Thursday, April 15, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Evolution of the Worker
We were not designed to sit at a desk. I spoke recently to several young working professionals, mostly from the Net Generation and they all had one thing to say. I don't want to be tied to my desk. Let me work from wherever I want. Leap Factors presentation has some good research and a good image on slide 4.
Leap Factor Executive Presentation
View more presentations from Leapfactor.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Content Economy by Oscar Berg: Explaining Enterprise 2.0 in one minute
A good post that gets to the core of Enterprise 2.0. The message may not be new. But a good short summary. The Content Economy by Oscar Berg: Explaining Enterprise 2.0 in one minute
10 Cool Things You Can Use Your BlackBerry Camera For
1. Take a picture of your white board brain storming sessions, right after the session and post them in a wiki and share them with colleagues. This takes very little effort and will earn you kudos.
2. If you see a flower in a garden, take a picture and email it to your significant other. It will make his or her day.
3. If you are in another town or in another place and are enjoying the scenery, take a picture and send it to your significant other to let them know that you wanted to share the moment. If the scenery is really good, watch our for a reaction such as "How come you are having all the fun and did not take me there".
4. If you are at a customer location, and customer draws something on a piece of paper,or a napkin, take a picture of it (with their permission) and use that picture in your next PowerPoint presentation.
5. If you are at a restaurant and want to send the address of the place to a friend, don't bother remembering the address. Pick a card or menu from the front desk, take a picture and email it while you are walking to your car or taxi, train or bus.
6. When you are at a customer site, take a picture of their actual office and use them in your next presentation. If graphic artists are available, they can use them as source material.
7. If you are doing user research, take a picture of the users desk, artifacts and documents (with their permission) so that you can look at them later. Your team will get a better sense of this customer if they were not part of the visit.
8. Take a picture of your receipts. You can print them later for expense reporting purposes. You will also remember the order in which you incurred the expenses.
9. Take a picture of visiting cards your receive. Don't have to worry about losing the card. You can also take a picture of books to remember their names and authors.
10. If you are asked for a copy of your drivers license or any other small document, (and do not have ready access to a flatbed copier) take a picture of the document and print it or email it.
2. If you see a flower in a garden, take a picture and email it to your significant other. It will make his or her day.
3. If you are in another town or in another place and are enjoying the scenery, take a picture and send it to your significant other to let them know that you wanted to share the moment. If the scenery is really good, watch our for a reaction such as "How come you are having all the fun and did not take me there".
4. If you are at a customer location, and customer draws something on a piece of paper,or a napkin, take a picture of it (with their permission) and use that picture in your next PowerPoint presentation.
5. If you are at a restaurant and want to send the address of the place to a friend, don't bother remembering the address. Pick a card or menu from the front desk, take a picture and email it while you are walking to your car or taxi, train or bus.
6. When you are at a customer site, take a picture of their actual office and use them in your next presentation. If graphic artists are available, they can use them as source material.
7. If you are doing user research, take a picture of the users desk, artifacts and documents (with their permission) so that you can look at them later. Your team will get a better sense of this customer if they were not part of the visit.
8. Take a picture of your receipts. You can print them later for expense reporting purposes. You will also remember the order in which you incurred the expenses.
9. Take a picture of visiting cards your receive. Don't have to worry about losing the card. You can also take a picture of books to remember their names and authors.
10. If you are asked for a copy of your drivers license or any other small document, (and do not have ready access to a flatbed copier) take a picture of the document and print it or email it.
Enterprise Software where SMS is the only end-user interface
In my last post, i wrote a simple use case where a new employee is helped by the IT department via tweets and direct text messages. In this use case the only interface used was text messages. These messages can be posted and received even by the most rudimentary phones on earth. If enterprise software has to reach and benefit every person in the world, it should have the ability to adapt to the most basic interface, text.
I have been thinking for a while about this now and wonder, how a text only user interface for an enterprise application might work. I saw some interesting examples during my last visit to India.
Project Management
After a long career as a college professor, my mother now works for several women's welfare organizations in India. The project manager for one of her assignments is a young man in his thirties from another city.. Every day morning he texts the tasks to her cell phone. [My mother uses a regular Motorola phone.] At the end of the day she texts back her updates to him so that he can track and report. She looked at my BlackBerry and said, "You can do a lot with text". I am glad she never had to seen the interface of any enterprise software system. I tried to capture the use case here.
Employee On boarding
In my previous post I wrote a simple use case where an employee tweets about her status on the first day of work and IT staff of the company monitor her tweets to proactively to help her. Is it not great to tell your Net Generation new hires, to just walk into the office and tweet about what they are doing and what they are having trouble with. One of my colleagues, Girish extended that idea and said why just IT? Why not a community of self appointed employees who monitor new hires and help them settle down in a new workplace. A group of people will directly text them directly to tell them what to do.
This scenario can happen in any country, any industry, any language, any mobile phone. The behind the scenes text analysis software can be sophisticated. But for the new hire, there is practically no software involved.
I am sure there are wonderful ideas out there for using just text as a user interface. What are your thoughts? Any killer use cases for just SMS? If you share an idea with me, I might draw (no promises though) the use case in a comic strip format, post it here and give you credit for the use case.
I have been thinking for a while about this now and wonder, how a text only user interface for an enterprise application might work. I saw some interesting examples during my last visit to India.
Project Management
After a long career as a college professor, my mother now works for several women's welfare organizations in India. The project manager for one of her assignments is a young man in his thirties from another city.. Every day morning he texts the tasks to her cell phone. [My mother uses a regular Motorola phone.] At the end of the day she texts back her updates to him so that he can track and report. She looked at my BlackBerry and said, "You can do a lot with text". I am glad she never had to seen the interface of any enterprise software system. I tried to capture the use case here.
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Employee On boarding
In my previous post I wrote a simple use case where an employee tweets about her status on the first day of work and IT staff of the company monitor her tweets to proactively to help her. Is it not great to tell your Net Generation new hires, to just walk into the office and tweet about what they are doing and what they are having trouble with. One of my colleagues, Girish extended that idea and said why just IT? Why not a community of self appointed employees who monitor new hires and help them settle down in a new workplace. A group of people will directly text them directly to tell them what to do.
This scenario can happen in any country, any industry, any language, any mobile phone. The behind the scenes text analysis software can be sophisticated. But for the new hire, there is practically no software involved.
I am sure there are wonderful ideas out there for using just text as a user interface. What are your thoughts? Any killer use cases for just SMS? If you share an idea with me, I might draw (no promises though) the use case in a comic strip format, post it here and give you credit for the use case.
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