Article posted on Mar 13
I had a really interesting phone call this morning with Michael Clark, the Western Region General Manager for Midmarket Customers for Microsoft (Holy crap, how’s that for a Title??) regarding a press release put out earlier this week by Microsoft, rating Us cities on how accommodating they are for remote workers.
In this study Utah ranks #4 overall, and #1 specifically for “How supportive is your boss or manager for remote working arrangements.”
The top 3 cities (from 1 to 3) were: Sand Diego, West Palm Beach Florida, and Buffalo NY.
In my conversation wit Michael, one of the things that I really wanted to know was why Microsoft had undertaken such a survey. Businesses tend to do things that benefit them. Is this so that Microsoft can find the best cities to setup shop, or is it because they want to get out a marketing message? The real answer from Michael was that (in relation to their customers) they want to better “…understand their attitude on certain trends.”
Further, Michael discussed that in the current economic climate that companies are really looking to try to find solutions to three key questions:
1- How to I save money?
2- How do I become more productive, and innovate my way out of this dilemma?
3- How do I retain my best people (and attract more)?
Microsoft feels that in answering these questions, and solving these problems, that more and more companies are considering expanding their support for remote workers. Michael expressed that Microsoft is working on a suite of products that helps to eliminate the need of facetime, and replace it with the ability to have “presence” (no, not presents… sorry folks.)
They have already (as the press release details) released drive encryption, and strong network encryption to help protect sensitive data, even in the event of a laptop theft. Michael went on to state that we will be seeing a comprehensive IM, Email, security, Voice, Video and web conferencing pack that helps enable collaboration.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of it. As an employer myself, I find that one of the biggest hurdles is how to really give me insight and piece of mind that remote workers are being productive, while not becoming even more busy work to track tasks and time, and not becoming so much of a “big brother.” Maybe I should just require that all remote workers move back in with their mom, and get a note from her promising to keep them on task? 
Article posted on Mar 10
One of the things I have always tried to do on this site is to share information about local events as I attend them. not just notification of the fact that there is an event, but my feelings on which ones I have found to be worth while (or not.)
On that note, I want to mention the Social Media Club of SLC (that’s #smcslc for us twitter geeks.) This will be the third meeting of the SMC here. I attended the last one, and it had about a hundred people from all different cross sections of social media usage. Definitely an energetic, exciting crowd (install summizeer on you iphone before you get there!!)
The upcoming meeting is outlined as something of an “open mike night”, where everyone can learn and everyone has something to share. Based on the diversity of the crowd I think this has the potential to be pretty eye opening.
The event is Thursday, March 19th at 5:30. To register and see more details go to the SMCSLC meeting details here.
Article posted on Mar 09
We all have one in the family… You know, that nephew, cousin, or sibling. The one you’re pretty sure ate flakes of lead based paint? The one you felt was completely out of control, or seriously broken as a kid. Then just backward and obnoxious as a teen, always out to get attention. Then as they began to grow toward adulthood, you’re still not fully convinced, but it’s shocking to see some of the value and depth of them begin to shine through.
No, we;r not talking about me here. I’m talking about twitter.
I started on twitter the same way I am sure a lot of the readers here did. I was an early adopter, and started doing it all from my phone over SMS. It did not take long at all to realize that was a big mistake, and that I was getting spammed at inopportune times with meaningless crap about who was parking their car, or going to lunch.
Others may have taken different routes at this point, but I opted next for IM. I couldn’t stand the updates to my cell, but my Instant Messenger client seemed like a better fit.
Until I realized that normally an IM is someone who actually needs my attention fairly quickly. I found myself sprinting over to my desk to see who was IM’ing, only to find more meaningless drivel.
I never have liked the web interface for twitter that much, so I started shopping for other solutions. I tend to like twitterific, and Event box (my FAVORITE by far for managing social media.)
But still, I watched twitter’s usage go through to phases of:
- Early adopters getting a feel for it and using it much like an SMS chatroom
- Coolness spammers who don’t really use it to connect much at all, but use it more for their personal mini-billboard to advertize what cool person they’re meeting with or what neat aricle someone told them to read, so they’ll pass that info along to look insightful.
- “Social Gurus” who appear to be pretty good at building their own social network, and claiming to be experts, but never seem to be able to provide a strategy to companies or business to actually monetize it in any way (not to imply that everything has to make money to be worthwhile.)
To where we are now.
Up until now we have watched the recognizable pattern of that akward cousin. But was it paint chips, or brilliance bubbling just under the surface of that weird grin?
Enter hashtags and search. Enter Twitter Hawk and Summizer.
I’m not saying that twitter has nailed it, or that this one is sailing out of the park… but dang, that awkward girl from high-school just got kinda pretty.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about here, imagine Google, but on a smaller, manageable scale, that lets you follow trends, topics, and your brand real-time. It let’s you see what people are saying right now, and interact with those people. Further, it lets you see what topics are currently hot.
Twitter is flooded constantly with people expressing their thoughts in immediate, concise ways, and to react to thought blips of others. New tools let you easily tap into this, learn from it, and react to it.
You remember in the latest Batman movie, how he turned all of the cell phones in Gotham into his own personal way to hear (and through sonics, “see”) everything going on in Gotham? Then he had the computer monitor for specific voices or phrases. It’s kinda like that.
Several of my nieces, nephews, and cousins have now grown to adulthood. I am really impressed with the people they have turned out to be. It sure looks like twitter, and the way a lot of people are using it, is turning that corner.
