Index – What Index?

Or should that be which index? Following the success of the Global Financial Centres Index 1 (GFCI), launched in March at Cannes, we now have GFCI 2. London extended its lead to 19 points over New York with Hong Kong, Singapore and Zurich following. The GFCI has generated press in August journals from the Economist, to The Times of Malta and the Caymanian Compass. Financial centres from Bahrain to the Bahamas, and Tokyo to Tallinn want to know how to enhance their competitiveness as financial centres. Not content with an index of financial centres, Z/Yen is now working on an intellectual property index for a leading law firm and other indices, such as ‘Arts and Culture’ and insurance, are being considered. Now & Z/Yen readers are asked to participate in GFCI 3.

Charityshare Expands And Wins Top Award

Z/Yen is immensely proud that it helped to establish Charityshare, the IT services joint venture, originally between NSPCC and The Children’s Society, and is now prouder still. The Alzheimer’s Society has recently joined the venture. Several hundred Alzheimer’s staff in major offices already enjoy the Charityshare service, while Charityshare is rolling out the service to Alzheimer’s Society branches as well, for some 1,200 additional Charityshare users. Ian Harris and Mary O’Callaghan have a continuing role with Charityshare helping with strategic direction and project management of the Alzheimer’s Society transition respectively.

Z/Yen bathes in reflected glory as Charityshare won the Best Charity Partnership Award at the 2007 Third Sector Excellence Awards last month. Ian Harris took great pleasure in joining the Charityshare team on the night; especially as Ian had written the award nomination. John Stoker, one of the judges, described Charityshare as “a really good, sensible collaboration offering high-quality IT services at good value for money”. (Why couldn’t Ian have summed it up that succinctly?) As the venture is saving about £1,000,000 per annum compared with the cost of its constituent parts, doesn’t Mr Stoker make a very good point? Many congratulations to CharityShare!

Z/Yen Guides Tourist Centres

The City of London replaces its main Visitor Information Centre, adjacent to St Paul’s Cathedral, with a striking new building opening in November 2007. The new centre uses the latest information display and delivery technology: 10 large screens display information to visitors, alongside smaller screens for City staff to show individual tourists internet and network based information. Mike Prymaka coordinated the design and procurement of the IT and AV systems, and is project-managing the build, co-ordinating City of London in-house resource and external suppliers. Mike muses; “I worked for Mercury in the early 90’s when the City was seeing major installations of fibre networks. We always thought high speed data links would reach everywhere. But little did I imagine that 15 years later I’d be working round the corner from Red Lion Square, planning COLT’s connection to the City’s Visitor Centre at 100 megabits/second as a standard service, and displaying video on 10 flat monitor screens.”

No Dirty Knapp-y Jokes

We’re pleased to welcome Alexander Knapp to the Z/Yen tribe. We found him wandering through Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Angola, and once he proved incapable of explaining what he was actually doing out there for the past fifteen years (that is, in a hundred words or less) we knew that he really must be a long-lost distant cousin who needed to (re-)join the family here in London. Since then, we gather that he’s been causing trouble in international development, risk management, and emerging markets, but apparently also photography, lecturing at university, and going to Italian cooking school – Michael’s now not the only one here to be chronically distracted by bright, shiny objects. Welcome, Alexander!

Yes Now I’m A Judge (And A Good Judge Too)

Z/Yen’s involvement with Payroll Giving continues apace, with Z/Yen organising the first ever National Payroll Giving Awards for the Institute of Fundraising and HM Government. The seminal event took place earlier this month at HM Treasury. The ceremony was hosted by TV money saving guru Martin Lewis, who managed to make the ceremony both entertaining and informative (a rare gift). The awards were handed out by the Right Honourable Jane Kennedy MP, Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

Linda Cook and Sonya Raymond did the real hard work organising the event. Z/Yen folk were sworn to secrecy about the winners, of course, but our own Ian Harris was greatly honoured to Chair the Judging Panel, so he knew the winners before anyone else. Secrets are difficult to keep when there is a one hour reception before the awards ceremony, with several of the short-listed organisations trying to pump the Z/Yen team for inside information. Indeed, even the normally “scrutable” Ian Harris (if you have a game of poker against Ian, go for cash, his face normally tells all) was surprisingly inscrutable on this occasion. He never, never budged, as they say. A superb evening was had by all. You can find out more about the awards from the Payroll Giving Portal website.