Posts from January, 2008

24th January 2008

So much for procrastination

Oh the irony… I’ve been so busy doing things since I wrote my last post a fortnight ago I haven’t had a moment to write anything here.

I must also send belated birthday wishes to this blog which was 3 years old 2 days ago.

9th January 2008

All in good time

My grandmother once gave my father a plate. It was called a round tuit.

I was reminded of it today as I found myself running out of ways to procrastinate.

Using twitter to announce my predicament I quickly received what I needed from @shbib. A link to an article titled “Structured Procrastination” written and published by John Perry in 1995.

Excitedly I clicked on the link and was faced with a several hundred word article. The only thing for it was to go and make a cup of tea.

On my way back in to my home office I noticed several things I’d been meaning to do. Shelves to tidy. Things to move from my desk to a shelf. A pile of papers to straighten. Ways to organise things on shelves.

Eventually, having fired up Sigur Ros on itunes, I did read the article and I can thoroughly recommend everyone adds reading it to their to-do list. To quote:

One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that they are important and urgent. This is not a problem, because virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills also.

Today was my getting stuff done day. I’ve got a list. Invoices to write, research to plan, people to contact, filing, researching various financial products for the self-employed, reading the next bit of Getting Things Done. I’d set the day aside for these. The reality is most of them probably won’t take very long. But I keep putting them off.

One day I’m sure I’ll get a round tuit too.

9th January 2008

Not so chubby - The Grocer’s Blog

A take on the blogging CEO PR stunt…

Waitrose head honcho Mark Price (no relation) wants to drop a couple of trouser sizes in three months and is using a blog called Not so chubby on the Waitrose website to record his experience - including his food diary and how many column inches he’s picking up for himself and the gastromarket. Comments from “Experts” and “Customers” is a little us and them. Food for thought.

7th January 2008

links for 2008-01-07

6th January 2008

links for 2008-01-06

5th January 2008

links for 2008-01-05

5th January 2008

Following mentions of “intranet” on twitter

As mentioned in a previous post, you can ask twitter to text message or instant message you whenever any term you’re interested in is mentioned in a tweet.

As well as tracking East Dulwich, I’ve been tracking a few others including “intranet”

It makes for some pretty interesting reading but was hard to share online until I came across Tweet Scan courtesy of David Sterry the other day.

It’s a twitter search tool with an RSS feed of your search results…

You can filter your search to individual people on Twitter or have it search the entire public timeline.

Also you can add the search to your browser’s dropdown list of search engines.

That’s mighty handy.

And through it I’ve found blogs by Anu Gupta and Jeremiah Owyang, which I’ve added to my intranet reading list.

4th January 2008

links for 2008-01-04

3rd January 2008

Essential intranet reading

Are you involved in intranet (in its broadest possible definition) content, design, management, publishing, thinking, consultancy, evaluation or strategy?

What’s on your reading list?

I’ll kick off with my blog subscriptions tagged “intranet” in google reader (view posts/subscribe to this list):

  • Column Two - James Robertson in Australia, who is also behind the Intranet Innovation Awards.
  • Currybetdotnet - Martin Belam, who I first met and worked with at the BBC when he helped us with our intranet search strategy back in 2002.
  • Dilbert - keeps me sane.
  • FastForward - stuff on so-called “Enterprise 2.0″.
  • Globally local - locally global - Jane McConnell in France. Useful international and strategic perspectives. Annual global survey giving excellent insight and evidence if anyone needs to build a business case for an intranet.
  • InfoDesign: Understanding by design - digest of design-related posts and articles (including interaction design, user experience design and information architecture) compiled by Peter J. Bogaards.
  • Inside out - A relative newcomer to the intranet blogging scene and a must-read from Richard Dennison at BT.
  • Intranet Blog - Toby Ward in Canada. Has worked with numerous companies and seen a lot of intranets - useful case studies and advice on avoiding common pitfalls.
  • IBF Blog - Rotating bloggers on a monthly basis offering insight and analysis from research and evaluations of dozens of company intranets. [I wear an occasional Intranet Benchmarking Forum hat]
  • Is this wisdom - Richard Hare on networking and sharing ideas.
  • Learning Trends - Elliott Masie’s newsletter on the world of learning, work and technology.
  • New Thinking by Gerry McGovern - killer content and the long neck.
  • The Obvious? - Euan Semple, who started the BBC’s internal blogs, wikis, discussion forum, profile pages long before anyone was talking about Enterprise 2.0 or other such neologisms. Thought-provoking ideas and ruminations on social media, the internet, society and work.
  • Signal vs. Noise - The blog from 37 signals makers of Basecamp and other useful, usable and desirable web apps.
  • Webcredibles - Accessible writing on accessibility.

This gives me a manageable amount of info and insight and points to other conversations going on that are relevant too.

It’s difficult deciding what to tag “intranet” and what to tag “intranet-related” - as Richard Dennison asks what is an intranet after all?

I’ve tagged quite a lot, including the frequently updating news-based sources, as intranet-related to try to see the wood for the trees as it were.

Right, wrong, good, bad? Too introspective? What’s missing? What do you recommend?

2nd January 2008

links for 2008-01-02

1st January 2008

Hello 2008