will supply up to 3 designs for you to choose your final design. The designs will be completely customised for you and will be incorporate any suggestions you make.

Rob Elliott is a wiki, website and intranet developer, CSS expert and database developer. Rob now works independently having previously spent nearly 30 years as a career British Diplomatic Service Officer with postings to Prague, Beijing, Antigua, Abu Dhabi, Mauritius, Jerusalem and Abuja as well as in London. Since leaving the Diplomatic Service Rob has undertaken projects, database and mapping work for the Scottish Government, Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Energy Saving Scotland advice centre.

Rob holds the Prince2 Practitioner project management qualification and also the ISEB Certificate in Project Management for Information Systems.

Rob is a member of Wikidot's first line support team and provides community management for Wikidot.

In 2003 Rob honoured with the LVO (Royal Victorian Order) by Her Majesty the Queen for personal service to the Monarchy.

Victoria Elliott is an administrator who grew up the UK, Japan and Hong Kong and has worked in Hong Kong, Jerusalem and Nigeria.

Rob and Victoria have 3 children, 2 cats, a dog and a rabbit!

We can call on a group of experts from across the world to assist with particular projects. Our colleagues are based in St Paul in the USA, Vienna in Austria right across to Sydney in Australia as well as more locally here in the Highlands.

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Wiki and Website Development Prices

Our standard website, intranet or wiki packages cost from £250 - £750. We don't charge a fixed price but talk through your requirements with you and base the price on what you need. If we need to research content, take photos or add complex functionality then the price is likely to be higher.

We don't just provide a basic template site with a limited number of pages; we create a design unique for you with an unlimited number of pages, and you have complete control over the content. We provide a site based on the Wikidot platform with a custom content management system designed for you so that you can update content from anywhere, with no special software, whenever you like and as often as you like. You can change text and photos, and if you wish to you can even change the design after some training.

We usually provide two initial designs and we then discuss a final design with which might mix-and-match from from the first designs or add any ideas you have. We then build up the functionality of the site and include content provided by you.

You will receive a training package to help you manage the site after just a short amount of tuition (we provide this within the price). This is either a hard-copy manual or an online equivalent if you prefer. But we also provide on-going support and help after the site has gone live. The wikidot platform is ideal either for a static website or a wiki collaborative website with many people contributing to it.

The standard package offers hosting, domain name registration, site development with custom css design, unlimited pages, photo galleries, calendars, noticeboards, chat facilities and forums. If you wish to have other features we are happy to discuss this although for some extra features there might be an additional charge depending on the complexity or time it will take to implement.

Our sites are ideal for community groups, villages and towns, voluntary groups and charities.

So do get in touch to discuss how your group can benefit from a first class, flexible, custom website.

Quotation for online database projects

We develop databases on the Caspio Bridge online database platform from http://www.caspio.com. These might be small databases for your group or business, or larger secure databases for charities and government. These integrate well into the Wikidot-based sites we develop. But each database is different in size and complexity, so please contact us and we will discuuss your requirements and the price with you.

Would you like your conference or event to be held in the Highlands of Scotland? Do you have an important visitor arriving and everything must be just right?

With a background in the British Diplomatic Service Rob and Victoria Elliott have managed the administrative arrangements and logistics for many high-level visits, conferences and events since 1998.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you how we can help to manage your conference, event or important visit to ensure everything runs smoothly.

The events and visits that we have managed include:

Event Management

• Banquet for Commonwealth Heads of Government, Abuja, Nigeria
• Workshop for Scottish hydropower companies
• Workshop for Scottish whisky distillers
• Official dinners for Buckingham Palace staff
• Official dinners for senior Foreign Office and other Government Department staff

Visit Management

• Visit of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to Jerusalem and Gaza
• Visit of British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to Jerusalem and Gaza
• Visit of Cherie Blair, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to the Gaza Strip
• Visit of HRH The Duke of Kent to Jerusalem
• Visit of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to Abuja, Nigeria
• Visit of British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to Abuja, Nigeria
• State Visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh to Abuja, Nigeria in December 2003. As a result of the success of this visit Rob was honoured with the LVO (Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order) for personal service to the Monarchy .

Services we can provide and arrange include
	online event registration		dedicated event website		conference planning		finding venues
	hotel and B&B reservations		hotel liaison		dinner/banquet organisation		desktop and laptop equipment
	projection equipment		preparation of presentations and data		travel arrangements		away-from-conference activities
	filming and photography of your event		event publicity		full administrative support

We have experience going back to 1998 in developing websites using a range of development tools and platforms. Our first website development was for the British Consulate in Jerusalem using Dreamweaver 4. We now develop on the Wikidot platform which is similar to Wordpress only more powerful. Recent sites have made use of flex, flash and javascript, and we always try to integrate modern Web2.0 tools into our sites wherever possible and where they provide added value. These tools allow you to interact more easily with your customers and contacts and provide the users of your site with engaging online web services.

"Rob is our resident Web 2.0 online services guru and a big fan of embedding external content." - Ed Johnson, St Paul, USA

There is a vast array of high quality tools available that we can integrate into your website. Examples of tools we have integrated recently are:

• online calendars using Google Calendar and also native wikidot syntax
• online form processing using Jotform and also native wikidot syntax
• mapping using Yahoo Maps and Google Maps
• embedded shareable spreadsheets with Zoho Sheet
• embedded shareable databases with Zoho Creator
• magazines (with flippable pages) using Issuu
• quizzes using mystudiyo
• polls and surveys using Polldaddy and Zoho Polls
• mindmaps using MindManager
• hotel ratings from TripAdvisor
• image galleries from Cooliris, Picasa and Flickr
• RSS feeds

This page contains links to projects within Strathpeffer:

Strathpeffer photos and location map

Images of Strathpeffer

We are based in the beautiful Victorian spa village of Strathpeffer, 17 miles north-west of Inverness in the highlands of Scotland. Below are images of Strathpeffer and further down is a map of the area. But we can undertake projects anywhere in the world, either in person or via online collaborative tools.

Rich Internet Applications built with Adobe Flex concentrate on providing advanced usability in an engaging interactive interface which provides a better experience for the user.

Most business requirements that you will have lend themselves to development using Flex and we would be happy to discuss with you ways that we can help you provide rich internet applications for your users.

The image and map applications on the location page, the "CV accordion" on Rob's CV page and the image applications on the homepage were programmed by Rob in Flex as simple examples of the sort of rich internet applications that can be produced using Adobe's Flex Builder 3. Other more complex examples of applications programmed with flex are at http://flex.org/showcase/

Thank you for contacting Strathview. We will respond as quickly as possible.

Rob Elliott

Don't forget…

We specialise in providing affordable, high-quality sites for local community groups, community councils, villages and towns, charities, small businesses and government. We provide solutions that give you full control over your site, with rich functionality, unlimited space and frequency of updates, and a hand-crafted custom design. We know that local groups never have enough funding and we aim to provide a site that meets your needs and exceeds your expectations, all within your budget.

We can also offer a combined website and intranet in one site, with the intranet area viewable only to those you decide should see it.

We also undetake database design and development and data management using Caspio Bridge, a powerful online database platform which is ideal for use with Wikidot sites.

http://meetingwords.com/

As Deputy Director of the Knowledge Management Programme at the Foreign Office, as well as in other roles, Rob Elliott has directed, managed or been closely involved in projects to deliver:

* intranet and website development;
* wikis, blogs, mindmaps and web 2.0 tools, primarily for remote and distributed team collaboration;
* management information systems;
* graphical information systems (GIS);
* database/CAD information systems;
* content management systems, specifically Documentum;
* document management systems;
* CRM.

Please contact us to find out how we can help you with your knowledge management requirements.

Live sites

• Strathpeffer village website
• Royal Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow
• Highland Skate Parks
• Strathpeffer Spa Golf Club
• Tanglewood House
• La Chapelle
• Lord Lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty
• Strathpeffer Community Council
• Prescience
• Fairburn Scout Group
• Firebug for Wikidot
• Jasmine Design
• Strathpeffer Community Centre
• Acacia Development Associates
• Strathview Consultants
• Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre

• Several private intranets and secure websites for business, government and charities.

Recent Online Database Projects

Database development and data management of Scottish Government home insulation schemes across Scotland
Development of an online and business database for teams working from the Energy Saving Trust

Professional Qualifications

• Prince2 Practitioner
• ISEB/British Computer Society Professional Certificate in IS Project Management

Key Skills
• Project planning and delivery
• Stakeholder Management and Communications
• Organisational and administrative skills (events, visits, conferences)
• Budget Management
• Supplier Evaluation, Management and Relationship
• Very strong IT skills: Microsoft Office 2007 Including Project 2007 and Visio 2007), Mindmanager 8, Adobe Flex Builder 3, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Dreamweaver, AutoPlay Media Studio 7. Wiki development on Wikidot, TWiki, Confluence and other wiki platforms. Very strong CSS skills and some Javascript.

Key Achievements
In 2009 developed the multi-user, Scotland-wide, database to handle the hundreds of responses to the public consultation on the Draft River Basin Management Plans for Scotland and Solway Tweed.

In 2008 project planned and delivered on schedule (December 2008 as directed by the EU) the draft River Basin Management
Plans for Scotland and Solway Tweed.

In 2008 developed the first ever wiki to be used at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for distributed team collaboration and co-authoring documents.

Managed the delivery of Phases 2 and 3 of the Foreign Office intranet in 2005 to 2007 through the whole lifecycle, from requirements capture through to stakeholder management after roll-out.

Personally negotiated the £2 million+ contracts with Fujitsu Services for technical development of Phase 2 of the Foreign Office intranet in 2004 and Phase 3 in 2006.

Managed the administrative and logistical arrangements for HM The Queen's State Visit to Nigeria in 2003 and was honoured with the LVO (Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order).

Career History

December 2007 to December 2009 (contract)
Business Project Manager, Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Responsible for planning and managing two projects for the production of Scotland’s River Basin Management Plans and the introduction of the new Water Environment Charging Scheme for Scotland, including steering the projects through public consultation and Scottish Government approval. The IS component for the projects involved specifying and project managing the development of Geographic Information Systems to support the public consultations and developing the multi-user database to manage consultation responses by over 200 organisations and individuals. The role involved extensive stakeholder management across SEPA, the Scottish Government, external companies and members of the public. In the final few months the role concentrated on data checking and analysis for the final Plans. This was originally a 6 month contract that was extended by SEPA to 2 years.

February 2006 to November 2007
Project Director/Executive FCONet and WebMail Projects, Information & Technology Directorate, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Delivery and direction of FCONet (intranet) and WebMail projects. Writing Business cases; budget management of £4 million a year; managing a team of 42 internal and external project team members; requirements capture (face to face/email/workshops) and analysis, tracking and reporting; product selection; benefits identification, measurement and management; programme level risks and issues; establishing change control process and managing changes; stakeholder identification, analysis and management; communications planning and implementation; programme and board level presentations; project document quality reviews; Post Implementation Reviews; Lessons Learned Reports; reporting to Information & Technology Directorate and FCO Investment Committee; FCONet development strategy and strategic fit; cases for and assessments of pilot projects; external supplier relationship (Fujitsu) and contract negotiation and management. Drafting Service Level Agreements, negotiating service contracts with Fujitsu and FCO Services.

June 2004 – February 2006
Deputy Programme Director, Knowledge Management Programme IT Strategy Unit,
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
As above but with stakeholder and budget management responsibility across all projects in the Programme including CRM, EDRM, and intranet totalling £17 million a year. Also Responsible for organising OGC reviews on the Programme and individual projects. The position also involved procurement and contract bid reviews and recommendations.

January - June 2004: Leave

February 2003 - January 2004
Head of Logistics for State Visit of HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh to Abuja December 2003
All administrative arrangements for the visit including accommodation, food, transport and communication. Liaison with the Royal Household. Honoured with LVO (Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order) by HM The Queen December 2003 for personal services to the Monarchy.

September 2001 - February 2003
Senior Management Officer, British High Commission Abuja
All High Commission management work including personnel management, finance and budgets (£2.5 million a year), security, transport, IT and estates. Investors in People coordinator. Managing the logistics for visits by the Prime Minister, DPM and other Ministers.

November 2000 - September 2001
Senior Management Officer and Entry Clearance Manager, British High Commission Abuja
As above but also Entry Clearance Manager covering the full range of ECM work. Liaison with BDHC Lagos, UKVisas and Nigerian government officials

September 1997 to October 2000
British Consul, British Consulate Jerusalem
Full range of consular, passport and nationality work in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Hospital, prison and court visiting and all other consular protection work. Consular statistical reporting. Managing the Consular Section staff. Managing the logistics of visits by the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and other senior visitors. Included project managing the opening of the British Government Office in Gaza.

March 1993 to September 1997
Project Manager, Home Estates Department, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Planning the moves of departments and staff between buildings due to refurbishment work. Liaison with senior staff and other staff affected. Project managing the actual moves. Supplier relationship management with refurbishment and removal contractors, FCO departments, architects, furnishing and IT companies.

Earlier experience

April 1988 to December 1992: Management Officer, British High Commission Mauritius
December 1984 to March 1988: British Vice Consul, Abu Dhabi
September 1983 to September 1984: Full Time Arabic Language Training, SOAS, University of London (Foreign Office funded)
August to September 1983: Temporary Resident Representative, British Deputy High Commission Antigua
June 1982 to July 1983: Head of Registry, British Embassy Beijing
November 1981 to May 1982: Visa Officer, British Embassy Prague
February 1981 to November 1981: Desk Clerk, Iraq Desk, Middle East Department, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
March 1980 to February 1981: Communications Clerk, Communications Operations Department, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
March 1980: Joined HM Diplomatic Service

Education: 1972 to 1979: Watford Boys Grammar School. 9 ‘O’ levels, 2 ‘A’ levels

Family: Married, 3 children

Interests: Acoustic guitar, tennis and sport in general, slowly getting into playing golf and gardening, travel, mastering new software, travel, driving.

What is a wiki?

Traditional static websites often do not allow you to do much more than to read the content, contribute to a forum, email comments to the site owner or buy things.

But a wiki is different; it is a type of website that allows some or all visitors to the site to add, remove and change pages and content very quickly and easily, and all versions of pages are saved.

Wikis reduce email: the ability of groups to collectively edit and develop documents can save hundreds of back-and-forth emails as shown in the image below:

Wikis are invaluable in team projects where staff in different offices, cities, or countries can collaborate easily. They foster team working and communication.

This wiki/email comparison image was originally produced by Manny Wilson in June 2007 for a presentation to senior leadership at the United States Central Command to demonstrate how wikis could be used to more rapidly draft contingency plans.

One advantage of a wiki over a traditional website is that the responsibility for making changes doesn't rest with just one person, it becomes a group resource and everyone has a stake in it and a contribution to make. Making changes and adding content can become quite addictive and good fun.

Where did wikis come from?

The name "Wiki" was inspired by the Hawaiian word wiki or wiki-wiki, which means "quick". The first wiki was developed in 1995 by an American, Ward Cunningham, who wanted an alternative to the word "quick" for his product that would allow quick, collaborative editing. He remembered the wiki-wiki shuttle buses that run between terminals at Honolulu International Airport and the name stuck.

Who uses wikis?

In business wikis are now used by many of the world's most innovative companies for team collaboration, co-authoring of documents, knowledge management and intranets, event planning, contact with customers and for project work. Large and small companies are benefiting from the efficient use of time and knowledge that wikis bring. Wikis avoid long email chains and make collaboration much easier whether your team is in the same building or spread across the world.

Wikis are also used extensively in education for class work, assignments and projects.

Many community groups also use wikis to enable local residents to promote their town or village and to discuss issues as a group without one person always having the responsibility of keeping it up to date.

How your team can benefit from wikis

The number of ways you can use a wiki for personal, group or corporate use is almost endless:

How wikis can help you cut costs

Prevent knowledge loss

If employees leave an organisation they take a lot of experience and knowledge with them. Often that knowledge has not been written down and can be expensive in time and effort to re-create it. By using a wiki, knowledge can be captured and stored easily for future reference by current or future employees.

Better Use of resources

For a collaboratively-authored document it is common for a lot of people to contribute to drafts by email. Those comments and changes then have to be merged together. And frequently someone will have changed text that had already been changed by someone else which takes time and effort in checking. Using a wiki allows changes to be made to the always-current version of the text and the history of those changes is stored. Not only is this a good audit trail but it is much easier to see the current state of the document, and changes from many people do not have to be merged into a final version. Less time is spent on the process and so the cost is less.

Contribute through discussion forums

Using discussion forums on a wiki help all members of the team contribute to a topic, even if they are working remotely. It is more environmentally friendly and cheaper than travelling to meetings and is easier to see the thread of a discussion than with email.

Manage projects better

Using wikis to manage projects helps all team members to be in the loop about tasks, risks and issues and project plans. If a project ends it keeps all the relevant documentation together, and this is more efficient as well in case a project is halted but later starts up again. For any project in an organisation, if team members add lessons learned into a wiki as they go along it saves having to remember them later and they can see what others have written which saves duplication and time.

Communicate more effectively with clients

If you are doing work for a client you might want to involve them and obtain their ideas and feedback. Although doing this on email can work, it can be much more effective through the use of a wiki. Real-time collaboration via a wiki reduces expensive travel to meetings, lets your client see the current state of the project and contribute comments and feedback at a time that suites them. And it helps both parties to manage communication effectively.

How we can help you

We have expertise in designing, developing, managing and supporting sites built on the Wikidot platform in a wide range of businesses and community groups. Our preferred wiki platform is wikidot but we are able to advise and develop wikis on a range of other wiki products, for example for enterprise wikis an excellent product is Mindtouch.

Please contact us if you would like advice on how wikis can help your team or on which wiki to choose.

Information about prices is available here.

We can implement secure SSL-encrypted wikis if your content requires this level of protection.

We would be happy to conduct workshops with your team to show them how to contribute to and benefit from wikis in their work.

Welcome to Strathview. We are based in Strathpeffer in the Highlands of Scotland and specialise in providing affordable, high-quality website, intranets wikis and online databases for charities, local community groups, villages and towns, small businesses and government.

Do you need a website where you can…?

• update the content quickly and easily
• Have a custom content management system with the features you want
• create an unlimited number of pages
• make an unlimited frequency of updates
• where features can be added as you need them
• update the from wherever you are in the world
• update the site from your smartphone, iPad or computer
• have a hand-crafted custom design
• manage the site without special software
• manage the site without long years of IT experience

…then you need us at Strathview

Do you need an online database…?

• which can be developed and delivered quickly
• which is secure
• which is easy to use
• which can be accessed across the web
• which doesn't require your own servers
• which uses a platform trusted by many of the USA's top corporations
• where you can have multiple users only seeing "their" data
• where only the people you want to see certain data can see it
• where updates can be done from your smartphone, iPad or computer, wherever you are
• which your staff on the road can update
• which gives you the reports you need
• where you can see your location-based data on maps

…then you need us at Strathview

Our websites and intranets are based on the powerful Wikidot platform - similar to Wordpress but better!

Our databases are built using the leading cloud database platform, Caspio Bridge, which enables us to do rapid development with a high quality result. The database is delivered via one of our Wikidot-based website portals.

Our Current Featured Project

In late 2011 we developed a Wikidot-based website with a secure embedded Caspio Bridge database to manage referrals from the Energy Saving Scotland Advice Centre to home insulation installers and local authorities in the Highlands and Islands and to book surveys for customers of the Scottish Government's Universal Home Insulation Scheme.

The Caspio Bridge database from http://www.caspio.com allows for rapid online database development and can be scaled from small community databases to major mission-critical databases.

Please email, complete an online enquiry form or telephone us to discuss how we can help you.

We hope you will contact us to discuss the range of practical solutions we can provide for wiki and website development, conference, visit & event management, team collaboration tools and general business and IT projects.

Strathview Consultants
++44 (0)770 666 7818
++44 (0)1997 421 164

Complete the contact form below or you can call us on Skype, look for strathviewconsultants.