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!

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 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

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:

• Focus on the world is flat, but now crowded, and increasingly the spotlight is on IT to deliver even if it is a non-standard application.
• 17% of CISCO workforce use Macs, CISCO IT doesn’t support or pay for Macs, consumerisation message.
• End points for unified communications are increasing.  End points may be anywhere.  2 key drivers are cheap multimedia chipsets with UC capability and virtualisation.
• CISCO spend 25% of their development budgets on interoperability.
• Discussed CISCO thinking on tiered solution UC >> Video >> web 2.0 building together to a collaborative platform.

Example 1 : UC improves process for service / repair industry:

• Customer calls
• Telephony system integrated with salesforce.com to bring up customer details
• Call handler takes customers fault information
• To increase screen estate the cisco phone shows the map with the nearest available engineer

Example 2 : Coca Cola improve warehouse operations:

Old system:

• Order slips on paper
• Pickers (fork lift drivers) take paper and collect order
• Take order to checkers who validate
• Loaded to lorry
• Go
• 78% accurate

UC way:

• No paper
• No checkers
• Fork lift drivers get audio instructions over headset to go to particular place in warehouse
• Validation codes via audio to confirm correct location
• Then instructions on what to collect
• Then load on lorry
• 99.8% accurate
• Reduced traffic movements and accidents in warehouse
• Ability to move fork lift operators who are loading lorries for outward delivery to one area of the warehouse allowing the operators who stock the warehouse to efficiently re-stock

Microsoft presented and demonstrated Office Communication Server release 2 today at VoiceCon, in tandem they hit the press.  Eric Swift announced the new release and the key elements I noted were:

• Audio conferencing capabilities from within OCS.
• Ability to dial in from any telephone not just OCS attached devices
• Communicator client support for video up to high definition quality
• Delegation support for telephony (secretary / manager scenarios)
• Attendant client allowing for switchboard style control of calls and grouping of people to help route calls
• Attendant shows call queues and historic information about callers
• Web access to OCS meetings without need for live meeting client - then used web meeting to call the user on a standard telephone to link that web user to the audio
• Screen sharing from within the Communicator client.
• API’s available

Attendant Client

Looking Forward

The stated aim from Microsoft was to remove the requirement for the PBX.

For those with CSC GlobalPass ID’s I’m going to publish more detailed information, with more comment rather than observation, into the Collaborative Wiki space.

More images are available in my Flickr Set for the event.

I’m lucky to be spending the bulk of this week at VoiceCon.  Today was tutorials and a round of keynotes.  The keynotes were from:

- Eelco Block (KPN)

- Gerhard Otterbach (Siemens)

- Eric Swift (Microsoft)

KPN’s Eelco Block was the platinum sponsor of the event and used the session to inform the audience of the KPN/Getronics offerings, positioning the services they offered and describing their Human 2.0 offering, reflecting the increased nature of remote working and more typical information style of workers:

Siemen’s Gerhard Otterbach talked about their organisational differentiation, their view on UC, on the changing workforce before focusing on Openscape and their offering in the UC field:

He then went on to announce at the conference their new mobile extensions to this offering which extended the reach of their products to a comprehensive list of mobile devices.

For those with CSC GlobalPass ID’s I’m going to publish more detailed information, with more comment rather than observation, into the Collaborative Wiki space.

For the Microsoft Keynote see my next blog post!

More images are available in my Flickr Set for the event.

Made me smile when I plugged the power in last night.  Although you never know, this may be commonplace in 5 years.

Technical bits

• BlackBerry 8800, couldn’t be half as effective during travel without this - knocking emails, scheduling tasks and contacting people while waiting for trains, planes etc.
• Standard wired headset and bluetooth headset for the Blackberry
• X60 Tablet - I’m a real tablet fan as it gives me the widest choice of input types and is much more acceptable in physical meetings than having a screen open.
• A spare battery (and if possible charged!) so as to last a day if at conferences.
• Mobile data card (invaluable!)
• A portable mouse, the Logitech VX Nano.  I would not be without this portable mouse now.  The only pain is that I have to unplug the receiver before standby otherwise it wakes the laptop up - not good if like me you prefer not to toast your laptop in your bag.
• A standard telephone headset.  When away I still have to do many conference calls, and you can never find a desk with a headset so I now just take one.  Its really changed my comfort levels during calls and takes minimal room in my bag.
• Logitech presentation wand.  This is worth every penny!  I even find myself using it when talking just using my screen.
• Several USB memory sticks.

Tools I use to stay effective on the road

Corporate stuff (in no particular order):

• Lotus Notes
• Lotus Sametime (IM and presence and sometimes web meetings)
• AT&T Connect for integrated audio and web meetings (my preferred virtual meeting tool)
• CSC’s PC backup and restore service
• Confluence Wiki
• OneNote
• Mindjet Mind Manager Pro
• Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000
• Our Office Communication Server lab environment for one-to-one video calls with team members.

Consumer stuff:

• SkyDrive to share selected files with people
• Twitter - more colleague focused updates
• MSN Messenger and Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 for calls back to home (I find its really nice to see the family when away - especially when abroad).
• Facebook to keep up-to date with friends (on both web and BlackBerry)
• Googlemail to keep up with personal emails (again on both web and BlackBerry)
• Newsgator Feeddemon
• Twitterberry
• Twhirl
• Ultramon (for when I can find a monitor on travels)

Important non-techie stuff

• Pencils
• Hard backed notebook (even with a tablet I still need pencil and paper at times)
• Travel sickness tablets (tilting express trains and flights sometimes set me off but the tablets control nausea and maintain my effectiveness)
• Flyers about our services.

Desires for the future

• A folding screen
• Better bag storage (thats mainly down to me!)

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“We’re wrapping up a project where we’ve been working with a crack team charged with developing a handbook for leaders who have to work in this new way - across organization, culture, timezones - AND with peers. Command and control, obviously, doesn’t cut it in situations like this so what’s a “virtual leader” to do?

For one thing, get rid of those long-standing war rooms, skunkworks, as per the scent that arises from people working in windowless settings dressed in flip charts and armed with magic markers.”

The survey Jessica referred to was from the Institute of Corporate Productivity:

“more than two-thirds (67%) [of companies surveyed] foresee their reliance on virtual teams mushrooming in importance. In companies with more than 10,000 employees, the virtual team concept jumps to more than 80%.”

Do I agree?

I believe that it depends upon the organisation, the team formed, and the culture.  In some cases the best team possible for a task will be co-located.  We support customers with tens of thousands of people working in offices on the same site.  In those cases a number of war rooms will remain.

In other situations organisations will be large enough to sustain regional sites, and if I consider many of my customers they will have multiple sites in the UK with potential for people to be at a regional site within 2 hours.  If that is the case then war rooms can be adapted to link them between those regional centres and support remote users.  Thus encouraging teams to maintain relationships through regional centres.  You’ll note I use the word maintain because I do feel where possible teams should initiate face-to-face.

The final situations will require completely remote tools and giving everyone a level playing field.  I still remember a phrase Jessica used at the Collaborative Technologies Conference in 2005 which was the “disadvantaged participant”.  Its important in virtual teams that a common baseline is met and those working above that baseline (perhaps being co-located with others) don’t forget the limitations of those on the baseline.

Conclusion

We have 3 key working styles here:

• co-located
• regionally based with very rich collaboration tools
• remotely located with less rich tools

Each will require different leadership styles.  A lot of the tools, methods and processes will be defined by the remit the team has, i.e.:

• do they have travel budget?
• do they have a carbon budget for the project?
• where are the key people?
• the motivation and requirements of the individuals concerned

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