Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Another pause for thought last week with respect to Jim Collin’s classic statement.

For those who have known us for a number of years, you might recognise that we’ve come a long way from our “wilderness years”  – we’ve taken some big steps in getting the right people on the bus, and (just as importantly) in the right seats.

However this year we’ve still made a couple mistakes – which has been costly and painful for all involved – and has not helped us in our goal of putting customers first:

In meeting these challenges, I found Jim’s “five things to consider” useful – along with the other materials on the site.

In more general terms, I have also found that there are sections in “Execution – the discipline of getting things done” (part-way through reading) that have been useful.

Looking forward, there are a number of things that we will be looking to do over the coming 12 months or so:

read more »

* out of all blog posts ever written by me, excluding me’s in other parallel universes

Hi, I’m Ben and I just completed 7 months of work experience as a noobie software developer at Global-Roam.

I have to be honest: this is the first blog post I have ever written. It’s probably not very good and I know that it’s too long. Nevertheless, I promised I would compile a post on my experiences at the company, and when I make a promise I always deliver (at least 50% of the time, and anyway, Todd threatened to mark my “post on the blog” task as failed if I didn’t). Hopefully this chronicle of my adventures at the company (a tragedy, mostly) will be at least mildly entertaining, capture some of my insights, and give a sense of what it’s like to be a Global-Roamer (at the moment anyway – it’s changing fast). It is a great place to work if you are motivated, open to learning and trying new things, love customers and have a burning desire to be remarkable (like my colleagues, who seem to believe they are a collection of spies, wizards and gods that make it rain – just check their business cards).

My journey began on a sunny day in November 08 when I walked through the glass doors of Global Roam’s office, and into my first real job as a software developer. On my desk sat my two new widescreen monitors, a quad-core desktop, my very own business cards, a copy of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (by Stephen Covey) and a requirements document. Not bad! A sheet of glass separated me from the rest of the development team (5 developers at the time, though most of them were either on holidays or working from home that day).

read more »

This is just a short post to say goodbye as I’ve left global-roam for another job. A friend recently informed me of an opportunity that I’d be insane to pass up and so I’ve jumped ship. Not a sinking ship mind you. I just saw a port in a different shipping lane.

I found working at global-roam to be fantastic learning experience. Prior to joining, I hadn’t been in IT for a number of years. The amount of useful junk that I’ve crammed into my skull in the past 13 months has my head spinning (in a good way).

These are exciting times for the energy markets and for this company in particular as it undergoes its restructuring. The ETS has been all over the news. Everyone is bricking themselves for a hike in their home electricity bills. Talkback radio personalities are doing their best to scaremonger and every second person you talk to is an expert.

Now that I’m leaving, there’s a bit more room on the bus. That means there’s more opportunity for innovative individuals to get in at the ground floor (Yes smart-arse, this metaphorical bus has an elevator). You may not be an energy market expert at present, but if you can demonstrate the ability to learn and a can-do attitude, then I’m sure the company will be most interested in hearing from you regardless of whether positions are advertised or not.

That being said, it was a pleasure working at global-roam and I’ll continue to follow this blog with interest.

While I was overseas in Europe on a three month backpacking holiday, I decided that I didn’t want to go back to university this year. I wanted to do something real in the world of IT and get some practical experience during my final year. I was either in Madrid or Barcelona when I received an email from the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering school at UQ that was offering exactly what I was after. When I arrived back home in Aussieland, I applied for the Professional Information Technology Placement Scholarship (PIPS) and before I knew it I was sitting at my own desk (not in a lecture theatre!) at Global-Roam.

For the next three months I was in charge of my own project. I was given the task of building a system that automated the building and distribution of a report for the National Electricity Market (NEM). After scoping out the project with my supervisor at Global-Roam, I spent the first three weeks here researching, trying to find a tool or API that could put together a detailed report. Once I had found a suitable tool, I started designing and implementing each component. I built a database, two data processing applications, a secure website, and a console application that builds the report. In the final weeks of my project I started to pull together all of these components and after much testing and debugging the system was actually working! There are still a few loose ends to tie up but it shouldn’t be long now before this new product is revealed to the world.

When I started at Global-Roam I knew nothing about the NEM and nothing about the .NET framework and the C# programming language. I appreciated the fact that Global-Roam was willing to take me onboard and was actually looking forward to absorbing all this new material. The guys working at Global-Roam always found the time to listen to every annoying question I had and send me off in the right direction. In the beginning I spent a lot of my own time reading a great book they purchased called Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition (Windows.Net) by Andrew Troelson. I also spent some time reading the NEMMCO website to gain a basic understanding of the NEM.

The interesting thing about working at Global-Roam is that everyone is their own boss. Therefore, the company is run not so much by an individual, but by a team of people that collectively make decisions on a weekly basis. This was a fantastic experience, and one that I did not expect to come across. read more »