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!)