The latest thought-leadership, blogs and news from Ctrl O

On the 6^th March this year I did a TEDx Talk in Leuven, a town about half an hour from Brussels in Belgium. The project was an interesting journey from start to finish – from getting access to excellent coaches, to working out how to learn a speech off by heart. And it taught me something I hadn’t quite realised before – that if you really want to succeed in public speaking, it’s true what they say – preparation and practice is everything.

In February of 2025, our software LinkSpace was involved behind the scenes with a major policy announcement at the Ministry of Justice, and some of the Ctrl O technical team were busy working around the clock.

During techUK’s first ever defence campaign week in December 2024, our CEO Andy Beverley wrote a guest blog about flexibility of working in the military and the impact it’s had on efficiency. He discusses how those working in defence, and indeed many other industries, can work more flexibly than we did ten years ago, and he asks if it’s helped people achieve more. It’s something to think about for all of us – has ubiquitous communications made us more productive?

For techUK’s Blue Lights week in November 2024, our COO John Hayden wrote a guest blog about how technology could reshape the interaction between victims and the criminal justice system. He was inspired by something rather unconventional – a yellow gnome!

This week at Ctrl O we’ve had a visit from someone with such a specialist job, he’s called upon by businesses all over the world, from Singapore to Guatemala, Chicago, Australia and everywhere in between. Stuart Rowson is an information security auditor for the international standard called ISO 27001.

Recently, our Marketing Manager Carla Francome enjoyed seeing some flowers in a beautiful mews, as she made her way through London to Andy Beverley’s house for a crucial part of her induction - Information Security Training.

We had a very exciting evening last Wednesday on July 2^nd 2024- it was techUK’s annual black tie dinner, and also where the results of the President’s Award would be announced. Our Chief Executive, Andy Beverley, was honoured to be shortlisted in the Economy category, so we slipped into our finest outfits and headed down to the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Central London to see how he got on.

We had a good day in the Central London sunshine this week! Our COO John Hayden jumped on a train to London early in the morning on Wednesday as he had an important meeting at the Ministry of Defence. I met him at Waterloo, and as we took a stroll across the Thames, the sunshine was glittering on the water, it was delightful. From the bridge, you could see the Ministry of Defence building, and there was a large ship in front of it, which appealed to John, with his navy connections.

We had a great couple of days at our Ctrl O stand at the Excel Centre, at the Global Government Forum’s Innovation fair. We didn’t think saying “fancy a chat about spreadsheets” would be a good opening gambit, but it worked an absolute treat, so we were all clearly in the right place! (Or people were very kind in humouring us, or tempted in by one of our chocolates)- in any case, we were grateful to meet so many lovely people and enjoyed it immensely!