I try to keep up with developments in personal and organizational productivity. Here's a development in the area of randomized productivity management you should know about. It's from Alan Lepofsky, who is once again at the forefront of enterprise collaboration software with the instroduction of the new Socialtext Enterprise Chatroulette, or SECR.
SECR removes the hassle of having to manually locate subject matter experts, by allowing you to interact with any available colleague.
Looks like things are not well in the T-Mobile/Microsoft Cloud:
T-Mobile and the Sidekick data services provider, Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft, are reaching out to express our apologies regarding the recent Sidekick data service disruption. We appreciate your patience as Microsoft/Danger continues to work on maintaining platform stability, and restoring all services for our Sidekick customers. ... Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device - such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos - that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.
(Emphasis, mine)
I know that service disruptions happen al the time - that's why I rely on Lotus Notes. I rarely see them. As far as T-Mobile and Microsoft spinning this, I would classify this as a little more than a "disruptuon" and a lot more than an "inconvenience".
I am evaluating Web 2.0/Office 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 applications for our company and clients. Today I signed up for some trials and in the registration process I noted that by registering I was "agreeing" to the "terms and conditions". So, being the kind of guy that actually reads the fine print, I did.
I found this section most reassuring: (Name redacted)
He would probably wear like Marc Orchant carries. He would probably also be platform agnostic and live in the cloud
As part of my prep for the upcoming Office 2.0 conference, I'm listening to past interviews I've done, looking for excellent examples of people that are living and working the Office 2.0 lifestyle.
Listen in to this interview with my friends Marc Orchant and Michael Sampson as Marc gives us a tour of his gadget bag. This near-bulletproof gadget bag carries everything that Marc uses for mobile geek productivity.
The conversation is not strictly limited to gadget bags, though, as Marc shares how much of his data lives in the cloud allowing him to work from anywhere he has an internet connection.
We stop for a brief commercial break - to plug Michael's excellent article on Calendaring & Scheduling in Messaging News Magazine. A worthy read!
We then continue discussing about Marc's [then current] mobile devices kit and all of the glue that he uses to get all of these to work together nearly as in sync as do in Lotus Notes....
Having recently returned from the Enterprise 2.0 conference, where it seems everything was something 2.0, I've been thinking a lot about my own tool kit of methodologies and technologies that I use to stay productive accomplish results, personally and for my clients.
As I prepare for my upcoming presentation with Steve Barth at KM World: New Fundamentals of Knowledge Worker Productivity, I realize that while the current iteration of GTD has been a transformative tool for personal productivity for me, it doesn't go far enough for the way I work today...
The business world is a much different place from what it was just 15 years ago, when I was first introduced to GTD. The pace with which decisions are made and the information needed to make those decisions has increased to the point where we are expected to be connected at all times (omnipresent) and aware of all of the information (omniscient) that we need to know. Of course, that's not possible for us mere mortals. Nonetheless, the expectations remain.
I've returned from Boston and I'm in the process of downloading my video and audio files. Included are several podcasts and interviews. I'll start posting these this week.
Including:
Interview with The Brain creator, Harlan Hugh Interview with Marc "Batman" Orchant and his gadget bag Interview with Alan Lepofsky, Michael Sampson, and others.
If any of these are of interest you may wish to add my RSS feed to your iTunes or other podcatcher software.
We're in the home stretch on the Enterprise 2.0 conference sessions. Live blogging the conference has been an interesting experiment for me and the new Lenovo X61 Tablet PC had made the process easier - factors contributing to the tablet success for me include, small size, weight, excellent battery and power saver modes. Michael and I will try to do a podcast about our tablet experience later today.
We spend much time today on Many-to-Many collaboration. One-to-One collaboration works via email, phone, and IM, but the group aspect is the greater challenge and opportunity.
Expediting innovation:
What does it take to drive innovation? The technology is only as good as the people and processes around it. So, let's look at the soft stuff.
Got group intelligence? Speaker theme, "Personal Productivity is yesterday" (ouch! Sorry David.) Let's see where he goes with this theme...
Sam Weber, VP, Technical Services, KnowNow, presents on using RSS to bridge the information management gap between the people and information that drive business.
KnowNow's premise: information overload creates a gap. E-Mail is overused - 50% of email is junk - a communication platform or storage device?
Static portals are broken - <20% find portals useful - 16 clicks to find useful information
Search isn't the answer, either - > 50% of searches are successful - Burden lies on user
Our second GEEC (Global Experts in Electronic Collaboration) & GTD dinner was a success. A great time and some very interesting discussions. Tom Hagan of Actioneer joined us, too...
Hosted by David Coleman... What technologies will be the next big thing? David Coleman walks us through three examples of 2.0 tech from the bleeding edge of tech...
Notes from presentation: (Typing quickly) Lots of pressure in three areas: How to embrace changes in the business climate? How to maximize business effectiveness in the workplace? How do we promote innovation?
Instant messaging is moving beyond simple text. ~59% of enterprises have deployed enterprise IM platforms. IM is becoming the dashboard for UC (Unified Communications).
From left to right ... Adam Gartenberg (IBM), Nick Fera (Parlano), Eran Barak (Reuters Messaging), and Irwin Lazaar (Nemertes Research)
Real-time meetings are precious time. Status reports can be shared by email or other collaborative tech. Conferences are precious time in the day of the knowledge worker. Stop it. No more status reports. That's what collaborative tech is for.
A key take-away from this afternoon's Q&A session with the folks from Netage on E 2.0 case studies.
My reticular activating system continues to call to my attention the growing number of Tablet PCs -especially Lenovo Thinkpads, but several kinds.
I'm sitting next to Tom Austin, an analyst in high performance workplace computing at Gartner Group. He's got his Lenovo X60 Tablet PC on his lap, with OneNote 2007 open and taking notes. I'm here with my new Lenovo X61 Tablet doing the same, blogging in real-time with Lotus Notes.
I'm not taking notes in Ink - too time-consuming given that I'm blogging in real time. And, you should be thankful, given my handwriting.
Web 1.0 - Publish and everyone could view. Put up information anywhere and access it. Web 2.0 - See a web page and comment on it.
Web 2.0 Goes to work Economic - New business designs that address the "long tail" Technology - Lighter weight infrastructure & simpler programming models Community - Tapping the collective knowledge
The digitizing of information and communication is restructuring the basic mechanisms of control business has used internal and externally. David Weinberger keynote: Enterprise 2.0 is about meta data - information about the information.
When organizing physical stuff, limitation of current taxonomies is that the organizer decides how the physical world will be filed.
It's a sad thing that our information organization skills follow the way we organize our laundry.
Filing systems in the new paradigm: 1. Leaf on many branches 2. Messiness is a virtue 3. No difference between data and meta data Everything is now meta data. Meta data is the stuff you know and data is the stuff you don't know. 4. Users own the organization of their stuff (tagging, classification, etc.) You cannot tell what people are going to be interested in. Continue Reading "Meta data - information about the information." »
500 years ago, most all work was task work. Now, move forward 500 years.
Information work has come to dominate our work.
Dennis Moore, General Manager, Emerging Solutions, SAP is the next speaker:
Web 2.0 technologies are penetrating the enterprise Blogs 45% RSS 43% Wikis %35 (Source IDC, 2/2007)
Changing nature of work - more knowledge based
Increased consumerization of IT People at home often have better IT than at work. 200MB limit on email at work? I have terabytes of storage on my home server. People bring their expectations from home to work. This changes what is expected of IT
Remember PCs? They were not sanctioned. People brought them into the enterprise on their own. Web 2.0 is the same. Is this a problem? People are bringing these expectations from home.
Composite applications, mashups, etc. - transforming the enterprise.
Enable emergent processes - participation with security and compliance. Portals, Collaborative tools, etc.
Build on the
Wisdom of my colleagues
(the crowds) Leverage collective intelligence Enhance work patterns Improve self sufficiency
SDN Example 1 week to respond to Q via traditional network. 31 min to get an answer on SDN.
Derek Burney, GM of SharePoint tools at Microsoft, spoke on how to amplify the impact of your people with Enterprise 2.0 Technologies. People, not the technology, drive business outcomes and innovation. - Develop customer relationships - Drive innovation - Improve operations - Build partner connections [Action item: find a way to do real-time, high quality capture of pre-sized 320x240 images into my PC for my blog]
As I listen to the key presentations at the conference and product pitches from the E 2.0 vendors (and even to Marc Orchant's description of how he uses all these tools to link his systems) I can't help but smile and think about the stuff I've been doing with Lotus Notes - for the past 15+ years.
The speakers are saying that asynchronous & persistent collaboration is the real NEW of Enterprise 2.0. (Oh, really? Notes did that two decades ago.)
How does the saying go? There's nothing new? Well, I'm not sure about that, but at least a portion of what is now being billed as Enterprise 2.0 is definitely not new. I've been doing this for years.
Thank you, Lotus Notes. I look forward to Lotus Connections to bring us to further extend E 2.0
A typical 21 year old. 100 calls on mobile phone, but 2500 text messages. Something's going on in technology and how people use it. But are employers ready for the change in the work force entering the employment market? Presentation: Marthin De Beer, Senior VP of Cisco's emerging technologies group
Social networking is making is way into the workplace. Ready or not, it will be in your business, too. Whether you embrace it and bring it in or whether the new workers bring it in on their mobile devices or through their network of social interaction.
In the lobby of the hotel, Marc Orchant showed us his geek bag full of gadgets. I took photos and recorded multiple podcast segments whick I will post, soon.
Melanie Turek moderated this afternoon's panel on Unified communications. She gave a brief overview of Unified Communications. Unified communications is not unified messaging. Unlike most panels, where vendors are prohibited from mentioning their products, Melanie invited each presenter to talk about and show their products. My notes follow.
To assist with the real-time demonstration of SameTime 7.5 at the conference, David Marshak got a camera upgrade today...
Michael, one of the participants pointed out that the benefit of not having the camera integrated in to the PC is that it is easier to upgrade the PC without changing the camera. He said that if you are migrating from PowerBook to PC, you can keep your camera. Easy migration: Unplug camera, toss PowerBook, plug in PC. Simple.
I don't agree. Why PC vendors have not integrated cameras into their laptops is beyond me. This is a mess. Just look at David's laptop.
And - he has a long USB cable he has to deal with.
I'm sitting in the Unified Communications session, moderated by Melanie Turek, which deals with making unified communications work in the enterprise.
Michael Sampson and I spoke on Unified Messaging, a key part of Unified Communications, ten years ago at 1997 EMA conference in Philadelphia. (In fact, that's how we met.) It's interesting to see how far this technology has come, and yet how far it needs to go to deliver on the promise of anytime anywhere collaboration.
Michael is doing a great job of using both his Mac (as a presentation tool) and his Lenovo X60 Tablet as a mobile note-taking device for real-time display during the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Michael's taking notes using OneNote in real-time as he presents. Then, during each break, he uploads the notes to the web. (Example) A powerful use of a Tablet. Today, he's tethered by a 25' VGA cable. I'll have to show him how to use MaxiVista for true mobility. Note: if you want to do the same, you'll need to disable screen saver and auto-rotation. Also, you'll need to invert the tablet screen from the normal landscape orientation. Overall, it works well.
I'm at The Enterprise 2.0 Collaborative Technologies Conference in Boston. I plan to blog the conference using my New Lenovo X61 Tablet. I'll try to do most of this in slate mode. I want to get the full experience of using this cool tablet PC.
If you use Lotus Notes and the GTD methodology, you'll be pleased to know that the long awaited GTD and Lotus Notes implementation guide is now available. My colleague, Kelly Forrister, and her team worked hard to assemble a valuable collection of tips and tricks for using the Lotus Notes Calendar, Email, Personal Journal, and To Do's more effectively.
David Allen and I began using Lotus Notes long before The David Allen Company first opened its doors. Over the years, I've not only learned for myself what works and what does not, I've had the privilege to watch other highly productive people use Lotus Notes effectively. I think Kelly's done a great job of collecting some this wisdom in one place. Continue Reading "The GTD and Lotus Notes Implementation Guide is here!" »
Eric Mack On-Line
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