Well what a smashing day it was yesterday, my visit with The Kent IT Clinic to the PC Pro Offices in London was a real insight into how Dennis Publishing and PC Pro Magazine work as a company in the Computing Publishing industry.

The visit started of with an introduction from Barry Collins to PC Pro and Dennis Publishing, this session gave us a quick overview of the PC Pro magazine, and other computing titles within Dennis Publishing and the rest of the industry.

And then there was a How the Magazine Works Session in which an explanation of how PC Pro is producedfrom copy being written by journalists right through to the printed product that you’ll find on the shelves.

• How they select products for review/news
• How they stay ahead of the technology
• How the dynamics of magazine publishing are changing

After this Jim Martin, Labs Editor of PC Pro and former University of Kent Computing graduate explained to us:

• How they test PCs/laptops/printers/monitors in their dedicated labs
• How the PC Pro benchmark suite works and why it’s more accurate than industry benchmarks
• The role of external laboratory tests for acoustic/power surge testing

Once Jim had finished, Barry gave us a talk about the PC Pro Website:

• Explanation of how the PC Pro website is operated/designed
• Hands-on demonstration of the PC Pro website Content Management System
• The importance of Search Engine Optimisation and RSS
• How they monitor the website stats
• Future plans for the PC Pro website

And then he took us down to the PC Pro Labs for a quick tour.

After this it was time to leave the PC pro Offices and make our way home… though myself and my mates Steve and Rob had other plans, that being to go to some london pub’s and then head to Namco Station for some more fun. On the way there we also went on the London Eye which was pretty cool at night.

So hey check out the pics, and expect videos to come soon! 🙂