Eric Mack On-Line

I haven't even opened it yet and people are sending me links and tips. (Thanks!) Rick just sent me this video.


Hopefully, this weekend. I'm still fighting temptation.

My friend, Bob Walsh, of 47 Hats, just pinged me to ask that I look at his 3-minute video which explains why he should get a speaking slot at the upcoming Business of Software conference.

I have both of Bob's books, Clear Blogging, and MicroISV, and they are excellent. In fact, MicroISV inspired me to change the way I develop and launch eProductivity.

Bob has done a great deal of research and I know that his 18 minutes will return good value. It wouldn't surprise me to see another book come from his conference prep.

So, click here to go to the web site, find Bob's video and watch it. It's only 3 minutes long.
Then, if you like what you see, click the rightmost star under it and cast your vote for Bob.

Steve Barth and I will be speaking at the Office 2.0 conference next week. The conference organizers sent an Apple iPhone to all attendees and presenters; we will use them interactively during the conference. I received mine today.

I have resolved -- and blog here for accountability -- that I will NOT open the box until my presentation is finished.

I hate temptation.

Mark Twain says that the trouble with resisting temptation is that you may not get another chance.

I'll be good.

I'm preparing for an upcoming speech and I would like to collect some real stories of how bad or overactive management policy kills (or harms)  collaboration and knowledge worker productivity in organizations.

To get this discussion started, I've shared a tragic example along with my thoughts over on my Notes on Productivity blog.

Would you help me out by sharing a story of your experience? I understand the sensitive nature of this request, so anonymous posts are fine.

If you can, please spread the word. I'm sure I'll receive some very interesting examples. In a future post, I'd like to propose alternative responses that management could take to prevent a collaboration disaster.

Thanks.

Link

While Skype takes a PR hit for their outage, there are some good stories to share...

It's 4:45 AM. and I'm wrapping up a 3-way Skype voice+text meeting with my overseas development team; we're working on the next code release for eProductivity. My counterpart and I are using Lotus Notes for real-time management of the project and code releases. He's coding and I'm replicating every few minutes to test the latest code. Thanks to Lotus Notes, moving code changes is simply a click of the replicate button. The coming together of Skype for voice + IM and the ease of use of Notes as a distributed development platform facilitates collaboration at a level that was not possible (or at least affordable) just a few years ago. (Yes, I know that SameTime does Video and Audio; it even runs very well in my test lab. Unfortunately, I've not worked out the issues to get it to work in the real world yet. Fortunately, for high quality audio over IP, there's Skype. It simply works.)

We've been on phone - oops, Skype - for 6 hours with impeccable call quality. Between, Skype for Voice, SameTime for collaboration, and Lotus Notes I'm getting more done in new ways with people I would have found it difficult to communicate and collaborate with before. I suppose the only missed opportunity was that we did not use video. Perhaps next time.

It was a successful meeting and we are one step away from the next code release.  I'm tired.

I've been very slow at blogging. Client work and this new product development has required a lot of my attention in addition to my graduate studies and public speaking. I've got a lot going on. Now, more than ever, I appreciate the power of a good productivity tool kit.

I recently took the digital sandbox on the road and I've got two very interesting podcasts coming up: the first, with my friend and colleague, Kelly Forrister and the second with another good friend, Marc Orchant. Kelly and I will talk about how I use the Lenovo X61 Tablet PC, and Marc and I will talk about what's in his gadget bag. Stay tuned...

The Skype outage happened at a really bad time for me as I was set to meet with my UK eProductivity development team in several meetings. Fortunately, I was able to set them up on IBM SameTime and business continues on.

Now, if I could just get SameTime to match Skype in it's ability to penetrate firewalls (e.g. My SameTime Connect client won't for audio or video, even though Skype could) I'd be a happy SameTime camper. Still, it's great to have SameTime and I love the rich integration with Lotus Notes.

Thank you, SameTime team.

Next Action: Temporarily move Skype to DeProductivity list.

My colleague, Robert Peake, is on holiday in England. He blogged about his mishap playing with the in-flight entertainment system on an Air New Zealand Boeing 747.

He describes beating the computer at chess a few times and then...

After I selected the default option, the entire operating system crashed hard into a black screen and began rebooting. Not surprisingly, the boot screen proudly proclaimed Windows CE circa 2004, then began loading up files using the ancient Xmodem serial protocol. Finally, it booted itself back into friendly pictures of New Zealand coastline. I spent the rest of the flight hoping Microsoft hadn't won the bid on the flight controls.

Only slightly funnier was, Paul's response:

Attention all passengers... This is Capt. Harris from the Flight Deck. Will the passenger in seat 24B stop messing around with our navigation system. It's now put us on course to Iceland, which is not good... Thank you.

Full post: Robert Peake

Watch and listen, as this adorable child recites the 23rd Psalm...



Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Amen.

What a blessing for this child and her parents, that they would teach her to hide God's Word in her heart. Kathy and I endeavor to do the same in our family and through our service in the  Awana ministry.

I've been so busy consulting with clients this week that I've had to do a number of emergency scans of my in-box, leaving all non-urgent emails to be processed some day...

Well, today is going to be some day:



Ouch!

Thankfully, I've got eProductivity for Lotus Notes and I'm experienced at Getting Things Done (Thank you David!); I know how to get back on track quickly.

I'll see you on the other side.

If so, you can stop reading now. For the rest of us - perhaps less fit or less effective - there's much that we can do to improve our performance.

As I thought about what I wanted to write in this post, I kept coming back to these words from inside the jacket of a book, called The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz:

We live in digital time. Our pace is rushed, rapid-fire, and relentless. Facing crushing workloads, we try to cram as much as possible into every day. We're wired up, but we're melting down. Time management is no longer a viable solution. ...managing energy, not time, is the key to enduring high performance as well as to health, happiness, and life balance.

The number of hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. This fundamental insight has the power to revolutionize the way you live your life...

I'm ready for the kind of change that insight can bring...

Continue Reading "Are you fit and effective?" »

I'm always looking for tools to make Notes development more productive, so earlier this year, I contacted TeamStudio and Ytria to look at their tools. Ryan Hum, of Ytria, responded the same day and immediately and offered to assist me. Since then, we've chatted about some of the tools that Ytria offers and last week, I met with Andre Hausberger, of Ytria, to discuss their suite of developer productivity tools for Lotus Notes.  I had several interests: professionally, I evaluate tools so that I can make recommendations to my corporate and enterprise clients that do their own Notes/Domino development; for myself, I wanted to learn how these tools could save me and my team time as we continue to enhance eProductivity for Lotus Notes.

I plan to post a more thorough review of the Ytria tools, once I have had the time to really work with them and to get feedback from my developers.  Meanwhile, I have posted some of the key take aways from my conversation with Andre over on my Notes on Productivity blog.

Ytria is making all of its tools available for free
Through August 26th, Ytria is making use of all of its tools available for free. I posted the details on Notes on Productivity as well.