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The big question

What is your favourite piece of technology? Do you embrace the latest tech to the full, or are you someone who is proudly ‘old school’ who believes pencil and paper is still best?

Join the conversation

@biz_cornwall /businesscornwall businesscornwall.co.uk

LYSSA-FEE CRUMP

Kraken Marketing

As a marketing agency that primarily works with technology companies, we get to experience a lot of cool technology, but our favourite has to be Trello. It helps us be superefficient and allows for full transparency in real-time with our global clients. We use it to prioritise and collaborate and it stops anything from dropping through the cracks. I don’t just use it for work either! I have loads of personal boards too for things like house renovations. Everyone should embrace Trello!

RICHARD WOODS

Eslas

My saviour is my mobile phone. A cliché but I can do almost everything I need to run my business with the technology and the extensive range of apps. If it broke I’d sadly feel like I’ve lost a limb.

JUNE SHIELDS

Miller Commercial

Undoubtedly the most important and therefore my favourite piece of technology is RDP (remote desktop protocol). It has been a vital tool before and during the pandemic in making sure our staff can access everything they need for work whilst working from home, on the road or at our clients’ properties and businesses.

I am definitely one of the main technology champions in our business, and although I do love a written list or notes the one piece of technology that has made the biggest impact on me personally at work is the iPhone 11. The quality of the camera and video means I can take professionally looking staff photo

ADVERTORIAL A DIGITAL FUTURE FOR EVERY

BUSINESS By Paddy Paddison, chief technology officer at Wildanet

When the G7’s digital and technology ministers met a few weeks ago in the run-up to the Cornwall summit, they pledged to put digital technology at the heart of a more productive and resilient global economy.

They said the pandemic had underlined the importance of digital technologies to economies and societies worldwide, and accelerating their uptake was vital to economic recovery and socially inclusive growth. I couldn’t agree more. In Cornwall, technology is driving exciting developments in areas like renewable energy, mining, data and space, and indeed this month’s Business Cornwall magazine is brim-full of exciting stories showcasing a wide range of businesses innovating digitally.

Our mission at Wildanet is to continue to get Cornwall and its businesses connected for a digital future. And we want to address the toooften overlooked issue that many businesses

and video to upload to our website and social media within minutes rather than wait on someone else.

JOE TURNBULL

Bull & Wolf

For me it has to be the smartphone. It might be the bane of some peoples lives, but it has also transformed the way we communicate with each other. The whole ecosystem of apps that have evolved from that have transformed the way we consume all sorts of content, and it’s made so many things far more accessible. It’s because of this that I always look for the latest tech, whether that’s new apps or programmes or new pieces of kit. It helps us to keep innovating, make better content and deliver better value for our clients.

ELEANOR MCGILLIE

MGMPR

For me it’s reMarkable right now. I try to live and work as sustainably as possible and as a brand editor I take a lot of notes. So not having to use notepads is great. Here’s to the day when it is able to understand shorthand!

ROBERT KELLOW

RJ Kellow

For me it has to be my iPhone. I am an Apple geek anyway, but that aside, I smile when I think back to the days when I used to take a camera, a tape measure, a pad and pencil (plus spares), a calculator, large format printed plans, and sometimes even a laptop to a survey. Now all of that fits neatly in my pocket rather than taking a rucksack everywhere! That said, my pad, pencil and tape never ran out of charge, so they weren’t all bad.

TREVOR LEE

Trevor Lee Media

Mine is the Rode Rodecaster Pro which I use for podcast recordings followed by Calendy which has made organising meetings on Zoom unbelievably easy and finally Dragon Dictation which enables to speak rather than type email responses and planning notes etc... as a slow typist that saves me a ton of time.

STUART BEVERIDGE

Cornwall Air Ambulance

Technology plays a massive part in my life and I embrace it – from my daughter changing my favourite playlist to Disney classics on our Alexa device to keeping in touch with loved ones during lockdown on Facetime and Zoom. I really believe that using technology can improve quality of life. My favourite piece of tech has to be ApplePay – the ability to pay by tapping my phone is convenient and saves rustling through my pockets for change. It also is a gamechanger in the charity world. With less people carrying cash, we’ve adapted our donation points to accept contactless donations.

While we aren’t doing away with penny jars completely, new hybrid models allow contactless donations too and we’re seeing a rise in their use.

FIONA CAMPBELL-HOWES

B2B tech content writer

My current favourite is Otter.ai, the machine transcription tool. I do loads of interviews for my work and it’s saved me hours and hours of manual transcribing – hours that I can now spend on billable client work.

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and communities here still struggle with a lack of connectivity to make the most of these opportunities.

In some areas they don’t have to because the alternative services, such as ours, are there. In others we’re working to put them in place.

We’ve seen first-hand the difference that fast, reliable connectivity can make, especially in rural areas, where we are investing £50m, with UK Government support, to close the digital divide.

For businesses, it can be no less than transformative.

Staff aren’t wasting time waiting for pages to load; your business is more secure because business-critical data is backedup and stored in the cloud; emails and file transfers are downloaded in a flash and data, presentations and large video or graphics packages uploaded instantly, so you’re not sat watching the progress bar.

How much of your week would that give back to you and your team?

With Covid restrictions easing, it is now possible to get to meetings – but the past year has shown us that it’s far from compulsory to spend hours in the car if you have the bandwidth to support high-quality video conferencing with your customers and suppliers in Cornwall and beyond. More time gained to invest in your business’s success. Wildanet is the Cornish broadband provider bringing superfast and superreliable broadband to communities and businesses throughout Cornwall. It has a range of options including discounted home connections for staff if your business is connected via Wildanet’s network. Call 0800 0699906 to find out how Wildanet’s broadband can help your business thrive.