Author Archives: Sean Gilligan

Leah’s Road to Rio

The greater the challenge, the greater the motivation

Leah Moorby & Sean Gilligan, Webanywhere

One of my core values has always been engaging with the community. Webanywhere seek to create high quality employment opportunities in the Keighley area, build on our strong links with local schools and faith organisations, and also support outstanding individuals and causes in the community as they strive for ambitious goals.

As part of this Webanywhere are sponsoring Leah Moorby, a local secondary school student with incredible Taekwondo talent. She has quickly risen to international standard, and is experiencing great success on the European tournament circuit, recently winning gold in the Parks Pokal Taekwondo Open Championship in Stuttgart and the Dutch Masters in Rotterdam.

Her aim is to get to the Olympics, to Rio in 2016, or elsewhere in 2020 (at which time she will still be only 20!), following in the footsteps of Jade Jones, who captivated the nation in winning Taekwondo gold for Team GB in the London 2012 Olympics.

This is a huge challenge, but Leah is up to it!

The road to the Olympics is an expensive one, which is why I am delighted to be able to contribute to the costs involved in traveling to international tournaments. Leah has a great support team, (including her father Gary, a former professional Rugby League player and coach of Keighley Cougars), and has a fighting chance of achieving her dreams.

I will keep you posted on how Leah progresses – good luck from the Webanywhere team!

Leah & Sean

Halfway to jobs target
March 18th

Creating careers in our local community

As I’ve said on this blog before, one of the parts of my job I enjoy the most is being is position to seek out and recruit talented people to join the organisation I manage.

Webanywhere’s stated target for this year is to create 60 new jobs across the organisation, a target we aim to meet by September this year. I’m really pleased that we’re currently slightly ahead of where we need to be to meet this goal. This week I spoke to reporters from the local press about our recruitment aims, and Webanywhere was featured in a couple of local papers as a result.

It’s nice to see interest from the local media – and this kind of coverage obviously helps us to get the message out to local job seekers that Webanywhere is one of the best places in the region to find your niche and build your career.

(Employment boost as web firm Webanywhere Ltd is set to expand: Bradford Telegraph & Argus)

 

 

Webanywhere at Learning Technologies and BETT 2013

Leaning Tech 2

Webanywhere are taking up residence in London this week as we show off the latest in education and workplace learning technology at BETT 2013 and The Learning Technologies Exhibition.

My colleagues in Workplace Learning and I kicked off proceedings this morning at Learning Technologies, with a rush of visitors to our stand (122 – come and visit us tomorrow if you get the chance, it’s well worth a visit!). As well as getting a chance to talk face-to-face with workplace learning professionals, and promoting new offerings (such as the Compliance Module for Moodle, and a groundbreaking social video platform for training) we are also hosting our partner The British Safety Council on the stand, as they promote their great range of health and safety e-learning courses.

A big highlight at the show tomorrow is the joint Webanywhere-Google seminar – Stretch your organisation further with Google Apps for Enterprise – not to be missed.

Tomorrow also sees the first day of BETT 2013, the world’s largest technology in education show. The Webanywhere presence at the show will be our largest to date – here’s just some of the reasons to drop by our stand:

    • Free Mathsanywhere account for primary schools who visit the Webanywhere stand
    • 5% discount for BETT visitors on the Webanywhere product range. Simply visit the stand and get the promo code(s)
    • Launch of the new look Learner Journey e-portfolio and safe social network for schools, with enhanced functionality, improved user interface and a range of new themes
    • Demonstrating the great new Learnanywhere mobile app, which allows the primary specific VLE to be accessed on the go
    • A joint promotion with Planet Sherston (stand F310) – take a product demo at both stands and claim a sticker. Attach both stickers to flyer to get a promo code for a fantastic special offer

…as well as the chance to talk to our e-learning consultants, who I can proudly say are the best in the business.

I’ll have updates throughout the week; be sure to follow @WebanywhereWork and @webanywhere_ltd for the latest Twitter updates, or check out the show hashtags #bettshow and #LT13UK

Learning Tech

It’s Showtime – BETT Show 2013 & Learning Technologies 2013

A very Happy New Year to you all!

We’ve had a fast start to 2013, with more new starters and some exciting developments
approaching fruition – more on that another time…

January sees Webanywhere at the two big ICT exhibitions this month. We’ll be at both BETT and Learning Technologies, at Excel London Jan 30th- Feb 2nd, and Olympia 2 London 29th-30th Jan respectively, with a bigger and better presence than ever.

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I’ll be at both shows, and am relishing the chance to chat to customers and non-customers alike. Our stands will be manned by our fantastic team of e-learning specialists and developers, so if you would like to ask us a question or see our products in action, make sure you stop by stand F280 at BETT or stand 122 at Learning Technologies. To book a meeting in advance, click here for BETT and here for Learning Technologies.

I recently had the pleasure of another trip down to Google UK headquarters. As a Google
Enterprise partner, and Google Apps for Education reseller we really value our relationship (and internally Webanywhere’s use of Google Apps for Business allows us to communicate and collaborate in a way that wouldn’t be possible otherwise).

Sean at Google

I am delighted to announce that Webanywhere and Google will be conducting a joint
seminar at Learning Technologies – Stretch your organisation further with Google Apps for Enterprise, examining amongst other things the integration of this powerful suite of cloud based tools with Totara LMS.

We hope you can make it to at least one of the shows, and that they provide you with new ideas and inspiration for the coming year.

Merry Christmas from Webanywhere

I would like to wish all our customers and partners past, present and future a very Merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous New Year.

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I would also like to thank the brilliant Webanywhere team for their many and varied contributions to (another) record year. Our office Christmas Party is this afternoon (and most likely long into the evening…) and is set to be a cracker!

Look out for some exciting new developments from Webanywhere in the New Year, but for now however you are spending the festive period, have a great time.

Silicon Valley Comes to the UK

I was delighted to receive an invite to attend SVC2UK 2012 – Silicon Valley Comes to the UK 2012– and last week travelled to Cambridge to take part in this annual meet up of UK business leaders, Cambridge University students and the cream of Silicon Valley.

The event brings together digital entrepreneurs, investors, thought leaders and the brightest students of Cambridge University to debate, discuss, create and fund the technology of tomorrow.

As the sector under the spotlight this year was Education Technology, the event was of particular value to me. My main focus was the ‘Scale Up’ theme of the event – examining how to transition growing tech companies into internationally operating concerns with turnovers in the hundreds of millions.

SVC2UK+2

Webanywhere are certainly ‘scaling up’ as we broaden our horizons internationally, and so I was invited to join the CEO workshop event comprising of leaders of companies on track for rapid growth, who are looking to accelerate that growth.

I was inspired to speak with some of those who have been there and done it on the grandest scale, including Megan Smith, VP, Google [x], Rahul Vohra, Founder and CEO of Rapportive and Angela Lin, Head of YouTube Education. As you may imagine, I came away with plenty of food for thought. Something that struck a chord with me was that the best companies empower their staff to act like the CEO – to own their issues, to take control of their projects and to be proactive. If you have talented people, provide the space to be creative and you will be richly rewarded.

I also got chance to sit in on a very lively debate: The Future of Learning – What will students’ lives look like in 10 years time?, covering topics such as the flipped classroom, learning platforms and social and mobile learning.

The main thought left stuck in my head when leaving Cambridge was the need to stay dissatisfied. There are always opportunities to improve your offering, there is always a new challenge to stretch your ability, and always another horizon to aim for.