The Business of Meh

Testing new Digg

Eric — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:40:57 +0000

Looks like it had a lot of potential so far. the video by Kevin Rose will describe my experiences and new features better

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3 Tips for Freedom from the Machines

Eric — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:10:41 +0000

It’s 6pm on a Friday evening. You have only one wish – to leave the office and head home. Unfortunately, the blackberry went off on your way down to the car. Your boss needs a presentation ready for 8am Monday morning. Looks like another long weekend of work ahead. My friends, James Cameron had it right – the machines have already won. Now it’s time to rebel. Time to make our lives a priority. Here are 3 tips for ruling your technology – and not the other way around.

1) Turn off all email notifications – everywhere

I can’t tell you how many family dinners have been ruined by my bb. The incessant need to reach for the device when I feel the new mail vibration. Just… Must…. Look. Even in it’s absence, my colleagues and I would discuss the feeling of phantom buzzing. This just ins’t normal. Turn off the lcd light notifications, the vibration, the sound notification – in fact, just turn the phone to “phone only” profile. Don’t stop with your wireless device – I also turn off the notification in Outlook. Nothing is more distracting that working and hearing the little ding ding of a new message. Focus – your email isn’t going anywhere. If you REALLY need to, screen your emails with rules. When my boss emails, it gets a special flag and moves into my “to do” list.

2) Remote Backups

I swear, Western Digital and Seagate are in a ploy to mold me into submission. They’re complete domination over my information and making a grown man completely helplessness. Take back control from your computer. Follow the 3-2-1 backup plan. 3 back ups, 2 different types of media, 1 offsite. Don’t be left feeling helpless – like the ad executives in the Doctor Media video discussing social media.

3) Rely on Humans

Google this, wiki that. Forget it. There is just too much information to sift through. You need aggregators – people that you trust that can filter out the garbage and let the good info rise to the top. Let’s use an example. The old rss feeders – if you went on vacation, they’d fill up to the brim. You’d either feel overwhelmed and mark them all as read missing lots of great stories, or you’d waste a significant amount of time trying to catch up. With trusted sources in your social circle, if it’s important or if it’s a quality article, they’ll share it with you. Congrats – you’ve just turned the machine into a source of information again – and not telling you what to think.

What are your tips to take control over your devices? No comments eh? Bet you and your new ipad / evo / macbook keep you warm at night.

Things My Blackberry is Missing

Do Real Estate Agents Provide Value?

Eric — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:17:05 +0000

In my experience, Real Estate agents have provided me with no real value. When providing someone with about 5% commission per sale, one would assume that there are value added services critical to success.

Yes, agents are able to post to MLS, a shared website created by and used exclusively for realtors. Yes, they are able to poll and query historical sales prices from MLS. In my opinion, that’s where they’re value proposition ends.

In would venture to say that a realtors true value should be made through the following. For those agents out there, this is a direct dialogue to you:

1) Finding prospective properties for their clients

I can search MLS on my own. I don’t need someone to tell me what I’ve already found myself. As a real estate agent, if you can let me know what houses haven’t hit the market yet through your network of other agents, then you’re worth your commission. Otherwise, you’re as useful as my last agent, who’s full time job was playing piano for weddings, parties and bar mitzvahs.

2) Following up with their clients

When I call you, answer your phone. If I want to see a house, make it happen. You only have to work with me for a few hours to make your commission. As long as I’m reasonable with my requests, there should be no reason for you to say no. Get out of your office, leave your leisurely dinner and show me my new house. The only reason you shouldn’t show me a house ASAP is if you’re with another client.

3) Providing opinions on renovation costs if necessary

I am not a house-buying professional. I don’t work with other agents everyday. It isn’t my line of business to provide insight or advice on the condition of houses. As my agent, you should be able to tell me things to watch out for! If

4) Negotiating

I’ve done my research. I know how much I want to spend. If you want my 5%, you had better provide more value than getting me to fill in a form letter and sending a fax. I’m sure the guy at the convenience store would do the same for me for $0.25 per page. Since both the seller and buying agents are paid by the buyer, they are both motivated to get the most out of the buyer. No one is really looking out for my interests.

What are your thoughts on this?

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Recommended Podcast: Tech News Today

Eric — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 01:23:59 +0000

Seldom do you find something that you want to be a part of your daily life – for technology news, anyone can recite the happenings, but few can do it in a concise and fun way. Tom Merritt, long time CNET editor, has recently moved to the TWIT network. With Leo Laporte’s network of technoristas and Tom’s exceptional delivery, it is an essential part of my daily tech consumption.

Tech News Today can be found http://twit.tv/tnt

3 Ways to Demonstrate Value: get supporters, manage timelines, calculate the benefits

Eric — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:08:01 +0000

The effectiveness of a leader in the workplace isn’t about punctuality. It’s not about number of people. It’s about being able to provide value.

1) Get Supporters

You want to be champion of your idea. It doesn’t matter if the idea is about changing the strategic direction of the company or getting a new coffee machine in the lunch room. The more impactful the idea, the more people believe in it, the better chance you have on implementing it. That being said, the idea must be clear and attainable. As the champion of this idea, it is critical to meet with stakeholders that the project will impact and get their support. Listen to their concerns and address them. Often I’ve heard “we’ll this is a great idea, but more efficiency means people will lose their jobs”. You need to do your part to open the eyes of your soon-to-be supporters. Gained efficiency allows the existing skilled people to work on new things or increase the span of control.

Think through your ideas and think of how your audience will react before presenting your grandiose idea.

2) Manage Timelines

In order to have the largest impact on the organization – you need to be able to manager your people, the customers expectations and your own deliverables. The best method I’ve found is to set up smaller deadlines. The benefits of this is you can celebrate the smaller successes on the path to the larger goal. Additionally, if the project is going off-track, it allows corrective measure to be deployed. Worst case scenario – if you foresee the project missing the end timeline, you can inform the audience ASAP.

3) Calculate The Benefit

Whether you have refined the art of ROI / IRR calculations or you can tabulate the time savings from an idea you have – the strength of your ideas should always be tabulated in dollars. Goodwill is always difficult to calculate. Put yourself in the position of the decision makers. The bigger the impact, the bigger the cost savings, the more likely they will approve the idea.

3 Ways to Make The Most of Your Team

Intra-Office Collaboration

Eric — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:23:36 +0000

If you work in a team, document revisions can be cumbersome. In some teams, members may be contributing to the same deliverable – often working on their own versions of documents or workbooks at the same time. Personally, this is a bane of my existence.

I thought Google Wave would bring the answer – but up until now, the dream of a self-hosted server with the ability to simultaneously edit documents has been a dream.

How do you do it? What are your tricks?

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3 Ways to Make The Most of Your Team

Eric — Tue, 11 May 2010 18:29:06 +0000

Do more with less. Isn’t that a theme lately. You may have the workload of 6 people, but the company will not increase your team from 3 people. How do you do it? How will you make it? Is there any hope?

Get out the pen and paper – it’s battle planning time.

1) Plan Your Deliverables

It may sound like over-kill, but a project plan for your regular deliverables helps. It assists in thinking through the monthly process and allows the team to visualize how their goals are achievable. As a leader and manager, you can set up check points to ensure quality of the finished product. You can also set up smaller milestones so that if there is an issue, you can raise the flag early to your customers.

2) Coordinate Activities

Your people may have down time that you don’t even realize. There may be bottlenecks in the process that you’ve built. The best solution is to get everyone involved into a room, explain the constraints, draw a line in the sand when things need to get done and have everyone participate in the goal setting exercise. They’ll know what they need to get the job done and they’ll rally around their leader if they see you’re in trouble (assuming you have helped to motivate them in the past)

3) Share the Burden

Maybe it’s physically impossible to meet your deliverables – maybe there are too many expectations on your team. I’d recommend living by the following saying “under-promise, over deliver”. If you can’t meet the expectations, someone is going to be disappointed. If that’s the case, make sure that your team is being honest with their assessment of workload, and ask your boss what to prioritize. If there are available resources within the larger team, maybe they can help out. If not, there is a need to raise the flag and realign expectations for the deliverables with the end customer.

Recommended Blog: Crackberry

Eric — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:06:31 +0000

For everything blackberry, crackberry fulfills my needs. Everything from interesting apps, to functional accessories, leaked OS, and an engaging forum, CB have a lock on the RIM products.

If you’re a bb addict, I highly recommend heading over the crackberry.com – they’ll keep you posted on the latest news.

Top 5 Management Techniques to Motivate

Eric — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:40:11 +0000

Ever find yourself trying to lead a group of staff to no avail? Have you found yourself at a loss uninsipired or lacking direction yourself. Look to these 5 techniques to help re-invigorate your team.

1) Team Charter

I love this one – have your team create a document. Have them answer the question “this is how I like to work”. It will allow them reflect on tough decisions they’ve made in the past and how it could be handled next time. It will also force them to think ahead about situations they haven’t dealt with yet. By explicitly stating these things in a charter, as the leader, you are forcing the team to deal with their Norming phase of group development – hopefully reducing the Storming that they will encounter and bring them through to productivity.

2) Team Meetings

As a team, it is expected that you handle customers and situations in a similar vain. Set up regular times to meet as a group, discuss problematic situations and share what worked for you. This dialogue will all your team to learn vicariously from one another and hopefully avoid mistakes in the long run.

3) Employee Goals, Developed by Employees

By having your staff participate in developing their goals, there will be less resistance to them. Also, although you are the manager (and higher paid) you don’t know everything. You staff know the ins and outs of their job better than you. Let me come up with something realistic. You can step in to make sure these goals are important to the employee…. and also to the company.

4) Regular One on Ones

No one wants to miss their goals. Everyone wants to over-achieve. By having regular feedback sessions – you provide an opportunity to reflect on the work done to date and as the leader, you can give insight on how to do things differently next time around. By setting up these meetings, you won’t be in a position at the end of the year telling someone they didn’t make their objectives. They should have seen it coming the whole time and have ample opportunity to influence the outcome.

5) Regular Team Work

I’m sure there’s a level of professional respect between teammates, but actually having a shared goal is a critical component to trust. By working towards a common goal, team members will butt heads with each other, debate, negotiate and eventually deliver. The experience will bring them closer together. As the leader, remember to celebrate the success and encourage increased collaboration. As a result of this, you’ll have a stronger team and better ideas will come as a result.

3 Ways to Make The Most of Your Team

BlackBerry Barcode Uses + Generator

Eric — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:36:21 +0000

http://crackberry.com/more-blackberry-messenger-barcode-oddities#comments

Scanning bb barcodes doesn’t just add contacts – it can also bring you to websites.

e.g.: (scan below and you are brought to a website for the National Post)

http://www.niemanlab.org/images/nationalpost2Dcode.jpg

A way to create your own bb codes:

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ or