Cole Camplese

There are No True Emergencies

Mt wife shared this little gem with me last night as we were talking about the culture in higher education and our tendency to meet all the time. I was thinking it was specific to higher education as I haven't been in industry for 12 or so years and at that time it was a small start up where we had lots to keep us continuously busy. I especially like the part about managers ... how many of us (I'm a manager) perceive our needs for updates and information to more important than the people we manage. I think there is a huge lesson to take away from open conversations like the one Jason Fried (from 37signals.com) engages in throughout the video. In so many ways it shows us that we may need to rethink the way we create emergencies and have to react to them nearly every single day within our organizations and instead think about the work that should be getting done as the goal.

"And the truth of the matter is, there are really no true emergencies in business." I love it ... now to remember it.

The Hallway

Sometimes I love the things that my Google Reader shares with me from down the hall ... this afternoon I jumped into my feeds for the first time since very early this morning. One of my favorite things to see is the little new article indicator next to my ETS folder. I love to see fresh content from those in my own team ... just warms the heart. There were a couple new ones today, but the one that caught my attention was from my colleague, Elizabeth Pyatt. Elizabeth is an Instructional Designer in our group who brings great insights into literally everything we do. Elizabeth was instrumental in starting and executing our blogging community hub so she gets the community thing in a big way. Her post today really made me step back and think.

What is funny about it is that her post is about a whiteboard. You see, about a month and a half ago the whiteboard we ordered for the Cafe ETS space showed up and it was way too big. Instead of sending it back I asked that it be installed in our hallway so it could be used for ad hoc conversations, announcements, or really anything else people wanted to use it for -- within reason I suppose ... my general rule for anything around the office is to not spew hate (a good rule to live by). I've watched the whiteboard since it went up and it has been used for all sorts of things -- pictures of me, polls, announcements, and more. I've liked it all and haven't given it too much thought. I did notice when we first had it installed that someone asked (via the whiteboard) what the policies governing it are. I didn't respond, but did put a fictitious item on our all staff meeting agenda to address that. We didn't.

Elizabeth notes some things that only now am I growing aware of -- people want to know what it is there for. The funny thing is that I really don't have a concrete answer. It is there to be there ... if that is too abstract then so be it. Chalk it up as another grand experiment.

The other thing she notes is the Twitter stream running on a display in the same hallway. We all tweet with our personal accounts and they end up showing up in our hallway. I usually always enjoy reading them when I get off the elevator and I do feel like it provides an interesting insight into our organizational DNA. But as Elizabeth points out, some of the tweets are probably not aligned with our organizational perspective (maybe ... not sure about that). Again, it is an interesting look at social interaction ... another grand experiment. I am honestly intrigued by the way we are all navigating both online and physical social platforms -- and yes, I just called the whiteboard a social platform.

So what the hell is this post about? Well it has a little to do with who we are as a group and the kinds of things we are all thinking about individually -- and really how they add up to form an organizational identity. It is also about how we are walking in the open without the old rules -- whatever they were. The new school technology of Twitter has brought a strange view into the collective (even if not everyone contributes to it), while the whiteboard seems to have caused more questions. I'm not sure if we are more forgiving with our use of the new school stuff or not. I do know one thing I can answer with certainty for those who are wondering -- I am not the one erasing stuff. I am leaving that to the community to deal with ... if I erased I would violating one of the things I believe in -- communities self correct. Even on whiteboards.

Remote Collaboration?

I spend a great deal of time in meetings. On an average week I bet I spend close to 30 hours either sitting in meetings or traveling to meetings. That doesn't leave a ton of time to actually get stuff done, but I understand the need (and value) to meet ... as a matter of fact I find myself setting a lot of this up. I think the thing that is bothering me the most at the moment is the amount of traveling around campus I need to do to get to it all. Sure, we have great shuttle services and walking is always an option, but when the walk or shuttle ride is at least 20 minutes it puts a major crimp in the before and after times of the actual meeting. Additionally, there are days when I start at different buildings and won't see my office all day -- this makes me end up moving my car all day to different parking places across campus.

There are days (and today is one of them) where I really wonder about my own use of technology to support new practice. All this travel is hitting me hard in the wallet -- not sure if you've noticed gas prices are hovering in and around the $4.00 a gallon range. Even if you don't care about the brutal effects this has on the local and global environment, you'd be crazy not to get a little frustrated with it all. I had a conversation with my wife last night about finding ways to lessen my impact on the environment (and my wallet) and I was thinking specifically about the fact that I am part of a group that licenses and supports a very powerful collaborative tool -- Adobe Connect. I almost never attend meetings in Connect -- even though I have a killer setup for it with a MacBook Pro, tons of bandwidth, and a USB headset. Not sure why ... I wonder how much carbon and dollars I could save by requesting three meetings a week happen locally over Adobe Connect?

Then this morning, some of the ETS staff were at the weekly brainstorming breakfast down at Irving's Bagels ... I was watching as they were updating the ETS wiki and Twitter and thought about heading down there when I saw an interesting Tweet from Brad about using SubEthaEdit to take notes in prior to shifting them to the wiki. Think of it as pre-collaborative collaboration (if that makes sense).

Brad then invited me into the document and from there we decided to jump into iChat AV to add voice and video. All in all it provided some new evidence that we have to start rethinking what we classify as attendance at meetings and push ourselves to take advantage of the tools we are all trying so hard to "sell" to the others. Any thoughts?