Sky's Blog

Communicating in a networked world

You are here: Home / Archives for Our networked world

Effective use of Electronic Devices in Meetings

by 1 Comment

CIO Magazine has a column written by David Rosenbaum, and titled Cranky Old Guy in which a week ago he wrote an entry Please Stop Playing with Yourself.

iphoneI view the column as being partially humor because I personally am such an odd mix of experience and a desire to use new techniques and technologies in novel ways.

David Rosenbaum really does sound like a cranky old guy in this particular entry, because what he’s bemoaning is that people (today) sit in meetings with their Blackberry, or cell ph, or computer in front of them (or in their lap below table level in order to hide it) reading and answering email rather than attending to the topic of the meeting.

Well, it’s easy to understand that he feels neglected and disrespected because people are doing other things while he’s making a PowerPoint presentation. And who hasn’t done this at least a couple of times in some boring meeting? But there are other aspects to be considered. On both sides of the table.

In fact, I feel that bringing a laptop computer to a meeting should in most cases be encouraged and put to good use, and here’s the how-and-why of that… [Read more…]

I’m a Turtle

by 1 Comment

gate-3-workclub-logo.pngI’m listening to Neil Goldberg talk about “The future of work” while I’m writing this. Neil created and operated the Gate 3 Workclub, which lasted until early 2005 in Emeryville, CA. Gate 3 was a place where people could “hotel” and drop by and work (for a monthly fee). (You know, kinda like Starbucks without the hassle factor as they try to chase you out because you’re taking up space.)
Neil is a designer, and (wow) Gate 3 looked very designed! He worked thru many issues about what made a great workspace, including not only the physical layout, but the social aspects – which are SO important! “Water-cooler conversations,” anyone?

So why is this post called “I’m a Turtle”? – read on. [Read more…]

Project Happiness – video for happiness

by Leave a Comment

Project HappinessThe buzz is growing on Project Happiness. And I think it’s a reflection of how attractive it is to all of us to be able to see video rather than just read words on a page. We get so much more out of even a short video snippet of our friends than we do from a written email (which is so easy to misunderstand!).

Jeff Buderer of OneVillage Foundation has summed up some of what we’re doing, plus provided valuable links to others who are using video in their work across Africa. So take a look at what he has to say.

Building a Pervasive Game

by Leave a Comment

Chicago Water TowerI arrive in Chicago just after noon on Friday the 13th. Nah, I’m not superstitious. But knowing that my journey was to begin on Friday the 13th helped me remember to get all that accumulated work done so I would be ready to travel. The flight left San Francisco at 6am – so Thursday nightconsisted of packing and a little over 3 hours’ sleep, and then up at 3:45 for the ride to the airport. San Francisco International airport is actually a pretty civilized place at 4:30 in the morning – people are drowsy and polite. The lines are tolerable, especially for the self-check-in, meaning that I could walk right up to a kiosk, punch the touch-screen with my finger a few times and I was ready to go within a minute.

Having spent the first half of my years in Chicago, I was used to the flight. Kind of like commuting. Chicago is so central to the US that it’s a perfect base of operations – you can get anywhere in the country in 4 or 5 hours. Of course, I measure flight length in terms of “computer battery capacity.” This is a one-and-a-half-battery flight, as measured by my current Mac Powerbook. Day flights are “longer” because I have to keep the display brightness cranked up (draining the battery faster), whereas night flights measure shorter because I can dim the screen, thus saving the battery. I can squeeze three hours out of a single battery on a night flight.

“Pervasive Games” are games that are played out in real life, but directed by an unseen presence which in our case is a computer program. (There are lots of forms of pervasive games – many involved real life puppet masters, who work behind the scenes to invent (on-the-fly) new puzzles and to adapt the game to those who are playing it. Some games are one-time-only, designed for a group who will play the game and then it’ll never be played again – we designed and played one of these one-timers in Palo Alto this summer. Red7 pervasive games are based on a complex piece of software that runs on our servers, and is driven by a game scenario, composed of a set of rules that the software uses to determine what the players do at each step along the way.

[Read more…]