Must ... Stay ... Connected ....

Today is day 5 of my week long vacation from work, and I am embarrassed to say that I have been simply unable to stay disconnected.


First, I was originally scheduled to take off the following:


8/23 - 8/24 (Thursday - Friday)

and

8/27 - 8/31 (Monday - Friday)


Due to my inability to tie up the loose ends I decided to work from home on 8/23 - 8/24 ... proceeding to call in to no less than 5 meetings and honestly working from 6:30am - 4:00pm (when I had to disconnect from the laptop to cook dinner - something I occasionally do).


Vacation now:


8/27 - 8/31 (Monday - Friday) ... still decent.


In my preperation for my two days working from home I forwarded my desk phone to my cell, and I gave my office key to a coworker ... so ... my calls this entire week have been forwarding to my cell ... some I let slide to voicemail, but some cannot go unanswered (or so my whacked my says).


In addition, I took on a project in one of those work from home meetings that I need to report out on my first day back ... not to mention that I have accepted four more meetings on my first day back, leaving me no prep time. (if I was actively applying the principles of "Take Back Your Life" I would NOT have let this happen.


So, now I

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FlickrDown Rox ...



Hey ya'll - new hotness for me today: FlickrDown



This sweet little app lets you suck pictures from any public Flickr collection with the use of a username, email address, tag, or group name (you can also authorize it if you want to pull your own private photos).

I am currently populating a Picture library in SharePoint from pics I used to have out on my external Flickr - and this has saved me tons of time!

Thanks Greggman!

http://greggman.com/pages/flickrdown.htm

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Create an Anonymous Questions Repository in SharePoint - quicky quicky

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T-Mobile Wing .... Why Do I do This to Myself????

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Taking Back MY Life Microsoft Style - booyah!



Okay, before I begin this post I must encourage my good *nix peeps to close their eyes ... or have a couple of drinks ... or put on their "grain of salt" hats. Please remember the world I live in - the office dimension ... Microsoft land. You must not judge me as I am only a product of my surroundings ;)




I have been reading copious materials about how to organize my life and priorities using Office 2007 magix (see book references below). In my excitement to "hiya!" take back my life, I have found myself once again buying into the Microsoft marketing voodoo.



First, let me make a statement, a controversial statement that may make me vulnerable to my good *nix loving friends. I love Microsoft, I do ... I love the way that there are at least 5 ways to do everything in Microsoft programs, I love how everywhere you turn there is some kind of MS propaganda, I love that MS products all work together, I love that when you pick up some MS training material there is always at least 10% marketing for other MS products. The fact the Microsoft is a huge evil genius monopoly actually gives me chills. CHILLS. I suppose it should be said at this point that I am also the person who feels for the "bad" characters in all story lines ... often seeing their points of view much more clearly than the sympathetic good-ees. Whatevs ... I digress.


So, in my gathering resources re: SharePoint I stumbled upon the book referenced above ... and as a certified MS - cult member it was my duty to purchase, read, and then attempt to implement the wise words written within. I read the book over a weekend, took notes even ... and followed along by diligently completing the exercises necessary to TAKE BACK MY LIFE. By the end of the book I had reduced my inbox to 3 items (I swear, down from over 500), scheduled out the next couple of weeks with time to complete tasks. Re-evaluated some of my commitments ... and ended up with a categorized task list of over 80 actions - urgh. Now, a couple of weeks later my inbox is back up to 250 and 30 of those actions are overdue. Oh, and I also shelled out some bucks to by a new Windows Mobile device to replace my Blackberry ... so that I could appropriately manage actions on the go. (blush - don't tell my husband - I just can't pass up a new toy ... I mean, tool).
I'm going to try again with the concepts in the book, like all things worth doing it will take work and commitment to truly get the greatest benefits out of a productivity plan like what is laid out in the book. Oh, and I have to do something to justify the new fancy-smansh phone I shelled out for :)
ps. new phone: T-Mobile Wing, runs on Windows Mobile 6 ... review to come.

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SharePoint Training - "Advanced" Day 1

Day 2 ("Advanced" Training)

Audience: Site Owners (Full Control - responsible for determining structure of site, etc)
Duration: 2-days

Top Take-Aways for Me (related to my companies SP implementation) :




  • Company provided users w/ "Step-by-Step MS WSS 3.0" Book in lieue of official course materials.

  • First 3 hours of course was review of the class from the previous day (Beginner's class)

  • Many of the attendees of the course were very new to the product, or had used it but were having a lot of trouble with basic functionality, instructor did a good job of accomodating those users

Course Outline:


Section 1: Intro to Sharepoint


What is SharePoint?



  • Collaboration

  • Central Document Mgmt

  • Communication

How is SP used @ this company


Define different components of SP


Section 2: Contributing to a Site (see Beginner's Outline)



  • Announcements

  • Links

  • Calendar

  • Tasks

  • Document Library

  • Discussions

  • Surveys

Section 3: Creating & Modifying a Site


Creating a Site



  • uses for announcements

  • add an announcement

  • edit announcements (through drop-down & accessing the announcement directly)

  • add alerts (alert me) - applies to all lists & doc libraries

Links



  • uses for links

  • add a link

  • edit links

Deleting Content



  • Delete content

  • Access deleted content

  • Restore content

Calendar



  • When you would use this calendar (differs from Outlook calendar)

  • add an occurence

  • change calendar views

Tasks



  • Why/when you use tasks

  • Creating tasks (adding owners)

  • Altering views

Document Library



  • Create a new document (using pre-defined template)

  • File naming (no special characters: # % / )

  • Uploading single file

  • Uploading multiple files

  • Versioning (if enabled by Doc Library Owner)

  • Opening w/ Windows Explorer

  • Placing a Shortcut on Desktop

Discussions



  • Post topics for discussion

  • Reply to other posts

  • Set alerts

Surveys



  • Responding to surveys

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SharePoint Training - "Advanced" Day 2

Advantages of SP Libraries over Folders:
Fewer Clicks
Permissions can be set at the site/library/folder/document
Templates
Workflows (can be isolated by library)
Versioning
Requiring Check-Out (security feature - helps to maintain integrity of documents)
Content Approval
Editing options w/i SharePoint
Use "Edit" - Edit w/ default program if MS Office file
If it is non-MS Office then navigate to the Windows Explorer view through your shortcute
Versioning
Content Approval
Adding Alerts
owners can add alerts for other users as well as themselves
Workflows (there are steps that need to take place in order for work to be completed)
Adding an "Approval" workflow
Adding multiple Approvers (approvals are sent in order by default)
Assigning a single task to group - only requires one user from group to approve

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Synopsis & Observations from SharePoint Training - Part 1

As promised (to myself and my coworkers, and I am sure to all the myriad of folks reading this blog) I am going to be posting a summation and observations from the SharePoint training I attended this week. It should be noted, this training is user training - not technical ... which makes it much more interesting to ME ... the users user. hmmm - that doesn't seem to make much sense. whatevs.

Day 1 (Contributor Training)

Audience: Team Members (viewing, adding, editing - not responsible for determining structure of site, etc)
Duration: 4 hours

Top Take-Aways for Me (related to my companies SP implementation) :
  • Company provided users w/ a great tri-fold quick reference guide: included a high-level hit list of basic functions with-in SP (their guide is for MOSS 2007 so I will be developing on specifically for WSS 3.0)

  • Course was designed specifically for users with little to no knowledge of SharePoint, very valuable offering - previously we were not considering doing one of these courses, but I could see taking pieces of it and offering via podcast or even being led by a Super-User

  • There was a component of the class centered on the future of SP @ the company, used to reinforce the recommended/required usage for the tool based on companies guidelines - an absolute necessity

Course Outline:

Section 1: Intro to Sharepoint

What is SharePoint?

  • Collaboration
  • Central Document Mgmt
  • Communication

How is SP used @ this company

Define different components of SP

Section 2: Working w/ SharePoint as a Member (Contributor)

Announcements

  • uses for announcements
  • add an announcement
  • edit announcements (through drop-down & accessing the announcement directly)
  • add alerts (alert me) - applies to all lists & doc libraries

Links

  • uses for links
  • add a link
  • edit links

Deleting Content

  • Delete content
  • Access deleted content
  • Restore content

Calendar

  • When you would use this calendar (differs from Outlook calendar)
  • add an occurence
  • change calendar views

Tasks

  • Why/when you use tasks
  • Creating tasks (adding owners)
  • Altering views

Document Library

  • Create a new document (using pre-defined template)
  • File naming (no special characters: # % / )
  • Uploading single file
  • Uploading multiple files
  • Versioning (if enabled by Doc Library Owner)
  • Opening w/ Windows Explorer
  • Placing a Shortcut on Desktop

Discussions

  • Post topics for discussion
  • Reply to other posts
  • Set alerts

Surveys

  • Responding to surveys

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SharePoint Training ...

I have had the great opportunity this week to audit a block of SharePoint courses (both beginner level and advanced level). Yesterday I sat in with a group of people who were going to be Contributors to their SP sites in their corporate environment, but that had not used it before (or as one student stated - "I could have used the last version, but hated it - this time I am going to give it a real go").




I have lots of observations both on the state of the students (very interesting and diverse) and on the content of the class ... but the advanced level class is about to start ... so I will be back!

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and I care what you're doing because ....?


"Dude, I'm chillin relaxin and watchin some dog da bounty hunter - holla!"

"listening to my 2yr-old running around the house shooting bad guys- (aka mommy), complete with 'boom-boom, boom-boom' sound effects~"

"im really enjoying my coffee. i wish it was something i could get really messed up on though. i wanna stop thinking."


Above are examples of some of the types of Twitter updates random folks post ... they look, well, sort of useless to me so when I was first invited to join Twitter by a friend it was with great skepticism that I proceeded.


I began by tossing out an update that was inline with what I was seeing from other users, something like "Chilling out - working hard - wondering why Saturday feels like Monday." Okay, anyone following my updates could now learn that I was working on Saturday ... um - ok, nothing new there - everyone I know already knows I work on Saturday. However, I began to prepare to write a blog post and realized I was facing blogjam - because everything I want to post here needs to feel like gold. While I was waiting for the blog wisdom to flow I popped over to Twitter and updated status referring to my current state of blog-readiness. And later, as I sat at a kids party I texted my status update to Twitter and had a great sense of ... well ... for lack of a better word: not-alone-ness.


Later on, when playing around in Facebook I discovered I could add a Twitter badge so that my Twitter updates would show to my Facebook friends (of course, my preference would be for my Facebook status to update automatically with Twitter, but doing that takes some code slicing and I don't care that much). I also added a Twitter badge to this blog. Folks who also had Twitter in my life and saw I was on it through reading my blog (and there are ALOT of folks I found who have Twitter) started following me, and I started following them. As my network grew organically (friends of friends of friends added me) the updates I started to get were actually very worthwhile. I was linked to a viral video, someone sent a link to a blog post on a new Blackberry technology, and I discovered I could follow Barack Obama.


I think what I am appreciating the most about Twitter at this moment is that it isn't heavy, while both Facebook and Myspace offer similar micro-blogging status update options now I cannot navigate to either of those sites without feeling the desire to add more "stuff" to my profile, or go check out how my friends are doing, or listen to some of the crap indi-music they have uploaded, or read the comments and wall posts folks are putting in other people's pages. Frankly, sometimes checking out other folks social networking profiles makes me feel a bit creepy - but I don't have the self control NOT to look @ the latest pics my cuzzins best friend posted or to scrutinize the wall posts from his crazy ex-girlfriend. With Twitter, there is none of that ... get in, update, stay connected, get out.


booyah.



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Who you callin' a tech-beee?????

One of my focuses lately is identifying the right types and combinations of tech tools to enhance my life as opposed to complicating and weighing down my life. A little over a year ago I found myself downloading and signing up for every cool tool, website, software, etc etc that someone mentioned to me (and since I work in a high tech environment and have some super-uber-geeks for friends, that was A LOT of stuff). So anxious was I to be qualified to engage in techno-rich conversation with an air of authority that I literally saturated every computing device I owned until my boot-up times became monumentally slow and blue screens, hard reboots, and random computer centered expletives became a way of daily life.

While browsing urbandictionary recently I came across the word: tech-beeeyatch, and realized that I undoubtedly fit neatly into that moniker. Certainly, in my quest to be the quintessential "early-adopter" I had become a technology whipping-girl ... a source of frustration to my IT brethren, and undoubtedly the subject of many jokie-jokes.

I post this as a reminder to myself, and a warning to those who tread in the wild depths of the interweb ... tread lightly, grasshopper - think long my brutha (and sista) - because that "download" & "install" button may hold heavy consequence to your future productivity.

** "bong bong" ** (Law & Order scence change sound)

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Luvs it – Roger’s Bell Curve

I remember sitting in an auditorium at Intel listening to some dude droning on and on about innovating the Mobile Computing device market when all the sudden he pulled up the most amazing image (amazing to me @ that time didn't take much). Anyways, I have often reflected back on that graphic – and this morning as I posted about tech tools and how folks use them, yada yada – it occurred to me that I should seek out the image and immortalize it here. So, here it is – Roger's Bell Curve:




Now, I challenge myself to:





  1. Strive to prove that I am in the 13.5% Early Adopters stage … that makes me appropriately special, don't ya think?


  2. Successfully categorize the peeps I associate with and discover how that knowledge can aid in implementation of collaboration and efficiency tools in the workplace


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Theorize’n – Technology Usage (Personal vs. Corporate)

My newest endeavors in the collaboration and efficiency tools arena makes me feel compelled to examine the root of my own thoughts and approaches around technology and how we use it to make our lives easier …. Or more complicated. As I am trying to organize my thoughts it has occurred to me that there are some clear distinctions to be made, and since I work with a range of folk from uber-geeks to technology ee-diots I feel I am fairly qualified to make some broad strokes here (in my most humble):


 

  1. FACT: Humans (unless they are living in a shack in the middle of nowhere living off of tree bark and earthworms) use technology in two important quadrants of their lives: personal and corporate (I am well aware that that covers all of peeps lives)
  2. THEORY: In our personal lives, the technology we choose to surround ourselves with either:
    1. Addresses some specific problem or need we are experiencing
    2. We use because of it's blatant COOL factor
  3. THEORY: In our corporate lives, the technology we use (note: not CHOOSE) is provided to us because:
    1. Someone else perceives it addresses some problem (that someone else could be IT, or some executive, or an admin assistant – anyone who has decision making power)
    2. Because the tool has COOL factor to someone else


 

Now to me, no one can really tell you how to be efficient or how to collaborate – a users methods for improving efficiency and collaboration must be tailored to that individual users own work methods. Afterall, remember, in our personal lives we are still choosing tools to help us live better … and I will bet you that what I use to remember appointments, tasks, and events is totally different than what my husband uses. In fact, it is important to ME to seamlessly integrate personal life and work life as I find myself not often delineating between to two – and he can literally walk out the door of his workplace and not even think about his job again until the next time he walks through that door going the opposite way.

These are theories, and the general basis of what I will be exploring through this blog at the same time I explore different collaboration and efficiency tools and their uses – both in a corporate environment with myself, my customers, and my co-workers.


 

Ps. Writing this blog post as I sit on my couch, with my corporate-issue Dell Latitude Series Laptop, with the Blog Post function of my non-standard Word 2007 software (I'm a beta-tester for my company … sort of … well at least I'm in IT!)

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