Friday, September 7, 2007

Liveblogging from Office 2.0

This week I attended the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. I decided one of the easiest ways to take notes, and be able to access them later, was via my iPhone. So I took my notes in iPhone's Notes application, then mailed it here to my blog. I haven't yet corrected anything except the titles, and added tags (I can't tag entries directly via email).

I decided to, at least for a day or so, leave them in the format they arrived in, just to see how I feel about that. I will tidy this all up, and also add links to the products and articles, rsn.

If you want to see all blog posts from everyone who was blogging directly from the Office 2.0 conference, check this out (also in my Links channel): Office 2.0 Conf Tag in Technorati.

GTD with Office 2.0:


Smartsheet shows "what changed", granular permissions,

PlanHQ shows also what you did

Do at least weekly review, maybe daily, schedule it

Sometimes you just have the mental aptitude to shred paper.

If you can't find the first actionable task, maybe it's not worth
doing. Staff Meetings start out everyone says what they need from
teammates.

Results Manager


(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 3)


-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Enterprise Collaboration:

Collaborative tools need to be, have fun so people will use them.

Externally-based tools can't always be used, some companies are too
protective of their IP (Sony).

Zimbra, Clearspace,

No votes for video conferencing

Really incorporate The Wisdom of Crowds.


(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 2)


-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Mind-Mapping:

(not sure I really agree with all of this)
Most useful tool now for collaboration. Align on language, context.
Nonthreatening. Virtual brainstorming.

McKinsey: Next Revolution of Interactions ( look this up and correct)
Past 30y reengineering, automation, outsoucing. Must increase
productivity of most knowledgeable workers

Now with Web 2.0, you can truly use for online collaboration. Before,
it was just duplicating paper-based tools (didn't transfer to online
collaboration). Will be lots more products appearing in this space now.

Visual Thesaurus

(Office 2.0 Fri PM Notes, part 1)


-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Online Communities:

Most Internet content produced by us now, not big corporate sites.
Approximately same rate (percentage) of errors.

Empty Quarter: least likely to use social tools, most senior authority
2% troublemakers

Companies creating online communities get new ideas for uses of their
products. Share best practices with each other. Community may/will
morph into something else; but you (company) don't own it anymore,
it's now their community.

Afraid to open up because you might hear something bad. But others may
defend you anyway. You may also get the new great idea. Offering joint
ownership with customers

Ideastorm. Know that ideas will not all succeed.

What resources should you expect to allocate? Many people may already
be blogging, etc., so may just start contributing, without much
additional time.

When Intel started theirs, had 90% Intel contributors; within year
switching to 90% non-Intel.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 4)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Knowledge Workers 2.0:

"bursty" workers
Mgmt recognizes both are valuable worker types, output-based, not time-
based
Frequent spectacular failures (already dying in video games).
Still must have a reasonable approach to project
Not just age-based

IT groups already ask SMEs (establish authority, sharing)

These workers usually expect high compensation (they think they are
worth more), high profile projects, high responsibility.

Bursty people don't always work bursty, sometimes have heads-down work
too.

Rewards: can't be expected or gets complicated (disappointment), not
as valuable.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 3)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

The New Platform:

Who owns the customer when they work via an aggregator
(salesforce.com, Zoho, OpenSAM)?

Cross-application activities: single sign-on, copy & paste,
preferences (date formats, etc.), dictionary, highlight colors,
printing, access/ ACLs, versioning

File formats! Can't I have open document format?

Use Facebook as sso? But mesh model vs. hub and spoke model.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes, part 2)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Office 2.0 Setup:

Applications and data live in the Cloud only?

My Office 2.0 Setup

Tools are not usually able to integrate, even copy & paste, also which
app do you look in?

Next year they will use a tool that natively integrates with
salesforce.com

600 attendees plus press, presenters, etc.

(Office 2.0 Fri AM Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Web Practioner:

ROI on these Web 2.0 tools, which are free, compared to ROI on
existing internal tools like email, collab, IM, etc.

Success in implementation requires champion(s). Ask forgiveness, not
permission crowd.

Tools on the Internet, is disaster recovery improved?

Death of the Application:
Iteritive releases ( or permanent betas) instead of big (bi-) annual
releases. Less disruptive, expensive.

Software as a service; now there are many choices of word processor,
spreadsheet, task mgr (see office 2.0 list).

It doesn't matter what phone, email program, etc., others are using,
we can still communicate transparently.

Long-tail apps... Product life cycles are accelerating.

(Office 2.0 Thurs late-PM Notes)

-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Meet Charlie (Pfizer):

Easy to remember URL
None of the people on the team were in the same department.
Sandbox: get people to post what they want to do; others will chime in
if they are also interested, or if they have already started one.

Culture & Technology:
Mellenial generation unsure of business mores and social tools, but
will go dull steam ahead, unlike current gens. Dress codes, conformity.

GenY wants responsibility in their new worklife. Existing managers,
previous gens want less/ no responsibility? Who gets replaced, and
why? More transparency as well will expose workers, too.

Successful corporations will be a "marketplace" for workers.

Collaboration: have we solved all of the one-brain problems, so now
all that's left are multi-brain problems?

Don't forget that the average IQ is 100.

Current young gamers are willing to die (fail) over and over again.
Current workplaces not so forgiving of failure.

(Office 2.0 Thurs mid-PM Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Office 2.0 Thursday AM Notes:

People enjoy collaborating
Cultural adoption don't send docs, send links
Decisions: what do I need to know?
What do I need to produce ?
What do I need to communicate ?
(where's the value?)

Pan for gold, I Love Lucy skit in my inbox, email is my favorite app?
No.

Enterprise 2.0:
Mgmnt support
Usability
Integration
Accessibility
Top down - mgrs can lead the way
Training- not how but why and what's different
Templating no blank page
Solving problems

Adoption: New tool must be 9x better than what it replaces (9x better
than email?)

No Long Tail of users, small percentage of people participating in
Enterprise can be a small number (top small)

Feed the open mouths, don't force others. Be patient

Morgan Stanley created system to convert email groups to discussion
forums

(Office 2.0 Thursday Morning Notes)
-Diana

<Sent from my iPhone>

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Working Online

If I want to do all of my work online, so I don't have to worry about having the right computer with me, or even a full computer with me, how do I do it? It looks like there are a few online applications (ThinkFree, Zoho, Google Docs-although the latter doesn't yet work in Safari) where I can edit from a browser on my Mac.

Here are my questions, or at least, unresolved issues:
* can I edit OO format documents, or only Microsoft?
* can I at least view these OO documents from my iPhone?
* can I edit somehow from my iPhone?
* do I always have to down/upload the documents to one of these sites? I can't always do that from my iPhone, but many of these documents were emailed to me, if that helps.

More questions, and I'm hopeful, some answers, as I figure them out. I'm headed off to the Office 2.0 conference tomorrow, so maybe all will be revealed there. And, everyone there will be using an iPhone!

Monday, September 3, 2007

iPhone Photo Blogging

This weekend I went to Disneyland (yay!) with Dawn and some friends. But not all friends, nor family, so they were happy to follow along with the pictures I was uploading from my iPhone during the weekend. Both the iPhone camera, and the "Post to Web Gallery" options worked great! It was very easy, and fast even over the Edge network, to upload my pictures to my .Mac account.

There is even a Subscribe option from the web gallery site, although I haven't looked at how that works. But now I know that the subject line gets posted as the caption, so next time I will add useful information there, instead!

Apple, once again, is changing how I work, this time in how I'm sharing pictures. I was missing MMS here, as I normally would have text-messaged the pictures to friends and family; but one at a time, and each would only get a picture or two. This way, I first emailed the link out, then as I took each picture I immediately posted it to the website, all weekend long. Almost as good as being there?