Calum Brannan - Is Social Media's Cowboy Builder

The 10,000 hour rule and Calum Brannan's RSI

2010-04-14T01:39:00.001+01:00

Oh how we laughed today when one of the team brought our attention to an article on the Sky Blog, entitled "Will Calum Become UK's Mark Zuckerberg?"

For a start we couldn't believe what a total mug Christer Holloman must be to have swallowed Calum's bulls**t.

Amongst the cherry-ripe quotes that we loved were:

"Last week I got a chance to catch up with one of UK’s most promising young entrepreneurs to see what he was up to these days."

"promising" yes, he's great at promising, it's just the delivery he has trouble with!

"........runs three businesses and employs a small army of assistants."

Like hell he does!! What a load of cobblers! In his head maybe, but in reality he's run away from Coventry and come down to London to live in a renovated piano factory in Camberwell to try and make some money, leaving all his work colleagues in the shit back home to such a degree that they're closing down CBJL's plush serviced offices and James Leavesley, the "JL" of CBJL seems to have been unceremoniously dumped. Could CBJL be just the latest in a very long string of company failures for the skinny boy from Coventry?

"...........Social Helium, where he already has racked up an impressive list of clients"

Another lie!! Social Helium doesn't even have a proper website and, in all probability, any clients it has were nicked from a previous company where he's still the subject of an investigation for a number of breaches both civil and criminal!

"His company has developed proprietary social media management tools and is regularly involved as a facilitator at roundtable discussions with C-level executives from a range of government bodies, charities and companies including Yahoo, eBay and Vodafone to name a few."

Does he seriously think people believe this stuff? Firstly, any tools are based on PHP, which is open source, so how can his tools be proprietary? Secondly, according to what we've seen they don't work, are full of bugs and the code is so badly written as to be almost useless! As for this youth being taken seriously at a roundtable discussion with Yahoo, eBay and Vodafone - not a hope!!

This one we loved:

"......the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours."

There are only two things Calum Brannan is likely to have practised for this long. The first is lying and he's incredibly good at that! The second is auto-erotic stimulation.

"........combined with his successful track record......."

That's a bit of a classic - how many businesses has this boy had collapse around his ears? 3? 4? more?

The liquidation of a couple of them, Youmeo still isn't complete a year after the process started!

Well done Christer Holloman, you had us wetting ourselves with laughter at your article!! Thank you for the best laugh we've had in ages, you muppet!

That's your credibility dented for a while.

2009 - Long Year, Tall Tales, Downright Lies, Hairdressers and Social Helium

2010-02-15T02:07:00.001+00:00

In Calum Brannan's own words:

The long year – 2009
Some 12 months after we launched Youmeo, American startup Friendfeed launched and was achieving massive growth doing what we were doing. The worlds a big place and we knew that we wern’t the only ones predicting this is how social networking would become. Friendfeed was setup by ex-Google employees, with it’s growth doing so well we had our innovation validated but we and we failed to raise next round investment we needed and failed to secure a robust revenue model. Our team and investors all walked away with our heads held high, we had pushed for inovation and many ways succeeded – but what an experience it had been.
Present day - 2009 to now.
Aged 20, I’m working on some very exciting ventures collaborating with some of the greatest minds in British business, some are already trading and generating healthy returns:
- Appointment-Toolkit; this service provides text message reminders and marketing to doctors, hairdressers and dentists.
- Social Helium: a social media consultancy business where current and previous clients include house-hold names, ‘AAA’ PLCs, charities and government organisations. We are social networking experts.
- Spendego – a new type of advertising agency for todays social media world.
My teams are regularly involved in roundtable discussions and consultancy with leading CTO’s, marketing directors, CLO’s and CEO’s from a range of companies including Simon & Schuster, Vodafone, Bebo, AGA, Lighterlife, Christian Vision, Yahoo and Glam Media to name but a few.

What a load of garbage, Calum - The only time you're "regularly involved in roundtable discussions...." with AAA clients, CxOs, etc is between the time you fall asleep and the time you wake up. You're dealing with a charity that look like they are about to get hauled hard for their (alleged) unethical conduct in conspiracy with you and James Leavesley, i.e. Christian Vision

Aga aren't a client of yours, don't seem to have any formal business arrangements with you and probably wouldn't be too impressed to find that you're naming them as such.

Vodafone - can't find anyone there who's even heard of you and they weren't too pleased to find you're naming them!

Lighterlife - fair enough, they seem to know you.

But the rest is just a badly punctuated, poorly spelt figment of your fertile imagination, it seems. Who are these government organisations?

You were getting near the truth with "failed to secure a robust revenue model."

But then it all went wrong again with "Our team and investors all walked away with our heads held high, we had pushed for inovation and many ways succeeded – but what an experience it had been."

By the way, there are 2 "n"s in "innovation".

The truth is that Youmeo is still with the Liquidators and you're now on your 4th company in less than 12 months and you'd probably be flat broke by now if you hadn't (allegedly) lied and deceived your biggest (only?) client into coming with you for the rest of the Boost.tv project when you unceremoniously dumped Inormas after they had bailed you out from Red Brick Labs and youmeo!

It's just sad and pathetic to see you trying to perpetuate the lies - do you even know when you're lying anymore?

It's a pity (as a number of people have commented during this research) that, when you're young and described in such terms as "charismatic and persuasive", you can't find ways to use this for honest, beneficial purposes, instead of looking for a quick buck and acting like (what appears to be) little more than a charlatan and a con artist in order to achieve your ends, whatever the cost to others who choose to support you or buy in to your "bulls**t".

Just out of interest, do you actually know off the top of your head exactly how many individuals you've let down, either as investors or clients through failed businesses, failed promises or failed deliveries of product? Do you even care?

Summary of Calum Brannan's activities to date

2010-02-04T17:33:00.000+00:00

Calum Brannan started a company at 15, called PPLparty, he then rolled that into Youmeo with some funding.

Calum wasn't making money, but he'd met James Leavesley, so they got some more money from investors known to James through IOD West Midlands and created Red Brick Labs, as a way to make money whilst trying to get Youmeo off the ground.

If Calum is to be believed, they weren't making money (again), so they sought alternative funding and received this in Spring 2009 and put Youmeo and Red Brick Labs into receivership, paid for by the new funder, which still hasn't been wrapped up! - is there a pattern emerging yet?

Now we come right up to date - Calum and James then walked out of Inormas and are now (apparently) using the names "Social Helium", although there's no website up yet and have a new Limited Company called CBJL Ltd, (Co. No. 07055592) - clever name, don't you think? CB=Calum Brannan and JL=James Leavesley. They also appear to be based from The Quadrant Business Centre at 3 The Quadrant, Coventry, CV1 2DY, which looks quite nice!

So they've now abandoned 3 companies, one way or another, leaving many tens of thousands of £'s of debt behind them in the process and achieved all this in about a year and the 2nd company (Youmeo/Red Brick Labs) wasn't even fully wound up before they'd already moved on to the 4th company!

Where's the money coming from to fund this company? Well, that's a story for another day, and there's much, much more besides!!

CBJL start a new business to stop themselves

2010-02-01T01:33:00.000+00:00

We found it interesting that CBJL seem to have created another new business.

This one, called dot com Guardian claims to assist businesses by moderation of content.

To quote the site:

People powered moderation, for your brand.

We protect your brand and keep your community safe 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Our solutions are tailored to your exact needs.

How do we work?
dotcomGuardian plugs straight into your Facebook fan page or group. Within 10 minutes your brand can be protected from:
- Obscene, abusive or intimidating content
- Breach of copyright
- Defamation or libellous material
- Annoying spam wall posts

What makes us different?
We already work with some of the biggest brands to provide them with around the clock human moderation services. We don’t just use automatic bots, we manually review all content to ensure nothing slips through the net!
We actively moderate wall posts, photos, videos and links. We ensure that all users, including children are protected from unwanted content.
We can provide 24/7 moderation, or out-of-hours to support your existing team.

How to get started?
Prices are dependant on the amount of fans and the volume of the posts created by them. Contact us today and we can calculate your quote instantly, you could beup and running within the hour!

We find this especially intriguing as the CB of CBJL Ltd is Calum Brannan and the JL is James Leavesley, registered at James' home address. Their main office is at The Quadrant Business Centre in Coventry, although they seem to list this business as being based at an address which appears to be Calum's flat (43 Boiler House, Electric Wharf, Coventry, CV1 4JU), which must be quite a busy place!

Coincidentally, a post on another blog, by someone named "Anus McFlangyfart" with the text being repetitive use of the word "Anus" was apparently traced back to the Quadrant Business Centre's IP address 82.108.65.77....

inetnum:         82.108.65.72 - 82.108.65.79
netname:         QUADRANT
descr:           Quadrant Business Centre
descr:           Office
descr:           COVENTRY
country:         GB
admin-c:         NC1595-RIPE
tech-c:          EH92-RIPE
status:          ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

role:            Easynet Hostmaster
address:         Easynet Network Operations Centre
address:         Easynet Group PLC
address:         44-46 Whitfield Street
address:         London W1T 2RJ
address:         England
address:         GB
phone:           +44 20 7900 4444
fax-no:          +44 20 7900 4445
admin-c:         SMK-RIPE
admin-c:         CVK6-RIPE
tech-c:          SMK-RIPE
tech-c:          CL60-RIPE
tech-c:          PPD-RIPE
nic-hdl:         EH92-RIPE
abuse-mailbox:   abuse@easynet.net
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

person:          Nick Campbell
address:         3 THE QUADRANT
address:         COVENTRY
address:         CV1 2DY
address:         GB
phone:           +44 2476227373
abuse-mailbox:   abuse@uk.easynet.net
nic-hdl:         NC1595-RIPE
mnt-by:          EASYNET-UK-MNT
source:          RIPE # Filtered

So, in the context of:

- Obscene, abusive or intimidating content

- Defamation or libellous material
- Annoying spam wall posts

........ it would appear that it is actually everyone else who needs protecting from THEM!!

We're unsure exactly which one of the duo it was who posted this, although one of them is apparently quite mature and sensible and the other one is neither mature, nor sensible, which narrows it down. However, we are certain that one of the two has a closer affinity than most, perhaps even an obsession with this particular part of the body, due to his sexual preferences (which he makes no big secret about! - Young entrepreneur invites other teens to join network) although it looks like his proposed venture, described in the article, (guysconnected.com) was just a bit of hot air, or perhaps it was just another attempt to get publicity!

Mindful of the fact that Calum (apparently) struggles to string a decent sentence together in English, we're also left wondering where he's gathered a talented bunch of individuals capable of speaking over 30 languages and, more to the point, how he's going to pay them, because we understand he's not exactly flush for cash at the moment.

We're also wondering if Marc Resnick knows that they are using his URL in their screenshots on the website.

Maybe someone should give him a call on 02476 234 737 and ask him, after all they're a 24/7/365 service..... allegedly!

Trustees and the duties within a Charity

2010-01-27T15:12:00.003+00:00

Thinking back over previous posts, it suddenly became clear that there are some serious questions to be asked and answered in respect of Christian Vision and the actions of people representing the charity in respect of the Boost.tv project and the wider engagement with Calum Brannan et al.

According to this Charity Commission document :

Compliance – Trustees must:

(2) Ensure that the charity complies with charity law, and with the requirements of the Charity Commission as regulator; in particular ensure that the charity prepares reports on what it has achieved and Annual Returns and accounts as required by law.

(3) Ensure that the charity does not breach any of the requirements or rules set out in its governing document and that it remains true to the charitable purpose and objects set out there.

(4) Comply with the requirements of other legislation and other regulators (if any) which govern the activities of the charity.

(5) Act with integrity, and avoid any personal conflicts of interest or misuse of charity funds or assets.

Duty of prudence – Trustees must:

(6) Ensure that the charity is and will remain solvent.

(7) Use charitable funds and assets reasonably, and only in furtherance of the charity’s objects.

(8) Avoid undertaking activities that might place the charity’s endowment, funds, assets or reputation at undue risk.

(9) Take special care when investing the funds of the charity, or borrowing funds for the charity to use.

Duty of care – Trustees must:

(10) Use reasonable care and skill in their work as trustees, using their personal skills and experience as needed to ensure that the charity is well-run and efficient.

(11) Consider getting external professional advice on all matters where there may be material risk to the charity, or where the trustees may be in breach of their duties.

In this context you'll remember from previous posts that one of the Objects of Christian Vision is:

4. OTHER CHARITABLE PURPOSES BENEFICIAL TO THE COMMUNITY WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE PROMOTION OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP AND MORAL VALUES WITH THE EMPHASIS ON HONESTY AND INTEGRITY IN EVERY DAY LIFE AND IN BUSINESS.

According to the Charity Commission Website, the Trustees of Christian Vision are:

Contact !

MR TIM BOXALL
COLESHILL MANOR OFFICE CAMPUS
THE PAVILION
COLESHILL MANOR OFFICE CAMPUS
SOUTH DRIVE
COLESHILL BIRMINGHAM
B46 1DL

Tel: 01675 435500
Email: admin@christianvision.com
Website: www.christianvision.com

Trustees

So, in summary, it is the duty of the people named above to act in accordance with their obligations and duties as Trustees of Christian Vision.

With me so far?

This leaves us wondering how the emails we have seen which appear to show Robert Norman Edmiston "conspiring" with Calum Brannan and James Leavesley to take not just the Boost.tv project but also a healthy pipeline of business (or words to that effect) away from Inormas and bring them into a new company set up by Brannan and Leavesley can sit comfortably with an Object which states:

One of the emails we have seen is a discussion between Mr Edmiston and Brannan/Leavesley where they are discussing the possibility of Mr Edmiston actually funding, or part-funding this Newco (now known as "Social Helium").

Surely it cannot be right, moral, honest, ethical or anything else that Christian Vision stands for, according to its own Objects, for one of its Trustees (and major benefactors) to act in this way in connection with the purchase of products and services for the charity.......

Obviously, we may have missed something - we can't claim to know the whole story and don't pretend to, but from the evidence we have available to us, it certainly looks extremely dubious and casts some level of doubt on both the charity and individuals acting on behalf of the charity.

It also leaves us wondering whether the other Trustees are aware that this issue exists. However, even if Mr Edmiston hasn't actually put a penny of his own money into this new company, there's no escaping the fact that he knew precisely what was going on and specifically asked for Brannan and Leavesley to indemnify him against any possible come back from their previous associates, which speaks volumes doesn't it?

Should new evidence come to light, or we receive the "other side of the story", we'll gladly update this article to reflect the fuller picture, as we have no desire to be accused of bias or, God forbid, libel.

We do feel slightly sorry for Mr Edmiston in one respect:- If he wasn't working with such incompetent fools, then these emails would never have come to light and his judgement and actions would not be in question or, at least no more questionable (that we're aware of), than since the whole "Cash for Peerages" fiasco was forgotten about.

However, we're told that there's "absolutely stacks" more to come when the time is right and we have to say that we're quite excited about the prospect!

Whispers of irregularities in the personal finances of Social Helium Directors

2010-01-25T19:52:00.000+00:00

We are getting some pretty plausible whispers that the directors of Social Helium - Calum Brannan and James Leavesley may not have played with a straight bat in terms of their financial affairs in the first part of 2009, when it was still Youmeo.

We've heard many examples where Calum seems untroubled by what others might consider "dodgy dealings" and we know that straight is not his thing either, but playing games with HMRC is never a good idea!

We'll dig further and let you know - watch this space!

John talks a lot of sense!

2010-01-09T23:59:00.000+00:00

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32

What d'ya reckon Christian Vision?

Social Helium - Hot air or just pure "bulls**t"? Part 2

2010-01-08T20:13:00.002+00:00

We heard this week that Michelle Stott-Leavesley (i.e. James Leavesley's wife) had an accident around Christmas and that it was "allegedly" the fault of this blog!

Apparently, she'd had sleepless nights worrying about all this information being in the public domain and the fatigue and stress caused the accident. We were very sorry to hear this until we learned that the accident in question was actually whilst away skiing for Christmas(!!).

Now, I don't know about you, but sleepless nights aren't the most common cause of accidents whilst skiing. They are usually caused by a conspiracy between gravity and slippery stuff under-foot. Michelle is no virgin when it comes to skiing accidents, as their blog demonstrates.

We're glad you're OK, Michelle, and had such a great time skiing! Perhaps you'll have returned in a frame of mind to authorise payment of the Birmingham County Sports Partnership invoice that is apparently hugely overdue. You remember the one? We previously highlighted it in the Conflict of Interest post a while back.

Now, when it comes to hot air, spin, waffle and downright bulls**t (to quote Calum Brannan) then this has to be a prime example. Let's face it, when you're hurtling down a frozen mountain on two planks of wood, a bad night's sleep doesn't have much impact on your concentration.

If you're worried about embarrassing information being in the public domain, Michelle, then it's usually best not to do things you don't want people to know about, or to associate yourself with people who are likely to impact your reputation in a bad way!

Sleep well.

Social Helium - Hot air or just pure "bulls**t"? Part 1

2010-01-08T16:43:00.002+00:00

On Calum Brannan's Twitter http://twitter.com/CalumBrannan he has posted the following derogatory comment about Andrew Reynolds.

we should stumbled across the entrepreneur channel with Andrew Reynolds, me and the other half are dying with laughter! MLM bulls**t!! about 17 hours ago from TweetDeck

Surely someone working on Social Media and running a company called "Social helium" - indeed a self-proclaimed Social Media EXPERT should know better. You'd also have thought that such an "expert" would also have ensured that their syntax was correct, so their sentence actually made sense!

I wonder what Calum's "other half" thinks of Calum's general attitude, approach to life and difficulty with telling the truth - he must find it hard to cope with at times.

Calum Brannan and others - serious deception?

2010-01-03T20:33:00.002+00:00

Rumours have been rife for some time about a serious deception perpetrated between Messrs Brannan and Leavesley and Christian Vision, or people acting on behalf of Christian Vision - we're uncertain (if it's true) whether this was an individual act by the parties representing CV, or done on behalf of CV, but either way, if the evidence is as solid as it appears to be, then it's pretty serious stuff!!

NOTE - As stated at the top of this blog, the statements herein are believed to be true, but haven't been independently corroborated, as such, we must state that these are unproven allegations.

The crux of the matter is that whilst Calum Brannan and James Leavesley were still being paid by Inormas, they were negotiating with CV (or its representatives) to remove the Boost.tv business and other pipeline to a new company called Social Helium. This (it appears) wasn't just done with the full knowledge of Christian Vision representatives, namely Gavin Mills (Project Manager) and Bob Edmiston (Founder?), it seem it was actually done with their active participation, according to the emails we have seen!!

In these emails it seems Bob Edmiston and Brannan/Leavesley discussed terms for Edmiston to fund their newco (Social Helium). It must be remembered that this may not have actually happened at the end of the day, but the email is pretty clear - it was discussed, in detail. Furthermore, these emails also discuss the "healthy pipeline" that Calum Brannan and James Leavesley intended to bring with them from Inormas.

The emails, at best, appear to show Christian Vision's willingness to turn a blind eye as Calum and James basically stole Inormas's pipeline of business and move it over to Social Helium without the slightest signs of remorse or guilt at this blatant act of theft/fraud/misconduct...... call it what you like!!

We understand that Inormas's lawyers have written to all the parties concerned in the various roles but have yet to hear back from Brannan and Leavesley's representatives, probably because James and his wife, Michelle Stott-Leavesley, have been away skiing for some time.

The allegations also seem to include acts of theft/fraud/deception, breach of copyright, breach of fiduciary duty and various other offences, both criminal and civil - clearly these don't all apply to all parties.

One thing that is clear, if the emails are indeed correct, is that Christian Vision (or its representative in the shape of Mr Edmiston) have/has been working a long way outside their stated Objects, as displayed on the Charity Commission website for all to see, especially

Does this sound moral, honest and ethical to you.......?

Watch this space......

Calum Brannan's view of leadership

2009-12-30T19:29:00.000+00:00

This latest article on Calum's personal website/blog calumbrannan.com was worth republishing for its sheer irony and humour value:

Running a business at any point in anyone’s life can prove a challenge. There’s the race to breaking even [something he never actually achieved except with other peoples' money!], not breaking your team, smashing your competition and ensuring throughout the whole process you stay enthusiastic, optimistic and honest! [OMG - did he actually say that?]

Personally I’ve had no formal education in running a team (nor running a business) [and it seems to shine through as brightly as a lighthouse beacon!] but I sure have observed and seen many great leaders in action, and those not so great!

I’d like to share some of the do’s and don’ts which I try to live and work by.

Celebrate success whenever it happens in a way people appreciate.
Don’t do public humiliation when people mess up, it’s the easiest way to piss off your rockstar team and make them feel small and stupid.
Clear processes and expectations . Make sure everyone buys into the company vision. Remember, a company vision isn’t ‘All the directors on their private islands with a glass of red wine’. A company visision is a shared vision of where the organisation wants to be. [Yeah, right - just read this!]
In the start-up world, make sure your team doesn’t include bullies or ‘bastard bosses’. Whilst TV programs like the apprentice show great bosses who have blunt tactics, the start-up work place is too small for this kind of attitude. [Except when you have a prima-donna as your team leader who has, by his own admission, "no formal education in running a team (nor running a business)" and you need to keep them under control while they fritter away the cash........ maybe?!]
Always hire your rockstars on the salaries that you can afford and they deserve. Obviously in start-up companies this is much harder to do, but show them you care!
This final point is one that I have found to do at all times. Recently I’d like to be able to say I’ve really tried to live by this each day: Lead by example!

You can read the original post here http://calumbrannan.com/2009/09/leading-a-team-from-the-front/

Enjoy!

Calum Brannan and his team's technical abilities

2009-12-30T19:19:00.003+00:00

At his offices, in Coventry, very close to where he lives, Calum and James set about trying to build what they had promised their clients and getting as much publicity as they could:

http://www.wmictcluster.org/Inormas - read about how James Leavesley and Calum Brannan met

http://twitter.com/inormasmedia - "We are a social media technology and strategy company based in the UK. Our team is a mix of experienced marketeers and cutting edge technicians."

Unfortunately, these "cutting edge technicians" weren't quite as sharp as they claimed and an independent audit of the system demonstrated some pretty fundamental issues in just about every aspect of the system.......

Here's what the report about the system they'd developed for their largest client had to say at the time [it's important to note that we've been told that some of these issues have now been addressed.]

Introduction:
The Bxxxx TV site is far too complex as outlined in the points below.

The purpose of this document to highlight some of the more serious problems with a view to providing guidance on the way forward.

Overall complexity:
Although the scope of this site is quite wide, it has been built in a way that makes the system difficult to maintain. Inormas are currently in the development phase, before people are using the site and it already slow and cumbersome - making changes will become much more difficult (if not impossible) once the site goes live.

The data structure is extremely (and unnecessarily) complex, the database contains over 100 distinct tables. By comparison, Facebook (built on the same basic code, happily supports 250 million users and all their content and applications with just 30 tables.

The system does not appear to have any design documentation or project plans and most of the code contains no comments (something that goes against all best practice). Although the system uses a framework, it uses it poorly and with a system this complex the framework is no substitute for a clear definition of the goals of the system, how it has been implemented and how the data is organised – all of which seems to be missing.

Poor use of MVC (Model View Controller):
The purpose of an MVC framework is to separate the different major functions of the site so that it can be worked on by people with different skills and easily maintained on an ongoing basis.

The Model, which is the heart of data driven site, should contain the business logic, in particular the routines that access and update information or data.

The View should contain templates to display the site in different languages and for different devices like mobile phones.

The Controllers should identify which View a request needs and which Models it needs to access to provide the data for templates. All contemporary literature and generally accepted best practice (including Zend) recommends keeping the Controllers small and simple.

This site contains over 13,500 lines of code in the controllers, including one of the most important controllers, which has 3,000 lines of code on its own – this is anything but “Small and Simple”.

There is also far too much code in the Views, which do not use a dedicated templating language. There is even more code in the View helpers which also access the Models but do not show up in the Controllers.

This means that the organisation provided by the framework is almost completely subverted. The code starts to become one mass of up to forty thousand lines of interconnected spaghetti code, which probably explains why the system is so slow and makes it almost impossible to build a Version 2 of this system as it stands today.

The Controller should act as a manifest or list of which resources are required for a particular request or action. This means that when the site has performance issues, you should be able to quickly identify which resources are causing the problem. The complexity of the Controllers and the fact that some resource access goes through the helpers, not the Controllers, makes identifying performance issues very difficult and extremely time consuming and it make rectifying issues near to impossible.

Another good reason that the Controllers should be kept simple is that Models and Views can often be easily transferred from one framework to another (see next section), whereas the Controllers are more unique to a particular tool. Some frameworks use no code in their Controllers whatsoever.

The whole framework directory structure is also very complex, with no documentation or guidelines of why it has been implemented in this manner.

Choice of Framework:
It is debatable whether an MVC architecture is the ideal structure for a social media site. Because the site will contain content, which is defined by managers and ultimately end users, it is questionable whether the structure of the site should be driven by its directory structure, as opposed to being data driven. Again, this has performance implications.

Regardless, having chosen an MVC structure, it is difficult to see why Zend was used. It is one of the biggest and most complex frameworks and is widely regarded as one of the slowest performers, whether this site will scale to a million users is highly questionable.

Organisation and Management:
As above, a number of the fundamental design decisions were highly questionable, but the technical management of the site and development work is also flawed.

The source control system doesn’t work meaning that a number of people are directly using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to update the main working copy of the site. This makes it almost impossible to test potential solutions. It also means that updating the site is complex with a good chance that one persons changes could overwrite, or otherwise compromise, somebody else’s.

There is no structured project management or work allocation/monitoring, other than a bug list with over a hundred items on it. Key members of the team are often too tired to produce high quality work or communicate effectively. Tasks are poorly defined and undocumented, which is confusing for the users, bad coding practice and will be very difficult to understand in six months time when something needs fixing and the developer that did has left.

There are no written guidelines on the configuration of the site. The site would not work with a standard installation of PHP because a depreciated (out of date) method was used to separate the PHP code from the HTML in the Views.

All of the above leads to very slow progress, poor morale and the application of unrealistic deadlines, which were never met, which is also going to impact relations with the client. Whilst this situation may be acceptable in the design phase, it should not exist in the development phase and is completely unacceptable and untenable once the site goes live.

It would be far more intuitive both for people using the site and for people maintaining it in the future, if content, such as polls, surveys, adverts, etc. could be added or maintained by editing a representation of the page itself.

Conclusion:
It is possible to rectify some of the more serious problems but it would be highly unlikely that such action and direction would come from the same people who created the existing system.

A large amount of the system could be migrated to a better design but it would have to happen very soon before the problems became entrenched and the system needed to be started from scratch.

In other words, the current approach must be stopped and the solution migrated to a robust, reliable, scalable and properly built platform without delay because if this system goes live as it stands, it probably won’t work, it will consume vast amounts of time to keep it limping along and Inormas will lose credibility with the client to a degree which is probably unrecoverable.

So, the question is this: "Does this sound like the sort of project you would want to have spent a very significant amount of money on?" and, moreover, "Do these guys sound like they know what they are doing?"

"Cutting edge developers" that's pretty similar to how the people who built the Titanic would have described themselves at the time, doesn't it?

Cowboys cash in on Social Media

2009-12-29T17:22:00.002+00:00

It seems pretty clear now that the Social Media phenomenon has attracted it's share of charlatans and con-men.

Just as SEO has probably got as many poor practitioners as it has professionals, so Social Media seems to be the new get-rich-quick bandwagon.

Let's see what 2010 brings.

Interesting events today.......

2009-12-23T19:27:00.000+00:00

Today I registered with Christian Vision's new website Boost.tv and had a really good look around at the functionality. Whilst it's far from perfect, it's not bad, I have to admit!

However, without warning, my login stopped working and then I got password reset emails for this Blog, as well as my Googlemail account and Twitter account.

I wonder how/why that happened!

It looks like someone didn't want me sniffing around the Boost.TV website and then tried to hack this blog and my email!

Was that you, Calum Brannan?

Calum Brannan's appalling investor track record

2009-12-22T02:39:00.003+00:00

With three failures in about 6 months, Calum Brannan seems to have an amazing record of using other people's money but delivering very little in return......

Looking at the funding for Youmeo.com, he seems to have persuaded a large number of bright people to part with many £tens of thousands and yet achieved little, which begs the question as to how his new concept, "Social Helium" will fare.

Listed as shareholders for Youmeo, we have the following (amongst others!):

Norman Younger - 1 share - Investment £1.00

Calum Brannan - 89 shares - Investment £8900

Votivation Ltd - 5 shares - Investment £17150

Calum Brannan - 90000 shares - Investment £zero

Votivation Ltd - 5000 shares - Investment £zero

James Leavesley - 13970 shares - Investment £10,001

Paul Tuson - 4576 shares - Investment £9356.91

Lisa Meadows - 4576 shares - Investment £9356.91

Orchard Growth - 629 shares - Investment 1286.17

Richard Boot - 9779 shares - Investment £19999.91

Michelle Stott - 6985 shares - Investment £20000.01

James Leavesley - 5588 shares - Investment £9999.84

Richard Boot - 5588 shares - Investment £9999.84

Ronald Blease - 2235 shares - Investment £3999.58

3 others 1397 shares each - Investment £1000 each

(Note to self - Must investigate Votivation Ltd)

So, in summary, Calum Brannan managed to get more shares than anyone else (in fact, everyone else put together!!) without ever significantly putting his hand in his pocket, whilst everyone else funded his gravy-train to the tune of about £111,150 - I bet they were annoyed when it went down!!

Imagine how James Leavesley and Michelle Stott-Leavesley, a young married couple, must have felt pissing such a huge amount of money down the drain and yet James seems to stick with him - hard to understand unless he expects to see his money back sometime!! What other reason could there be for them starting CBJL Ltd and promoting their new concept of "Social Helium".

As anyone who's ever been to a fair knows, you should never trust a kid with helium - they either have a concentration lapse and let go of the balloon, so it floats away, or they breathe it thinking that it sounds cool to have a voice like Mickey Mouse!

I'm finding it hard to imagine why anyone would want to invest into, or even get involved with Social Helium or any business in which Calum is actively involved (!) when he's taken down, or attempted to take down, three companies in the same space within less than a year - does that seem like a safe bet to you?

I wonder if the DTI know he's had such an appalling track record?

On another note, we hear that there's been some very interesting movement with respect to the whole Bob Edmiston / Christian Vision / Boost TV saga and there should be more here very soon - If you like some scandal, generously laced with hypocrisy and dirty dealing, then you're gonna LOVE this!

We just want to ensure we've checked our facts before we publish.

James Leavesley - Conflicts of interest?

2009-12-08T19:35:00.002+00:00

James Leavesley was apparently discussing the possibility of creating a Social Media solution for Birmingham County Sport Partnership "CSP" . His contact at Birmingham CSP is/was a consultant called Michelle Stott.

This is a commercial solution designed to meet the needs of the CSP and James seemed to "win" the deal without too much trouble, which is always interesting when dealing with Government departments and the civil servant types, don't you agree?

The fact of the matter is that Michelle Stott's full name is Michelle Clare Stott-Leavesley and she is (apparently) married to James Leavesley - check out their blog!..... Hmmmm. Now, I wonder how James was apparently awarded the deal so easily.

Then we get to the fun bit - apart from the potential for a huge conflict of interest when a wife, acting on behalf of her client, can influence the awarding of a contract to her husband's company, as a supplier!!

The other interesting angle is that James did this whilst acting for Inormas, but seems to have transferred the deal across to his new company CBJL Ltd Registered 07055592 at MILTON PLACE 30 TENBY STREET, BIRMINGHAM, B1 3EE, which is (coincidentally?) the same address that Michelle's company is registered at - I wonder if that's their home address!

So, James was going to get paid for bringing in the Social Media solution and Michelle was being paid, as a consultant, to select his company as the supplier - surely there's a conflict of interest there......? What do you think? In this period, he was presumably claiming salary from Inormas for the business generation activities and expenses for going to see his wife and he did so with (apparently) no intention of allowing Inormas to benefit financially from a deal they funded. That sounds like it's verging on fraud.

Michelle is a Director of Sportoptima and here she is on the IOD Website and she also sits on the Board of IOD Young Directors Forum with her husband, James. She also runs a company called NXO Strategic Marketing, although she doesn't seem to be a key member of the senior team.

Calum Brannan re-writes his CV

2009-12-08T19:31:00.005+00:00

According to Calum Brannan's LinkedIn Profile, which he's obviously updated in the last few days (!!), he's never worked for Inormas! Instead, he now seems to have used the time between the Spring and Autumn of 2009 working for SalonToolkit and Youmeo.

I'm sure that this will come as a huge shock to the people who've been paying his salary for the last 6+ months, as they don't seem to get any credit at all for the time and money they spent on him!

Moreover, Youmeo has been in the hands of the Receivers for the last few months, since his Red Brick labs/Youmeo venture, which he operated with James Leavesley, ran out of money and went down the pan!! Which is why the original www.youmeo.com URL doesn't work!!

According to Calum's version of events, on LinkedIn, his employment history looks like this:

Social Media & Digital Consultant

CalumBrannan.com

Information Technology and Services industry

September 2009 – Present ( 4 months)

Helping businesses understand the everchanging world of social media and digital marketing.

Non-Exec

SalonToolkit Ltd

Internet industry

May 2009 – Present ( 8 months)

A new startup using SAAS to provide low cost, quality diary management and SMS reminder solutions.

Ambassador

Enterprise UK

Government Relations industry

September 2007 – Present (2 years 4 months)

We were founded in 2004 by the British Chamber of Commerce, the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors and the Federation of Small Businesses, funded mostly by what is now called the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.

Founder/CTO

youmeo.com

Privately Held; Internet industry

April 2008 – August 2009 (1 year 5 months)

Youmeo.com was founded by young entrepreneur Calum Brannan in 2008, after being re-branded from PPLparty.com

It is a social networking aggregator. This technology allows its users to manage and update all their social networks from one location.

Youmeo is based from a converted Electric Factory in Coventry and it's team includes people from Bebo, Yahoo, BBC, KPMG, Media Corp and Trutap.

Calum has 6 recommendations (2 reports, 1 co-worker, 3 partners) including:

Founding Director

Redbrick Labs

Information Technology and Services industry

September 2008 – June 2009 ( 10 months)

Founding Director

PPLparty ltd

Internet industry

April 2005 – March 2008 (3 years)

PPLparty was created in 2005 for the clubbing community, it was sold into Youmeo.com in early 2008, where a new board and team transformed it into the cutting edge social media aggregator.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, there you have it - Calum Brannan has re-written his CV and ex-sponged Inormas from it. This begs an interesting question - if Calum was working on the development of Salon Toolkit for this period of time, why was he asking for a salary from Inormas, when he wasn't actually doing the job they were paying him for........?

Perhaps more importantly, was he fulfilling his duties to clients like Christian Vision during this time? And, even more importantly, what has happened to all the code written for Christian Vision, by his team, whilst he was off developing Salon Toolkit at Inormas's expense....?

We've also heard a rumour, unconfirmed as yet, that there may have been some extremely unsavoury and possibly illegal shenanigans going on between Bob Edmiston, the multi-millionaire chief of IM Group, Founder of Christian Vision and major benefactor to Grace Academies in Coventry and Solihull and the Calum Brannan / James Leavesley duo, now operating as CBJL Ltd.

You'll recall from the earlier blog, entitled

A bit more background about Calum Brannan

That the 4th Charitable objective of Christian Vision is, quote:

Now, we're pretty certain from the information shown to us, that this simply isn't the case where Robert Norman Edmiston's conduct in this matter is concerned...... and, if it's true, there are going to be some pretty heated exchanges on the subject when the Trustees of CV find out about this!!

Not to mention the few words that "Benevolent Uncle Bob" is going to want to have with James and Calum about the mess they've made of things!!

On the other hand, where Calum's concerned, it's not even clear that he knows when he's lying and when he's telling the truth, as we have reports of him doing it without even taking a breath!

Watch this space - the juicy stuff is coming!!

Calum Brannan's apparently unethical approach to business

2009-12-04T18:41:00.002+00:00

More than one person has described Calum Brannan as, to paraphrase, "lacking in integrity" and some of the descriptions I've been given were far less flattering. "He'd sell his Grandmother for the bus fare home, even if it wasn't raining" was another I was given - I'm simply repeating what I was told!

In this context, it's not hard to see why he (apparently) finds it so easy to flit from one funder and company to another. PPLparty became Youmeo and not, as Calum suggested on his About page something he "successfully exited in 2007" - this is simply not true, he transformed PPLparty into Youmeo and took a large amount of investment.

Then according to Calum's About page

From the pioneering early days of consumer social networking, Calum founded Inormas in 2009; a business focused on providing social tools and communities for charities, corporate firms and global brands.

In fact, Calum was not the "founder" of Inormas, and according to Companies House, he wasn't even formally made a Director.

This is correct, but only after he'd put his old businesses, including Youmeo, into receivership - you'll notice that Youmeo STILL has pride of place on his website, despite the fact that it is in the hands of the receivers! Not only that, but he was actually still operating it until very recently, hosted on the servers of his most recent employer without their knowledge or consent!

There's more!

He also had a few other companies hosted on that server without their knowledge - appointment toolkit was one example, but there were others!

Calum and James also used the funding from the Inormas investor to stoke their pipeline for Social Helium, including claiming expenses for trips to see potential clients...... only to take this pipeline with them, when they left Inormas.

The question is this: "If you build a pipeline of business on company time, claiming salary for your work and expenses for the trips and purporting to represent a company, when you have absolutely NO intention of allowing them to benefit from that business - which Section of the Fraud Act covers this? False representation? Fraud by abuse of position? Or is it just plain Theft?

There's more!

It would appear that, as far back as late Summer, Calum and James had hatched a plot to create a pipeline of business, funded by Inormas, that they had absolutely no intention of allowing Inormas' investors to benefit from. In other words, it appears that for up to 3 months before they actually left Inormas, they were already planning to take the business that Inormas had funded and paid for in order to set up their new company, Social Helium! Bear in mind that everything they've done so far has FAILED!

We can reveal the names of these clients, but won't be doing so at the moment.

However, there's MORE!

It would appear that one of their larger and longer-term clients wasn't just aware of this, they were actually complicit in it happening. We have seen emails between Calum Brannan and a senior member of this client which agrees the basis upon which it will happen!!

And there's MORE yet, but that's for another day......

But, referring back to the points made at the start of this post, it's possible to see why some people might be motivated to make disparaging comments about Calum's integrity and trustworthiness, if the information above is even partly true.

A bit more background about Calum Brannan

2009-12-03T10:51:00.000+00:00

On Calum Brannan's Twitter Page, he describes himself as a, "20 year old, coffee drinking, technology entrepreneur. Straight from the classroom to the boardroom!"

With the warm glow of success behind him (perhaps he was still sitting in it, in fact) he moved on from PPLparty to other ventures.

He created youmeo, about which he says "Descrption: Youmeo, a simple utility to bring together all your social websites and friends into one place. You can update them all at once, we support the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to e-mail me for an invite code. I’ve been luck enough to work alongside some great people on this project including Angel Gambino (ex VP of content at Bebo, MTV and BBC)."

When that didn't make any money, he went into business with James Leavesley [Note: exact dates are unknown] and, together, they set up Red Brick Labs, funded by a couple of James' contacts at the West Midlands IOD. These eminent local businessmen each invested 5-figure sums into the business, according to my sources.

As RBL, they managed to pick up a few decent pieces of work, including Christian Vision and LighterLife to create social media platforms for these companies. Christian Vision, Registered Charity 1031031 (wikipedia entry), was set up and (as we understand it) substantially funded by Bob Edmiston. According to their entry on the Charity Commission website, their Charitable Objectives are:

1. ADVANCEMENT OF CHRISTIAN FAITH.

2. RELIEF OF PERSONS WHO ARE IN CONDITIONS OF NEED, HARDSHIP OR DISTRESS ARISING THEREFROM WHO ARE AGED OR SICK.

3. ADVANCEMENT OF EDUCATION.

Remember these, especially #4, as we'll come back to it in the future.

Back to Red Brick labs:

Earlier in 2009, our intrepid entrepreneur realised that, having come straight from the Class Room to the Board Room, he hardly knew how to run a bath, let alone a business and RBL went bust, leaving the funders with significant losses. Both Red Brick Labs and Youmeo were still in receivership at the time of writing this.

Unperturbed, Calum Brannan sought new sources of funding, which he found in the Spring of 2009 and he started again under the brand name of Inormas, having retained Christian Vision and LighterLife as clients.

To be continued......

A bit of background about Calum Brannan, in his owns words........

2009-12-02T23:19:00.001+00:00

This is taken from his website http://calumbrannan.com/about/

Uniquely placed, Calum Brannan is a young technology entrepreneur concentrating on cross-platform social media, SAAS (Software as a service) and delivering traditional services with the right balance of emerging and/or proven tech, ultimately to solve age old business challenges.

Background & Experience

Created www.PPLparty.com at the age of 15. PPLparty experienced massive growth and popularity. Calum grew the user base on a marketing budget of £0 to way over 400,000 users and successfully exited in 2007. [In fact, he morphed it into youmeo, but that's another story!]

Calum then shaped the social networking functionality at Trutap (Started by Doug Richard, famed for his appearances in BBC2’s Dragon’s Den). At Trutap Calum was the 2nd team member into the London office after the CTO. [And, it was here that he met Carl Uminski]

[He still names Carl Uminski of Trutap as his mentor. I couldn't make the link to the Trutap website work, so not sure if he's put the business into receivership, or something.....but I've been told that Carl has no issues with using other people's money to start businesses and walking away, although I've been unable to independently validate this allegation - but it's certainly a recurring theme in Calum's short history!]

From the pioneering early days of consumer social networking, Calum founded Inormas in 2009; a business focused on providing social tools and communities for charities, corporate firms and global brands. [with someone else's money bailing him out from the insolvency of youmeo/Red Brick Labs (more later)]

Calum [claims that he] and his team have the inside angle on the evolution & future of social media/networking. His clients include house-hold names, ‘AAA’ PLCs, charities and government organisations.

He is regularly involved in roundtable discussions and consultancy with leading CTO’s, marketing directors, CLO’s and CEO’s from a range of companies including Vodafone, BT, eBay, Bebo, Simon & Schuster, AGA, Lighterlife, Christian Vision, Yahoo, Oliver Rothschild Corporate Advisors and Glam Media to name but a few.

[Note - it's not as "regular" as he would like to have you believe - some of these names were just one brief meeting and no sale!]

Recognition and Publicity [which he LOVES!]

Recognition and awards include being named by the IOD’s Director magazine as their youngest ever “Director of the month”. Revolution Magazine also crowned Calum as a trailblazer for his first company PPLparty.com.

His ventures have achieved full pages in major publications such as the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Times, New Media Age, Revolution Magazine, City AM and the Birmingham Post.

When Calum isn’t working he loves traveling, spending time with his friends and family and even the odd cider on a sunny afternoon.

Availability

Calum is availiable for consultancy, speaking, drinks and writing. [But clearly not spell-checking!]