Website rebuild almost completed
The arrival of Broadband in Annan last month has inspired us to redesign and rebuild the Chris McAllister Limited website. The rebuild should be complete in the next few days, and although it is being published page by page as soon as individual pages are ready, the final product will be “launched” by means of e-mails to my list of selected contacts, inviting feedback and comments.
The rebuilt website incorporates a number of spectacular and innovative features, based on the concept of the “Five ‘I’s," which are INFORM, ILLUSTRATE, INVITE, IDEAS and INSPIRE. As with most websites this sets out to provide as much INFORMATION as is reasonable about our training programmes and training resources. Colour photographs are provided as ILLUSTRATIONS. Typically, we INVITE you to join our programmes and to pick up on some of our IDEAS (such as electronic portfolios). We hope all of this will INSPIRE you to see if you can better us in any way.
The idea of HERON NEWS is that it should change almost weekly, bringing you timely information about ourselves, our work and our clients. Why not make a point of opening HERON NEWS every Monday and finding out what’s going on?
Chris McAllister

Assessing in a coffer dam
Assessor Tommy McLatchie (left) is himself assessed for his Unit A1 as he works in a coffer dam building foundations for a set of 850 KW wind turbines at a site in south Cumbria. Tommy was being assessed by Chris McAllister at the time.
Tommy is an employee of Ken Hope Ltd., Carlisle

Chris McAllister, HERON NEWS Editor-in-Chief

The Heron Hunt
Finding pictures of herons to use on our website has not been easy. There are plenty of heron pictures on birdwatching websites, but a fee must be paid to use them; quite a stiff fee in most cases. I had little choice, then, but to go out onto the River Annan and shoot my own pictures of herons. Some of the results can be found on the website.
Why herons? We use the heron as our logo because my office is situated directly overlooking the river. Frequently, when I look out the window, there is a heron perched on the sluice directly outside. Chris McAllister

Email needs etiquette
E-mail needs etiquette, opines Chris McAllister, in a recent interview he gave to HERON NEWS.
.The medium is the message, argues Canadian professor Herbert Marshal McLuhan, one well-known communications guru of the Twentieth Century. But even he could not have foreseen the development of text messaging and e-mail and their huge growth in popularity. Teachers of English may deplore how these two media have set back their attempts to instil a respect for traditional conventions of spelling and grammar in the youth of today (and indeed in some of those not quite so young). What has happened to the ability to write a correctly composed, properly spelled and traditionally grammatical letter, they ask.
Polite speech, telephone concersations and written communications all have their etiquettes. Is it too early for text messaging and e-mail to have acquired theirs?
We could make an exception in the case of text messaging. Only 160 characters can be fitted in a single message, so there is a need to develop a kind of telegraphic communication style. But what about e-mail? No such restrictions apply.
If one person sends an e-mail to another, the recipient may be very much dismayed if text messaging conventions are used. There is no excuse for not spelling words fully and properly, and most e-mail applications have spelling-checkers. E-mail messages can be simple, direct, personal and informal, and so they should be, but they need to be written in English.
And as for the Spammers. I get as many as 70 unwanted junk e-mails PER DAY and in my haste to delete them, there is always the risk that I will delete an important message in error. The problem is compounded by people who may not be Spammers, but they are “Blitzers”; those who cannot resist sending an e-mail to everyone in their Address Book, or who hit the “Reply All” button without thinking.
However, the most important point I need to make about e-mail etiquette is that you SHOULD always use the “Reply” button. Yes, e-mail is wonderful. You can send it and you can see that it has gone. However, it is never received until the intended recipient reads it and responds to it. The sender needs the feedback that you received the message, even if the reply consists of just a few words, one of them being “Thanks”. That too is good etiquette anywhere, and not just in e-mail’.