Stu Downes

Like most of the folks reading this I’ll spend a good proportion of my day in remote meetings.  Generally these are:

• one to one
• multi-way audio
• multi-way web meeting (some with integrated audio)
• Video calls (few)

But more importantly I’ll class those meetings as:

• relevant to me for most of the meeting
• relevant for some of the meeting
• only relevant for a small portion of the meeting
• irrelevant

Now hopefully you’ll have sent me an agenda before the meeting so I won’t even attend the last category, so lets ignore those (I tend to duck out politely).  The top of the list is easy, I tend to remain totally engaged throughout those meetings as they are completely relevant to me and what I need to achieve.

The problem comes of meetings where only a portion of the meeting is relevant.  When this is the case I suffer the temptation of distraction, like you I have lots to do and this call is dragging on and I’m not to interested in what X is saying.  The problem is that after we’ve switched off something relevant comes up and a question is directed our way – “could you repeat that please” becomes a well heard phrase.  So in order to maintain attention I have to take some basic measures (which are actually more difficult than they sound):

• Audio calls:  I walk around!  Carry a notepad and pencil and literally stretch my legs (sometimes outdoors) but generally round the house when working from home.  I really find it helps maintain concentration – but more importantly takes me away from distraction!
• Web meetings:  I have to force myself not to get into IM’s, read emails, tinker with my action lists or write that report I need to finish.  Its really hard – I know I’m not the only one who finds it hard.

In summary my survival technique is to avoid all calls with limited relevance and for those where I have limited input either pre-arrange a subset of the call to attend OR really concentrate on avoiding distraction.

What are your tips?

 

As we draw to the end of 2008 a quick post to say thanks for reading!  Its been a busy year at this end with challenges and changes at work, together with the challenge 2 young boys bring to the equation.  Although both bring their own fun and have been immensely satisfying.

The blog is still here, still posting as much as possible, and about 220 of you subscribe via RSS, 3 via email and about 90 hits per day look at content generally from search engines.  Most of the search engine hits are for Sametime plugins (for which Google rank me 2nd – how do you demote yourself!?!?).  Congratulations to the one person who visited after searching for “sleepwalking data”. 

Twitter remains my primary status update tool (“follow sdownes1972” in twitter or go here). On days then I post to the blog and inform twitter about it the web hit count shoots up.  I expect that trend will continue perhaps to the detriment of RSS.

Looking forward I expect we will all be touched in some way by economics, only today on Christmas eve a family member found their employers hadn’t paid any staff.  I expect though that in my areas (collaboration and end user technology) there will be continued demand where organisations seek benefits in terms of travel reduction, exploiting partnerships and removing cost through virtualisation.

I’m thinking of some themes for the blog for next year (and your thoughts are welcome):

• Tips:  Sharing ideas, tools, or techniques that I feel help me and may help you.
• Remote Meetings:  A series exploring remote meetings, what works, what doesn’t, how I best use the tools available to me.
• Novel and New:  My take on consumer tools which maybe haven’t hit the enterprise.

A Merry Christmas and just in case I don’t get to post here before 2009 a Happy New Year.

Technorati Tags: Reflection

 

Its nice to reflect at this time of year on how technology is making a difference (7mins long):

Link to video

 

Seamless Teamwork

I’ve just finished Michael Sampson’s book "Seamless Teamwork > Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways"

The intended audience is not techies, its business users who need to use SharePoint within their organisation to aid projects, especially where the team are not co-located.  Michael gave lots of great advice in terms of forming a team, understanding stakeholder requirements, developing deliverables, status reporting before finally setting direction, drafting deliverables and seeking feedback.  Michael discusses how to use SharePoint to the level that the project leader would need to understand (creating lists, modifying views, using the wiki, document libraries, workflows etc.).

I found the book an easy read and could relate the advice and recommendations to my every day project work.  I think everyone will learn something from the book, I certainly did.  Even better is the price, its about the cost of let me think, minutes worth of consulting, yet give this to key evangelists within the business and rewards will be great.  This is especially true for most organisations where the business leaders aren’t savvy enough to make best use of the IT they are provided.  If you are running a SharePoint implementation and would like better adoption then give this book to key people, read its message and use the techniques in your self help implementation.

It makes me realise that as IT organisations we miss a trick after we’ve delivered a project – but actually makes me think that vendors should all offer works such as this to help business users gain from their solutions. I’m sure it will do the rounds in for my local readers.

 

Well those who follow my twitter stream knew this weeks ago (there is a sign of the times).  I have a new role, still at CSC.  See more on LinkedIn.  I’m going to try and continue blogging here but due to the nature of the role its more likely to be general thoughts, tips and opinion rather than posts on my day to day working activities.

 

I’ve used this for a while but realised in conversations not many people do.  How many times have you wanted to be on Sametime and broadcast a Do Not Disturb except to a select Group.  Well you can in 7.5 or above.  When logged in go to File-Preferences, select Privacy, enable the function, then find/add names to the list.

 

I find it amazingly important for my stress levels to be able to stay on top of everything I need to do.  Even if it means that the list of things I need to do (or delegate) is sometimes overwhelming.  I’ve shared previously how I was working with OneNote and Notes for recording tasks while in meetings and then action them from the to-do list in Notes.

Well a new adventure started about a month ago.  I’m afraid neither Notes or Outlook worked for me as task management tools.  I like lists, and lots of them.  Remember the Milk is all about lists.  I’m not going to explain how it works here as they do it much better here.

The biggest differentiation for me is the multiple modes of device I can use to input tasks.  I can email tasks, I can access the web (both mobile and full featured) or I can simply twitter.  And this for me is the best feature for inputting tasks, in that is is intelligent.

d rtm do this action next friday

Becomes just that a task called “do this action” due for completion next Friday.

And d rtm !today returns all the tasks I have today in twitter, but I normally use the weekly action list as a reminder of today’s tasks and those coming up (and more twitter shortcuts).  It means during meetings I can rapidly add actions to my lists, I can also do it from the blackberry using twitterberry which means when I remember something I can simply fire in a task wherever I am.

Being a non-sanctioned tool within most enterprises folks may wish to generalise some of the task names so as not to give away any secrets, as I found recently its easy to type “s rtm taskname” accidentally in twitter and broadcast the task to your followers.

Working on the web the ajax interface is superb and the supported shortcut keys really help in terms of using it productively without constantly clicking or tabbing through boxes.  Anyone designing a to-do list feature should look at this product, I’m hoping it will influence the future products we see in our desktop software.

I also utilise the googlemail firefox plugin and the google gadget on my firefox browser home page.  All in all, if you don’t like your task management tools give remember the milk a whirl.

Cudos to Mrs Downes for she wanted a tool to use, I suggested RTM, and she raved so much I just had to try it.  Now I’m hooked!

 

Steve, Samantha and I have all been at VoiceCon.  Its been a good event, the final day being tomorrow.  During that time I’ve been experimenting with the best way of note taking and sharing information.

Option 1 : MindJet MindManager

Failed for me.  With structured sessions its not the correct medium.  Perhaps for taking notes during unstructured discussions it would be better (I’ll try that tomorrow).

It just didn’t let me take notes against slides and this really was where I wanted to add some value to the presentation.  I also miss the audio recording features available in other products.

Luckily most of the sessions are available in PDF and where this is the case the best option has been…

Option 2 : Annotating PDF’s

I chose to print the conference slides (PDF’s) into OneNote and then use the X60 in tablet mode to take notes unobtrusively without keyboard disturbance to fellow attendees.  Thats not to say that I didn’t use the keyboard!  But this is only good if slides are there before the session and time permits to print them through.  I am aware of pdf annotator but haven’t used that tool.

Option 3 : Onenote with Audio recording

OneNote with X60 in tablet mode.  The problem is the internal microphone on the X60 picks up all your pen strokes and makes listening annoying, so I’m now using my webcam as the microphone although an experiment in video recording during the sessions failed as it was just too difficult with a webcam to focus on the presenters.  The value of OneNote comes when reviewing my notes, I can hover my mouse anywhere in the notes and then play the audio at that point (see highlighted section in the image above) thus reminding me of the point in the presentation for the note.  It was also useful when using OneNote with slides pre-loaded to draw small lines between slides so as to have a record in OneNote of slide transitions.

Option 4 : Onenote with keyboard not tablet

The other option with OneNote was to do the same but use the keyboard.  I actually found this the most useful in terms of being able to re-use the data quickly afterwards, i.e. to copy to livewriter for my blog or copy to our corporate wiki for the wider team.  There are lots of opinion and strategy thoughts that I don’t place in this blog.  So in the end typing won the day.

Conclusions and Evernote

I also tried Evernote in both tablet and typing mode, Steve used this to great effect to publish his notes from sessions, but I wanted more granularity in what I published and preferred coming to OneNote and adding images etc.  However Steve’s approach was more efficient and certainly faster.

 

Johan Krebbers, Group IT Architect, Royal Dutch Shell

Johan gave an excellent overview of Shell’s strategy for their 108,000 employees in 130 countries.  Their solution is a Microsoft Office Communication Server infrastructure with other software as shown in the slide below:

80% of teams are globalised, it is not uncommon for people to work anywhere at any time, it is not uncommon for Shell to have significant input in projects from partners and people beyond the enterprise boundary.  Their aim is to implement a single interface for unified communications.  For remote workers today OCS is the voice communication channel and softphones will be rolled out across shell, replacing the majority of desk phones.  They see OCS as removing the need for much of their video conferencing capability.  They see a growth in telepresence but OCS will replace much of the room based capabilities today.

Overall the collaboration architecture for information looks like this:

His conclusions were to:

• Take the user as the starting point, what and how do they work
• Then examine the business drivers
• Treat voice as you would any application
• Ensure different generations are supported by what you propose
• Be clear with your roadmap and targets for delivery, don’t focus on today
• Cover real time collab and information sharing at once.
• Forget the borders, you’ll collaborate beyond them from day 1

 

David Farrell, Vice President, IBM Software Europe

IBM presented a mixture of slides, demonstration and screen capture:

• UC is not a cost saving, its a business value and need to exploit business processes
• IBM aim to unify the experience.  How do you find and expert, reach an expert, collaborate effectively
• Demonstration of screen sharing from within a chat
• Demonstration of CISCO Unity for voicemail in Sametime, Quickr plugin, communties plugin
• (?Re-?)Announced that Sametime unified telephony available Q4
• IBM will retain relationship with PBX suppliers and not try to replace their solutions [obvious difference in strategy to Microsoft]
• Then we had a screen captured demo of the telephony client, there were obvious network issues in the conference room and I felt a little sorry for IBM not being able to live demo.
• Key slides: