Microsoft re-invented the interface of their operating system with the release of Windows 8. Deviating from the traditional functionality of the keyboard-mouse user interface panache that XP, Vista and Windows 7 have oh-so-well delivered spectacularly to us (well… except Vista), Windows 8 is optimized for touch! Traditional non-touch computers, laptops and devices are also going to be supported by this new system, but to experience the full potential of Windows 8 would have to be on a touch centered system.

Hold on there just a sec… touch?! One cannot possibly process Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel charts effectively with touch screens! It’s virtually impossible, right? Well, Microsoft has an answer to that: Office 2013! Microsoft is re-inventing the style of processing documents with the release of the new Office which is augmented to complement Windows 8. Now, the question in every single person’s mind right now is this: “Will it work?”

What’s new with MS Office 2013?

Two words: Cloud Computing. Office 2013 is built around the concept of cloud storage for most, if not all, of its processing tools. So, what is this Cloud Computing technology anyway? Personally, I would define it simply as The Future, but since you’re probably looking for more technical explanations I will oblige.

Cloud Computing is a large networked environment wherein you can store, receive and access data at any time, from anywhere and on any device. This allows a user to access a certain file or document on different device platforms. Documents created on computers, for example, may be accessed on Smart phones later on. There is also the capability of real time creation and editing of documents in collaboration with other people. Google Docs is a perfect example for this, it offers the ability for documents to be created and shared to chosen parties who may then simultaneously edit this document.

In a nutshell, Cloud Computing is a place where you can store information and have remote access to it from anywhere, anytime and on any device.

Office 2013 Features

So how does Office 2013 utilize this Cloud technology? Well, here are some of the features that the new office will be packing.

-SkyDrive

This is where all that talk about Cloud Computing goes into action. SkyDrive is marketed as best suitable for small businesses. It allows the involved people capability of simultaneously accessing information such as business related documents and be able to collaborate in editing it from any supported device (computer, smartphone, tablet, etc…)

-Touch and Stylus

Yes, many have speculated the success and failure of this platform on computers. Only time can tell whether the naysayers will be proven right or dismissed for being wretchedly mistaken! I personally have had a good experience with touch devices so far. Plus when I tried out Windows 8 on a Tablet PC, I was immensely impressed! Touch computers may actually work -or would it? I guess that’s ultimately going to be up to the users to decide!

-Word

Microsoft word has been given a little bit of a makeover in Office 2013. The ribbon has a flatter, simpler look which takes a little getting used to; I know it got me confused, but only a little bit!

-Outlook

If you’re a heavy user of Outlook I think you would be pleased with the new appearance and the added features. I’m not an avid user of this application so I’ll leave this up to you guys for judgment.

-PowerPoint

New template designs, animations and effects are always welcome for presentations and Office 2013 packages plenty of this!

I personally find Windows 8 to be splendid, because of its sleek interface, cool features and PRICE TAG! This new operating system has offers to upgrade from the older ones; XP, Vista and Windows 7 can be upgraded to Windows 8 at around $40 if I remember correctly. Office 2013 on the other hand, I have no clue as to how much it will cost. As far as I can remember, the Offices have been priced very highly, maybe a little too high? I am hoping that Microsoft will not charge exaggerated rates for the office, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading guys, I know a lot of you are as excited as I am with the upcoming Office 2013! Fingers crossed we might just get something better than expected!

Vanessa Parks is a Freelance Systems Analyst with 5 Years of solid experience. She has been an advocate of cloud computing and collaboration for improved work efficiency and performance. She also has a passion in dancing, cooking and playing golf.

Social Media means business, networking, communication, information, synergy,  empathy, and mostly attitude 2.0 that empowers your chances to attract and engage customers. If you are not on Facebook, Google Places, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest or whatever other social network that better matches your activity and fits your business necessities, you are giving away the competitive edge to success while your business goes down.

Consumers have turned into prosumers, the intelligent consumer who does research before buying, who has a smartphone and buys online and finds what he needs around him, phisically. It’s the mobile marketing that complements local businesses and helps freelancers to find new customers in the area.

The interesting fact about Social Media for business is that it makes collaboration simple and easy for everyone, it democratizes the use of tools and methodologies that were only available for big enterprises and coachers. It’s time to start rethinking collaboration 2.0 not just a a technological advantage, but as a human ability to get the best out of every step we take, because now, it’s all about together we can make it faster and better.

Do you need some tools? Well, these ones are the essentials:

1. Social Networks, not just every network, but those who better work for your strategy, goals an plan. I wold definitely count on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as a start, but you will know better.
2. Google Tools: calendar, contacts, gmail, docs, drive, etc. All these tools will make your daily tasks easier to accomplish, specially if you need to work with others.
3. A Web and Blog. Most users and professionals search the internet for services and products, the easier way to get to them is to let them find you. So optimize your website and blog for SEO, invest in SEM, make sure your sites are responsive to smartphones and other mobile devices, and of course, create and share interesting and valuable content for your audience.
4. Collaborative tools: use collaborative tools to empower teamwork and collaborate with others, wether they are clientes, customers or colleagues. You can easily find free web-based tools and lots of apps and software that will help you work with partners. But be smart, choose your partners wisely, as much as you choose your tools.

Remember you need to be transparent, honest, direct, approachable, communicative and proactive. Big companies count on Community Managers and Social Media Experts to do the job, but you need to get it done yourself. So get ready, find the time, and learn, there are great courses for Social Media Marketing and how to use it for your business and brand.

Collaboration is the seed to grow your business, social media is the tool, make them work together for your business.

Are you already working on your Social Media Marketing? And collaboration?

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An attitude 2.0 is what we call to that change in the behavior, in the way we do things, not just contact and share, but talk, collaborate, lead, think, act, etc. All the platforms an tools we use to interact would mean nothing at all, would not be useful, if we wouldn’t count on the accurate attitude, the one that empower collaboration and sharing in a way we have never had before in our hands.

Now more than ever, we must follow the tracks of those valuable partners, those knowledge workers that help us get the best out of our teams an businesses. The era of the information, the technological ability to exchange information and process it, has turned into the knowledge era, the human ability to manage information with most critical awareness: that is to manage not just the info we receive, but to produce new points of view and perspectives and share them as real broadcasters with few or lots of impact in our audience.

There is no doubt that it is a challenge for businesses and workteam to develop and optimize methodologies which allow a better performance of tasks, and a more productive and effective way to interact with partners and stakeholders.

Workteam need leadership 2.0 to achieve new goals in the knowledge era, and it requieres an attitude 2.0 starting with CEOs and everyone involve in the organizations. Knowledge workers and new leaders 2.0 have to get the best out of every employee according to the workflow strategy and collaboration plan, so that everyone in the organization understands their value as a part of a workteam with a common goal that goes beyond the individual targets and milestones.

Collaboration means much more than sharing and distributing tasks, is an attitude in the knowledge era, a way to do things in a much more productive and professional manner, the intelligence of the crowd, collective and together, working as a collaborative mind.

Are you ready for the knowledge era?

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Within the past month, authorities across Europe and the United States have taken a series of steps that mark the first move towards regulation of cloud computing. The European Commission’s panel on privacy, known as the Article 29 Working Party, released a series of guidelines related to their opinion on cloud computing in the European Economic Area (EEA). This is the first time that a working party within the European Union (E.U.) has explicitly endorsed cloud computing; previous approaches to cloud computing have been cautious and tepid at best.

The working party’s move helps highlight the need for cloud service providers and their customers to ensure that data stored in the cloud is properly secured. There is a potential for this to inform and influence the decisions being made by regulators in the 27 E.U. member countries. Shortly thereafter, the USA’s Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, or FFIEC, followed suit with their own guidance for cloud computing in the financial services industry.

This move, while not regulation per se, will attract attention and certainly give the cloud increased attention from U.S. banks. History shows that guidelines like those released by the Article 29 Working Party and FFIEC are often precursors to regulations. If this is, in fact, the case, what would cloud computing regulation mean for you?
Here are some of the pros and cons of the recent moves towards cloud computing regulation and their potential down-the-road implications.

Full document here.

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Redifining collaboration for innovation in business

I often find that teams complain about tools, methodology, or workflow processes, but most of the time it is people that fail not the system: it only takes one person in the chain that is unwilling to follow the guidelines, that is unwilling to collaborate, to make the whole process fail.

Is it hard to collaborate? Collaboration implies a lot of planning; you have to get to know your team, choose the best people for the right tasks, make sure everybody knows what they are supposed to do, make everyone aware of the importance that their tasks have for the work of others, and then, choose a tool, a platform, the technology to support the process. But the process itself starts long before thetechnology is implemented.

Making someone collaborate, if they are not a “collaborative” person, will only cause trouble for the team, so the first thing to do is use your emotional intelligence, to get to know which employees are the most willing to collaborate, to trust their stakeholders, to understand there is one common goal.

How often have we witnessed this scenario: a group of employees work great together as a team, everything flows simply, but when a new employee comes in, everything starts to fall apart. It looks like the team doesn’t work as it did before, like something that was there before is not anymore, and suddenly, everyone stops trusting each other. What happened to the collaboration? What has changed?

A great example of how the right team of people makes collaboration work is sports: soccer, basketball, baseball… A team might get great results in a season simply because there is a feeling, a connection, among the players.

In the same way, businesses, knowledge workers, and managers should try to use emotional intelligence to identify those connections between employees that make them collaborate more productively and efficiently.

Have you ever encountered problems when working in collaboration wiht others?

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Freelance is all about collaboration

How can I easily find people to collaborate with?

1. Do not wait until you need help to find the contacts you might require: it’s obvious but you would be surprised how many freelancers start a business without a networking strategy. Networking is in fact one of the most powerful assets for your business, specially when you are working as a freelancer or running a small business, because clients who may need your services will not only look at your work to decide if they want to work with you, they will look at your network and your personality: you are your personal brand.
2. Attend seminars, conferences, events, etc. We all know it Is hard for freelancers to find the time to go to every event but think of it as a task that you need to accomplish in order to get better contacts, and to let everyone know that you are interested in what’s new, what’s next, and who is who. Many enterprises attend seminars and conferences for the networking alone, to fish for fresh professionals. Unless you are already a well known and recognized expert people will not come knocking at your door to offer you a project or a job, you have to identify which events sound most interesting for you and go, and remember, you represent yourself as your own brand, make sure you know what you are “selling”.
3. Do no refuse to contact your competitors, exchange cards with them, you never know how much they can do for you in the future, or even the present. Freelance work in itself is defined by ups and downs in the number of projects you have to work on at a certain time, therefore you might need their help, or they might need yours to meet a deadline.
4. Forget the idea that “if it’s not my market it has nothing to do with me”. You would be surprised by the number of agreements you can get with people you never thought you would do business with. Of course if you are a marketing consultant you would think of collaborating with designers, developers, etc. but you would never think of partnering with a plummer, right? Wrong… There are opportunities and it is up to you to decide if you want to expand your possibilities or reduce them.
5. Most freelancers are already online: do not limit your efforts looking for professionals to the yellow pages, if you need a team, an independent worker, an SMB, or another freelancer try Linkedin and websites focused on freelancing.
6. Keep learning, many courses are not only a way to update your knowledge but also to contact other people interested in the same fields.

One of the problems I have found in looking for the perfect partner is not in terms of what you offer or receive, not about the rules you establish by mutual agreement, but how much you rely on that person. Trust is an important issue we must value when working with someone else, especially when our project, reputation, and clients depend on the success of the collaboration between different people. With regards trust, it is fundamental to have a collaboration tool that will allow us to manage, share, communicate, and control how our project progresses: to monitor if our partners are doing what we expect them to do in time, to see how they are doing it, to control the different versions of shared files we need to work on, etc. At the same time we need a tool that we can rely on and is easy to manage allowing us to focus on our own tasks and work, a tool like Kloosion (more info), that helps us to accomplish all that even offline, and allows us to stay in contact with our partners and clients at all times.

As I said some time ago being a freelancer is not about working solo, do not forget this, it will only lead you to isolation and that’s the fastest way to get stuck, to lose your competitive edge, and of course to fail. You need to be prepared for present and future challenges: all trends, statistics, and experts confirm that collaboration is the road to success in business, and of course collaboration is about networking, crowdsourcing, collective intelligence and human interaction.

How do you find people to work with?

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Your success depends on your ability to get solo work done on time in collaboration with others, and even though it may be hard, your best bet could be to team up with clients and peers as though you were working for a big enterprise: if it works for them it could work for you too. So here you have a few tips that will surely improve your productivity and allow you to focus on what is really important, your work:

• Do not “overplan” your day. Once you determine all the tasks you need to get done do not try to plan to do everything in a day, be more realistic, write a to-do list you can do “anytime” during the week
• Avoid procrastination. Organize your tasks so that you know what you need to do next: if the next task takes less than five or ten minutes, do not procrastinate, do it now! It will help you focus better. But remember, you also need to allow yourself a little flexibility
• Identify those daily tasks you hate to do and distribute them so that they won’t distract you or bother you in the middle of something more important. A time tracking tool is a great solution if you want to manage your time and to have some free time for yourself (most freelancers decide to go solo to spend more time with their family).
• I know that sometimes you can’t afford the time for it, but try this: every 45 or 50 minutes, at least, stop for five minutes and carry out one those daily tasks that you have previously scheduled. Every 90 minutes, stop for 20 minutes: stand up and take a “coffee break”, free your mind of work for a few minutes and you will go back to your desk with more energy and fresh ideas.
• Turn off the sound on your phone (specially smartphones) when you really need to focus on what you are doing: remember your clients have email, chats, mobile apps, text, etc. to stay in contact.
• Try to do the most important tasks first. If you need to create, design, write, etc. do it first thing in the morning, your mind is more focused and fresher. You can check social networks, emails and messages in the first five minute break. It will help you get the most out of your day.
• If you can’t focus, stop for 20 minutes, do daily tasks that do not require much effort, free your mind for a few minutes. It’s not a waste of time, instead, it’s the best way to be more productive when you “reset” your mind.
• Keep your work space organized and clean. Being messy, and leaving papers, documents, office stuff, coffee cups, etc. around your desk is a distraction, and adds to the clutter in you head.
• If you need to leave your office plan a schedule and try to be punctual. Meetings with clients are important not just for your own reputation but to improve productivity and the way you work with them. Respect everyone else’s time and they will respect yours.
• Remember deadlines are not a countdown or a challenge, just a reminder that you need to organize your day so that you finish within the alloted time. If you have many deadlines for several projects focus on one project at a time, and when stuck, switch projects, fresh ideas will come back!

What do you do to boost productivity?

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• More experienced teachers understand they need to innovate, otherwise the generation gap grows exponentially: students are always the same age (kids, teenagers, or young adults) but teachers grow old and their perception of the present and future is completely different. They know how important it is to find emotional links, to engage, and technology is without doubt the easiest way to get through to students.
• If you have been teaching for several years you already know how much methodologies change. I’m not talking about the implementation of Educational Strategies that come from Administration, but pedagogy and teaching, the innovations from insiders and educators themselves. New methodologies don’t simply apply to new tools, but new attitudes and approaches to the learning experience. When we claim school is killing the creativity of students we know it’s not just a matter of learning spaces or methodologies but of “pedagogy and philosophy”, the social and cultural changes that interfere most with communication between the two generations: students and teachers. The more experience educators have, the more they understand the need to connect at a certain level with students.
• For their part, students usually associate technology with fun, and of course, studying is not exactly perceived as entertainment… This particular problem is a very tricky issue we must take into account when planning how we use technology and which tools we choose. Having a student sat at his/her desk for hours struggling with a computer to get homework done because the platform, tool, or application does not work properly is useless, and most important and distressing, it’s counterproductive: what the student learns is that computers and technology for educational purposes are a waste of time and boring, which is the exact opposite of the message we want to give them. Unfortunately it happens more often than we’d like to admit and I have personally reported this problem to my Department when teaching, but it’s not always easy to find a reliable tool that works for both students and teachers.

Consequently, I don’t find it surprising that older and more experienced teachers are more willing to try new technologies and new applications, or to find out they are more tech savvy than students, plus, we as teachers know it’s all about continuously reinventing yourself and your own methodology.

Is there any tool I recommend? Well, as you may know, we are developing a reliable and easy-to-use collaboration tool, Kloosion (register for the Beta here), and the primary goal of our team is to build a solid and useful tool you can always trust.

What is your experience with/using technology in education?

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Freelancers and Small and Medium Businesses, have found in the Web 2.0 and the Social Mediathe tools they needed to enhance their personal and professional brands, the way to collaborate with each other and find better connections that enrich their knowledge and help them be more competitive.

It’s the power of the collaboration, furthermore, the power of the people who collaborate, who understand that the innovation now is not the tools, which of course are necessary, but the humans who use them: it’s crowdsourcing, sharing, collaborating, co-working, networking, collective intelligence… Old and new words that emphasize the human side of a connected world based on conversation, humanization, integration, globalization and most of all, communication.

New times, new rules, new paradigms, new entrepreneurs, new business, and of course, new tools.

How to innovate:

• disruption: abandon old practises, embrace and adopt new methodologies, new ideas, new techonologies and integrate them all into your Business and Marketing Strategy
• human capital: value your own skills and find interesting connections that enhance your network. Give your employees the chance to grow and participate, it’s the era of co-creation
• knowledge workers: identify those who can make the difference, those workers who inspire and help others.
• early adopters: get to know your audience, those who are ready to try new things, the “knowledge audience” or prosumers who are willing to join your project and be part of it.
• influencers: identify the influencers, the leaders in the crowd, in your niche, those who can really boost your business and contact them; plan an effective affiliate program.
• branding: your reputation, your philosophy, identify that one single thing that makes your service, business or product unique, and find a way to integrate it within all your strategies and business plan.
• listening and engaging: don’t try to tell your audience what they need or why they need your product or service, instead, listen to what they want, to what they need, to what they think of you and your competitors, then listen some more… Learn from your audience, and connect and engage your audience.
• trends: follow and monitor what’s going on on your niche, what your competitors are doing and how, if it works and why, and of course, what you can do to differentiate yourself from them and add value.
• conversations: if you don’t listen, you can’t start a conversation. Content is king, but conversation is queen in the 2.0 Era, be a good listener and a better interlocutor.
• ideas: share your ideas with your partners, colleagues, team and co-workers. Brainstorming your ideas is the first test to know if they could work.
• collaboration: everything points to collaboration as the new force to improve our business and brands: interact, join the conversations with valuable contents and ideas; find your own collaboration team in and out of your own niche and company, and the best tools and people to join your team.

Great tools, better human resources: tools are the path that people need to walk along to achieve their goals… Be careful chosing the tools and be sure you chose the right people to use them. Rely on your tools and trust in your team, the human capital is your best asset.

What is your plan to grow your business and innovate?

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• Primary tasks: those tasks related to the project itself, the labour. Let’s say for example if you are a designer, we are specifically focusing on all tasks related to the design, doing the work, the software you use, the information you require from your client or any kind of input you need to create a successful project according to your client’s needs
• Secondary tasks: everything that implies collaboration, communication, rearranging, redesigning, organizing, making desitions, etc, always referring to the project and its’ evolution until finished
• Tertiary tasks: ordinary tasks, everyday tasks related to organizing administrative work, payments, scheduele, answering the telephone, banking, etc. All tasks that freelancers have to do no matter what projects they are working on.

Once tasks have been properly listed and classifed into groups, the next step would be rearranging them according to our daily routine  so that none interfiers, interrrups and delays the others: if we spend two hours with primary tasks, let’s say next thing could be, for example, tertiary tasks for half an hour or so, it allows us to have a break from the most creative or complicated activities, then go back to primary tasks or even secondary, decide what works better for you. If we organize and distribute tasks properly, we can avoid those interrruptions that usually bother us so much and make us forget important ideas and thoughts, plus, we will stop procrastinating.

Freelancers, self-employed, work-from-home and small and medium businesses also require reliable tools to simplify and improve their tasks, productivity and collaboration tools that allow them to work without having to struggle to get things done in time. Something as simple as having one single file to collaborate with your clients on which continue working and track changes and versions:  for instance, a designer or writer, usually shares the first draft with the client by email, the client points out a couple things to be corrected or modified, the same process happens over and over and the freelancer ends up with about 20 different files in a folder for the project, and does not remember what was the change for each file unless he opens all of them and compares the versions. Wouldn’t it be easier to have one single file and a version control that allows you to add a comment specifying what you want to modify or have modified yourself and gives you the opportunity to go back to the version you prefer? If the client, as often happens, wants to go back to a previous version, the freelancer won’t need to “find” the correct file by opening each one of them, he would just have to read the comments to identify it.

To avoid having different files when you only need different versions, that is, having a version control, with comments, instead of duplicating files, might seem one small step to productivity, but in my personal experience I must say it saves you a lot of time and above all, it helps you to organize and to keep under control your projects and files in a very simple, intuitive and productive way.

But, is there a tool that allows such version control?  Kloosion, a collaborative tool especially designed for  freelancers, small and medium businesses, self-employed, work-from-home and other professionals who need to share, communicate and collaborate with other users on a private and secure work space. Register now and be the first to try the private Beta, for free, and discover this and many other interesting features and uses to improve productivity.

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