Tuesday 6th October 09

A bit of a wasted morning in some ways. I had been invited to 'participate' in a webinar, a made-up word based on a seminar conducted over tinterweb. This was because of my being involved in organising York Green Festival, and my interest in organising events generally. So, cvent had invited me to get my computer ready to listen to and watch a presentation, and presumably contribute my views/experiences/questions.

So, as requested, 10 minutes before the event, I registered but my registration procedure just went round in circles. At about 5 minutes into the event, I was about to give up and the phone rang, and one of the organisers tried to help me get onto the correct webpage, and sent me an email with a URL, and put the phone call onto the live presentation so I could listen with the phone on loudspeaker, whilst I copied and pasted the URL into my browser but that just sent me to a pdf document. I got increasingly frustrated. I was also finding it difficult to concentrate on the presentation, as the gentleman had an accent which meant that to understand what was being said, I would have had to put all my concentration into the presentation... which I couldn't as the speakerphone isn't the highest quality and I was still going round in circles with the website. Right at the end the presenter asked if anyone had any comments so I decided to speak... and he answered me, was very apologetic and a bit later, he rang me back and I was able to explain the problems I'd had trying to access the presentation.

So, all I got from the presentation was that the organisation offers a wide range of online services which help event organisers run a successful event. Nothing that York Green Festival could use, I think, but who knows, in the future, I may get involved in organising something which might need cvent's help. I'll keep an open mind but hope the webinar software can be improved, as it gives a poor first impression if something doesn't work.

Anyway, the rest of the day was OK, I did quite a bit of housework, nothing outside as it was raining a lot.

I did go to the Hull Road Planning Panel where we dealt with the usual house extensions making three-bedrooms into 5, 6 or even up to 9 in some cases. These are usually for students.

On the way back I decided to pop into a house just down the road which has a SolarTwin hot water panel on it's roof, distinctive because of it's photovoltaic inset which runs the pump. Malcolm was in, a very engaging gent, and was delighted to tell me all about the system, which he is very very happy with. He has kept good records of all his meter readings and bills... Very interesting stuff... the household of two used about 2000 thermal units of gas a year before the installation, but now averages 1500, a reduction of 25% on their annual gas bill. They also now don't use an electric immersion heater and this electricity use has reduced too. Malcolm reported good customer service and was very satisfied.

I came in shortly before Gill and the boys came in from an open day at the secondary school where our youngest is going next year.

As well as doing washing up, I played loads of Scrabble on facebook.