At the 11th hour, I decided to head up to Ipswich to BT’s Heath Martlesham engineering R&D facility.
I did not have a particular desire to see what BT where up too as an organization, but Doug Richard was hosting one of his excellent School for Startups.
Now I last visited “Adastral Park” during the 1980′s. Those not familiar with this part of the world – semi-rural Suffolk, BT’s research Labs where built in the 1960′s on the site of a former RAF base.
The main building represents all that was wrong with post war architecture and the central tower is I am told reflects back to it’s RAF days give a control tower feel, but reaching up into the stars, hence the name.
Well apart from the name change in the 1980′s I cannot see what else has changed ?
The building is “shabby and dated”, the hospitality was at minimal levels, other than from the fine girls that did car park duty – out in pretty indifferent weather.
But this is the bit that would worry me as a BT shareholder – you have I’d guess over 100 budding entrepreneurs in the room along with one of the countries, if not Europe’s leading entrepreneurial educators in Doug Richard, they made no effort to do any marketing at all !
A BT chap came on a the start did the health and safety brief, informed us not to take any photographs and left! – that was it – after that zip.
Surely the thousands of engineers are working on something they could at least give us a sneak preview on?
I now understand why it’s called “Adastral Park” – somebody’s head is certainly in the clouds !
Hopefully some BT employees where in the audience, they need marketing advice as badly as startup’s do.
Roy 11th June 2010
Just off of a phone call to my father – life long BT customer until last Friday, when he did a total switch to O2 both for broadband and landline.
Why ? – He is actually paying £5 a month more – but he knows if he where to have a serious issue he can go into the local O2 store and actually speak to a human being, rather than some poor over qualified soul the other side of the world at the end of a phone – assuming of course that phone is working!