Tag Archive for: Productivity

If ever I had to put together an army, I’d recruit Costco shoppers for their sheer loyalty. My comments in last month’s column garnered more feedback than usual, most of it illuminating the privileges of membership which I so callously discounted in my remarks.

Imagine what your company would be like if fifty percent of your employees – or more – fell ill at the same time. Would you be able to continue operating?

My challenge today is to setup a social gathering with a number of friends. Everyone has a busy schedule and I need to find a time which is going to work best for the most people… or risk drinking beer by myself.

I dig into my toolkit and find….

When is Good
This is a free website to which allows you to create a calendar of proposed times for which you can email the URL to participants. The participants then indicate which times work best for them.

Website: http://whenisgood.net/

We were working on an important proposal just at the time when my business partner, Dave Nicholson, and his wife Judy were scheduled to travel to Mexico on vacation. Since Dave’s job is to keep me from giving away the farm, it was important for us to collaborate on this proposal no matter where in the world he happened to be at the time. So we decided it was a good time to try out some long distance Internet telephone usage.

We agreed ahead of time when Dave would be available for a call, and when I contacted him I found him (naturally) in a bar. Judy was using his laptop at the time, so she informed Dave that his computer was “ringing”.

When we connected I was amazed at how clear he sounded – except that his voice was much deeper, and he sounded like one of those deep synth disk jockeys. “Hellooowrmph!” I guess when his voice was broken up, sent through cyberspace and put back together – sort of like those transporters on Star Trek – something must have happened to enhance it.

If a website is going to be successful, fresh up-to-date content is the key but updating your website can quickly become a hassle if you don’t have a content management system (CMS) in place. You could rely on your web design firm but that can become costly, and cutting out the middle man is always faster.