Graham Chastney (oak-grove)

My Tools: Logitech Cordless Presenter

I'm not very often in the position where I am making formal presentations. It's more likely that I am leading a discussion or a workshop. But, when I am presenting I hate sitting down.

I've been in many situations where people are sat down at the end of a table talking through a set of bullet-points. This has to be the dullest way of presenting, what's to engage with. One of the reasons that people sit down to present is because they feel tethered to the control of their presentation, their laptop.

A while ago I was provided with a Logitech Cordless Presenter, this completely removes the tether. It's great to work without a tether, walking around, pointing, being visible. Hopefully presenting in this way is a lot more interesting than presenting from a seat with a laptop in front of me. I want my presentations to be engaging and Cordless Presenter really helps me to do it.

The Presenter has a really simple set of buttons which are just what you need:

• Forward and backward buttons which take me forward and backward through a presentation.
• F5/esc button which allows me to start and end a presentation.
• Black screen button that allows me to get people's attention back.
• Volume up and volume down. I'm not often presenting video or audio, but when I do it's great to be able to adjust the volume.

The Presenter also has a couple of features that I rarely use.

• Laser pointer - I tend to use my finger to point rather than to use a laser pointer. If people are near enough to see the laser dot, they ought to be near enough to work out where my finger is pointing. The other challenge with the laser pointer is that it causes me problems with airport check-in, a laser pointer cannot be carried within hand luggage. It seems a bit strange to check-in a single object that fits in your hand.
• Timer - There is a timer on the device that you can set in increments of 5 mins. When the time is reached the device vibrates. I've tried using it, but the device only vibrates once, and I've actually missed it a couple of times. It doesn't really vibrate enough for me to notice it.

There is also an on-switch and an off-switch.

The Presenter is a great piece of kit, it always surprises me that so few people make use of them.

Technorati tags: logitech, cordless, presenter

My Tools: The Off Switch

I'm told that I live in an always-on world, and there are many times when it feels that way. Like many of you I have a tool available to me that keeps me in control of the times that I am available. It's an invaluable tool and it's called the off-switch.

Most of the devices I have include an off-switch, even if they don't I am still in control of the power supply. I have the power to unplug, or to remove the battery.

The off-switch is very good for your brain. As we are approaching the season of holidays and vacations now is the time that you should employ this tool as often as possible and preferably for an extended period.

Here's my guide to the off switch:

• On my laptop it's the small silver button just above the F9 key.
• On my desktop it's the larger silver button on the front towards the rear.
• On my blackberry it's a silver button on the top left of the device.

Go on, you can do it.

My Tools: Mindjet MindManager Pro

I find mind maps to be a fabulous way of thinking about things.

I regularly find myself in the situation where I am doing what I call a personal brainstorm. There are a huge set of ideas that are floating around about a subject, placing them all down onto a mind map and then structuring them is a very powerful way of visualising them. It often sparks new ideas, highlights things that are not really related to the subject and highlights activities or ideas that are dependent upon each other.

The tool that I use for mind mapping is Mindjet MindManger Pro.

I've struggled for a while to know quite how to write about this subject. It's one of those where you either stay shallow or you dive in deep, and I'm not sure I see the real value in one and I don't have time for the other. I've decided just to start and see where I get to.

I nearly always use mind maps for structuring thought. I have tried to present mind maps for people to talk around, it normally results in lots of vacant looks. I've, therefore, moved away from presenting mind maps other than the simplest of diagrams (You can now do really simple diagrams in PowerPoint 2007).

As a thought structuring technique I nearly always start with a blank sheet and type.

Mind Manager allows you to do a lot of the working from the keyboard so it's relatively easy to stream-type. In this mode the two most powerful keys that you have available are the "Enter" key and the "Insert" key.

• Pressing "Enter" adds a topic at the same level as the one you are currently in. This is great for creating a list of things all at the same level.
• Pressing the "Insert" key adds a topic as a child of your current topic. Great for adding a sub-thought.

I don't classify, mark, annotate, or even worry too much about the structure it's just how the thoughts come out. It's amazing, though, how often that these thoughts are reasonably well structured. If you stop to think too much about the structure you loose the flow a bit.

Ideas tend to come faster than I can type so type as much as possible to make sure that I don't miss something.

After I've brainstormed I'll then structure and annotate. Mind Manager has a great set of Map Markers. I normally expand these out so they are all visible on the right of the screen. From here I'll pick topics and mark them. My favourites are priorities, because that's often what I am trying to get to understand.

The one thing I've always thought would be useful, but never been able to work out, is the ability to filter a set of topics based on the markers. Perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough.

Once I've been through this activity I normally go and create something that communicates the thoughts that I have just worked out. I'd like people to be able to just look at my maps and understand them, but that doesn't seem to communicate very well. Perhaps it's a culture thing.

I'm actually quite a simple Mind Manager user, and lots of people do far more explicit things, this way of working helps me though.

Technorati Tags: Mind Map,Mind Manager

More iTunes bloat

I really like iTunes, I do really, but I find myself on a reasonably pleasant Friday afternoon writing negatively about it.

My problem this time is yet another expansion of its scope. This expansion, in my opinion, goes beyond what iTunes does and moves it steadily into the arena of bloatware.

This time I'm talking about the bundling of MobileMe stuff into iTunes 7.7.

It's not an optional install, it just gets deployed, without warning and without question.

Is this just Apple arrogance - "Why wouldn't you want my software?"

Speaking as an enterprise IT person this would make iTunes a real problem within a secure corporate environment. I might not mind my employees using iTunes for their media, but why would I want them synchronising information outside the firewall. If I want to lock down this capability I need to take some special measures.

MobileMe might even be great software, I just don't want it thrust down my throat.

Like I say, I like iTunes, but...

Technorati tags: itunes

My Tools: Google Analytics

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will know that I'm a bit of a numbers freak. I used to think that everyone was like me, but I'm steadily realising that not everyone approaches graphs and charts with quite the same level of enthusiasm.

If you are a numbers person - read on. If you think numbers are as interesting as a postman's socks you have my permission to go and read something more appropriate to your needs.

For a numbers man link me Google Analytics is heaven. I can tell you more information than you could possibly want to know, or could be bothered to ask about.

I can tell you where people came from, where they went to, what browser they were using, where there device is situated, what search keywords they used, and so much more.

Probably the best bit about Analytics is that you get all of this information for the princely sum of £0. Now there's a bargain.

For those of you not aware of analytics it works like this:

• You register for an account at analytics.google.com.
• You then add a website profile.
• It then generates some code which you put in a sensible place on your site. In the case of this site typepad even have a widget to make it that much easier, and I know that wordpress allows the same.
• Then you wait a while, preferably 24 hours.

Bit by bit, the numbers start rolling in and you can enter numbers heaven.

I have a number of favourite views.

The first thing I normally notice is the Traffic Source view. In recent times there has been a shift here. Google used to absolutely dominate these numbers, they are still big, but they are down to 30%. The difference has been twitter and a myriad of other referers who have said something about one of my posts on their blog (thanks).

Having said that, I still have a good look through the search keywords. Should I be worried that the top two keywords are "graham chastney blog" and "graham chastney", are people really trying to find me.

As a technologist I'm also interested in things like the browsers that people use - Internet Explorer is still out in front, but Firefox is catching fast.

I'm also really interested in the location of my visitors. Being based in the UK and would expect many visitors from there, the number of visitors from the USA is nearly as big. Being able to drill down beyond country is fun, but it's not really that useful for my blog.

A blog is really about the content though, and that's where I get the best information, what are people reading? The simple answer to that is - all sorts of stuff. There have been a few really popular ones, but the reading is very varied, which I suppose reflects the variance in my writing.

You can also decide to share your analytics with other Google users if you so desire. I don't, primarily because it's a person blog and I'm not sure else would care about my statistics.

Analytics is so good that I regularly ask myself the question - "why can't I have this at work?"

Technorati Tags: google,analytics,statistics

3 Years of Blogging

I bit of reflection for a Friday evening.

When I first started writing this blog I was still in my thirties - three years later I am into my forties and still writing.

I know lots of people who have started blogging and stalled, or crashed altogether, but something keeps me going. I've often wondered what that "something" is, actually I think that it's "somethings".

Probably the single biggest reason is that I enjoy it. Sometimes the reason doesn't need to be any more complicated than that, but there is more. I regard it as a privileged that people actually read what I write. I get very little interaction directly on my blog, what I do get are people commenting to me when I meet them and sideline conversations that have been prompted by something I've written. That feedback cycle is quite edifying and gives me an encouraging lift.

This is post number 631, which isn't the thousands that I see other write, but it is roughly 1 every working day which is actually amazing.

Writing about things helps to develop the thoughts around a subject, I've particularly found this in the My Brain series of posts, where a little reading got me thinking about something which then urged me on to read some more. Reading a bit, writing a bit, cemented the thinking. I started with a couple of big questions; while pondering them I asked and answered other questions. It's growth and growth is good. Those with agile brains will be the ones of value in years to come, not to mention the ones who have a happy and fulfilling retirement.

I've recently been really enjoying thinking about the tools that I use and why I use them. I have a friend whose garage is immaculate, the tools all have their place and only depart from it when they are being used. I have a few boxes in my garage where my assortment of tools lurk in wonderful randomness. My IT tools are similar, I collect them, use them, leave them lying around. They wait, lurking on hard disks all over the place. Writing about why I use the ones that I use is actually helping me to sort them out a bit.

There is another theme that I think about quite a bit, it's kind of links the brain theme with the tools theme. I am concerned that the tools and working environment that we are currently exposing ourselves too might actually be as dangerous as the ones that other heavier industry exposed our fathers too. I don't mean that there is a disease like asbestosis lying undiscovered out there, what concerns me is what we are doing to our brains. I'm think of conditions like ADT, and Deindividuation, we don't really know that much about the long term impact of high IT use. My son has finished school (already) after completing his GCSE's. Some of his friends are really proud of the amount of time that they have been spending on WoW. One of them is playing so late into the night that he is almost nocturnal. He's in danger of working his body clock all the way around until he's back on the right time. These are brains that are going through rapid development and very susceptable. Are we really sure that this is not doing them irreparable harm?

On a lighter note, I also really enjoyed the company of Jimmy and Grandad. It started as a bit of fun, and has continued that way. Emily (who take many of the pictures) and I have had some strange looks from people as we have exposed them to the delights of these two fellows and the rest of the family.

It's now Friday evening and time for me to go into the garden and remove some weeds. Gardens are definitely good for the brain.

My Tools: Notebook + Pen

Part of my daily routine is to "free journal". After my morning walk I sit down for a time of quiet with an A4 Ruled notebook and a pen and I write.

I call it free journaling because I write whatever comes into my head. There are many different types of journaling, I've tried a few, but keep coming back to simply streaming out my thoughts.

It's surprising how often my thoughts come streaming out, thoughts on work, thoughts on the family, personal thoughts, thoughts on faith and grace.

One of the things that writing does is to get things out of my head. I can let things swirl around and around, once they are written down they stand still. It's much easier to look at something that is standing still.

That's about all I'm going to say about the reason why I journal, there are many people who have written far better explanations on the benefits than I could. This post is about the tools that I use to journal.

I've tried technology solutions for journaling but they all fail, not because of the technology, because of me.

With a notebook and pen there is nothing else, I sit on a sofa away from a keyboard so there are no distractions. When I write, I'm not worrying whether it's legible, spelled correctly or whether it is good grammar, I'm just writing. When I use a keyboard my brain won't allow me to be free, it wants me to be correct. While I'm trying to be correct I can't stream, it's disruptive.

I've tried to use a PC Tablet as a pseudo notebook, but still there is a deep felt need to be correct.

Some days I will only write a few lines, other days I will write a full page of thoughts. This used to trouble me, I measured the value of the journal by it's length. One of the ways I would overcome this fear was to write in an A5 sides notebook so I have a few of them too. I'm more laid back about it now so the A4 notebook does just fine.

There's more to it than that though.

A notebook and pen are tactile things. When I'm sitting in that place with those object my brain knows what is coming, I've build a routine and the routine helps. When I first started it took me ages to get into a stream, if I follow the routine the stream now comes quite easily.

When I have finished one notebook it goes on a bookshelf next to my other notebooks, there is something very satisfying about seeing the number of books increase. Seeing files feel a computer disk doesn't feel the same.

If you are interested in journaling D*I*Y Planner has a good introduction.

Technorati tags: journal, paper, pen

My Tools: Flickr

There are a number of things that I do with my pictures, my main purpose for posting on Flickr could be classified as publishing.

It's not my backup location for all of my important pictures, though I could view it that way. It's not the place that I manipulate my pictures, though it could do some of that.

Flickr is the place where I put pictures that I want others to see.

I love taking pictures, and I love for others to be able to see them, and interact around them. As an example you'll notice that most of the pictures I post on this blog are actually hosted on flickr. I'm actually hoping that people will click on the pictures and interact which has happened on a number of occasions.

There are all sorts of features to flickr and I only use a subset of them, here are a few of the ones I do use:

Sets and Collections

Sets are the place where you put photos that you want to group together - like an album. Collections are groups of sets. I use a number of both. If we go out for a fun day like we did this weekend I'll create a set for that day and then add it to the Adventures and Days Out collection. Set and collections are both unique to our account.

Groups

Groups are like global sets, or global albums. If you want to highlight a picture to a set of people then putting it into a group is a good way to do it. Anyone is free to create a group, but in many instances it's likely that a group already exists.

Batch Organize

One of flickr's most powerful features is the batch Organize capability. What you do is to select a set of photos that you want to work on from the stream at the bottom. Drag and drop them into the middle area and then perform tasks on that set of picture - add tags, add to groups, add to sets, etc. You can even drag them onto a map and set the geotags.

Map and Geotag

Adding a picture to a map sets the geotag for it, showing where it was taken. I try to geotag most of my pictures and the Batch organize capability makes this an easy thing to do. The Yahoo maps used in the system aren't the best and sometimes it's difficult to pinpoint where the picture was taken from the.

Creative Commons Licensing

I set the license on all of my pictures to be Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic which allows me to share my pictures with a legal framework to avoid exploitation. I can't be sure that someone somewhere isn't breaking my copyright, but I do have experience of it working. I've noticed recently that many flickr pictures are set to be All Rights Reserved which I think is a real shame. If you do set the license model to be All Rights Reserved flickr removes the ability for anyone else to download your picture.

Flickr Uploadr

I use the wonderful Uploadr tool to add my pictures to Flickr. This allows me to set all of the meta-data for a picture before it's uploaded. Once you've set up a batch of pictures to upload you I then set it running and forget about it.

Favourites and Comments

I love to receive feedback on my pictures. It's great to learn from others, and occasionally to receive praise. Adding comments is something that flickr does really well, as is adding pictures to you list of favourites (favorites). This is one of the main reasons that I think flickr has been so successful.

Statistics

If I am being honest I would admit that I spend a bit too much time reading statistics in general. I really like the flickr ones, they are clean and informative. There are some areas where I would like more details, but the ones I have are the most useful ones.

Tags

I use all sorts of tags, some of them are only meaningful to me, I hope no one searches on them expecting to find something useful.

Flickr Blog

I love to read the flickr blog. they are really good at picking different types of pictures. It challenges me to broaden the types of pictures that I take and gives me inspiration to try different things. Now I'm using a digital SLR camera I'm finding some of these things possible and really enjoying the challenge,

I haven't used the new video feature, I'm a stills man rather than a video man. I've not used any of the integrated picture printing services so I'm not in a position to comment on them either.

I've used flickr for a long time now, my first picture was posted on 9th December 2004, in Internet terms that's a lifetime.

Feel free to interact on some of my latest pictures (you can comment on the old ones too if you prefer):

Technorati Tags: flickr,pictures

Morning walk tracking on gpsed.com

Well, having been nominated for an Lifestyle Blog award, I suppose I'd better write something about an IT Lifestyle (and yes, this is the last time I'm gong to mention it).

I try and do a walk before I start work on most days, it's a body fitness thing mainly, but it's also good for the brain.

Recently I've been trying to estimate how much I walk. It's too easy to short-change myself when I'm busy so I wanted something that I couldn't kid.

I didn't want to spend any money, because I'm cheap, so I wanted to use what I already had available. Then one of colleagues pointed out gpsed.com, I'm not sure whether it was Steve or Stu so I'll credit both of them.

gpsed.com has a free client for the BlackBerry, and I have a Blackberry, so that met the criteria of free. It allows me to upload my data for the whole world to see, making it impossible to cheat myself on how far I've actually walked.

So I've uploaded some of my walks:

• Morning Walk 1
• Morning Walk 2
• Morning Walk 3
• Morning Walk 4
• Morning Walk 5

There you go, you all know how far I walk, or do you? I'm a bit dubious about the actual distances, the client on my BlackBerry says that I did 2.7 miles this morning, but gpsed.com says that I did 2.7 km. I'll have to try and work out which is correct at some point, it makes a big difference.

The other thing I've not been able to work out is how to show you all of the walks together on one map. I can see them all together, but there doesn't appear to be a URL for me to show them to you.

The next thing to work out is how to record how many times I do each walk. Could be a mash-up opportunity I think.

The other thing I've done is to start the tracking a short distance from my house, I don't want the whole world knowing exactly where I live.

Technorati tags: blackberry, gpsed.com

IT Blog Awards 2008 - I'm on a shortlist

Much to my amazement, I was informed today that I have been shortlisted for the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards 2008 in the IT Lifestyle category.

When I found out I expected the shortlist to be quite long, but actually I'm one of only 10.

So go on, be a dear, vote for me.

in Lifestyle Blogs

 

(Thanks for nominating me James)

Too busy to Think - Thinking Faster

Does this sound like anyone or anywhere you know:

Working with a number of senior managers and executives from some Fortune 500 firms, I increasingly find that all of them seem to be measured with a new statistic - meeting minutes consumed.  Often, the only valuable time you can acquire from these folks is in the hallway between meetings.  They are overworked, overscheduled, multi-tasking and reacting to what's going on around them rather than taking control of their work and their results.

Where is it written that we have to attend every meeting that we are invited to?  Where was the law laid down that we HAVE to be busy all of the time?  If these concepts are true, when does anyone have time to think about the consequences of being busy all the time, and the missed opportunities?

Jeffrey Philips of Thinking Faster then goes on to explain five reasons why he thinks that this might be:

1. Most firms place a high value on busyness, not necessarily results.  If a person seems very busy, then they must be doing something valuable.
2. However, if someone is successful at something, we have even more incentive to ask them to take on more work - of the type they are good at and often work they aren't so good at.  It is very difficult to say "no"
3. Many firms have lack good, clear objectives and strategic communication, so it is hard to tell what initiatives are really important.  When there's a lack of clarity, everything is important.
4. We've lost the ability to determine who needs to know what.  In a recent meeting I was asked to lead, many of the participants brought others who weren't originally invited, and who did not have a clear role to play in the meeting.
5. The pressure of making the quarter.  Speaking recently with a gentleman who was highly placed in a Fortune 500 firm, the frustration of constantly short changing the future to "make" the quarter was evident.

I'd subscribe to all of these, but I thought I would add to and expand a few of them:

1. Many places don't allow for good delegation. I work with a number of senior people who are constantly dragged into the trivial. They get pulled so often that they no longer put up a resistance.
2. Information sicknesses causing destructive behaviours. Everyone feels like they need to know everything, and react to it instantaneously. The BlackBerry is an addiction for many.
3. Lack of good administrative support. Administrators are devalued in many organisations, as such senior people are dealing with administrative activities.
4. Poor meeting etiquette. I've been in many poorly managed meetings where people have phased out rather than fix, or cancel, the meeting.

Just a few ideas, and many of them are interlinked.

Many of these issues cause terrible negative spirals. Last weekend I was sent an email at 10:20 at night on Sunday and then again at 5:30 on Monday morning, but the same person. This person is more senior than me. My initial reaction to this was to question whether I was putting in enough effort to be "impressive". I only thought about it for a few seconds, because I've been around long enough not to get caught. Once caught, though, it's really difficult to get off the hook.

My Tools Summary: June 2008

Having failed to publish a summary in May I thought I would get in slightly early for June:

Introduction - why on earth am I doing this.

Word Outlining - you really should learn how to write documents this way.

Twitter and Twhirl - not sure how to summarise Twitter

FeedDemon - my feed reader of choice.

Blackberry 8800 - my world in my pocket

Windows Live Writer - I blog so I writer

iTunes and iPod - a sweet piece of apple

Synergy - share that keyboard and mouse to get better returns

Jing - screen snapshot wonders

 

Technorati Tags: word,outlining,twitter,twhirl,feeddemon,blackberry,wlw,itunes,ipod,synergy,jing

 

My Tools: Jing

One of the things that I quite often want to do is to show people a snapshot of what I see on my screen. That's where Jing come in.

Jing does stills and movies and it does both of them in a wonderfully simple elegant way.

Jing appears on the screen as a small yellow/orange half-sphere. When you move over it you get to see three options:

Once you have selected "Capture" you then select the area which Jing automatically helps with by selecting the active window. You don't have to use this window, but it's surprising how often that this is exactly what you want to do.

The next thing to choose is what type of capture you want to do. If you select "Image" then you are prompted as to where you want to put it, if you select "Movie" then you are given a count down of 3-2-1 and then you record the movie.

Once captured you then decide what you are going to do with your capture. Again there are some nice features here, including the ability to send directly to Flickr and to screencast.com. The things that I am capturing are normally going into presentations for my work so I normally save them to a file.

Movies are in created in shockwave making them easy to transport and to publish.

I had forgotten how much easier Jing makes this process until I came to write this post. One of the challenges with showing snapshots of a snapshot tool is that you struggle to use the snapshot tool to do it. Going back to alt-prt scr was a real step back in history for me.

Technorati Tags: jing,flickr,screencast.com,snapshot

Hello Supplier

I've noticed an interesting trend in the access logs for this blog.

Every time I have a meeting with a supplier my blog will be visited by someone from that suppliers just beforehand, or just afterwards.

I wanted to say "Hello" and "Welcome" in acknowledgement of the effort you are putting in to understanding what might be important to me.

Seth Goblin: "You need to increase your value"

Sometimes someone says something in such a succinct way that it resonates.

Today it's Seth Goblin:

Your sales force and your customers may scream that you need to lower your price.

It's not true.

You need to increase your value. If people don't want to pay, it's because you're not delivering enough value for the money you're charging.

You're not selling a commodity unless you want to.

IT service delivery has become a commodity sell; so much so that the only focus is cost reduction.

The huge opportunity is this - no end-user really wants to buy their IT as a commodity, it's only their organisation that wants to buy it that way. End-users want loads more value than the value they are getting today. They need to innovate, and we need to help them to do it. we either help them, or they do it without us.

Wordle - a little diversion

Just took a little diversion down the Wordle route. It's a tag cloud creation tool for test, or for del.icio.us tags. Here are my del.icio.us tags, spit the themes:

If you take the text from my current blog front page it looks like this:

That's right - nearly completely different.

My Tools: Synergy

Synergy does a really simple thing, but it does it really well - it allows two PC to share the same mouse and keyboard.

When I am working from home I stand my work laptop alongside my home PC so that the monitors line up. I then start Synergy as a server on my home PC, and start it as a client on my work laptop.

Synergy then allow me to use the two systems sat next to each seamlessly switching between them by moving the mouse from one to the other.

Doing this I get all of the advantages of having multiple displays, I also get to use all of my processing power and I don't have to worry about which applications I have available on the machine that I happen to be using, because I'm using both of them. I'm running Windows XP on one of the systems and Windows Vista on the other, so I also retain access to two different operating systems, and as it happen, two different versions of Microsoft Office too.

There are a couple of disadvantages. Because the Synergy is relying upon a network you can sometimes get glitches caused by network latency. Having said that, I'm running across a 802.11g LAN and the glitches are rare. The other disadvantage is that the system relies on some processing, so if the processor is flat out you can get problems. If you have UAC started on Vista Synergy can't intercept the UAC Shell, but that would be expected, the nice thing about Synergy is that it doesn't stop you using the real keyboard. These are minor issues though.

Synergy is free, open source and hasn't changed since 2006, and still works with Vista. There's a reasonably active patch community, but I've not needed to install any of the, sometimes software that works is best left alone.

Technorati Tags: Synergy,Multiple Monitors,KVM

The death of the "classical geeks"

A quote from ReadWriteWeb:

Today, there still may be plenty of businesses employing ‘classic geeks’ in their I.T. Department, but that’s about to change. Don’t misunderstand - the world will always need a good engineer, but the I.T. leaders of tomorrow - the ones guiding the business in the use of their computer resources, the ones working with the CEOs to execute the vision and direction via information technology - they will no longer be what we think of as the classic ‘computer geek.’ You know the type - the stereotypical introvert, who’s more comfortable behind the glow of computer screen than interacting with the rest of the human race. The one who likes to speak in acronyms that only he or she understands. The ones who know how to do everything from a command prompt. These folks will be a dying breed…at least around the office. Instead, tomorrow’s computer ‘geek’ will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong.

Instead, tomorrow's computer "geek" will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong. So what does the "new geek" need to know to run tomorrow's I.T. Department? An entirely new skill set, as it turns out.

It then goes on to talk about the shift to "Enterprise 2.0", "Cloud Services", "The Mobile Workforce" and "A Self Provisioning User Base". I'm not sure that the titles are as important as recognising the general shift away from in-house provisioned and in-house constrained services to services that are leveraged globally and have few constraints.

I speak to many I.T. people, because I'm an I.T. person and very few of them see that there is a change lurking just over the other side of that hill over there. A change that isn't going to swoop down in a huge rampage, but is going to work under the radar and change their lives without them even knowing it. The ones who choose to go with it and to become valuable to their customers within the business will thrive, those who hide behind existing policies and standards will have their value steadily eroded until their value is difficult to see.

Change shouldn't bring fear, we are used to it, we do it every day, we just need to recognise it and embrace it. As I.T. people we can, at least, see that the change is there. Business people, in general, have no idea about the change that is coming their way. Security organisations, as an example, will have massive changes to make, the old rules will no longer be valid. I know of organisations where there has been a huge backlash against the security organisation when they have insisted on locking down Internet provided Instant Messaging. There view was that it was an unnecessary security risk, the business's view was that it was essential to operations, user innovation had overtaken them. It's just one example of many of the things that are going to occur.

It's just one small example of the mind-set change that will need to take place. Organisations that don't change will themselves find it difficult to survive, those that go with the changes will thrive.

Today is Monday, it's the start of a new week, perhaps now is as good a time as any to start embracing some change.

Technorati tags: Enterprise 2.0, Cloud Services, Mobile Workforce, Self Provisioning

My Tools: iTunes and iPod

One of the pieces of technology that quickly and easily became integral to my day-to-day work was my iPod.. Prior to getting my iPod I used a number of other media players; everything from a cheap MP3 player to the media player on my Windows Mobile phone. The integrated iTunes + iPod experience provides a significantly different experience.

The main benefits for me come in the podcast experience where it's the simple things that count:

• Simple selection and synchronisation with iTunes
• Remembering the last playing position
• Having podcasts listed in a specific menu structure
• Good handling of previously played items including synchronisation back to iTunes.

I don't just use it for podcasts though, there is a lot of music on there too classical, rock, jazz, instrumental.

It really becomes a significant tool in a number of scenarios. Here are some examples:

• Technology information - I subscribe to a number of different technology podcasts. These are a reasonable way of keeping my technology knowledge current. It's not my primary way, which is RSS, but the change of medium does give me different insights.
• Quiet space - when I am wanting to focus on something I find that quiet classical music is a great way of removing a lot of distractions. I have a couple of playlists set up.
• Contemplation and meditation - I try to make meditation a part of every day. There are a couple of podcasts that are produced specifically to help in this process. They provide a great way of slowing down.
• Gym - Listening to upbeat music makes a difference to my work rate in the gym. I'll also use this time as a time to consume more podcasts.

My next investment is likely to a kit for the car to extend my access to podcasts primarily.

I tend not to use iTunes that much for playing tracks, when I am working from home I'll use last.fm to provide tracks - primarily classical.

The update process for iTunes is still a pain in the rear.

Technorati Tags: itunes,ipod,podcasts