Year: 2010

The internal meeting clock

Dave

I had a bunch of meetings today. I have a bunch of meetings most every day. Most of them are an hour long. Some of them are 30 minutes long. One is 15 minutes long. Here’s the funny thing about them:

They all last exactly as long as they are scheduled to last.

Maybe once every two weeks, I’ll be in an hour-long meeting that wraps up early, and people always seem surprised and delighted, kind of like the feeling you get when your purchase is rung up on the cash register and comes to an even number, like $16.00. Sure, it’s not a huge mystery, but the novelty of it gives you a fun little thrill nonetheless.

Why is it that meetings always last exactly as long as they’re scheduled? Is it that the organizer always does a perfect job estimating exactly the time needed? I don’t think anybody believes that. I think it’s just that we have an innate ability to expand to fill the allotted time.

Somebody, maybe it was Ross Perot, advised that you should hold all meetings standing up. People will be less comfortable and more likely to get to the point. Of course, that’s the kind of thing a billionaire CEO can get away with. I doubt people would react very well at my next meeting if I told them all to get out of their chairs.

What would happen if we just started making 30 minutes the default? Would people innately compress, hold extraneous thoughts and avoid tangential discussions?

It’s worth a try.

Google Buzz is keeping me awake

Dave

A follow-on to my previous post, that’s going to make me sound even more obsessive, but I’m okay with that. I’ve been checking to see if my Google account is enabled for Buzz yet. It’s not, but I can get to it on my iPhone. So far it looks pretty cool; Twitter-like features and a fairly tidy interface that looks like a lot of other Google mobile apps. I found I was already following seven people “how, exactly?” and nine people are already following me, including a couple of people from my contact list and a few I’ve never heard of, who seem to be from a country far, far away.

Turns out one of the folks following me has been busy today and is following 147 people, many of whom I know, so in classic Twitter fashion I was able to build my follower list by poaching his.

Even better “and apropos of my earlier identity crisis” you can search people by their full names, and their full names are displayed, not their Gmail usernames. So far so good, it looks like I’m “David B. Thomas” on Google Buzz, and I might be getting to sleep before midnight.

Then I scroll down the other guy’s follower list. 146 people, all shown in the Firstname Lastname format. And me, shown as “Thomas, David B.”

Should be fun trying to figure that one out.

Once again, Google is making me crazy

Dave

Google’s announcement today of Google Buzz reminds me once again that they are on the way to owning our online life. We’re rapidly approaching the point where your single most important online identifier will be your Google username.

And what’s mine? dbt001.

I signed up for that back in the days when we were still being semi-anonymous on the Web. I’m sure I could have gotten davidbthomas as my username back then, but that seemed a little too specific, a little too revelatory. Why, that’s how I’m listed in the phone book! Who knows what might happen?

Now I’ve got a dozen or more services tied to my username. It would be a nightmare to change. But I want my online identity to include my name. Vanity? No, practicality. We’re all overwhelmed by information and incoming messages. I want to make sure that when someone sees something I’ve shared or directed their way, they know it’s coming from me.

So now I’m back to trying to figure out what I can add to the front or end of “davidbthomas” to make it unique, without sounding too ridiculous. And I’ve talked about this already online in several places, and with several people. My wife has suggested I consider medication, and she didn’t sound like she was kidding.

Is there a medical term for someone obsessed with their online identity? I mean, other than “dork,” of course.

Posted via web from David B. Thomas

My first unconference

Dave

I went to my first unconference this past weekend, AnalyticsCamp, held at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill. I really enjoyed the format. For those of you unfamiliar with the unconference/barcamp model, there’s no schedule in advance. Speakers propose their sessions on a wiki, then on the day, they stand up and pitch their ideas, then post them to a board. If you want to go, you make a mark on the sheet. Some of the sessions were packed, some had only a few people, but it was very democratic. It’s also handy in that you get a sense of the speaker before you commit your time to his or her session.

I also just registered for IgniteRaleigh, which follows the same format but allows you to vote online. The topics range from social media marketing to what zombies reveal about society and psychology. So far it looks like the most creative and unusual topics are getting the most votes, which is great. If there’s one thing I’m tired of, it’s hearing the same old thing at conferences.

Once again I’m reminded why I love my job. My colleagues and I are breaking new ground every day, and finding new ways to communicate that people enjoy and want to participate in, not just endure. Unconferences are the real-world equivalent. If we all keep this up, we may never have to read another boring, jargon-filled press release again, and we may never again have to fight to stay awake while someone reads their PowerPoint slides to us.

Refocusing on my blog and trying new tools

Dave

When I spent some time with Chris Brogan in December, we talked about blogs and sharing tools like Posterous, and the different ways people use them. Chris thinks people are diluting their web presences by posting in too many places. “You can watch him say this yourself.” “Home is where the web page is,” he summed up nicely.

I had a blog on Typepad for many years. When I finally decided to move to this self-hosted WordPress blog you’re looking at, I realized I could import all my old posts, but all my photos were stuck. I looked into methods for bringing them over and found one small company that will do it for you, but admits it’s such a massive pain that they charge a lot, since they don’t really want to do it. “They even provide the step-by-step instructions, which run to about 50 steps.”

I really like Posterous, its simple interface, the web-based tools that allow you to share pictures and videos quickly, and the ability to post by email to multiple places. But I’m afraid that if I get too tied in to Posterous, one day I might have the same issue that I had with Typepad.

So here I am once again, using precious toddler napping time to mess with my blog. I just installed the TweetMe plugin, which should send out a tweet announcing this post once it goes up. “This whole post started out as a test of that function, but I got carried away.”

I like this blog. I like the idea that it will continue to grow, and that it will continue to be my home base as new tools emerge, rather than just another outpost I used for a while and abandoned when something more exciting came along.

By the way, my thanks once again to my friend Jeff Cohen from socialmediaB2B.com. I posted on Twitter that I was looking for the right tools to do this, and he called me within a few minutes to talk me through it. Good man.