Archive for November, 2013

We Must Prevent Email From Hitting a Wall

Posted on November 20th, 2013 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

When technology hits a wall One thing about any mainstream technology: it can get so successful that it runs into a wall, and then another technology takes over. Take horse power: this worked great for millennia, but by the end of the 19th century there were hundreds of thousands of horses in New York City alone, and the manure they produced on the streets was becoming a huge problem. The issue was resolved only when the automobile was invented and took over (not, one may note, without creating its own environmental issues later on – and we’re waiting for the.. Read more

Default Settings for Scheduling a Productive Meeting

Posted on November 8th, 2013 · Posted in Organizational Solutions

In a perfect world… In a perfect world, your calendar application would have a slider control in the meeting scheduling interface captioned “Productivity”. The slider would have calibrations next to it, ranging from “Total waste of everyone’s time” to “Superbly productive meeting”.  Anyone scheduling a meeting could select whether they wanted the meeting to be effective, and how much so. Then again, in a perfect world, would anyone select a setting other than “Superbly productive” for their meetings? So  we could eliminate the slider, and just have the default setting be  the productive one. Right? … and in our world.. Read more