Steve Prentice's Blog, page 18

CloudTweaks Post: Clarizen and Collaborative Project Management

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to an interview I did with Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO of Clarizen (www.clarizen.com). They make a fabulous, cloud-based project management application which combines all of the best tools of PM software, including Gantt charts, and puts it in a highly proactive collaborative workspace. I have used it, and I can say, as a project manager myself, this is a game-changer.

CloudTweaks Post: Puppet Labs

I write professionally for CloudTweaks, an authority on cloud computing. This link takes you to an article I wrote which profiles Puppet Labs and its CEO, Luke Kanies, regarding their new cloud/IT automation solutions. Very excitng company.

Time Management for iPad: Organization

I write for Time Management for iPad Magazine, an authority on Time Management. This link takes you to an article I wrote for Issue 9, on Organization.

Time to Evolve from the Primordial QWERTY Sea.

With the proliferation of keyboardless and mouseless devices such as tablets and smartphones, one has to wonder why so many millions of people who communicate by text must still use the outdated and counter-intuitive keyboard system known as QWERTY.

Named after the first six letters on the first row of characters, few people are aware of the reason for this layout. Many assume it must the most ergonomically effective combination of keys for typing in English, however the opposite is actually true. The design actually comes from the early days of typewriters, when each letter was mounted on its own stalk, and the pressing of the appropriate letter key pushed the stalk up against an inked ribbon and then against the paper itself. It’s hard to imagine how anything actually got done that way in the days before spellcheck and copy-and-paste.

Urban legend has it that the QWERTY layout was designed so that typewriter salesmen of the 1940s and 1950s could demonstrate their product by typing the word “typewriter” even though they themselves were not great typists. The letters in the word “typewriter” all appear on the top row, making it easy to demonstrate with one finger.

The real reason for the layout is that since professional typists were very fast, they would often jam many of the individual letter stalks together, thus damaging the typewriter. The QWERTY layout was implemented to ensure that the most commonly-used letters were pressed by the typists’ weakest fingers, therefore reducing jams.

But the new generation of productivity devices frees us from the mechanical restraints of a fixed keyboard system, and begs the question as to whether a new standard could emerge. Alternate keyboards, such as Dvorak, and one-handed mechanical boards have been experimented with over the decades, but never has the world had such a liquid and malleable work surface as can now be found on our tablets.

Recently my team and I tried out a handful of text-entry alternatives to try and get a glimpse as to what the future might hold in terms of acceptance and implementation.

The magic of chorded keyboarding.

The first of these was ASETNIOP, which represents a new approach to “chorded keystrokes.” In the same manner that keys played together on a piano form a chord, the ASETNIOP approach provides an eight-letter virtual onscreen keyboard (the letters that form its name: A, S, E, etc.) from which combinations of these keys, for example pressing the third and fourth together, will create another letter. ASETNIOP overlays the browser screen, allowing you to type directly on top of whatever you are looking at without losing half of the screen space to the keyboard. The developers claim that a person can achieve a speed of 60 wpm after 15 hours of training. Its intelligent autocorrect feature adds an additional layer of practicality to this.

Secondly we looked at FrogPad, a one-handed keyboard in which certain letters are visible and others are access by pressing a Shift-type key which reveals a secondary set of letters.

I’m all thumbs…

Thirdly we looked at GKOS, an intriguing collection of primary and secondary keys that cling to either side of the screen and are designed with smartphone screens in mind. GKOS is a thumb-only approach to text editing.

We found all three relatively easy to learn, given that mastery of them requires just an exercise in memorization combined with muscle-memory. However the question remains whether the world is either ready or willing to retrain itself. The cost of retraining, it is said, would make a conversion prohibitive.

I however, question that.

A snapshot of any place where people gather shows that the acceptance of the smartphone is almost total. People have trained themselves how to use a smartphone, how to enter URLs into a web browser, how to copy and paste links and how to transfer photos to the cloud. It is easy when there is an end benefit.

So what would it take to have people want to change the way they enter text? Increased speed? Greater accuracy? Physical comfort in holding a device and typing?

The proliferation of alternative keyboards is another excellent example of evolution at work. New and better methods of communicating are coming forward, like new variations of plants in a meadow. The most attractive and ideal will find early adopters, who will in turn spread the “seed” of this innovation, while simultaneously demanding improvements and efficiencies through the beauty of an open market.

My expectation is that within seven years, people will look back upon the QUERTY keyboard with the same nostalgia (or perplexed expression) that they currently hold for the horse-and-cart or pocket watch.

Change cannot be mandated. It happens of its own accord, and does so despite the resistance of many who wish to hold on to the status quo.

——–

(As a quick footnote and a nod to the world of rock ‘n’ roll, it was Bette Nesmith Graham, the mother of Mike Nesmith, lead singer of the 1960′s pop band The Monkees, who actually patented the product known as White-Out or Liquid Paper, which many of us used religiously as we crafted our prose one letter at a time, and made many typos along the way. Even as she was developing this product, her innovation was admonished by management as “improper.”)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bette_Nesmith_Graham)

Are You a Speaker or Entertainer? Watch for Scams.

Beware the red herring!

Yesterday I received the following email. I am including the full body of the letter in the hopes that it serves a purpose in being found in a Google search by wary speakers who are rightfully suspicious of things that appear too good to be true:

Blessings to you from the United Kingdom , I am Bishop Allan  Wilson,The Presiding Minister of The New Covenant Church ,Bracknell United Kingdom. We are pleased to inform you that we would like to engage you to perform and motivate  our church congregation and members of our community at an event scheduled to be held here in New Covenant Church,It also  coincides with the Church’s annual conference and launching of the Church’s new auditorium .

This event is coming up on the 28th 29th and 30th of May 2013. The conference is tagged: ‘Big things: How to start small’. We heard about you from a church member of ours who is also a member of the YMF outreach , she told us you can perform at this event and also will be a huge impact and this fit-in for our event ,we also checked out your website and are impressed by the things we saw .

Please we would like you to convey to us your availability for one of the dates as it can fit in your schedule.  Also, please we would as well appreciate if you get back in-touch  with us in ample time so we can start corresponding the details.

Thank you and expecting to hear from you soon.

 NOTE : We are aware you are NOT based here in the United Kingdom and we will be responsible for your flight and other expenses

 Remain Blessed.

Bishop Allan Wilson
+44 7023011679

http://www.newcovenantbracknell.com
Crowthorne Road North
Bracknell
Berks
RG12 7AU

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him
who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.
1 Peter 2:9

If you are a speaker or performer, you are likely always hungry for new leads and business, and it is precisely this hunger that scammers prey on, taking advantage of that one moment of weakness that can occur, especially for anyone in the speaking/entertainment business as a “new gig.”

The poor punctuation and vagueness of the letter intrigued me, since at no point in the letter did the writer mention what I might be speaking about. I googled the name. There was no Bishop Allan Wilson, but there was a Bishop Alan Wilson – he even has a Wikipedia entry. Surely someone as educated as this would not misspell his own name.

I next googled the phone number, 7023011679, and that’s where things came apart. It became apparent pretty quickly that I was by no means the first speaker to have been approached. A travelling comedian by the name of Dwight York describes in his blog how his correspondence with this organization would have eventually led to the release of his bank account information by way of a blank cheque needed to assist in the wire transfer of the speaking fee.

It is sad that these criminals exist. From old-school pickpockets to internet scammers, they prey on those who actually work hard to generate an honest income.

The good that comes from this is that it helps reinforce the age-old adage, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Be careful out there.

Google Glass: The Rise of the Cyborgs

Glass is on its way. The portable computer/information device worn almost like a heads-up display within a set of glasses frames promises to be one of the “next best things” in ubiquitous portable technology. Whether Google gets to the finish line first, or Microsoft, Sony, or maybe even Wii, it’s a sure bet that Moore’s law will apply once again, and they will become exponentially more useful and less expensive with every passing year, to the point at which they will end up for sale at the checkout counters at WalMart alongside Juicyfruit gum and Bluetooth headsets.

But for the moment the bleeding edge of Google Glass must navigate an anti-publicity campaign from people who fear a loss of privacy from discreet glasses-wearing spies, whom they call “cyborgs.” Yet further proof, they state, of a society in which there is no privacy.

It’s an interesting fact of human life, at least in the countries where we have the time and money to worry about such things, that every great technology comes accompanied by a fanfare of reluctance, from those who would rather things stay the same, and not move further into a dangerous replica of The Matrix. The same argument was presented when cellphones first came equipped with cameras. And when the Internet was made available to everyone. And when ATMs replaced bank tellers. Go back even further and you will see a history of innovation that is pockmarked by fearful predictions. Television was seen as a vast wasteland. Moving pictures, it was thought, would affect young men’s minds through their realistic depictions and fast edits. In the early years of the 20th Century, women were forbidden to use the telephone for fear that a strange man’s voice so close to their ears would be a threat to their virtue. And a movement was established in the U.S. to ban the motorcar on the grounds that bank robbers could now outrun the mounted police.

Marshall McLuhan himself once said that human beings tend to drive into the future with their eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror.

Many organizations of late have learned that the Internet, including Google and YouTube cannot be censored, a conundrum of brand protection that gave rise to a term called the Streisand Effect.

It is easy to hail each and every development in personal communications technology as another threat to personal liberty from on high, and often George Orwell’s Big Brother is bandied about. But generally, it seems that whenever there is a major public incident that includes violence and civil unrest, such as a fight, a riot or even examples of police brutality, it is the citizenry itself that stands around photographing the scenes and posting them immediately to TwitPic, Instagram or elsewhere.

How many people these days remember that the Internet was actually a U.S. government project, designed as an insurance policy against a cold-war nuclear strike? Or that the GPS that everyone relies on to find a Starbucks is based on triangulation from a ring of satellites that also once served an exclusively military purpose?

There is no question that we live in a society in which everything is observed and recorded. This has helped identify and track down all kinds of ne’er do wells, from insurance fraudsters to shoplifters to more dangerous types of criminals.

Though human liberty is a right that all people strive to attain, and those who have it immediately lock it into their constitutions, I believe this is a condition that is best preserved through open access of information and the freedom to record and observe the world around us. And whether people agree with this opinion or not, the odds are this blog entry will be painfully out-of-date by 2016, when you stumble across it on your own personal heads-up-display.

My first novel, “Mouth” is here

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Steve Prentice holding an advance copy his new book, “Mouth.”

I am delighted to announce the arrival of my first novel, entitled “Mouth.” It is a lighthearted adventure set in the business district of an unnamed city. Here’s the back cover blurb:

A story of secrecy, deception and really small sandwiches.

“Sandy Parkinson and Christine Lee are co-owners of a small eatery in the downtown core based on the concept of offering small bites instead of large meals. Recently things have been going well, mostly due to the patronage of a mysterious Chinese man who uses the office space above the restaurant. All that ends, however, when the Chinese man disappears and a long line of people come along looking for him. His upstairs business, it turns out, was not entirely what it seemed. Sandy and Chris are thrown into the adventure of their lives as they seek to keep their restaurant alive and discover that everyone around them has secrets.”

If you want more detail, here’s more:

“Mouth is a humorous adventure through the buildings and back-alleys of a downtown city core, where people work, scheme, invent and drink coffee. It centres around a small restaurant called Mouth, where people stop over briefly while on their way to do what they need to get done. Filled with double meanings, secret pathways, hidden agendas and mysterious loyalties, the characters that frequent Mouth intertwine and influence each other with results that go well beyond the limits of their own imagination and comfort.”

And more…

“Mouth is an upbeat urban adventure story, filled with humourous episodes that skewers our busy lifestyles and love of technology while weaving a narrative of plot twists and engaging characters.”

Needless to say I am rather proud of getting this out. It has taken many stops and starts, but I am finally happy with it. Currently it is available in hardcover, and very soon, both the e-book and audio versions will be available. There will also be a website.

If you want to buy one, or two or five hundred copies, please use this button, which allows you to pay through PayPal. I’ll even sign them for you. $20 (each) plus HST and shipping.

Getting people back to work one town at a time – for free

Help us travel the country putting people back to work.

Now that my book Work Like a Wolf is out and on sale, the next thing we have on our agenda is to get in front of people, sharing our knowledge about finding work and keeping work. There are millions of people out there who want to work: students, people who have been recently downsized, people returning to work after an absence, veterans and those just looking for a change. But the skills needed for hunting down opportunity, building a network and finding the time to build a future — these need practice.

To that end we have launched the Wolf On Wheels project. Our goal is to start travelling across the country, speaking to schools, service clubs, legion halls, wherever we’re needed,  and to do this for free.

But we need your help to do this. We are looking to raise $80,000 to buy and fuel an RV for a cross-country tour that can take Steve to the people and the towns that would otherwise not be able to afford him. That’s a lot of money when you look at it as one amount. But there are two really cool ways to make this happen.

Buy a book. Every time a copy of Work Like a Wolf is sold, 100% of the revenues after printing costs, ($15.75) goes towards the Wolf On Wheels project. We would need to sell just five thousand copies of the book to make this happen. Just five thousand out of a country of millions.
Sponsor us. Alternatively, we would also love to find corporate sponsors. Just eight companies, shelling out $10,000 each for national exposure, their logo on the sides of the RV, on the handout materials and the gratitude of thousands and thousands of consumers.

The Wolf On Wheels project seeks to deliver the skills and ideas found within the book Work Like a Wolf in an interactive town-hall format, where people can ask questions and build an active viable plan for finding meaningful work.

Our trip will also be publicized through social media and regular media, so in the end sponsors and book-buyers will see their investment flourish. What a great way to help rebuild the economy.

Want to buy a book now or find out more? Click here to go to the Wolf On Wheels web page.

Work Like a Wolf – the book – is published.

Work Like a Wolf: Own Your Future, a book on career survival.

Work Like a Wolf: Own Your Future, my third book, is a handbook for survival in the high-speed age. I created it for three reasons:

I have observed too many working people existing without a sense of control; overloaded by email and ToDo lists, compelled to respond to their BlackBerrys 24/7, and being held in position through fear.
I have met too many people who have suddenly found themselves out of work, and equally suddenly have found themselves lacking a network or career safety-net.
I have observed “reaction” as a dominant force in all that we do, and I want to reinstill “pro-action” instead.

The wolf imagery primarily emerged from the phrase “working like a dog,” which people use often to connote an on-going workload that we take on without question or expectation of relief – doggedness, as it were. I chose to extend the metaphor by looking at the way in which dogs are kept: they are collared and controlled, but in return, they are fed once or twice a day. The price for a full stomach is strong restrictions on liberty, but at least you don’t go to bed hungry.

The problem with this occurs when immediacies such as email and meetings start to dull the senses. When a dog is worked all day and then fed, its ability to hunt, and its general survival skills get dulled. It becomes domesticated and therefore dependent. An overly busy person at work is like that: in exchange for a bi-weekly paycheck, he/she is kept in a state of constant overload and busy-ness, one that forbids the opportunity to network, to explore, to develop the career and financial safety nets we all need.

I’m all in favor of hard work, but when people have no time to protect both their present and their future, they are in trouble.

A wolf, by contrast, eats only what it kills. It must always stay vigilant, because it is owned by no-one. It must keep its hunting and survival instincts sharp, always on the lookout for danger and opportunity. My goal is simply to re-inject an amount of self-sufficiency into the lives of time-starved working people by reminding them of the skills and techniques that will get them further ahead, rather than just running all day just to keep up.

It’s about survival, career management self-determination.

Topics include:

The power of networking
Sculpting your own future
Personal presentation and image
Dealing with job loss
Looking for work (for people of all ages)
Locating the hidden job market
Staying literate in the social media age

For more information visit www.worklikeawolf.com

Steve Prentice is a speaker, author and Partner at The Bristall Group. He works at the crossroads where busy working people intersect with technology. Follow him on Twitter @stevenprentice or visit steveprentice.com (speeches) or bristall.com (training + coaching).

Email techniques for a time-starved world

Email is like a bridge between two worlds – it is electronic, which makes it part of the modern world, certainly, but it is a letter, which makes it part of the past few centuries – structured and formatted like its paper-based predecessors. The formality of email has long been a challenge when it comes to managing time. When you sit down to write an email, the actions involved are as formal as those of placing a piece of paper into a typewriter, or dipping a quill pen into an ink jar. The action is formal and focused.

Similarly, when receiving an email it has been shown through numerous clinical observations that the actions of stopping what you are doing to read and reply actually shift the nutrients and oxygen in the brain away from their useful positions and into fight-or-flight mode. This reflex is based out of our innate fear of the unknown, and takes many minutes to recover from. When this physiological drainage happens dozens or even hundreds of times per day, it is no wonder that people lose track of their time.

Every email must account for its value. Time is precious. Just like every meeting you attend and every task that you perform, there must be a bottom-line dollar value to it that makes it worth doing.

My suggestions for economical and effective email in this day and age are as follows:

Summarize: Make sure the subject line says 100% of what you want to say, in 12 words or less. Drop the “Fwd” or “Re” and replace with something meaningful.
Twitterize: take a lesson from Twitter and keep your message body as short as possible. Twitter demonstrates just how easy it is to say something in a very small number of words. You can do the same. Get your writing down to its shortest possible, because your audience just does not have the time or attention for long essays.
Singularize: Stick to only one message per email. If you have two or more different topics to talk about, send one email for each. If you place three or more items in a single email, the odds are good that only the first or last idea/request will be remembered and acted upon, the rest will be forgotten.
Personalize: Try to connect individual-to-individual wherever possible. Demonstrate in your email text some type of personal connection so that the reader does not just feel like part of a CC crowd. Incorporate their name into the text. Show them that you care. If you are communicating to a group, don’t use email. See Point 10 below.
Customize: Choose the medium and style that fits your recipient. Maybe they prefer phone calls. Most likely they will prefer texting ( again another nice, brief alternative). Get to know your people on a one-to-one basis  and see what works for them, since this will best get their attention.
Analyze:  Make sure spelling and grammar are correct for your audience. Not all of your readers will be comfortable with short-form texting (the letter “u” instead of “you” or “L8” instead of “late”) but others might be the opposite and may be turned off or intimidated by excessive prose. Your message must both represent you and your company as well as connect with your reader. Also, drop the “High Priority” flags. Cut down the monstrous signature lines that tell your readers you can be reached by phone, fax, blog, website, twitter, toll-free and carrier pigeon. Lose the graphical backgrounds. Eliminate excessive punctuation!!!  and WRITING IN CAPS.  These all lost their value a long time ago.
Accessorize: Use links to additional resources, instead of writing extraneous background material. Use links also in place of attachments wherever possible. (see Point 10 below)
Standardize: Be consistent in your writing style, choice of font, grammar, degree of formality/informality, and your use of headers, signatures and contact information. In a fast-changing world, your clients/contacts will feel a little more comfortable with you if your visual approach stays constant.
Prioritize: decide whether it is more advantageous for you to choose times in the day to answer your emails as a group (this allows for better time management and greater focus),  or to answer them quickly and immediately, which allows for a greater sense of control in most people. Pick a technique and commit. You will feel better, and all of your work will benefit from a heightened sense of control.
Centralize: If you are communicating with more than one person, then avoid email completely whenever possible. Set them up on a collaborative central work zone such as Google Docs or Sharepoint, where their comments can be posted FaceBook style, rather than in hundreds of cc’d emails. All related documents and links can be posted in this same area and everyone can congregate and communicate as a group on their own time.

The bottom line: the pace of life is moving faster and faster, and people do not have time or the attention that they might have had a generation or two ago. Capitalize on the speed and ubiquity of your technologies but remember, ultimately every message you send actually goes from a person to another person. Your job is to stay mindful of that and to not let your technologies muddy the connection.