Pure Play

Taking Control: Things you may need to refer to sometime

When working your way through the stuff that clogs up your inbox each day it is really helpful to have a well organised and accessible place to put reference materials.

For physical stuff that place should be to hand - making the filing away really quick and easy.

For digital stuff it can be tricky depending on what devices you use and what the policies are whereever you work.

Whatever you use should fulfil the following, or as many of them as possible:

• Capable of taking information orginating in multiple formats (ie html for webpages, pdf's etc)
• Be instantly searchable across both titles and content for all parts of it
• Be usable on as many devices as is practical

There are an increasing number of services which allow for the above - my working one is Evernote. This is around since June 2008 and has been developed and improved constantly since then.

For me it allows me to take either a whole document or a clip of one (a copy and paste) really easily - and it preserves the formatting when you do so.

Sorting can be done on a number of levels - Notebooks, Places or tags and you also have a kickass search function.

Sync is instant - so as I drop information into it on my main computer it is copied into "the cloud" and then instantly available on my other computer, my laptop and my iPad.

It does not matter what you use - it just needs to do the job for you. What is your favorite tool for digital reference holding?

keith

Thanks to MrBill for the photo

Taking Control: Tackling an email backlog after holidays

The theory of a zero inbox (briefly this says that you need to process your email and get it the hell out of your inbox to a system somewhere else - resulting in a strong mental boost to see it at zero) can go by the wayside for good after a break of a week or two.

The cumulative backlog may need some more brutal hacking through to regain control - otherwise it will suck the will to live from you!

A great post on this was done by Gina Trapani in her Work Smart series. You can see the full post here - it is entitled How to Power Through a Mountain of Email and the key messages are:

• You may well need to work in bulk - imposing straightforward deletions based on criteria like sender or lenght of time since received.
• Give yourself permission for short responses - clearing your decks in a much more concise way than normal.

The sooner you do this the sooner you will regain control and lessen your stress. Check out the full post.

keith

 

iGAP2 - applications open (for 2 weeks only). Get yourself kickstarted

iGAP - a joint production of Enterprise Ireland and a bunch load of very experienced and successful entrepreneurs - has opened applications for the second program.

I did a post recently on Web2Ireland with details.

Andyou can get more information and apply for iGAP here.

Any questions just ask.

keith

Taking Control. Sorting out an office working area

We had friends around at the weekend and at one point the conversation turned to his office and how he was frustrated with it.

That frustration was initially expressed as a lack of daylight (he works with his back to the window).

We pulled up Abobe Ideas on the iPad and sketched out his currently layout, identified a much larger list of issues and then made the following change suggestions:

Physical Layout

His desk was modelled on the traditional idea of facing the door. Which is great, except that it put his primary work surface (and a chunk of wood)between him and his guests in room.

Personally I prefer not to do this, when I meet people I turn around and we work face to face with nothing between us.

Removing that requirement meant that he could change his layout and have the desk facing out the window. Making sure that the glare from the sun would not cause an issue with his monitor. Working Files That also produced a bonus - his working files are on shelves high up (good) but currently not reachable by him when working (bad).

The new layout means he can reach up while sitting and get what he needs. That is much better as it allows him to move all working files off his desk.

File Storage

Next was the meeting table, currently a dumping ground. As well as that his extensive shelves also enable him to function as another area for medium term file storage. However the presence of numerous files relating to non-current projects inhibits him from clearing the room.

Decisions On What Stuff Is

He now has a task to work through each file, wherever it is, and do 2 things.

Firstly make a decision on what it is:

• Current actionable project belonging to him
• Current actionable project belonging to someone else
• Project for the future
• Reference material to be either stored or read.

Next get rid of all the stuff that belongs to someone else, is a future project (making a note of it) or is reference material.

Next Actions

Finally be clear on everything that remains of what the next action is - in Getting Things Done (GTD) terms each action needs to contain a verb and so can be immediately done if required.

We did not go anywhere near an actual system for recording all of his projects and actions. The above chunk of work will take him a chunk of time to implement and in itself will give him an enormous mental boost.

Once that has happened I will introduce the next stage of GTD implementation to him ;)

Keith

Java Script Coder required (not for me, for managing-safety.com)

From a contact:

I need help with programming in Java Script for risk assessments forms.  I need a code that works in Adobe Life Cycle Designer.

I need the script to calculate figures in specific cells.  The figures will be represented in a graphical format.

The graphical format I want to use is similar to a thermometer.  A low risk will be shown as green, medium risk yellow and high risk red.

If anyone can help please contact me at: vinny AT managing-safety.com.

keith

Bizcamp Comes West: Galway on September 11th

From their email:

Entrepreneurs, innovators and people with ideas in the West region are invited to get involved as both speakers and learners for an upcoming conference with a difference.

Organised by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs, Bizcamp Galway is the first event of its kind to be held here in the West on September 11th. Based in the NUI Galway, the day long event follows the model set by previous events held in Dublin and more recently Limerick with great success.

And a really interesting panel discussion:

The Power of Failure
Irish people and entrepreneurs alike are often plagued with a fear of failure. A fear so great that it can often cripple some of our best ideas and prevent us from putting ourselves out there in case we don't succeed.

One of the highlights of Bizcamp Galway will be a panel discussion between a number of well known successful entrepreneurs on the idea that "failure is good." The panellists will share their own failure stories and explain how these failures taught them valuable lessons that became the bedrock of their eventual success.

This theme promises to raise some interesting debate and will hopefully leave delegates with the thought that, "if they've never failed, then maybe they haven't reached their full potential?"

Find out more here.

keith

dbTwang V3 - what is in the technology melting pot?

A quick post on the various elements which make up dbTwang V3 (we had an intermediate build way back, inbetween the launch and current versions)

Geeky stuff:

dbTwang site was build using these tools by the team in LLP (thanks to Agnieszka, both Jakub's, Paul and Ewelina):
- Ruby On Rails (http://rubyonrails.org/) ruby based web framework (version = 2.3.5)
- Prototype ( javascript library version = 1.6.0.3)
- MySQL ( version = 5+)

hosted on Rackspacecloud

Core site contains elements of the following external services:

Facebook - optional for account signup. Like button for guitars

Tal.ki - embedded forum (www.dbtwang.com/forum)

- this allows for the rapid setup and integration of a competent forum, really sweet

bearhugapp - running our FAQ area and also allows for other elements of customer service and discussion

Soundcloud - embedded audio clips for individual guitars

The Guardian service:

The Guardian service subscriptions are managed via Spreedly which then goes through to Realex Payments and Elavon for our merchant account.

Our Affiliate program is run via Affiliapp integration with Spreedly.

Comms:

The blog runs on a hosted version of Wordpress and there are a number of plugins there with which I am not familiar. Thanks to John Keyes for his assist with this.

The email newsletter is done using Mailchimp.

Any questions on any of the above please ask, it is an illustration of just what you can outsource these days - and also the interdependency when delivering an online service.

keith

 

New dbTwang service live :-)

We have just launched our new service - www.dbtwang.com/guardian

After working with our group of initial users for months - listening to them and using questionaires (thanks to the iGap participation for that) we found a key issue which the majority of them identified with - getting back lost or stolen guitars.

In short the new verison of dbTwang does that - both by allowing subscribing members to record their guitars in details and also by offering a very effective one click alert service if an instrument is lost or stolen.

Have a look:

Now comes the marketing and selling.

We had a lot of help from Richard Hearn with the design of the new home and landing pages and will cover that iteration in a post later this week.

keith

 

GTD Training in Dublin - 1 day workshop 20th August

• Find you constantly loose track of stuff?
• That you are regularly stressed and cannot relax?

You need to take back control of your life! Put your stuff where it belongs and stop letting it rule your days.

Getting Things Done (developed by David Allen) is a great methodology for stress free productivity.

During this one day workshop you will be worked through the theory of GTD - and spend time  in a  practical session where you work through the workflow stages of GTD and develop your understanding of how it will help you.

Full details here and booking: http://www.eventelephant.com/gtd

In summary 

• Friday 20th August, 9 to 5
• €225 including lunch and a copy of David Allens Getting Things Done book.

Any questions let me know and looking forward to seeing you on the day.

Keith