Monday, October 11, 2004

Your personal information space (Dashboard and Beagle). Here is a piece explaining the goodies of Novell's Dashboard and Beagle. [OSNews] 5:43:17 PM    comment [] Cisco continues to court small business. Networking giant launches new program for resellers targeting small and midsize customers. [CNET News.com] 2:17:22 PM    comment [] George says [vowe dot net] 12:52:00 PM    comment [] My research interests. A colleague of mine recently asked me what my IT research interests are.  It got me thinking; I am interested in lots of things, but only a few that I am prepared to put serious time and effort into.  Here they are:   Personal Knowledge Management Team communication, collaboration and co-ordination, especially ad-hoc inter-business scenarios, but also more formal team, project and programme collaboration Mobile working Home working Workplace design and workstation ergonomics Office tools and associated office systems, especially the transition to XML enabled office tools interacting with collaboration services and client/server XML aware databases for unstructured and semi-structured data Client technologies, and platforms, especially as they relate to the above Information lifecycle management Personal productivity, especially as it relates to the above Best practices and processes associated with the above Client application development and delivery technologies and associated user interface approaches Digital rights management and evolving trust and assertion based security models Consumerization of technology and the impact of consumer provisioning experience on enterprise service provisioning Enterprise infrastructures and especially how these need to evolve due to extended enterprise and flexible enterprise pressures as well as some of the above Enterprise infrastructure programme management and programme design User satisfaction criteria as distinct from budget holder satisfaction criteria The totality of the end user experience, rather than vertical optimisation of individual processes DCO, TCO and TVO modelling and business case development, especially as it relates to the above [Adventures in home working] 12:48:32 PM    comment [] Six Thinking Hats. I have just started to think through some of the processes, I take for granted.  One of these is "researching and decision making".  One of the first approaches I came across was the "Six Thinking Hats"; approach it stunned me that a process I am so familliar with could be so dramatically improved through applying more structure.  What particularly appealed was how the approach works within teams to avoid conflict.  Here's a summary of the approach: White Hat: With this thinking hat you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them. This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data. Red Hat: 'Wearing' the red hat, you look at problems using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally. Try to understand the responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning. Black Hat: Using black hat thinking, look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively. Try to see why it might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan. It allows you to eliminate them, alter them, or prepare contingency plans to counter them. Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans 'tougher' and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance. This leaves them under-prepared for difficulties. Yellow Hat: The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult. Green Hat: The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas. A whole range of creativity tools can help you here. Blue Hat: The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, etc. Buy the book, I know I'm going to! [Adventures in home working] 12:47:18 PM    comment [] Blogware features. In her blog kathleen describes how she decided on blogware vs TypePad.  I use blogware to host this blog and I think its great.  One of the features I like is that I often use the public view of the blog when I am browing around, finding old articles etc.  As an author of the blog, I see some extra options, see below: For example I see the integration the "Post New Entry" and "Edit Entry" links and the "Post New Entry" link automatically sets up the category for you based on where you are in the blog at the time. The edit link is also good because you can do a search to find and old article and then edit it with a single click. I particularly like this because often when I want to send someone a link to an old article I go to my blog, search for it and then see an error I want to correct :-). I just wish I could buy it and install it behind the firewall as well. [Adventures in home working] 12:45:39 PM    comment []

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