Adventures in home working

I grew up with a large orchard and I still love growing my own fruit.  I don’t have room for many trees so I have them growing in metal dustbins all the way down the drive at the side of the house. 

This month I’m picking cherries every day – I have 3 cropping trees this year, with another one that should start to crop next year!

My second hand Thinkpad X60 tablet arrived today via HireIT and eBay.  Its an ex eval model and in perfect condition even though it was less than half price.  Even better HireIt seem to give you whatever model they have available and in my case the spec was up-rated quite a bit from the model they were selling on eBay.

So that’s the good bit,  the not so bad bits were:

1. I got the Tablet and the power supply, no manuals, disks etc.  No loss really
2. They had installed their standard image onto the machine,  not too bad an image as they go, but unbelievably on a TABLET they had installed XP Pro!!

For the average user this would be a bit if a issue, but not for me as I was going to blow the image away anyway and install Vista.  This is what I did to get a completely clean Vista install:

1. First off I wanted to delete the IBM hidden system restore partition as I don’t need this backup capability.
2. To do this you need to go into the BIOS by pressing F1 during boot and pick security,  and then PreDesktop and then select disabled.  The partition will then be visible to Vista
3. Boot from the Vista DVD by pressing F12 during boot, initially go into repair operating system, and open up a command prompt
4. At the command prompt run diskpart – you will use this to delete the partition (5GB)
5. The following instructions DELETE ALL YOUR PARTITIONS, i.e destroy all data on your disk!!!
6. I don’t remember the exact DISKPART command but it goes something like this.  Type SELECT DISK 0, LIST PARTITION, SELECT PARTITION 1, DELETE PARTITION OVERRIDE.  do this for every partion on the disk. 
7. Reboot and hit F12, this time install Vista rather than repair.  You will only be presented with the option to do a customized install because you have deleted the old partitions
8. Install Vista
9. In my case at the end of the install both wireless and wired networks were working fine so I left Vista alone for an hour to download and install all the updates
10. I then installed an Anti-virus product, in my case the free and excellent AVG Free
11. The I installed the excellent Thinkvantage system update utility and installed everything except the rescue and recovery tool (this is the backup product that I didn’t want to use)
12. This downloads and installs most of the drivers, help files etc that you need, but strangely a few are missing.
13. You also need to install the Active Protection System, this is needed it you want the auto-rotate function to work
14. And you want the Shortcut menu
15. Once you have installed the shortcut menu press the key associated with it – between screen rotate and escape, and pick settings (lower left) and enable ActiveRotate
16. That’s all I’ve noticed so far

Those of us who grew up with the co-located meeting never stopped complaining about how unproductive the experience was.  We spent years trying to improve the level of interactivity with whiteboards, flip charts, projectors and decision support systems to increase the level of participation and improve the quality of decisions. 

With the advent of virtual meeting technologies we found that not only could we reduce travel but we could actually improve the dynamics of meetings,  web conferencing made it easier for multiple participants to take a share at presenting, instant messaging made it easier to access specialists and for participants to capture thoughts and questions without disrupting the flow of the meeting.

Those of us who discovered multiple displays realized that we could improve productivity even more by using a web conference to share one screen while having video on another and reference materials readily to hand on a third screen.

Finally those of us who work from home found that they could now work in a quiet environment, without disrupting the rest of the office with noisy meetings and reduce travel to zero.

Then along comes Telepresence,  a return to the worst of the traditional meeting:

1. you now need to schedule time for a meeting, rather than just having one as the need arises
2. travel to the nearest Telepresence suite, rather than do it at your desk
3. sit in simulated round table environment optimized for seeing people, rather than an effective meeting

Of course I realize that Telepresence is not targeted at the types of meetings most of us have, its focus is on those very infrequent meetings where every subtlety of human interaction needs to be perfectly communicated, the major deal, the negotiation, the critical agreement.  That said I have two concerns:

1. Telepresence will take the focus off designing environments to deliver really effective collaboration and switch focus to simulation of an environment that delivered pretty ineffective collaboration in the first place
2. Telepresence will soak up investment that could be spent to much better effect at the desktop

For myself I think we are already very close to perfection at the desktop, to a degree that will meet the needs of all but the most demanding scenario.  Here’s my vision for desktop collaboration:

1. 3 displays – 1 for video, 1 for web conferencing and 1 for reference material
2. A high quality camera and enough bandwidth to upload video at 30 frames per second 640*480 resolution, this means that you see 4 high quality images on the monitor you designate for video.  I watch a lot of videos of talking heads at 640*480 and I find it pretty easy to engage with the person talking at this resolution and I can always full screen the image if I really need to
3.  Enough bandwidth to download 4 streams at 30FPS and 640*480.  The vast majority of my meetings have 5 or fewer attendees
4. A web conferencing solution that’s really easy to use to initiate ad-hoc meetings straight from my IM presence list (scheduled meetings are already easy)
5. A web conferencing solution that makes it easy for all attendees to easily share information with each other, I.e. less focus on the idea of a single presenter
6. An integrated high quality audio solution that provides easy recording and publishing of the meeting and that doesn’t degrade because of the web conference or the video
7. An easy way (drag and drop) to share documents, web pages, etc with participants as the meeting progresses
8. A good way for participants to type notes, questions, comments, surveys etc as the meeting progresses
9. A Tablet that allows for easy markup of shared content and the freeform interactivity of the whiteboard or flip chart

My guess is that a setup like this will cost the average home worker less than $300 per year within a couple of years, and that’s probably 1/1000 th the cost of a Telepresence environment and in most respects it provides a more effective solution.

For another similar perspective check out this article by Melanie Turek from Frost and Sullivan, where she says:

Telepresence is getting so much play these days, it’s hard not to buy into the hype. But I’m a skeptic when it comes to this high-end and high-cost equipment, which does look great, but which also solves a problem most companies don’t actually have. When it comes to video conferencing, users want a basic level of quality—not a negligible point, given how long it’s taken for the technology to deliver on that expectation. But today’s high-definition systems (and even many standard definition ones) address that issue well: They deliver TV-quality audio and video with the touch of a remote-control button. That’s all most end users really want or need.

If you are interested in the concept I described of a web conferencing solution that’s much more interactive, ie allows multiple people to share content with each other in real-time check out this solution from Perspective Labs.

James Dellow works for the same company as me (but on the other side of the world) and blogs on many of the same topics, although he’s much more prolific!  James has recently provided a consolidated list of his articles and papers and collectively they make a great read.  James’ blog is generally one of the best I have come across for tracking significant activity in this space – recommended! 

Jon Udell’s – Interviews With Innovators - is currently my favorite Podcast series.  Whilst Jon is not a “great” speaker his relaxed interviews are really excellent and his knowledge and insightful questions really make each one a real learning experience.  I have listened to thousands of podcasts and I can definitely say these rank near the top and in fact would be at the very best in terms of consistent quality.

For years now I have observed that most IT staff are moving in the direction of becoming generalists whether they realize it or not.  This is nicely illustrated by this post by Brian madden where he quotes Citrix:

IT professionals are more and more becoming “generalists,” so it’s important that the products that Citrix makes are easier to architect and use

One of the commenter’s on the post was none too happy, saying:

Citrix better explain the comment that we are becoming more “generalists.”  This is an offensive statement to anyone in the IT profession. Things are not getting easier…..they are getting more complex. Just look at how simplistic Metaframe 1.8 was compared to Presentation Server 4.5. With each new version comes more features and more complexity.

This statement must have come from Citrix marketing. Citrix marketing is often confused and distorted. Look at all the name changes of the products over the years.

Brian has the perfect follow up comment:

I was in the session, along with maybe 200 attendees. The speaker asked how many people in the audience thought that their jobs were becoming more specialized, and no hands went up. Then he asked how many people thought their jobs were becoming more “generalized,” with them having to know more about more topics.. and probably 150 of the 200 hands went up. (Mine included!)

I mean five years ago I could be an expert in Citrix MetaFrame and that was it… but now I have to know about SBC and streaming and VDI and virtualization and WAN optimization… There’s only so much time in the day, so as I learn about more topics, I become more general. 

For me being described as a generalist is far from offensive, in many ways I think it’s code for saying “less likely to be out-sourced to India”, especially if your generalism includes business analysis, communications, systems integration and value delivery.

I am a big fan of the quick conditional formats in Excel, but I get very frustrated by the in cell bar graphs and their strange behavior – basically this means they are very unreliable as a way to visualize the real relationship between numbers in a range.  They are however great as a way of quickly (in a couple of clicks) spotting outliers in the data-set.  If you want to make them more accurate, it’s possible to change the formatting rules that Excel users:

From the home tab select Conditional Formatting, and Manage rules.  You will see all the rules in the current table.  Select the rule you want to change as you will see the dialog on the right.

For example you could base the shortest bar on the number 0 and Base the longest bar on the highest value. If you want to see bars based off percentile or some custom formula, then you can make those changes here as well.

For a much more comprehensive discussion on the issues with Excel 2007 conditional formats and how to work around them check out this article by Juice Analytics.

I came across this diet on a few blogs (the wonderful David Pollard and Kathy Sierra) by chance and was fascinated by its simplicity:

leave at least 2 hours between eating food with flavour.  At least one hour after eating take some flavorless food (a glass of sugar water or  a tablespoon of extra light Olive oil is recommended). 

That’s it.  More information on the diet is available in this New York Times article and there is an incredible forum that provides an incredible amount of advise and refinement.  Seth Roberts discovered it.

My VERY simple version of how the diet works is that the brain associates flavour with calories, by ingesting calories without flavour this association is weakened and this reduces cravings. 

I modified the diet a bit because I didn’t like the idea of a tablespoon of Olive oil.  This is what I did:

1. Wake up at 7:00 AM and take 3 capsules of fish oil, 2 of evening primrose oil and 3g of protein tablets
2. Eat breakfast at 10:00
3. At 11:30 take 4 capsules of Flax seed oil and 3g of protein tablets
4. Eat lunch at 13:30
5. At 15:00 take 4 capsules of Fish oil and 3g of protein tablets
6. Each Tea at 16:30
7. At 18:30 take 4 capsules of Fish oil and 3g of protein tablets
8. Eat supper at 20:00

I have drunk a lot more water than usual as well, partly to take all the Tablets!

The effect after only 1 week on the diet has been pretty startling:

1. I no longer feel hungry
2. Cravings have virtually gone completely, I haven’t eaten anything at all between meals and no sweets or treats of any kind have passed my lips
3. I have lost 4 lbs with no effort
4. My concentration has improved dramatically
5. After 30 years of trying to stop biting my fingers, I noticed after 4 days that I had not bitten them once! – this is truly amazing.  When I realized this the craving to bite did come back a little but it seems to be fading again
6. I seem to be sleeping better – no longer waking at 3:00AM

I have just ordered some olive oil capsules so that I can add a few extra calories of flavourless food and perhaps reduce the fish oil.

To follow the diet you don’t need to read the book, just follow the links above, however lots of people say that the book is really interesting because it provides a lot more detail into how Seth Roberts came up with the diet through self experimentation and the science behind it.  If you want to buy the book it’s on Amazon here.

I’ll update this blog post every couple of weeks with progress reports.

I have been worrying for a long time about how to improve the benefits delivery from investments in desktop, office and collaborative systems and it’s always bothered me how little attention Microsoft has invested in the problem until now!  They have come up with a tool called the Enterprise Learning Framework, which follows the lifecycle shown on the right.

It’s a simple idea – basically it exposes a whole load of existing material on the Microsoft web site through a simple interface that allows a communications team to identify appropriate content for different audiences at different phases of a project.

The sample below shows a few of the topics that are recommended for “influential knowledge workers” to review 1 month prior to deployment.  It’s a great idea much more approachable than previous attempts.  However as I reviewed the content I couldn’t help but feel that it talked as much about potential issues as it did about business benefits.  That may be commendable (Microsoft being honest) but it’s a bit of a worry! 

By way of contrast I watched this demo of Zoho Notebook and was blown away by the capabilities of this free of charge and legacy free product!

Over the last few years I have paid a lot of attention to improving my happiness at work and it’s certainly paid off.  But more interesting has been the impact on my professional activities.  I work mainly in vision and strategy for a large systems integrator, my focus is on desktop services, personal productivity, PKM, application delivery and collaboration – the stuff that people spend most of the day doing.  That means if I get it wrong end-users of our services are going to feel the impact for 4 or more hours a day! 

For me that’s a big risk and a great opportunity!  if I can improve the users experience of using these IT systems, reduce the frustration, increase the fun and engagement then I can potentially enrich the lives of around a million people, perhaps only in a small way – but it makes the effort worthwhile.  One of the reasons I write this blog is to try and do the same thing but for a broader audience.

Right now life is pretty interesting with the increasing acceptance of consumerization and work life balance and integration as important issues for enterprise IT.  And Web 2.0 service availability, virtualization and smart client applications are dramatically increasing end-user choice and freedom.  We also have much richer immersive experiences being provided by technologies like Ajax, Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight and Flash as well as much more use of speech and video and early signs of more immersive gamer like work experiences, for example Microsoft Surface. 

I can only see things improving as we see more people working outside the office, further integration of work and personal IT, more work/life integration, and richer IT experiences.  These tech trends are combining with a workforce that is increasingly comfortable working virtually and the rapid consumerization of Telepresence like collaboration experiences will free people to work from home without the isolation.

Finally I am excited about the gradual recognition within business of the value of a happy workforce, blogs like that of the Chief Happiness Officer are showing the way and increasing number of CEO’s are evangelizing the impact that changing their culture has had on their companies success.

This report provides a useful summary of the current state of happiness at work and this workbook provides some good tips if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the volume of work.