Social Media & Time Management

Steve Radick from Booz Allen Hamilton talks about the need for personal time management skills, but also how to retrain your brain to think NOT "how long will attending to this social media stuff take?" but instead, "how much time will attending to this social media stuff SAVE me?"  It's important to put some thought into how you set up your filters - information overflow has always been there, but in the past, we've had help with filters (he gives the examples of book publishers, TV producers, etc.) - now we need to do a better job of filtering the wild, wild web for ourselves.

TinySaur???

Oh now this is too precious!  And I say that in the tone of voice my grandmother used whenever we were getting too big for our britches. . . 

Customization Ever Increasing

Customize? Or off-the-shelf? This is the forever-back-and-forth debate in all IT shops. It's been intrinsic for so long that by now it's just a ultrasonic buzz (like a dog whistle) we don't even recognize but it still gives us headaches.

From an enterprise perspective, off-the-shelf -- YES -- as much as possible! But from a user and usability perspective, off-the-shelf won't be adopted if it's not adaptable, so customize!

I think it's not an either\or question and Google is providing the ammunition for my argument this week. Recently Google announced a massive improvement to their search engine's back-end. They're calling the new search indexing "Caffeine." (I love that!) In addition, they're giving users the option to put their own, custom wallpaper on the Google search homepage. So this is a terrific example of enterprise off-the-shelf AND customizable.

You don't have to write the code for the whole darn app -- just make sure the app leaves space for customizing -- that's all! Most orgs want the ability to banish the software's logo and insert their own. How hard is that? Especially if they're paying customers! Most users want the ability to move and re-size and re-sort data. Also not hard. Just build flexible applications and the world will line up at your door.

Market Justification for Social Media

A PR perspective, from Ogilvie Public Relations, on what social media is and how to use it. In particular, how to blog. You'd think that was self evident, wouldn't you? But apparently not - if you're a tween on MySpace, you're telling the world one thing. But if you're really USING blogs for business, you need a different, more polished and directed approach.

Next time I post, I'll be an EXECUTIVE Collabosaur. . .