Work in Progress

20120112 Journal

2012-01-11T16:11:00.002+11:00

Capacity

How did I prioritise, plan & and organise my activities today/this week?
Work priorities are currently prioritised by getting to know the landscape and the people. I have had my agenda set by the people I need to meet and the things I need to know. This has been effective but is showing up some shortcomings in the information available.
What changes has this made to my awareness of my workload?
It has made me realise the enormity of the tasks I have ahead. Mercifully I am not going to be alone in executing these. It has made me focus down on the tasks and start work on them immediately.
How did it improve my capacity to achieve what I need to?
By providing focus.

Habits

What work habits am I now aware of?
Allowing myself to get distracted when the task is too hard.
How do they support or restrict my ability to achieve the things I need to?
This restricts the ability to get things done by taking focus away at critical moments.
How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Monday was a bad day, I got confused and drifted in the afternoon but Tuesday's schedule and actions matched
Did I drift or produce?
Mixed but predominantly produced, more directed on Tuesday and Wenesday

Planning

Did I plan my achievements?
Yes
Did I achieve what I planned?
Yes. Daily achievements are contributing to long-term work
How did I maintain an attitude of completion?
On Monday this was hard and I'm not sure I succeeded. On Tuesday I did this by getting into the tasks and ploughing on with it

Prioiritisation

What steps did I take to ensure that I did not behave like what I want is urgent and looked realistically at the priorities?
Documenting everything
How well did these work?
Monday - not too well. Tuesday, much better. Got a lot documented, got a lot clearer on what's to be done.

Going forward

What proactive steps am I going to take to ensure that I:

can increase my capacity to achieve what I need to?
Build relationships with key people - dealing with conflict wastes time
have prioritised, planned and organised my activities?
Weekly review of project tasks has to be put back into place - personal ones as well as work projects
have managed my bad habits and bolstered my good ones?
Going to make sure I schedule my time so that I stay focussed on task, find something interesting about
don't act like what I want is urgent and realistically look at the priorities?
Schedule the outcomes and work backwards - this will help me to see the steps and how soon they need to be done and prioritise my actions accordingly

Hiatus

2011-11-24T17:42:00.000+11:00

I will be starting a new role on 4 January so writings will recommence then.

20110929 - Journal

2011-09-29T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By planning and taking actions for future problems

What work habits am I now aware of?
Prioritising important over urgent

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Support it by allowing me to focus my attention on things that have long term effects

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Not very well

Did I drift or produce?
A little of both

Did I plan my results?
No

Did I produce the results I planned?
No

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Moderately

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Considerably but as you can see above, I've rationalised it!

20110930 - Journal

2011-09-28T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By addressing my task & project list before doing anything else, prioritising and sorting.

What work habits am I now aware of?
I desperately want and try to spend time in the "Important not Urgent" Quadrant and will sometimes do so at the expense of "urgent but Not Important" work.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
This supports my ability to produce results - do more of it!!

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
My schedule and actions were a little off today

Did I drift or produce?
Drifted a little but came back to production after lunch

Did I plan my results?
Not as much as I would like

Did I produce the results I planned?
Yes

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Somewhat

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
A little

20110927 - Journal

2011-09-27T16:45:00.001+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By completing larger tasks in the way of further work.

What work habits am I now aware of?
A habit of setting yes to our volunteering myself for jobs that really others should be able to handle

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Restricts by constantly meaning I am working to someone else's agenda

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule matched actions.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced

Did I plan my results?
Yes

Did I produce the results I planned?
Finally, YES!!

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Completely

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
not at all

20110926 - Journal

2011-09-26T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By getting things finished that need to be done before I can move on.

What work habits am I now aware of?
I tend to ignore my to do list when there's a main project to complete.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
That restricts my ability as I need to get a clear picture of other tasks too.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule matched actions

Did I drift or produce?
Produced

Did I plan my results?
No!

Did I produce the results I planned?
Yes, but I still haven't finished.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Totally.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Very little.

20110915 - Journal

2011-09-15T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
I was so busy trying to get things done I'm not sure I did.

What work habits am I now aware of?
I close myself off when I'm trying to get something done and don't receive inputs.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
It's great in terms of production but it inhibits relationships badly.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule and actions matched.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
I hadn't allowed enough time to get everything finished.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Totally, but when there's too much, there's too much.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all.

20110914 - Journal

2011-09-14T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By recognising the complexity of what I am trying to do and allowing for it.

What work habits am I now aware of?
A tendency to believe that things are more simple than perhaps they really are.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
That restrits my ability to produce as it causes me to over promise and under deliver.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule and actions matched.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Not quite.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Moderately.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all.

20110913 - Journal

2011-09-13T17:18:00.001+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By seeking feedback and considering it carefully. This produces more accurate and usable modifications.

What work habits am I now aware of?
Tendency to get emotionally attached to work I've expended a lot of effort on.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Restricts by making me reluctant to make changes.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule did not match as I had to revise work I had hoped was complete.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced but it was painful getting there.

Did I plan my results?
Yes

Did I produce the results I planned?
No. Revisions to material were not what I had in mind for today.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
A little. I want to get more off my plate to feel like I've achieved something.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all

20110912 - Journal

2011-09-12T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
Broadly by ignoring the external influences and focusing down on an individual task.

What work habits am I now aware of?
I habitually work across multiple reference points and in different media.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
That currently supports my production as I am producing multi-media resources. It might need careful observation if doing a single-output task like writing though.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule and actions matched.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Yes.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Extensively.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all.

20110909 - Journal

2011-09-09T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By frog-eating: doing the thing I want to do least first. Also by making and following a work plan.

What work habits am I now aware of?
When motivated I am tenacious to the point of single-mindedness.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
That particular one supports production by giving me some focus. Care needs to be taken that I don't allow it to become obsessive or to hinder relationships and other work though.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Exactly. That felt good.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced. A lot.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Yes.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Completely.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all.

20110908 - Journal

2011-09-08T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By focussing on the complex tasks that require the most thought first.

What work habits am I now aware of?
The desire to concentrate on the tasks I can accomplish quickly first to achieve something and look at the more detailed and complex items that need planning when I feel I've got somewhere.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Currently these restrictions producing results but I think they can be refocused to produce by quickly getting rid of the small items and then stoping and planning the larger pieces of work. Currently I'm getting lost in the middle.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
My schedule matched my actions.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Not quite. I had to redirect my efforts halfway through the day.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Mostly, though I did get seriously disheartened in the middle of the day.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all.

20110907 - Journal

2011-09-07T16:48:00.001+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By proactively enquiring after projects of others that may have an influence on me later on.

What work habits am I now aware of?
A conscious need to be aware of external factors.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
If actively investigated and acted on these improve the ability to produce results. If poorly timed or ignored altogether they would restrict it by allowing the unexpected into the equation.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Schedule matched actions.

Did I drift or produce?
A little of each.

Did I plan my results?
Yes.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Mostly. No real omissions but not enough completion either.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Moderately. Today was more about a well articulated middle than a narrative end.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
A little, but not enough to stop me producing significantly.

ePortfolios

2011-09-07T13:00:00.000+10:00

I am investigating the use of ePortfolios for my employer for use in our courses. Ideally I'd like to be able to create and use these from within our LMS but that will take some work.

I have joined a Massively Online Open Course on ePortfolios and am working my way through it. Naturally I am behind with my work!

Personally I dig ePortfolios, they're a great idea and I can see their use to the point where I started using Evernote for just about everything a while ago. However ePortfolios for education seem to mean something a little different (not much though).

Here are some videos pinched from the site:

The first week's learning asks me to share my responses to these questions, so here we go:

What are your hopes/fears for this course?

My hopes are that it will give me a clear picture of what tools and techniques I can reasonably use with learners with whom we have fairly limited contact and little support resource allocated. My fears are that despite great community engagement and content it will be a bit of a navel-gazing exercise that focusses on using it yourself rather than how to drive it forward in an organisational context.

What areas of your life do you plan to reflect on in your e-portfolio?

I plan to reflect on my working practice, creating eLearning materials.

What will success look like for you after you take this course?

Success for me will be that I have not just an understanding and a methodology but a strategy to take ePortfolios forward as a useable means for learning and assessment. Also without wanting to be too provocative this question is a navel-gazing classic. Fantastic, I've captured my own learning objectives which is really useful for me personally. Perhaps it would be useful to have the learning objectives for the course too.... Bueller, anyone? Because in my opinion this is no real objective:

The main aim of the MOOC is to provide learning and networking opportunities, for:
VET practitioners developing a professional e-portfolio to support their Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs (eg industry and professional currency)

No defined success metrics, no targets, no individual goals, nada. It's also too easy; this audience group actively has to be discouraged from networking and learning or it's all they'd do all day!!

20110906 - Journal

2011-09-06T16:40:00.001+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
I didn't. lousy day.

What work habits am I now aware of?
Over reliance on MS Outlook.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
They restrict me because the app crashes when I try to archive my work.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
Poorly.

Did I drift or produce?
Drifted between crashes.

Did I plan my results?
As far as was possible.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Er, no.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Moderately.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
A bit.

Instructional design - the basics

2011-09-06T11:34:00.002+10:00

David Merrill from Utah state university gives the basics. These are almost always missed and I must admit to having allowed things through QA before now that don't fit these principles.

20110905 - Journal

2011-09-05T17:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By ensuring that I actually use the system I set up to handle my tasks and responding appropriately to messages, not getting bogged down in communication threads.

What work habits am I now aware of?
I have a strong urge to redesign things that I find visually unappealing.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
They restrict my work by distracting me on to a design task when the task I need to be focused on is a content task.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
My actions reflected my schedule.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced, but I had to grind it out today.

Did I plan my results?
Not as much as I should have.

Did I produce the results I planned?
Yes

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Considerably. I had to today, I didn't feel hugely motivated and I had to just keep chugging along.

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
I didn't. Value of the GTD system I'm using is that the prioritisation isn't normally an issue - you've already decided what's important and urgent and you're just going through your task list or processing new items into the queue.

20110902 - Journal

2011-09-02T00:00:00.000+10:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By focussing on a single task that's blocking my way and attacking it.

What work habits am I now aware of?
When there is a priority task I will focus on this almost exclusively.

How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
That one supports but it needs care that it doesn't damage other work in the process.

How did my schedule and actions match or otherwise?
My schedule and actions almost matched. There were one or two errors that set me off schedule but these were quickly resolved.

Did I drift or produce?
Produced

Did I plan my results?
Yes

Did I produce the results I planned?
Almost. I wasn't quite realistic with the results I planned.

To what extent did I maintain an attitude of completion?
Considerably

To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
A little.

Evidence based Training Evaluation

2011-07-06T09:30:00.000+10:00

Okay, so basically I agree with the following...

All you need to know about training evaluation in about 700 words |:

"From the 1970’s the ASTD regarded Kirkpatrick’s 4-Levels as their standard:

Reaction to training (happy or smile sheets)
Testing learning
Applying learning in the workplace
Business impact

Let’s try this out by thinking of one salesperson going on a sales training course at a cost of $1000. When they return you take them through the 4 levels, starting with how they felt about the course… – WRONG. You will find that when you get to Level 4 you have no way of assessing impact.

Let’s start again. Before you send them on the course you ask them how much they sell now ($1.2 million) and what the profit margin is (10%)? Then afterwards, when you get to Level 4, you can ask again how much they are selling and you have a basis for gauging impact. The critical, pre-learning questions form the BASELINE and produce the simplest, most obvious and effective evaluation model with just 2 levels:

Baseline evidence
Business impact measured against the baseline data
- but you will quickly find in practice that this 1st, Baseline level will usually suffice because it is this one that adds all the value in what is now an enhanced, learning process. Individual learning starts when each individual knows their own Baseline."

...however as a Training Organisation, not an organisation that has an L & D Dept., that has to justify its prices and prove its efficacy to both Government and Client (even when the two are different) we have found that we are also obliged to try and measure at least 3 of the 4 elements. As we also deal with jobseekers we are often obliged to measure employment outcomes too.

Yes a baseline should be the starting point. Can we separate it from attempts by other stakeholders to measure its impact outside of learner progress? In fact we are obliged not to by the funding that we seek, the client audience and the compliance environment.

Work, home, pub?

2011-02-18T15:46:00.001+11:00

This is one of my increasingly frequent cries of "why, oh why, doesn't it all just fit together, DAMMIT?!"

The map embedded below is from me switching on background updates in Google Latitude on my iPhone and keeping it on for a month or so. As you can see I live a fairly humdrum existence commuting and very occasionally going for a drink! So why is this on the work blog and not on my personal blog? Because of the things that don't yet show on it. Should I have an Android phone I would have been able to add photos to this as they were taken, though I'd still have to use something else to embed them in the map for this page, and add specific check-ins to the stream that were automatically added when I arrived at a pre-set point.

It's not really even this that interests me though, how about being able to add in tweets, videos, photos, QR codes and links to direct people to related content or information, adverts I've scanned, blog posts from specific locations, audio that I've recorded? Now if my phone did that without my permission then I personally would find it a little creepy but if I could opt to add information to specific compilations or not to add it at all the possibilities for it as an educational tool are at least as interesting as for a social tool. And if we start grouping together the output of the social tools and forming them into communities of practice the possibilities are extraordinary.

If I were teaching a land-management or conservation course I could directly link the content I want to send others to, to the location of its subject. If learners are following the right map-based activity stream or even have access to a more static resource then they can check their own location against the subject and visit the sites separately and see the other related content by just checking a map on their phone.

With an increasingly mobile and social set of published activity, the published activity available is going to become more and more diverse, more frequent, more interesting and more geographically related than just work, home, pub. Despite the apparently routine map of my life this could quickly change, even my routine map may be useful in a few ways - to someone other than a stalker, I mean. If you go through the markers one by one you will find days when the markers along Military and Pittwater roads are closer together than on other days - traffic was running slowly.

Open separately

Location isn't the only interesting possible future tracking point here either, and let's think wider than just education. How about market research, anthropology, community dynamics?

A linguistic (semantic?) analysis might allow a Venn type diagram of content or activity by mood. You might also be able to look at what times of day you publish different activities. How your different media cluster around these different filters might also tell you things about yourself - are there places that make you sad or happy, places where you take a lot of pictures? How does posting a new piece of audio make you feel? Are you in foul mood on the bus every evening because it's too crowded (personal gripe there)? Do you travel a long way to go to a specific restaurant that you like? Where and when do you have your best ideas? And importantly, what are the community norms around this published activity? Do fussy coffee drinkers all cluster round particular cafes? What and where is the most useful information for a particular course coming from?

Because we now publish in so many places the information needs to be presentable in more meaningful ways, collated, sortable, tagged and still dynamic. New efforts like Google's public data explorer are a great idea, but this is static data by enlarge, let's see some tools like this for published social media running in realtime.

Design and interaction

2010-11-26T16:02:00.000+11:00

I am a recent convert to TED, which I had though smacked of elitism. Videos and concepts like this are the reason why.

GoogleFail: 3 products, 3 missed opportunities

2010-11-02T03:44:00.000+11:00

Google has a whole suite of products, a large number of which I use every day. When they get it right they generally get it really right but when they don't otherwise fantastic products are left to atrophy or are left to the open source community to see if anyone else runs with.

There are three that really stand out for me;

Notebook - a web-based annotation tool
Jaiku - a stutus update tool, essentially a twitter competitor
Wave - a new platform designed to be a replacement/enhancement to email

The really sad thing about these products is that with a bit of vision and drive they can be combined to add immense value to other Google assets in a way that other companies are already making money out of selling to individuals. Google has the opportunity to build these in to its' apps suite and offer them to a ready made corporate market. Before I get into the possible reasons let's look at what these might look like.

Notebook + Wave = Evernote

Image via CrunchBase

I stopped using Google notebook, which has some features that Evernote distinctly lacks, because the addin was discontinued meaning that it was much harder to add clips without constantly having the page open. However this becomes less of an issue with the drag-drop file additions of wave. I moved to Evernote because the need for the product hasn't gone away but I had no faith that it would be continued and I knew for certain that it wouldn't be developed.

Jaiku + Google Docs = SocialWok

Jaiku seemingly pre-empted some twitter features but its' main opportunity was to be what SocialWok and others like Yammer have become - a social platform for work collaboration. Short status messages that can be published to other platforms, with documents, event attachments etc. No need to send an email, just look at the feed.

Wave + GTalk = GoTo Meeting/Adobe Connect with big hairy bells on

Honestly, did no-one see the potential here? Combining high quality voice and video with a real-time multimedia document creation and collaboration platform that needs only minimal downloads to work would have created a kind of fully interactive meeting environment that would have provided a serious contender for world's most versatile communication method. Add this in as a checkbox option on a Gmail message and you have a ready audience.

This last point is really the saddest; the continual failure to meaningfully combine products or to develop them with an eye to their future context and how to give them to people in a meaningful way presents as a lack of focus and a lack of vision. It really isn't a vast leap of the imagination to combine these things into GApps and to see how they work together.

Picture a set of mostly web-based applications in which you begin an email with a client about a prospective project. Your idea meets with general approval and your client jumps into Gtalk at the same time and you start fleshing out some details by clicking the wave-ify checkbox and live editing what was previously an email thread, adding graphics and other resources as you go. You've been recording the video from the session and add this in to the message when you sign off. You take the resulting message and post it on your company's Jaiku/SocialWok platform and punch out the most salient sections of it to a document that becomes a draft project brief. You also take the parts of the message that aren't immediately relevant and push them to your notebook for later reflection, adding pdfs and other documents to give the ideas more substance. Your post on the JaikuWok platform serves as an invitation and you are able to bring a potential project team together, create a project website using Google sites which has the newly created project feed embedded in it, the formal proposal document sits in there too. You revisit this with your client using the original message and inviting them to the website and feed. As the project develops you are able to keep your client and team up to date with short status messages, conversations on key topics embedded next to the content they refer to and have an embedded notebook that acts as a scrapbook.

Really - that took me 10 mins to think up on the fly, with a few hours I could probably start building a business model out of this. If anyone has a spare million or so and knows some developers I'm up for it!

Sorry Google I used to want to work for you but now I think, I don't.

Reasons
I'll expand on these as I get a perspective on them.

Google is so caught up in its insistence that the web is the platform for everything other than mobile that it feels like they are ignoring the possibilties for useability, accessibility and speed in native software

Google is also attempting to be a platform and seems scared of offending developers off of their environment

A strategic plan

2010-10-28T18:47:00.002+11:00

It's that time of year when the company I work for likes to go away and tune-up the business plan. This is a process that I get a lot from as it helps me contextualise what I'm doing and keep some focus. The key parts of the planning session for us were:

Culture & maintaining direction
What will the company look like in 5yrs, 10yrs+ Sell your vision!
SWOT - revising this; making sure that we are making the most of the strengths & opportunities, dealing with the threats and have mitigation strategies for the weaknesses
Key questions - this is a session I led on key questions that I thought needed to be addressesd
Key areas of effort - where should we direct the most energy?

Whilst this is a healthy and natural thing for an organisation to do it does have the side-effect of making you a bit uneasy about yourself and a desire to write a plan for the bits of your life you might have neglected. Being the slight geek I am this meant a new planning webpage that I can access and change whenever and wherever I want. I have started filling this out with my own mission vision and values - yes I am aware how naff this sounds - and have also plotted out key areas of my life as separate pages within the site (family, hobbies etc). I am in essence building a personal [business] plan!

This is a new thing for me, I have always dreaded the "So, where do you see yourself in five years time?" interview question and now I think I may be on the way to being able to answer it. I will update as it grows and takes on more meaning about what this does to my day to day life.

Interfaces & Tablets

2010-10-12T04:55:00.001+11:00

Smartphones & tablets like the iPad have the potential to replace paper as the portable readable medium of choice. Not in the short or medium term but longer term as the next generation comes in, a generation who may not have been educated using paper and who understand almost all media as interactive. Please note: potential does not mean likely.

However I do think the interface will need significant improvement, or possibly just replacing wholesale. Prodding at the screen whilst attempting to hold the device with the other is no way to do anything other than just read or compose lightweight replies. Attaching a keyboard takes away the essence of the device so really we're left with the idea of talking to it and even possibly speech becoming the default interface for technology.

That could have some interesting ramifications for communication generally and what we currently understand as literacy. The more articulate verbal reasoners will be more quickly and accurately able to record and communicate their thoughts. In the sci-fi fantasy world inside my head this also means a return of clearer spoken language with fewer colloquialisms as an important factor. Given some of the work I've been doing recently I can't help thinking that it might also prove less of an educational disadvantage for some cultural groups that have what amounts to a spoken and drawn culture.

What do you think might be the possibilities for speech powered interfaces and/or tablets?

Thoughts on Social Media: 3 Mainstream Threats

2010-10-01T15:27:00.000+10:00

When you've made it, when you embody and are part of a societal norm as an enterprise there are 3 threats I think that you have to address to maintain stability, and so it is with the social media companies at the moment.

1. Litigation and Legislation
You may have made it but are people comfortable enough with what's happening to just let it happen? Is there a legislative framework in place that governs this area or is this still developing, is there case law?
Nothing gets laws changed more quickly than a perceived threat to children - angry parents are a force of nature. and it's an easy target for tabloids to say that children are not protected well enough. If, as with social media, you aren't a long-established part of the picture and people are still adjusting to what you do then test-cases and hastily drafted legislation could be a real risk. In Particular accidental overshare whether it is ultimately the fault of the user or the service provider will trigger litigation and ultimately legislation. We'll see social media companies continually tweak their terms and conditions to deal with this, though legislators may not be impressed by these in the long run.

2.Federation
If a common set of format standards is adopted for your status, sharing pictures, videos and for messaging then which service you use will cease to matter. Email works for everyone no matter what client or service they use - social media could go the same way. I suspect the current APIs that allow third party access to these services are a precursor to this. When an open standard becomes the norm companies are forced to compete on quality, speed, service level and price. Even the network effect of having a large numbers of people using the service becomes steadily less of an advantage. The free barrier is going to be hard to break here as the ad-supported model makes this an issue for how effective or intrusive ads are on the service - good services whose ads are not effective would suffocate from lack of cash and bad services with effective ads would not be able to keep users, there's a balance to be struck.

This will not have escaped the big social media companies and they will hang on to proprietary formats and data calls until they are convinced that the possibilities of their current market position and first-mover advantage has been exhausted. They will also begin acquiring any service that looks like it might make a good move in this space with an open format - before Google does. One of Google's main market tactics is to lay siege to closed platforms with open ones. If you want a good example people are backing Diaspora as an open-source competitor to Facebook; however Mark Zuckerberg is a major investor, one can only assume he reads the board reports with enormous interest and in great detail.

3. Obsolescence
The general, all-encompassing threat is always that there's something better that you just can't predict. However if you can't predict it, you can't buy it and you can't innovate ahead of it then you won't be alone when it eats your business model...

How & when to quit

2010-09-28T08:30:00.003+10:00

Seth Godin talks about the concept behind his new book The Dip

100 Top tools for eLearning 2010

2010-06-16T12:16:00.001+10:00

If you're involved with eLearning, or learning of any kind for that matter, scanning down this list will be good to guage the currency of your knowledge if nothing else. You should get a few new tools out of it with any luck!

in reference to: Emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2010 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Working at the weekend

2010-03-21T10:26:00.000+11:00

I know it's not a great idea to allow your working life to intrude into your leisure time, but working when there are fewer pressures - and fewer walk-up queries - is so much easier. Besides, everyone else is asleep or out doing something else!

When I've chosen to work and I'm at home and comfortable I don't resent any part of it, and I didn't have travel for an hour and a half first. I don't feel guilty about taking breaks to tweak small design issues that are niggling at me or to read an interesting blog post or.... you get the picture.

Partly this is working at home which makes me more productive in any case but most of it seems to be attitude. My productivity peaks come early in the morning, late in the afternoon, and around 8pm - when I'm feeling relaxed and ready for them. As only one of these peaks is during working time normally work can sometimes be a slightly frustrating experience; I know I'm not doing my best work and I'm not quite keyed up for it.

The other benefit of putting in a few hours at the weekend is that I know I'm going in to the office with the things I need to be done actually finished. This means I am relaxed enough that the walk-up queries and general everyday things won't be as intrusive as they sometimes can be.

Adding a social layer to the work tech

2010-02-12T09:26:00.000+11:00

Most of the people you interact with on a daily basis are not actually those who you socialise with. They are the people you work with. There are lots of technologies for you to connect with people you socialise (the near ubiquitousfacebook is one of them) but connecting in a mutually useful way with people at work seems to be mostly limited to using a fairly tied down intranet, instant messenger if you are very lucky/unlucky and the dreaded email.

I get email all day long, mostly from people within my direct line of sight or who are within 20 meters of me. I don't want email from people who could just raise their voice, or their hand. The majority of these emails are one liners, internal document distributions, short notifications and well, chatter. I don't want those by email either really. In fact if I cleared all those out of my inbox my working day would be considerably less cluttered. That's not to say that I don't want these things at all, they are fundamental to the way people work.

What's happening here is that there is a disconnect between the medium and the message. People need to be able to do these things and everyone wants to be able to do so from theirinbox , preferably without cluttering it up. What social networking sites are really good at is lightweight sharing unfortunately they also generate a huge amount of noise. What workplaces need is a system of sharing that doesn't generate huge amounts of noise or that is easily filtered, and no the intranet wont work, not in its current form - it has limited to no messaging capability.

It seems other people are well ahead of me on this Socialwok already has this for Google Apps as do a whole bunch of other tools. Google it seems are not far behind with this week's release of Buzz which mirrors a lot of the functionality of these sites from within the gmail inbox. Apparently there is an enterprise version of this product too which I would be astonished did it not include the majority of Socialwok's functions. It seems the future might well be social, and that's not very surprising. The people joining the workforce currently have grown up with email and social media why on earth would they want anything else? Email seems sluggish by comparison with any social media application whose real-time rich media updates make email look positively shallow.

For a work context think perhaps of project management scenario involving updates to documents that contain various media - something I do fairly often. In this case short updates with rich media file links that play from within the browser/inbox environment seem like a fantastic idea. The social aspect here seems more appropriate too. Working with a small team of collaborators such as subject matter experts with a large group of stakeholders that need to kept up to date with progress - activity streams form around projects with task level updates and at a glance progress tracking directly accessible content that relates to the output of the project. Suddenly social media stops looking like a toy and starts to look like it's the kind of competitive advantage your competition might get to before you.

This also has some other interesting implications. If you use contractors for projects and they need to be able to see and contribute to this project platform then you're going to have to allow them access. This might feel like the tail beginning to wag the dog but what it's doing is exposing just how porous the boundaries of organisations are necessarily becoming.

Adding in the social to thee technology makes the workplace more transparent and more workable for want of a better word. As working in silos has largely ended - everyone is in a team - and is working on a piece of work with a beginning a middle and end - that team has a project - having documents, processes and outputs that are open to only one person at a time or that can't be seen from out side the team is not just inefficient it's entirely inappropriate to the way we now work.

iPad, Adobe, Google HTML5 and eLearning

2010-02-04T06:38:00.001+11:00

Unless you have been living on the moon for the past week you'll have noticed that Apple released a new product into the wild which was essentially a giant iPhone without the phone functionality. Whilst the tech press were singularly underwhelmed they do seem to have missed the point. This device is not for them, it's for people who want to pick up a piece of technology and have it just work, and work in a way they expect it to. Stephen Fry will tell you why more eloquently than I am able.

The thing is going to have some big effects on the internet if it takes off. The touchscreen internet is really not something that's been well visualised yet but I expect to see things like rounded corners and button style links to become much more prevalent. Everything onscreen is now potentially a button and is probably going to have to look like one to be effective.

I was interested in the device from a professional perspective. This thing looks like it has enormous potential as an educational tool. It makes a lot of sense as a general mobile learning aid over a full size laptop, though maybe not a netbook. As a multimedia device that can transmit feedback from the point of learning it makes a great deal of sense. Most basic learning and work tasks only actually need the minimum of input from the user (for example just to demonstrate understanding). When you get to the point of practicing a competency or compiling a larger assessment then rarely are the circumstances going to be right to use a device like this though they will more commonly exist. As the iPad still needs you to connect to a larger, more powerful computer occasionally this allows you to learn on the move, collect your notes and synchronize them to the machine on which you will complete the larger more involved task.

There are a a lot of missing features on the iPad which will be added to a greater or lesser degree as time goes on but the big missing feature is support for Adobe Flash. Most eLearning is built in Flash because this technology is on about 98% of computers, including Apple's larger more conventional machines. The reason it isn't on the smaller devices is that Flash has become an application platform in its own right and this could remove a degree of control from Apple, a degree of control they have used to make huge amounts of money from through the app store. Flash could also use up a lot of graphics and processor memory that would adversely affect already pressed battery life.

The real issue here is that we are on the edge of a new generation of the internet. The HTML 5 standard is really aimed at removing the need for plugins like Flash - allowing the web to be natively more programmable than it currently is. This is good for geeks as it allows them to use a single platform to develop for without the need for an intermediary application. It is bad for Adobe who have a sizeable suite of software that outputs flash. They are not alone, most eLearning software not made by Adobe, outputs to Flash.

There is a school of thought that Flash exists largely because Internet Explorer is such a bad browser. IE didn't and in many cases still doesn't present the web in the same way as other browsers. To get a universal experience and to escape using proprietary video formats that didn't work on non-windows computers Flash has been deployed almost universally to provide the richer content that a browser that is only programmable to a degree could not support. Adobe's CTO Steve Lynch reasonably pointed out that we run the risk of returning to the pre-flash days if Apple and others stop supporting it. HTML 5 is not complete as a standard and the interested parties writing the standard have failed to agree on a video format and that is the only reason this is reasonable.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Apple's device was the only one out there of its kind. It isn't, HP and others have released things that are very similar, it's just that Apple make a big noise about it, their hardware is hugely desirable and people are already familiar with the operating system and the interface - which is why MS Windows has been the dominant operating system on PCs for so long. Software developers who make all the applications on the machines are also familiar with the operating system and have already used it to build things for the iPhone.

There is another operating system that has multi-touch support (if you hack it), works on mobile devices and is already to software developers building applications. It's Google's Android operating system and it is going to be installed by the manufacturers on around 50 mobile devices this year. It doesn't take a genius to see that installing android on a tablet-type device is going to be quite attractive to any manufacturer other than Apple.Google have also been working on an open source operating system with higher capabilities that could easily be made to work on a higher end machine. Mock-up video below made by Glen Murphy, one of the team working on Chrome OS (via TechCrunch).

Android already supports flash and being open-source it's cheaper and more accessible and customisable software. It also means that that it probably provides the better internet browsing experience at current and critically the faster machines it runs on could support the eLearning applications without software suppliers having to rewrite their software and eLearning professionals having to re-render all their programs of learning.

What's going to happen? My prediction is that Apple will make hay whilst the sun shines and sell quite a few iPads and the H.264 video codec that they favour will look like it will become the defacto web standard for a while, but that it won't entirely manage it because it's far too big and clunky. Adobe are, in the long run, going to have to capitulate in any case and will start making software that outputs HTML 5 rather than flash but we'll still see Flash based content around for at least 3 years.

Perhaps the more interesting trend that the trend towards netbooks and things like the iPad and the iPhone suggest is the modularisation of computing and communication. Your workstation for high powered computing remains a larger, more powerful machine and whilst you are out of reach of this you use a cut-down device so that you are still able to do some of the tasks.

For eLearning professionals things are going to carry on much as they currently are for a while but look for the trend towards the software packages we use starting to output HTML 5. I think this will start to happen before the standard is complete. The trouble is the same as always though - Internet Explorer has at least a 60% market share you listen to, it doesn't currently support HTML 5 and Micrsoft are notorious for ignoring standards that the rest of the world use.

Will we see devices like the iPad being used for eLearning? I think we probably will, eventually rather than quickly. There's a camera, a GPS chip and potentially some phone-like functionality missing from this kind of thing at the moment which could send the device further afield and increase its efficacy. The reason that media publishers will flock to the device is because you can still charge for multimedia content which is placed on the device that doesn't need to connect back to the network to view it, but can do so when it is back in range or it really needs to. That same feature set along with the slim and light form factor make it very appealing as a mobile learning aid.

I don't think we'll see these in a classroom environment though, for the same reason we haven't seen other electronic devices there. They look like they will be hell on earth to take notes on. I don't think they help to facilitate the direct face-to-face interpersonal interaction that a group session suggests. As someone who builds eLearning isn't one of the things that I'm aiming for to take the informational aspect out of the classroom to a degree so that it can be used more effectively for the interpersonal aspect of learning?

Notes on a theme

2010-01-08T15:12:00.000+11:00

Even more of a note to self post than normal this one.

Learnings from end of 2009:

Deadlines are not just for yourself, clients and other stakeholders need to have these imposed on them too or you end up with changes to content on the day you go to production which make you rush and could potentially adversely affect quality. Set an agreed content and signoff deadline that gives everyone a decent enough cushion to allow for approval but not so much that everyone expects an unattainble perfection.
A robust change request procedure is needed for changes that come through outside of the regular processes. Changes that this generates need to be scoped for time and other cost implications and these clearly communicated to project stakeholders (a list of project stakeholders and their contact details/means of contacting them should be one of the first things requested along with a style and tone guide/branding pack)
Don't be afraid to try things that feel like a bit of an over-reach. As long as you know the risks you can scare yourself. You never know, you might find you've done something brilliant!

Some thoughts for 2010:

This year is going to be about production and experience where last year was about gaining new skills and tools
There is more leadership activity, advocacy, and best-practice establishment to be done. This is the groundwork for future success and not drudgery that stops things from getting done. Remember this perspective when you are tired and feel like you've had enough.

Resolved: The Five-Day Work Week Is Obsolete

2009-08-27T13:29:00.000+10:00

Now this is a good idea. I wonder what wffect it's had on productivity?

Resolved: The Five-Day Work Week Is Obsolete: "

A year ago, unbeknown to cubicle-dwellers across the country, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman started the Working 4 Utah initiative—an idea so radical we’re still amazed the Beehive State gave it a shot. In a bid to save money, primarily on commuting costs, Utah changed the work week schedule for 17,000 non-essential employees. Instead of 40 hours spread from Monday to Friday, the state gave everybody Friday off and tacked another two hours onto the four other days of the week.

PREVIOUSLY ON THE STIMULIST: Resolved: You Should Move to Utah

Now, for any of you who have worked a true 9-5, you know that an extra hour in the morning and an extra hour in the afternoon is absolutely worth a three-day weekend. But Huntsman’s plan was about trimming costs and reducing energy use, not just letting people sleep more. One year in, GOOD has the startling results:

* Closing all those state facilities on Friday has saved cut energy use by 13%; officials hope to get that number to 20 once more kinks are worked out

* When you add in the gas that’s been saved, the energy cuts are the equivalent of taking almost 2,500 cars off the road

* Nine months into the program, Utah had saved almost $2 million

* It’s not just the state that’s saving cash—commuters pocketed almost $6 million

* Not surprisingly, 82% of workers are in favor of the new schedule. And they’re happier, too—complaints are down at places like the DMV.

Not bad.

According to GOOD, several other cities and states are taking a good look at Utah. If Huntsman Utah can continue the momentum, no doubt other mayors and governors will up for a gamble—you just can’t turn down the chance to save money these days. And consider what a four-day week would mean for some federal departments. The Post Office is in major trouble—think John Potter couldn’t use a different schedule?

The five-day work week was a much-needed improvement, but it was arbitrary one. As we’ve said again and again on this site, we’re living in a moment where the conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. And if that means everyone getting a three-day weekend, well, it might not be too hard a sell.

Data

2009-07-18T09:10:00.000+10:00

Something I said *cough* after a few drinks *cough* a week or two ago was that way that you collect, interpret and report on data about your job is going to be a if not the skill set that defines work.

I'm recording that thought here with some bullet points that I may elaborate on as I consider it:

Make yourself responsible and accountable for the data you use
Data analysis is being pushed down the food chain to sit closer to its point of collection
Presentation is half the battle - if you can't communicate your information it wont mean anything
Interpreting the data - what it means now and what it means for the next few lifecycles of the work - is going to be key to successful working
You may be provided with various tools to collect data you need to be able to tie them together.

Stopping here for the moment I'm not coming up with anything brilliant or insightful

Focus on achievements

2009-05-20T16:26:00.000+10:00

When going to job interviews the advice is to focus on your achievements. I'm not even thinking of changing jobs but it's probably healthy to review what you've done in those terms from time to time, especially with an end of year review coming up.

One of my aims at work is to be an agent of change and develop the organisation and its practices, so have I done that and if so how?

eLearning

We didn't do eLearning where I worked and the operations manager and the MD had major disagreement about whether this was even a good idea and we were going nowhere with it despite the requests of clients. I got so frustrated with this situation that I designed a blended delivery model for one of our courses using half the number of face-to-face days supported with eLearning and sold a run of a program using this model to a client. Now this delivery model supports 2 of our key moneymaking programs and is about to be rolled out to a third and a brand new product - which I've been building.

Digital Marketing

We subscribed to a digital marketing tool that has SMS, email and auto-response capabilities. In 2 years I didn't see this used for more than sending out our newsletter. I persuaded - read goaded and cajoled - a client into allowing me to use their contact list and filled a course using a promotional email and an article on our website with an application form. This was also for NGOs who are generally quite resistant to eMarketing and are not big users of technology. Using the same process we have now filled well over over 100 training places this year and it now supplements our press advertising and direct contact with clients. I've also successfully added enquiry forms to our website that generate casual enquiries.

Internet advertising

As of only last week we're also using internet advertising and it's producing results - there's been a noticeable increase in enquiries about the programs advertised. We now need to get better at converting these into actual business. Since we're quite new at this outbound marketing business that's to be expected.

Online lectures

We have used text-driven online tutorials for as long as I've worked here however the native chat feature on our Learning Management system was creaking and was only useful to revise content already covered or for very lightweight application. Now we are about to embark on a diploma level course heavily, but not exclusively, using the new tool that I selected and implemented.

I am by no means saying I made this happen on my own but I contributed to what was quite a conservative training organisation becoming something very different and much braver and more innovative.

eLearning, the story so far...

2009-04-15T09:45:00.000+10:00

A quick note to try and capture some of the things I've learnt building eLearning, or rather trying to build it. It's going slowly and there are reasons for that.

Get your content together and make sure everyone's agreed on it before you get going otherwise you end up making huge changes that confuse the whole piece and yourself
The same goes for learning objectives/outcomes
Make sure that your reviewers review the whole thing annd don't just give you their opinion on as much as they can stomach reviewing in a single session
Voiceovers are painful to record and edit, finish the design work before you get started
Work in sections. Finish one section before moving to another - storyboarding is invaluable
Focus - like writing you need total concentration. Turn the email off, put your phone on busy and try to minimise distractions
There is always a better tool and a neater way of doing things - use what you have and save the clever bits for the next version

That's it for now, more when I've had some coffee.

I am a Peacock Dove, apparently

2009-04-02T14:28:00.004+11:00

Hmm, that's a pretty marginal score. My polymath tendencies tend to screw up these type-indicator tests but interesting nonetheless.

TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE If you are a Peacock-Dove you could be more effective with less concern about how others feel about you. You can't please all the people all the time, so why try so hard? Not everybody is going to love you! Perhaps try paying more attention to your own needs and less on other people's. You might also look at setting tighter time deadlines to do things, or stop promising so much. Give it some thought. It might be a step in the right direction.

Everyone is now in for it.

Thanks to tick.com.au for the free test!

7 Habits

2009-03-03T18:40:00.000+11:00

Trying to think up my personal mission statement as an experiment. I have not related well to the PR21C teachings - a bit too nuts and bolts and not quite enough personal change. 7 habits seems more in line with my own thinking.

Keep an eye on stuff.dataphage.com for other related bits and pieces.

January

2009-01-30T06:54:00.001+11:00

I think we can call January a no-score draw. I've done enough to get what work there was done finished. Of course in February I'm going to change the world...

Xmas geekout

2008-12-18T08:01:00.001+11:00

I'm posting it up here because it's a very quick way to demonstrate the power of collaborative effort on a document (okay, really I'm doing it because because I'm a geek and secretly it delights me).

eLearning08 Wiki Page

2008-12-13T07:20:00.000+11:00

Inspired by some of the things I was seeing at eLearning08 I put up a wiki page about the event.

Why online and why not

2008-12-08T13:03:00.003+11:00

This is a video Stpehen Collins used in his closing keynote at eLearning08. It stuck in my mind, so I am reposting it here.

It captures the reasons for using internet enabled learning strategies but also shows why it needs to be done carefully.

eLearning 08

2008-12-04T09:14:00.007+11:00

Today I shall mostly be liveblogging from elearning08.

Naturally there is a twitter stream for the event despite the fact that twitter's full functionality is not available in Australia (which would be why I use Jaiku).

09:30 - Trying to find the Adobe Connect link

09:35 - There are many more laptops in the room than there were last year. The program looks very similar

09:56 - Much more traffic on twitter than last time out. Getting curious about what fluid learning might be...

10:40 - Great keynote podcast will be downloaded and used.

16:39 - Big gap in posting down to being busy. Covered a lot of ground today, eRecognition, Community engagement, wikis etc.

Journaling overstretch

2008-11-17T15:57:00.002+11:00

Okay, so journaling is a great thing but is just too hard to do daily and seems to break one of my own rules; it is over-optimising. I was trying so hard to make myself use it that it wasn't working for me. It might have to be a Friday only gig from now on.

Also I am realising that the word decide seems to be left out of a lot of what I'm doing at the moment. It's all about getting old stuff finished but nothing new seems to be starting. That's probably unfair but it's how I've been feeling today. I so desparately want to get started on the new-world things that we could be doing that will add so much that I'm getting disappointed when I can't get on with it.

Restarting the journal

2008-10-27T17:49:00.001+11:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
I got some old things ('conversations') reactivated so that they might complete and stop handing me admin work.
What work habits am I now aware of?
A tendency to let work overflow into personal time
How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Initially it allows me to get more done but then I end up with less personal time and feel more tense and so get less done!
How did my schedule and actions match or not match?
Fairly completely, there was a moved meeting but this didn't impact me too badly as I was able to juggle things around it.
Did I drift or produce?
Got a lot done - produced.
Did I plan my results?
This is still something I'm not doing. Planning the outcomes is still difficult as I'm still struggling a bit with how long these take to achieve
Did I produce the results I planned?
Most of them - as far as I planned any!
To what extent did I maintain a condition of completion?
Substantially - I got things that were drifting moving toward completion again
To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
A little, however it was because I need them done to give me more capacity to produce results!

Blog/Journal FAIL

2008-10-22T14:50:00.007+11:00

Hmm okay, journaling lasted about 3 days before I managed to take a week's break. You really have to stick at it and discipline yourself. I will see what I do today and restart in earnest next week.

What happened? Well my productivity peaked as I got busy and then I trashed it by getting angry with everything and everyone for 2 straight days as we had a compliance and re-registration audit. And then yesterday was not a success. Whatt I need to do is refocus and prioritise my to-do list again. A new week will undoubtedly help.

A below average day

2008-10-15T18:37:00.004+11:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
I didn't! I developed one pieceof organsisational capability which will, in future, bear significant results but actual output was close to nil.
What work habits am I now aware of?
If the day isn't carefully scheduled with specific tasks that have desired outcomes I will drift aimlessly.
I also have a tendency - as I suppose everyone does - to attach myself to the interesting tasks that cover new ground rather than grinding out the required outputs.
How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
The first habit, quite obviously restricts my capability, but sticking to very clearly articulated tasks, schedules and outputs seems to knock thiss on the head.
The second point is a tendancy that can be useful. A lot of my role is about capability and technique development for the organisation. Once directed correctly this can be very productive.
How did my schedule and actions match or not match?
Not well! The afternoon was better than the morning but I still got distracted.
Did I drift or produce?
Mostly drifted
Did I plan my results?
Did I produce the results I planned?
This feels like the critical point to me. I scheduled swathes of time for activity with no specified output and lo and behold what I got was no specified output. If I can plan and stick to the results planned for each day I will change things really quickly but I will have to get used to how long or not it takes to achieve the outputs I want. This feels like a level of maturity and experioence that I am a long way from at the moment.
what extent did I maintain a condition of completion?
I didn't - I didn't schedule anything to be completed so no condition of completion was possible!
To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Extensively! The interesting things got done and the boring things didn't

What a badly manged day. Iam going to have to work twice as hard today to make up for it. Bugger.

An average day

2008-10-14T18:06:00.004+11:00

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
By actually knuckling down to do the horrid pernickity fiddly things that I despise and not procrastinating longer when I realised that's what I was doing.
What work habits am I now aware of?
Drifting first thing. It's easy to get distracted, particularly when you've had less sleep than you should have.
On the positive side having all my notes to hand meant that when I got distracted I could easily refocus on what I was meant to be doing!
How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
The distraction of email first thing in the morning is no good - I must also learn not to read news feeds first thing as this takes your mind straight off the task at hand.
How did my schedule and actions match or not match?
Again producing compliance documents takes about twice as long as I'd like so I managed to do many of one type but not get through the really big type that is looming at me again tomorrow.
Did I drift or produce?
Both. Damn near nothing at all got done until 10am
Did I plan my results?
Yes, but I didn't get all of them. I am still thinking very short term and need to work on the big picture stuff too.
Did I produce the results I planned?
Some but not all. Only got 2 personal things done and missed out on lunch but I got some personal things done which isn't always the case. I got the majority of the work tasks done that I had scheduled but I seem to be ducking the big ugly ones as normal. Planning the result of doing these should help with this.
To what extent did I maintain a condition of completion?
Not bad today but not great - as above really.
To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not a lot today. Not much on my list was for me, mostly for the organisation.

I'm not feeling like writing a great deal today. I woke up at 1am and didn't get back to sleep until 3 so I am short on energy. However to focus on the day's achievements we got a tender done and submitted today. However, I really don't feel like going to play tennis, which is what I am about to do now.

13 October

2008-10-13T16:59:00.003+11:00

These are the questions I have been given to answer for my journaling which I am going to use as a template for these posts.

How did I improve my capacity to produce results today/yesterday?
Today I improved by scheduling my time fairly strictly and even when I was interupted managed to reschedule everything so that the urgent and important tasks got done first. Quite impressive really, I never do that!
What work habits am I now aware of?
Doing things that feel like work that aren't actually productive in themselves; like reading RSS feeds and obsessively checking email.
On a more positive note, when I am actually engaged in a task I stick to it and try to do it in a way that interests me - although I tend to curse a lot (might start a swear box!).
Also I tend to keep notes in a number of places.
How do they support or restrict my ability to produce results?
Doing things that feel like work as above allows you to procrastinate and feel like you're working when actually you're producing nothing.
The more positive aspect means that I don't get distracted easily and I'm able to get through a task even if I find it tedious (and the cursing keeps people away from me! Note to self: this isn't actually a good thing even if it feels like it at the moment.).
Keeping notes in more than one place is not useful at all - I neqarly lost an important phone number.
How did my schedule and actions match or not match?
This is an even 50/50 - my schedule would have matched exactly if I hadn't got an important and urgent piece of work as soon as I walked through the door. As it was I still got a lot done, just not as much as I actually scheduled but I feel like I prioritised correctly.
Did I drift or produce?
Today I produced! There was little or no drifting time at all.
Did I plan my results?
Oddly, for such a positive day I didn't plan my results I planned the activity. I might need to work on this, but I'm early in the process so I won't judge too harshly
Did I produce the results I planned?
As I didn't plan any results, er, no! As above, this needs work.
To what extent did I maintain a condition of completion?
Er, wot?! I completed the tasks I had, I moved a couple of critical ones forward and don't feel bad about where I will be tomorrow. I guess this is a yes and a no...
To what extent did I behave like what I want is urgent?
Not at all, nothing I really wanted got done today, though that sounds bad.

PR21C & Journaling

2008-10-11T11:20:00.004+11:00

On Thursday I went to the pilot course of a course called Producing Results in the 21st Century or PR21C. It is a producivity course designed to help you change your mind about your working practice. The key concepts for me were:

Organisations and their activities are best articulated as conversations which need to be actively managed to sustain and remain consistent
The language used to conduct these conversations affects their content and efficacy
Reducing the 'noise' and the interuptions in your work environment will help you achieve
Producing results is made possible by mentally constructing [visualising] what a sucessful result will look like and framing the activity to yourself get there in ways that are appealing [fun, new, engaging, authentic] and adventurous

Key areas [domains] of focus to do this are your:

Concerns [issues, areas of endeavour]
Time [management]
Communication channels [which ones you choose, how you use them]
Workskills [building more]
Networks [conversations, actions]

I'm going to try and do this for myself and to do so I committed to doing a journal of work practice that is reflective and says which you have noticed, which have been useful and which haven't. Since the PR21C idea is also about getting you to change your habits you need to do this for an extended period of time. I have heard it said that it takes 90 days to make or break a habit so I shall be aiming for 90 days of the journal at least.

90 days is a long time, I'm going to have to schedule reminders for myself to do this. I'm also goint to try and extend it into my personal life a bit to help me get a bit more focussed on some of the personal goals I have too.

I started using my calendar to schedule tasks and activities on Friday and found it useful. It also exposed just how much longer it takes me to do some things than I think it does so that was very useful. Focus seems to be a probelm - I wasn't able to stay doing any single task consistenty for longer than about 40 minutes, particularly when it was something I found tedious.

I think this will help me focus in on what's important to me, but I'm not completely convinced it's going to work - it is, however, well worth a shot.

In at the Deep End

2008-08-06T13:05:00.001+10:00

As my role as a new eLearning Manager crystallises there are a few key things I have to do. The first was to get a good understanding of what the scope of my role really is. As I’m now comfortable with that situation and there are plenty of definitions of eLearning out there and they are constantly shifting so I’m not going to define the term here other than to say that I will most likely to define it myself by what I do and what I write here.
The next task is to pick a set of software tools. As I’m in a situation where we have an LMS platform, suppliers that we co-own eLearning materials with and courses in progress using those materials the immediate pressure is on upgrading our provision and extending our capabilities. As we’ve got great asynchronous tools and products but are using only a basic online chat facility my first major task is to choose a synchronous eLearning platform that allows us to facilitate eLearning live to the internet.
To that end I've compiled a wishlist of features/benefits and prioritised them.

Feature	Description	Priority
No Downloads	Must be ready to go with no user downloads	Essential
Live polling	Participant voting	Essential
Whiteboarding	Trainer drawing, typing & highlighting areas of the screen	Essential
One-way audio	Trainer talking directly to class	Essential
Session recording	Ability to playback the session and take content from it	Essential
Presentation	PowerPoint style slides & uploading	Essential
Direct Messaging	Typed text messaging (as current)	Essential
Pre-scripting	The ability to automate certain portions of the session ahead of time and simply trigger them in the session	Highly desirable
Grant control	Hand over control of the session to another participant/trainer	Highly desirable
Live video	Video streaming to participants	Highly desirable
File transfer	Send participants files	Highly desirable
Breakout rooms	Split participants into workgroups for activities	Desirable
Two way audio	Participants can reply to the trainer via audio	Desirable
Application sharing	Show participants what’s on your screen	Feature only

All the usual suspects are under consideration for purchase as well as a few from leftfield. Check back for the shortlist in about a fortnight's time.

Grassy Knol

2008-07-24T10:17:00.000+10:00

Google has launched its 'other' wiki tool, called Knol. This will an interesting experiment to see whether the introduction of advertising cash and author accountability injects some formality into the wiki process and what impact this is going to have on the quality of the information.

TechCrunch is predicting a lot of attempts to monetize and a kind of land-grab approach, presumably people will rehash wikipedia's content to do this. It seems an odd idea but this is definitley a potential tool for peer review of ideas that sits outside of the published journal method...

Use the damn phone!

2008-06-20T17:00:00.001+10:00

Using the phone is the new black. After getting hacked off with everyone emailing everything (self included) and reading about how email is a time-waster I decided to stop using it so much. Using the phone more than I normally would has probabl;y saved me 2 hours today. That's the same 2 hours I would have otherwise lost to getting called in to meetings I didn't know about....

Also using email seems to generate more email, a syptom of the kipple begets kipple rule....

Grand Central

2008-02-28T14:36:00.003+11:00

Ah, if only this worked in Australia. On the long list of Things The World Really Needs But Doesn't Know It Yet a unified and easily configured communications system is very close to the top.

Gimmethetoy!!

Invisible competition

2008-01-30T09:03:00.000+11:00

Another from the geek shall inherit the earth file:

The greatest gains in this new world are likely to go to people who are methodical planners or who love the game for its own sake. Some people plot their competitive strategies far in advance. These planners—be they crazy or just highly productive—don’t need anyone breathing down their necks, and indeed they often work best alone or in small groups. ... Planners’ behavior may manifest itself in competitive forms, but their underlying psychology is often not very rivalrous at all. They are ordering their own realities, usually for their individual psychological reasons, rather than acting out of a desire to trounce the competition.

The ‘invisible’ quality to competition in massive distributed groups is leveling the playing field, or is it simply providing a medium for expression, an outlet or conduit that doesn’t necessarily favour the brash and classically competitive who thrive in s smaller context?

The New Invisible Competitors - by Tyler Cowen

Jihadinets

2008-01-04T07:36:00.000+11:00

This article posits a startling idea - militant groups using virtual worlds to conspire. Is Neuromancer really so close to becoming a fact?! [Via the excellent wanabehuman]

Prioritising and over-optimising

2007-12-10T18:18:00.000+11:00

I'm suffering a bit from overload at the moment so I thought I'd share two prioritisation tips that I'm making use of:

The first was taught to me by a former teacher and is used everywhere in some form or another: label and sort your tasks from A-C in terms of priority (A highest) and then by estimated time to complete them from shortest to longest. Do a few of the short ones, then a few of the long ones, rinse and repeat, that way you feel like you are making progress and don't get demotivated.
Don't over-optimise your workflow: you can spend all day making a to do list and making sure that it is 'at a glance understandable', that your emails arrive and are labelled, that your desk is neat and that your status reports are up-to-date. If you make this a task in itself it will be the only task you do!

TryHard

2007-12-07T16:14:00.000+11:00

This morning going through my newsfeeds as my alter ego dataphage I found this article in Scientific American linked to. In essence it states that children see talent as the means to success and effort as pointless and not valuable at all. If they don’t achieve at the first attempt they will consider giving up or cheating to get good grades.

To my mind this is not just an American problem this is a part of westernised culture at large where individual brilliance is lauded more than enterprise and collective endeavour. Success is somehow supposed to effortlessly as the result of talent. This is an attitude I encounter in people my own age and younger (I’m 30). This is the way TryHard became a derogatory term and is probably the reason much of the under 30’s group seems to be so badly regarded by the other age groups at the moment. It is, I might add, almost certainly the result of an education system skewed by favouring individual achievement and talent to the detriment of the kind of skills you actually need in life.

*Climbs off soapbox*

The Wisdom of Crowds

2007-12-04T15:19:00.000+11:00

I know a lot of people beleive in the Wisdom of Crowds but Mister Splashy Pants thinks it's more like the lowest common denominator.

How Bill Gates uses Office

2007-12-03T08:49:00.000+11:00

Sometimes it's best to get it straight from the horses mouth:

Office Hours: How Bill Gates uses Office - Help and How-to - Microsoft Office Online

I've read articles before that suggest you can increase your productivity by a third by using a second screen, Bill uses 3. Note to PC sellers and employers: one screen is probably not enough any more!

Websites

2007-11-30T08:01:00.000+11:00

It's been a bit of a struggle learning how to use Joomla and getting components and modules in approximately the right places but the BCA website is now doing about 90% of what I think it should be doing. It also now has a blog for all staff so there'll be some cross-posting here from there once I get everyone posting on it.

Now for the next little struggle, learning SEO from scratch...

How to vote

2007-11-24T07:04:00.001+11:00

The Australian Electoral commission have a piece of eLearning showing how to vote. It's short, clear, effective and well thought out. Notably it is also lead by the audio.

Experimental workblog

2007-11-18T13:29:00.001+11:00

I'm going to try something very new for me; I'm going to make this a workblog.

In line with my new role at work which has a greater focus on flexible learning, with eLearning forming a big part of it, I will be making this page a log of things I learn, find interesting or just want to share. It will include links, podcasts, articles if I have time and general items of interest.