You need to be made of awesomeness, as our project manager puts it, and be both extremely reliable and easy to work with. Don’t bother if you know you’re kinda flaky—it won’t be fun for anyone, and you will be let go. If you are reliable and easy to work with, great! Extra-special brownie points go to Seattle folk, as the client is based there.

E-mail your resume and cover letter to dotnetjob2010@causeit.org. Please do not call—we are not screening developers for this client, just forwarding on your information.

People have different roles for project managers within their business. In my business, I have about eight hours of meetings with project managers per month. In those meetings, I process the tasks in my inbox and triage them into Remember the Milk, have conversations with the project manager about the feasibility of the commitments I have taken on/will be taking on/would like to take on, and start to get in communication with anyone I need to repromise to, revoke promises to or reschedule with. I also have higher-level conversations about processes for efficiency, total workload capacity and balance between different types of work.

For some small business people, the project manager also does a bit of cat-herding—checking in on tasklists and duedates, especially those which are past due. When they spot something which is lagging behind or flat-out has not been done—especially if there is a recurring theme of delay on that type of task—they have a conversation with the team member to see what they need to be effective. Sometimes that conversation looks like coaching to uncover any emotional or contextual roadblocks, and sometimes it is a process conversation to see what would make it easier to complete that task consistently.

Project managers also are likely to assist in the scoping/estimating process of bids to make sure that time conflicts, logjams and cost overruns are prevented wherever possible. For example, Causeit worked with one of our project managers in the process of constructing a bid for a large flat-priced graphic design project to ensure we met a minimum hourly pay rate and, thus, profitability.

In a smaller business, the project management accountability often falls on the business owner, general manager or an account manager. First steps for additional project management support, with a generally effective team who sometimes get overwhelmed (rather than a team with systemic problems around accountability, self-discipline and communication) are to implement some simple, low-cost solutions centering around reminding people of the promises they made. Technology solutions like Remember the Milk automate some of this process, and work particularly well when paired with a meeting with an outsider or other strictly-accountable team member who gently causes the conversation to come up on a regular basis (once or twice a week is best) and to stay on track.

In short, project managers serve to make sure the actions of your games get moved forward by ensuring actionable promises are made, recorded and managed. Contact us to have us facilitate an introduction to some of our favorite project managers, like Jodi Sweetman and Amye Scavarda!

A screenshot of Gmail's conversation view

In short, it comes down to Google’s core values. Among them are “Focus on the user and all else will follow,” and, parphrased, “don’t be evil.” Running with this direction, Google’s team (and a huge user community) turned on email on its side by acknowledging two core things: 1) people have conversations, not messages,   2) humans don’t always think linearly and 3) keep powerful features easy.

Staying in the conversation

Gmail offers something few other email clients have been able to touch: effective threaded conversations. What is a thread? Imagine passing a note back and forth in class—writing a reply on the same page that you received a message on. Gmail pieces together the messages going in and out of your address to provide a cohesive view of a conversation—even if the messages are weeks apart—so that the context of messages is clearer. This way, instead of wading through pages of ‘quoted’ messages, which are often hard to read, a user can collapse and expand messages which came before and after whatever message they are reading. Often, this makes each message shorter, too, as introductions and conclusions are less necessary.

Needle in a haystack

Gmail also acknolwedges another truth—it’s often easier to search than to sort. Since one conversation (Gmail parlance for a collection of messages) may reference multiple topics or a couple of different people, Gmail leverages its class-leading search technology to make it possible to effectively search all of the conversations in an account. That way, users don’t have to try and remember when a message came in or even who sent it—they just search like they would Google. Searching email isn’t new—but having instant results with miniatures ‘teaser lines’ of each message (much like a web search) was groundbreaking when released and is still basically unmatched in other clients.

Powerful, easy features

Gmail also does something almost no other mail client or service does successfully—it keeps its powerful features out of the way, but still accessible. Gmail offers a feature that many users may not be aware of: Labels. For example, all messages I receive from certain domains or addresses get labeled ‘Clients’. Some of those same messages, depending on their content, might get labeled ‘Deadlines.’  Unlike most email applications, which would take these messages and move them into another folder, Gmail tags them—so that I can see the message both in my inbox, or when I look only through the lens of ‘Clients’. An unlimited number of Labels can be combined, so that ‘Finance’ and ‘Response required’ can be independently or jointly applied to a message.

In another stroke of genius, any search you perform can become a filter or saved search—in other words, if you search for messages from clients which include attachments, Gmail offers the option to save that search as a filter so that you can then apply actions, such as labeling all of those messages automatically when they come in in the future (eg, ‘Client Files’).

Signal to noise

Perhaps the most powerful bit about Gmail is that it allows you to reduce the clutter and excess you view. First, Gmail has perhaps one of the best spam filters in the market. I have never had a conversation marked as spam accidentally, and I see maybe one spam message every three days in my inbox. One click of ‘Report Spam’ and I will never see that message again. Google combines the input of all of its users to have one of the most up-to-date anti-spam services anywhere.

Using a tool Gmail calls archiving, conversatons can be removed from your inbox without deleting them. This allows you to complete old conversations (which will come back into the inbox automatically if a new message is added to the conversation). For example, when I’m done conversing with my insurance agent about renewing my policy, I can click archive. At that point, I can still find the conversation through search or by clicking on the “All Mail” tab. From there, I can always bring the conversation back to the inbox if I want or need to. As a productivity tool, archiving is indispensable—it allows users to remove the clutter in their inbox and be clear about what emails still need to be managed or replied to.

Using the filters function discussed earlier, newsletters and other ’sometimes I want to read them’ emails can be automatically archived, so that they are not in the way but can still be referenced. This is great for managing email subscriptions and listservs which can otherwise dominate an inbox.

In short, Gmail is the web app with the single biggest positive impact on its users—and absolutely no hit on their pocketbooks. The time it saves and the reliability it provides make it the first technology shift we recommend to our clients who don’t already have it. Try it today!

Remember the Milk works as a great tool for implementing productivity guru David Allen’s excellent methodologies, as articulated in Getting Things Done. The core of his practice involves sorting tasks into a couple of cross-referenced criteria, such as project (e.g. ‘creating a new website’), context (e.g. tools or locations such as ‘phone,’  ‘grocery store,’ or ‘office’) or duration (five minutes, 30 minutes, etc.). In a traditional paper to-do list or a mish-mash of different task management tools, it can be difficult to sort your the work at hand, or, say, find out what five-minutes tasks you can do between clients. Remember the Milk makes implementing a cross-referenced set of lists easy.

Remember the milk accomplishes sorting of tasks through a number of criteria:

• Due date (and time)
• Repeat (e.g. a reminder to send your mother a card every six weeks)
• Time estimate (estimated duration for the task)
• Status (completed/incomplete)
• Tags
• Location (the location where this task needs to occur, such as your preferred grocery store or the post office—as a plus, this serves to automatically alert you of the tasks due at a given location when paired with a GPS-enabled iPhone)
• URL (great for putting a direct link to the relevant site, especially if it’s hard to remember)
• Postponed (a very revealing counter which lets you know how many times you’ve postponed, say, balancing your checkbook or cleaning the garage).
• Sharing (others who you have shared the task with so that it shows up on their to-do list—great for small teams/delegation)
• Notes (a place to add clarification of a task so that your list doesn’t get cluttered with lengthy titles)
• Priority

The core service is free (save for certain reasonably-priced special features such as the iPhone app)—and it’s a lifesaver. Every week I review my calendar and my task lists with a colleague, and we enter new things into the list while checking in on overdue tasks. Little to nothing falls through the cracks now, and if it does, I know about it quickly. While inputting all my work into Remember the Milk was sobering as I dealt with the amount of tasks I have every week, Remember the Milk allows me to know exactly when the tasks for the day are done and when ’someday’ projects like updating business plans will be picked up next. Most importantly, it lets me say yes (or no) to requests from colleagues with complete knowledge of my project load.

For further reading, check out this excellent summary of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology

Photo courtesy .fabio under Creative Commons license.

into the streets, into our communities,

when we see each realm as a temple,

as a place to discover that which is sacred.”

—Jack Kornfield

• After about 20 comments, search engine rankings and click-throughs increase.
• Retailers needn’t be afraid of a few bad reviews if they are confident in their product: “…a handful of bad reviews, it seems, are worth having. ‘No one trusts all positive reviews,’ [Google's retail industry director John McAteer] says. So a small proportion of negative comments—’just enough to acknowledge that the product couldn’t be perfect’—can actually make an item more attractive to prospective buyers.”
• For products with a large volume of reviews, a ranking system for the helpfulness of reviews increases trust and allows for a blend of ‘most recent’ and ‘most relevant’ reviews to be aggregated into a glanceable area.

Read the full article in The Economist’s 5 Mar 09 print edition “Fair Comment” column, or here.

For a while now, Causeit has been searching for a new office space. After a round or two of false starts, including one we were almost ready to sign on, we found the perfect spot. What has the new place work so well is that we carefully crafted a list of wants (negotiable) and needs (non-negotiable) before we ever saw an office. We even came up with a one-sheet of what it might look like and a list of our needs and wants:

Our mini-floorplan and wishlist

This meant that when we looked through the lease (a generic and exhaustive document covering almost every industry and largely, of course, favoring the landlord,) we were able to quickly identify potential sticking points. Some of the changes we made:

• Negotiating a less-restrictive clause about bringing material in and out of the building (we have a lot of loading and unloading to do)
• Clarifying use of the office to include our deskshare concept for business incubation and network-building, so that no confusion would happen in the future regarding whether or not deskshares qualified as sublets
• Finding out exactly what we were permitted to do with the space regarding subletting and assignment (the process of handing off responsibility in the lease to another party) so that we know exactly what will happen when we go to expand

Google Docs is a free service which allows you to work on basic documents (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) in your browser. At a basic level, it provides the most commonly used functions of programs likes Microsoft Office for free. Your files are stored online, instead of on your computer—which means that crashes and viruses don’t affect them, but your ability to access the web does (for example, if your cable modem goes out, you can’t access your documents until you find another internet connection). This sort of online file storage is referred to as ‘the cloud’ in Web 2.0 parlance.

Google Docs also allows for the wonderful experience of jointly authoring or editing a document. Say, for example, that you are working on a notice from the board of your neighborhood association. You could try to get everyone together in the same room to edit at the same time, or attempt to pass around a document (while tracking revisions of it) or delegate the task to just one person.

Instead, Google Docs allows you to create or import a document and then share it with other users (either in an editing or read-only capacity) to make it easy for everyone to contribute (or just comment). No downloads, installations or virus-scanning is required. This is also a great way to work on joint budgets or other technical and rapidly-changing information. During one busy period, my partner and I used the spreadsheet function to track apartments we were looking at and the status of each rental application. It saved us a lot of ‘missed leads’ or duplicate communication. Google Docs can even send notifications to other users when a file is modified, taking out the step of emailing ‘look at this change.’

While there are a few bugs in its implementation (formatting isn’t as fluid, as, say, Apple’s iWork program, or even Microsoft Word), the convenience of shared documents and the ease of use make Google Docs a great tool for just about any user looking to either save money on Office or bring friends and co-workers into the editing process.

• Mind-Mapping and Outlining Tools to Organize Your Thoughts
• Bookkeeping in a Browser: Online Bookkeeping & Invoicing
• Using Google Documents to Share For Free
• Teleportation: Remote Access and Meetings Via the Web
• Save on Saving: Online Backup Tools
• Can Facebook Actually Get You Clients?
• Using LinkedIn for Networking Knowhow and Reference-Checking
• Online Phone Systems: Press 1 For Cheap Voicemail & Calls
• Google Calendar: Scheduling Your Success/Workgroup Calendars for $0 a User
• Remember the Milk: Free, Powerful Online Task Management
• E-Mail Marketing: What’s the Best Deal?
• Online Project Management: Does it Really Save Time?

comapping.com

We’ve struggled to find a solution that works to meet the needs of our clients across the board, though. Simple solutions like word processing documents are often too limited, graceful desktop apps cost money and/or are platform-specific and may not share easily, and web apps online only work with a good internet connection and often have limited features.

In a blog entry from GTD Times we may have found a solution in Comapping. It’s not ‘battle-tested’ yet, but seems to be an affordable software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for sharing thoughts, collaboratively authoring outlines and mindmaps, and even beginning the work of coming up with task delegation. It looks like it will work both online and offline (using Adobe Air), and the interface, while not the sexiest, is a good blend of power and entry-level accessibility.

Jury’s still out, but you can check it out at Comapping.com.

The general guideline to keep in mind is that your clients are encountering big hits to their routines and likely their own profitability, efficiency and stress levels. You can help ease their weather pain. A well-prepared plan of your own can make you stand out from the competition by providing special attention to your clients, while ’snow-day’ time can allow you to catch up for the end of the year.

When you see storms coming, make sure you’ve at least: 

• Use time from cancellations of networking meetings or other routine events to create new value for your clients. For example, could you bring your business to them, rather than have them come to you? If a client who typically comes to your office can stay warm and safe at their own office or favorite coffee shop while you brave the weather on their behalf, it lets them know how committed you are to their business and their needs. 
• Catch up on past-due work or do ‘extra credit.’ If you have assignments which are near-due or past-due, use ’snow day’ time to finish them up and deliver them while your client has time to review them more carefully than normal. If you find market info for them while you’re cruising around the net, save it and send it in a courtesy email. 
• If your client is overburdened by managing the weather, lend a hand. If you have a weather-worthy car and give a ride, or have extra supplies around, offer yourself to your clients. Could you be the sand-man and bring salt or anti-slip grit to your client’s doorstep, perhaps with a note?
• Be proactive about keeping appointments. My partner and I have been leaving twenty minutes earlier to get to the office, and I have been confirming every appointment which might be affected by travel, adjusting timelines to ensure that I can get myself there on time or that my client isn’t rushed in bad weather.
• Catch up on correspondence, blogs and social networks. If you are on Facebook, Linkedin or any other sites, use the fact that many more people will be home on the net than usual; start conversations with new contacts and catch up with acquaintances you haven’t been in touch with recently.
• Don’t surprise your clients with a bill if they’re not expecting it. If your clients normally pay you in person or from their office, but you know they’re stuck at home, make polite arrangements to collect in advance. Framing the conversation with “So that you don’t have to brave the weather…” or another statement which will genuinely provide value. I’ve let trusted clients know that they can put off their retainers a bit, or offer to come pick up their check. Especially if the bill is unexpected (eg, not a retainer or subscription), consider the other expenses your clients may be incurring to deal with the weather, and think about delaying until after the storm.
• Be clear about cancellation policies, and revise them prior to the next storm.

Check it out—it’s super-easy and pretty powerful. I’ve been using it for about a month and have already noticed some trends in my spending which I hadn’t spotted in my system in Excel.

• Offer value when you network—don’t just look for where you can take something for yourself.
• Listen for people’s commitments and how to acknowledge them and serve them.

Where can you build community? What communities are you already in?

• Friends and family—make sure that you know what they’re up to, too. 
• Can your friends and family articulate what you do and identify other people you’d like to help?
• Neighbors and acquaintances: are there people you know who don’t know what you do?

Networking in mixed crowds. Ask genuinely what people are interested in, and be prepared to answer the same question. No one wants to hear a sales pitch at a friend’s barbeque, but will gladly tell you all about their career or their vacation plans.

Followup. Make sure that you follow up with people you meet, to cement the connection you began to create when you first talked to them.

• Handwritten notes are your best bet
• Phone calls and emails, if personal enough, are a distant second
• Send referrals to people you do business with, or want to do business with

Convert to next steps

• Always ask people if they would like to have coffee or lunch to continue your conversation. 
• Carry a calendar, and ask to set a time right then.
• Have times & places in mind already so that you can cluster-book and become a regular at a cafe or restaurant—another potential new community.
• Confirm the appointment if you are unsure that they’ll make it

Manage your success

• There’s an truth in business which applies particularly well to networking: If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. 
• Track your leads and connections, and more importantly, track what you’ve done for them recently.

As the economy has gotten slammed by the credit planning (or lack thereof) of Wall Street and consumer spenders, many small business owners are piling on the hours to try to keep up. Sometimes they lower their prices, while others network more than they ever have. Sometimes they do both. Right now, many business owners who enjoyed focusing primarily on the product of their businesses (healthcare, art, etc.) are now having to pay much closer attention to their cashflows and marketing than they used to. Some business owners are looking seriously at whether they want to remain in business for themselves, and are considering part-time or full-time employment to create stability for their income. 

Who's affected by your decisions?

When clients come to us and ask for support, one of my first questions to them is to ask who will be affected by their choices about the business’ direction. Exercises such as value chains/webs/networks can expose the vendors, employees and end users who will be affected by your product; I invite clients to question who will be affected in your personal life as well. 

When you’re working alone, it’s easy to cut your partner or spouse out of the decision-making processes in your business, and gloss over your decisions as ‘what has to happen’ in the business, or what ‘the economy’ or some other nebulous force outside of your control is ‘making’ you do. Especially if your partner is not business-savvy, the difficulty of explaining business decision-making processes you yourself might not fully understand could be very challenging. 

Inasmuch as your personal life will affect your business, and vice versa, consider bringing in your partner or spouse, even if you don’t ‘have to,’ as a way to build an ally in your business—someone gunning for your success.

Consider asking your partner the following questions: 

Ars Technica has released a comprehensive evaluation of McCain’s technology policies. Check it out and research Net Neutrality, RIAA War and Sharing and other issues. In contrast, Ars Technica also reviewed Obama’s technology policy, which includes provisions for more equitable access to high-speed internet in economically depressed areas and highly ambitious reform plans for our nation’s technology infrastructure and government use of technology—including transparency provisions.

McCain’s Tech Policy

Obama’s Tech Policy ]]> http://blog.causeit.org/2008/09/ars-technica-releases-excellent-critique-of-mccain-technology-policy/feed/ http://blog.causeit.org/2008/09/jess-bogli-featured-on-opb-piece-on-sarah-palin-and-sex-education/ http://blog.causeit.org/2008/09/jess-bogli-featured-on-opb-piece-on-sarah-palin-and-sex-education/#comments Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:29:32 +0000 mj petroni http://blog.causeit.org/?p=29 One of Causeit’s clients, Jess Bogli, a highly regarded K-12 health education consultant was interviewed on OPB today. Think Out Loud aired a piece on health education as it relates to Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter, Palin’s stance on abstinence education in schools, and how sex education fits into an overall health curriculum. 

Find out more at OPB and meet Jess Bogli; read her blog post below: 

Today I was interviewed by Emily Harris of OPB’s Think Out Loud. It was a great experience and I hope that people listen and take out of it the following:

Teens are having sex. Not all, not even the majority. But, many are sexually active.

Family and community support is important; when you have it. Some of our teens are homeless, living in horrible living conditions, do not speak English well enough to navigate our health system, etc.

Abstinence-Only programs are ineffective. They have been proven ineffective over and over again. They work for intent, but do not lead to behavior change.

Abstinent-Based programs are effective and promote abstinence, but include contraception lessons. They have lead to behavior change and abstinence for a longer period of time.

Sexuality Education should be skills-based, not just basic biology where students learn information and are tested out of a textbook.

In Oregon, we need teachers to be supported through professional development opportunities by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Currently there is no health education specialist on staff and we’ve recently lost our school health team lead. We need to advocate to ODE to support school health programs. Because healthy kids learn better…

My favorite company of the day: Posterous. If TypePad is blogging, and Twitter is nano-blogging, then Posterous is mini-blogging. Or, blogging for the rest of us. You send an email to post@posterous.com with pictures, PDFs, video, etc, and voila! you have a blog.

This fall, we’ll be offering:

biz plans 101

sat 9.20.08 | 10-4 @ the q center

business plans can be a roadmap for your business, provide freedom and stability in a changing economy, and empower both you and your team to make powerful, quick decisions. learn the basics of market analysis, project planning, organizational design and financial measures & projections. leave with an outline for your business plan and connections from networking!

 

small biz marketing 101

sat 10.4.08 | 10-4 @ the q center

get the word out about your business with our half-day workshop! having a great business is not enough to bring clients in the door. you can have a pitcher of the best lemonade in the world sitting on your porch, but until someone knows they can buy a glass from you, you won’t have a customer. learn about print and web marketing, the basics of p.r. and more! networking opportunities included!

 

small biz 101

sat 10.25.08 | 11-5 @ the q-center, portland or

come learn about intention in your business, basic planning, finances, the politics of business and the importance of public relations, marketing & etiquette at our sixth small biz 101 conference! workshops will be punctuated by networking-meet other small business people and have fun, and leave with a powerful, succinct plan for your projects!