Stu Downes

For many who read this blog or stumble on this post the Workplace is a strange term.  Increasingly for many of us a surface available to us is where we work.  The Workplace is increasingly the best place to do what we need to do which could be solitude, remote collaboration, in-person collaboration.  I’m focusing deliberately on my work style here but its clear that as we go forward we need to think more about the areas in which we work.  I want to introduce a concept which is how I talk about the workplace.  I consider the workplace to be the location that work is done; office, facility, home, cafe, hotel, transport hub, train, plane etc..  Within many of those workplaces are workspaces.  Its the workspace that gives us the possibility to improve the performance of people and teams; but how often do we see a vanilla fit for an entire office.  This came up in conversation this morning with @grahamchastney and we are both mystified by this vanilla fit which we see in most enterprises.  We really need to consider the roles people perform and their needs in terms of solitide, in-person collaboration and remote collaboration in order to design spaces which provide for all their needs.

For true innovation its the home that gives us most freedom and the designs of work and there are a massive array of examples of workspace design available on lifehacker….enjoy and have a think about your workplace.

 

No doubt we are all thinking about how to improve various elements of performance in 2013.  Some will think about workplace strategies and will want to focus on improvements in:

• Collaboration
• Innovation
• Retention and attraction of talent
• Brand
• Health
• Productivity

I used the bullets from Profession Frank Becker of Cornell University.  What he focused on was thinking about the workplace needs us to think way beyond the technology sphere.  Frank correctly highlighted that we measure cost and satisfaction …. and those measures can’t help us understand how we improved any of the 6 bullets.  The other observation he makes is that in most cases organizations are not truly interested in fully understanding the impact of changes.  In Frank’s words he states that in many cases workplace design changes in the physical places we work are measured after the event solely on cost and satisfaction, deeper studies are rarely performed and key stakeholders either “believe it works”, “hope it works”, or “proclaim it works”.

My view here, and something I’ll try and focus on in 2013 is there is a blend of experience design required to make workplace services successful.  Firstly there is service design, a true end to end view for how organizations provide services to clients.  Secondly workspace design, how the physical workspaces that people utilise can be designed to be as efficient as possible.  Thirdly technology design, how do we design a user experience which meets the needs of the processes or activities being performed and how do we make that experience as productive as possible.

His overview of real examples and an academic approach to measuring the success of workplace is worth 30 minutes:

 

Increasingly in my conversations with customers and internally with colleagues I’m talking about Supplement Your Own rather than Bring Your Own.  For some reason Bring Your Own resonates with replacement, and that isn’t what I observe in industry today – supplementing enterprise IT with personal technology is what we see today.  We all see a massive pull from senior executives and information workers to allow enterprise services to be accessed from personal devices, primarily the iPhone/iPad but increasingly Android based devices.  So I’m blogging here because the expression seems to resonate well – and this is my laying claim to the term

On a more serious note this is really about recognition that the new wave of disruptive touch screen devices are primarily consumption and triage devices.  Serious creation is still best reserved for large monitor(s) with a keyboard and mouse (or other specialist pointer), so even with a tablet like the one I’m using now with a keyboard, the creation use case is limited (e.g. I wouldn’t want to create a complex conceptual architecture diagram on a capacitive touch tablet yet it would be the best device to view such a diagram using pinch-zoom and scrolling to navigate such a diagram).

The other point to note, and I’d be happy to chat to colleagues or customer in more detail, is that BYO shouldn’t just be considered at the device level.  We consider all the layers above the device as potentials for BYO, or should I say SYO…..

 

There was a lot of interests sparked late last week on a Forrester report relating to the future of end user computing. In a blog post relating to the research the author, Frank Gillett, tells CIOs that the future of end user computing being dominated by tablets:

…tablets are very good for information consumption, an activity that many of us do a lot of. Content creation apps are appearing on tablets. They’ll get a lot better as developers get used to building for touch-first interfaces, taking advantage of voice input, and adding motion gestures.

They’re even better for sharing and working in groups. There’s no barrier of a vertical screen, no distracting keyboard clatter, and it just feels natural to pass over a tablet, like a piece of paper, compared to spinning around a laptop.

All these reasons add up to our prediction that tablets will become the preferred, primary device for millions of people around the world, which is in the just-published report “Tablets Will Rule The Future Personal Computing Landscape.” Note that there will still be lots of personal computers sold and in use — in fact our casual estimate is that there will be 2 billion PCs in use by 2016, despite growing tablet sales. That’s because tablets only partially cannibalize PCs. Eventually tablets will slow laptop sales but increase sales of desktop PCs. That’s because many people, especially information workers, will still need conventional PCs for any intensely creative work at a desk that requires a large display or significant processing power.

Frank also mentions in his report the concept of a new form factor for personal computing called a Frame.  This was picked up in a little more detail by Matt Hamblen in this post on ComputerWorld:

Gillett also wrote a 17-page report with other Forrester analysts for clients that described ways tablets and smartphones will fit into a new form of PC. Called “frames,” these new PCs will essentially be displays that have sensors, processing power and wireless docking to work with handheld devices of all types.

Frames will be stationed in meeting rooms, coffee shops and more, Forrester said. Tablets used with frames will substitute for laptops in significant volume, the report said.

I have to say the idea of frames resonates well with my, and many other knowledge worker use cases.  I’m more questioning of the Frame use case when we consider task based workers and I have a concern that those work styles are increasingly forgotten, yet they will always be a significant portion, albeit a minority of the future of our workplace.  In terms of the way we think about desktop at CSC our strategy for delivering efficiently to mixed work styles within the enterprise remains sound, some of the end points and infrastructure may change with time but our conceptual architectures remain valid.  That’s a relief!  That last comment was a little flippant as we have to be preparing now for significant changes in the way workers interact with technology especially as it relates to applications and data.  The challenge of managing information in the cloud and the blend of information in enterprise and personal cloud services will be an increasing focus for CIOs.

Disclosure: Stu Downes is employed by CSC and is the global portfolio executive for desktop services but the views in this article don’t necessarily reflect those of CSC.

 

I’ve recently finished reading Speaking PowerPoint by Bruce Gabrielle which I would recommend to anyone who needs to present information in order to reach a decision or build trust. The book is the first presentation book I’ve read that deals with the full range of presentation styles (reading decks, business decks, conference decks) and helps you understand how to formulate your arguments into a cohesive message that looks superb.

In a great easy to read format, spoiled only by the lack of colour, the book helps on how to build a story based on the evidence you have, how to present the story and then on the slides themselves includes excellent guidance and recommendations for using the correct style of title, the correct layout, the right amount of text, the appropriate use of colour and all of this without creating “powerpoint shock”.

The book incorporates many real world examples of how presentations and presentation slides could be improved. The book also reminds us why it is so important given that even back 2,300 years Aristotle recognized that decisions were made based on logic and emotion. This book certainly has helped me present information more logically and use the look and feel of a presentation to win the emotions too.

I’d recommend you purchase the book. If you do I’d recommend you print the colour images before reading.

Other links:

speakingppt.com

LinkedIn Group

YouTube Videos

 

First recommended purchase is a Pogo Sketch Stylus for the iPad. I bought this to use with apps like notes plus which offer a magnified writing pad and a wrist pad. I still find capacitive touch screens are nowhere near as good as a pen based Tablet PC but the pogo is worth it for the iPad if you like to sketch or can tolerate the handwriting limitations.

Second top non-tech technical purchase of 2011 was my backpack. I stumbled across The North Face Surge in an outdoor shop, the point of sale was awful in terms of helping me understand the bags potential. Five minutes and one bored Mrs Downes later I’d bought it, it is the first bag I’ve owned which ticked all the boxes. It will carry a small laptop (15″) which suits me, plenty of room for the iPad, a pocket big enough for me to last a couple of days from one bag (big bonus for flying), a third pocket for pens, papers etc.. A fourth pocket has plenty of small zipped storage for my mouse, cables and small USB peripherals. That last pocket and a fifth pocket are easily accessed when the bag is laid flat on a desk, the fifth pocket being that for a power supply. It’s just a really well designed bag which also has elastic pockets either side for water / umbrella making it excellent for commuter journeys (for me mainly off the train at Euston and onto the tube). Well recommended, but you’d probably not pick any of that up if you went to The North Faces web site or visited an outdoor shop. This you tube gives a good overview:

 

please let me know whether you like or dislike it.  I’m not sure it will survive the week at the moment.

 

We all live in a world where managing information is key.  If I look back 20 years I got most information from books and libraries, research involved paper and general announcements and news came through in trade magazines.  Its an area that has been completely turned on its head, and continues to change.  I thought I’d spend a few minutes jotting down how most information arrives at my door and what I do with it.

• Email: is generally where colleagues suggest information, partners email me and general update newsletters arrive with links.  These either generate a file or a URL.  Files if I class as personal knowledge are off into Evernote and corporate knowledge off to the appropriate repository.
• Web pages: either arrived in an email, via twitter, within RSS feeds or from direct searches.  Most web pages get read and ignored.  Some get read and instantly stored to Evernote or Instapaper (Evernote when I know its needed for good and Instapaper when I need to read later or take time to digest).
• RSS: is still a great source, and like twitter tends to be where I keep up with industry news and announcements.  What I love about Google Reader and Instapaper is there is a clever tool that takes all starred items and automatically posts them to Instapaper.
• Instapaper: is absolutely excellent.  It allows me to read on a number of platforms at a time that suits me.  The new features to have friends and share favourites is excellent.  It means I get wisdom from people much cleverer than I.  The other feature I love is all my favourites flow automatically into Evernote.
• Evernote: is ultimately my resting place for content and knowledge.  I know when its there its indexed and searchable, its available on numerous devices and from the internet.  I know wherever I am I‘ll be able to find information when needed.

It’s a far cry from the first job when I graduated where very little information was available online and most was available at the laboratory’s library.  Now I have better knowledge management and retrieval tools available to me than I could ever dream of from any enterprise.  I capture knowledge from new alerts, friends, industry experts and use the wisdom of others selecting the best information for me to consume.  I wonder how my children will laugh at these primitive tools in another 20 years time!

 

I’ve had some time recently to catch up on a number of TED talks.  Rachel Bostman spoke in Sydney on 2010 on the subject of Collaborative Consumption.  The main themes of the talk were society moving to a point of utilising technology to highlight reputation, and trusting that reputation in transactions which are moving from ebay and swapsites through to lending money or sharing expensive resources such as land or cars.

One graphic that stood out during the talk was this visualization from Jason Tester proposing a reputation statement account, and he first created this back in 2004.

Image Rights Creative Commons (Jason Tester) (Source)

There are some interesting points of reflection in 2011 which make me believe we finally have the critical mass to start to see reputation based models moving into employment models.  Those are:

• We are increasingly trusting of reputations to allow us to make purchases, its only natural that this will progress to skills and services.
• LinkedIn is now over 100 million people strong, this means that we all find peers and opportunities from this community than we do from our much smaller social circle or enterprise communities.
• We increasingly are working as specialists in the long tail and the likelihood is that within the tail is where we will find peer support, opportunities and employment in the future.

The question is when?  Employment contracts today aren’t ready for the change, simple financial tools such as credit rating tools aren’t ready for the change.  It seems that we need to see the shift that society is making in trusting reputations to be repeated by institutions.

With that comes cautions too.  How easy would it be for our reputation to be damaged maliciously etc..  Its an exciting new world we are moving towards but its also just a little bit scary too.

 

Are we getting to the point that we can’t read anything now?  I have this problem at work and at home.  Like most knowledge workers the workplace can be a cacophony of distractions.  Reading means locking myself away somewhere quiet.  Home is a cacophony of distractions too.

To support us all in the quest to make reading articles from online sources easier, I’ve turned, about 12 months ago, to scanning then batching items together using  Instapaper.  So everything goes there from web pages I’ve landed on from searches to articles I want to read from my RSS feeds.  Instapaper is superb, especially the iPad app which makes the reading experience great (but it works on paper too and lets you group things together to print – great for when electronic items are still banned on the plane).

But I see it “do it later” more and more.  It seems its like the free credit we get on sofas “buy now pay in 400 years time” – even YouTube now has a watch later feature.  We seem to be drifting that way with consuming information.  I doubt I’m alone in saying I wish I had more time to consume information and add value to it, after all that’s what I’m paid to do – yet the hardest thing to find time to do is consume information and then even harder (if you can get harder than hardest) is make the thinking time to add value to it.  I think tomorrow might see a scythe being taken to some repeating meeting (be warned folks!)