I count stuff

Continuing in the vein this week/month of reducing information clutter - and adding to my hardware clutter - more later - I decided to go one step further and try to make my Google Reader more effective. I had subscribed (if that is the verb) to so much that I could no longer bear to look… except as an insomnia cure, when quite frankly I will do anything!

Having this rather weird fixation with numbers - no not in a clever way, I wish it was - rather I just find myself counting, and I have often counted into the hundreds before I notice. (It is often the case that on dog walks I count the number of steps I take, and only when I get home do I realise what I was doing… I know, seek help :))

Any road, I also use my counting fixation to manage stuff, make decisions, picking a random number, and pontificating using many and varied (usually barking) tools of measurement stopping at that number and plumping with the associated choice. Er, this might make me seem rather slapdash to future employers, sorry - I try to keep this to the trivial, say Mac or PC? - or some such demotive argument. *Emma grins wickedly at all Mac bullies*

So, I decided to pick a random number to manage my Google Reader… I came up with five, and immediately told myself not to be so ridiculous. Then - the children being asleep - I chose to see if I could do it. Just five feeds, five people without whom I would not be able to do my day job, either for entertainment value or education.

Guess what? I did it

Do you know how many people I had subscribed to before I did this? 236 - I kid you not…

I am eager well, eager and also I added people because I could, every time I read a good post, or someone commented here, I would subscribe to their blog etc etc… news blah. Or searching for a subject that I was into and subscribing to the blogs with the most posts… madness.

Resulting in this horrific cacophony of digital noise: everyone talking at the same time, different subjects, random thoughts.

When I moaned, as I may occasionally have done, friends would tell me to file this stuff, streamline it… I don’t even file my nails, as if I am going to go in and actually manage this information flow! I know that I can, and easily too, but when you have that many feeds, even insomnia is more attractive to filing. (May just be me).

Deletion was the only answer. And so now I have five, and I have five feeds that I will be watching intensely. I will not bore you with my decision process, it is and should be deeply personal! But now my Google reader is a thing of beauty, and I am really quite excited about tomorrow morning…

In other news tonight

Emma has a Mac - get over it

My iphone is working, and I am so in love with it (would blog the last hurdle of getting to this point but really, you don’t want to know - it works, O2 head of customer services sorted it out for me, and was good, but it took blood, sweat and tears on his part and mine), just waiting now for the reimbursement… any time now… yip… I will just put the kettle on…

Why Tom Cholmondeley is the most important man in my life

(Perhaps I should give him his (hated) title - Honourable/Horrible Tom)

For those of you who are not glued to my life, this week’s rant is about Tom - click here for further stuff

Before I continue, let me clear up some obvious queries:

1. No, I never shagged him - nor do I want to, nor him me (although this is clearly irrational thinking :))

2. We are friends only (gasp)

3. He is not a strutting murderer picking off Africans - he is actually a rather yogic, lovely man, completely in love with his lady, wanting to do the right thing in the current situation.

4. Tom is desperate to do something to make a difference - consumed with the usual guilt that infects white men in Africa.

All of this is my own opinion only (sub-judice)

He is my friend, and is very, very dear to me. His parents also…

Kenya is stuck in a reverse racist society, and this is wrong. My friend is caught up in this and I am desperate for him to be able to roam the world again and bring happiness to everyone, and be with his love.

I need to create a force for Tom, justice is not enough.

Now I have some more time - free of Twitter and Facebook - I am more angry and militant about Tom.

FFS, this is ridiculous…

Growl

Ever-decreasing circles of time

I have been head-scratching here for the last few weeks about how on earth I can keep up with everything online, and have a life.

This weekend, I gave myself the gift of time: I left Twitter and Facebook. Well, not completely, I still have the accounts but both of them have a message to say to contact me through gmail if needed.

I am left with Flickr, WordPress and gmail… I think I can cope with that. The journey has been typical of all forays into any kind of new experience/hobby:

1. Manic enjoyment of the thing
2. Discovery and exploration
3. Adoption into routine
4. Frustration at limitations
5. Divorce

It feels a bit weird - I mean being the complete insomniac I am, I am awake here at 4.30am, perfect time for me to be Tweeting with those in different time zones. Instead, I am going to have a peppermint tea, catch up with my GoogleReader stuff (which probably needs a cull as well), then read a book.

Heaven.

Oh Emma, not another Twitter rant

No… but a Twitter-induced rant.

I have been gearing up to taking on a serious amount of work this week - OK, seeing my mates, taking the odd telephone call and playing; all in the knowledge that my life was about to be taken over by work once again, come May.

Inevitably the conversations I have been having have been supremely brilliant at completely confusing me about what I really think or feel. I have my young, free, whipper-snapper friends snapping at the heels of VCs in San Francisco, chiding me with their success; jaded worker bees who, like me, have no such luxury as far as fabulous travel is concerned - but still have brains that jolt and purr with new ideas; newbies who are so brilliantly clever and so enthused with ideas and healthy livers…

I want to go back to work for a break!

Inevitably, Twitter has played a part in this mayhem of being work-free, and I have either indulged fully, gorging myself on talking about ME every few seconds (yes I do manage to bore myself as well!) to just popping in and out checking up on my colleagues there.

My last moan on Twitter was about community vs. commune.

What a commune brings to mind is a peaceful, hippy place, where everyone is there to do good and help each other - of course there is more, but frontal lobes people, frontal lobes - this is where Twitter and social meja come in.

Community is starting to feel a bit bingo-y, if you know what I mean. What is an online community? Who creates them? Organisations, based on the knowledge they have gleaned from your/our behaviour online.

I don’t want to be in a community, I want to be in a commune… but not on Twitter!

Thoughts?

I have a frontal lobe? Or two?!

Here is a description of what your frontal lobes do:

The frontal lobes are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgement, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior. (This was copied from here)

The most important roles of the frontal lobes for me as a communicator are:

• their ability to exercise judgement
• initiation
• problem solving

Many of you have mentioned the fact that you have one (or two :)) - presumably triggered by a throwaway comment on one of my other posts. We do have them, they have taken many millenia to develop and adapt, so we do not need to have our information mashed and nuked in order for our brain to digest it.

What we do need is for the information to be targeted enough and delivered to us in the format we are most comfortable with. (Without any data mining or any of that rubbish).

So, rather than spending time and energy looking at all the hundreds of possibilities for ‘engaging with target audiences’, we should employ experts to deliver those once that has been identified as a valid route. (der)

We need to go back to the drawing board and understand what people need to know and how they would prefer to get that information. This is not new, people have been creating great businesses gleaning customer insight/intelligence - my very favourite company who were always brilliant have now gone out of business… hmmm (they had the best contracts and consistently performed well, the market has moved on). This leads me to the conclusion that the value of social media might be in looking at customer behaviour and finding out where they would prefer to receive information - or how they interact with an organisation - without sticking them in front of a computer and watching them through a two-way mirror whilst they complete a set of tasks, or shoving an annoying pop-up box on a website when it is visited.

I have no idea how you would do this without echoing the voice in the pub I spoke about in my last post - I am not trying to solve that here, I am just suggesting that someone does.

Let me know when you do

Wow man, that is really clever

All sectors are doing really clever and exciting things using social media tools at the moment. I wonder if we should re-name these tools? If they are purely for social communication purposes, then why are businesses and the public sector getting involved.

It seems rather like being in the pub with your mates having a chat, and perhaps even including people around the pub whom you don’t know - when suddenly a disjointed voice joins in the discussion, with well-crafted verse - clearly delivering ‘a message’.

Ed aside: a message is how a person asks for a bribe in Kenya btw

Or my old bug-bear, having an email discussion with someone and suddenly an extended copy list has been added to the conversation, and you end up having - what is more often than not a disagreement - in front of a sea of faceless people. Weird.

So… my point is that these social media tools are supremely brilliant and simple at enabling conversation and connections in the SOCIAL world. However, they are, or could be, an expensive distraction from problems that are less simple to solve. I hear you cry at the word expensive, these tools are dirt cheap/free (I know) but what I mean is that if organisations start spending time, money and attention on developing clever ways to interact with their customers using Twitter - there is a risk that the knotty, difficult problems will continue to go into the too-hard box. All in the name of quick-wins and fanfare.

For example, I would love to be able to register a change of address or circumstance in one place online, and have all government departments notified.

Wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could do this?

Dog-walk-triggered obnoxious post

Whilst walking my dog tonight - he is a Spoodle, really not very clever but he is very lovely - I started thinking about freedom from information. A concept that has been bugging me ever since the UK government introduced Freedom of Information (FOI) - ironically my tea is currently squatting on an FOI mat thing.

I think that this is where my last post on bills to pay and bills paid, i.e. simplicity, sprang from in the first place.

There is too much information available now, it is creating confusion and chaos.

On said dog walk, I came over all pretentious and wondered what Plato would have said about information - it was his thing really. When I got home I Googled it and got this (amongst other things):

The philosophy of Plato is marked by the usage of dialectic, a method of discussion involving ever more profound insights into the nature of reality, and by cognitive optimism, a belief in the capacity of the human mind to attain the truth and to use this truth for the rational and virtuous ordering of human affairs. Plato believes that conflicting interests of different parts of society can be harmonized. The best, rational and righteous, political order, which he proposes, leads to a harmonious unity of society and allows each of its parts to flourish, but not at the expense of others. (Blatantly copy and pasted from here)

Argh!! The complete opposite of what I had hoped for. He thought that this dialogue would create harmony and unity.

Dare I disagree?

Bills to pay - Bills paid

I have spent the day rather luxuriously sorting out my study, which had become a dumping ground for ironing, stuff we had not unpacked from November 2006 when we moved in… and shoes.

I threw out three bags of rubbish, filed the business stuff that I am legally required to keep (in the shed), and ruthlessly sorted until I found the nirvana that is the study now: a bachelor-esque space, free of clutter… it is heaven (I am so sad).

During this process I recycled another two bags of paper, something my dear Oli has written about today here.

I have to admit to two rather large piles of paper now reclining on the dining table waiting for attention. I need to get them into three piles:

1. Bills to pay
2. Bills paid (therefore filing - at some point at the weekend)
3. HMRC/business stuff that is too important to sit in the shed

It is so simple and I know that I will have done it by midday tomorrow.

This got me thinking… yikes not again

My online working life is so flipping complicated. I run three businesses, am a partner in another two, play in about three business sandpits, mentor two children, willingly throw myself into social media play-pens and fulfil the contracts I am paid to complete. (Bill - both Edwards and Reay - this does not necessarily reflect the order of importance/attention…).

I also over-promise on all sorts of other stuff I want to do voluntarily but really struggle to find the time (Internationale - apologies, I will get there).

The only complication is the online management - I can run it all off-line no problem, but I have no online time left! Notwithstanding the two daughters and husband (parents, friends, Tom) - I warned you this had no particular order.

My online life is a complete mess.

I update:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Flickr

I check:

• WordPress - for comments and stats (yeah vanity)
• Gmail
• Webmail

I write:

• Justice for Tom
• Emma Mulqueeny
• Linkedin

To do all of the above requires more hours in the day than are provided, if you are to also have a family life, fun, and rest. The obvious conclusion is that I need to sort the rest of my working life into a ‘to do’ and ‘done’ category, with an ongoing online/mental tray for ’stuff’.

So… I need to be as ruthless as I have been in my study.

Bear with me whilst I work through this. Essential stuff:

1. email (gmail and webmail) - comms
2. justicefortom - soul/friendship
3. emma mulqueeny - work

I guess the rest is optional. So in order of importance, if I have time, I will attend to the following:

1. Twitter - people I do not know but respect are here and I have a line to them that I cannot ignore
2. WordPress - if people are commenting on the posts I write then I will respond and learn)
3. Facebook and Flickr - worth checking as some good friends and colleagues here who use this as primary comms route
4. Linkedin - my CV - needs to be up to date

This all looks doable. And sitting in my heavenly study, I am committing to this order of priority.

Of course my family comes first, but right now I am dedicating my days to family, and evenings to ‘work’. You will find no value in me expressing how I juggle my family life, but perhaps this order of service will help some of you in the same position as me.

Good luck everyone! Bet you cannot wait for me to go back to work in May…

Bye-phone

I know you are all gagging to hear about the latest update on the i-phone saga. I got back from Kenya and received a call from O2 saying that my i-phone is now clearly broken so they need to look at it. I am not about to schlep to anywhere so they promised to send me an SAE for me to send it back.

This was last Wednesday… nothing yet. UPDATE 15/4/8 SAE turned up - phone dispatched

You know what? I really do not want this thing any more. I will send it back - eventually - get my money back and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Now I need to wrench back my i-Touch from my sister, or get a new one.

Never again.

Pour coffee into sachet

There is something bothering me about politicians…

Surely not everyone who goes into politics is corrupt - yet that seems to be the general opinion. What happened to the person who was so determined to help the lives of himself/herself and fellow citizens? So much so that they dedicate themselves to public service? I refuse to believe that every one of them fell foul of some  mystical spell that turned each of them into self-serving , corrupt individuals.

We citizens are not stupid; explain what you (politicians) are trying to do, why and how - and we will get it! We may not support every policy as an individual, but if you explain the background - we will be able to compute what you are saying (and argue intelligently if necessary).

This works in international politics as well.

Politicians are not a breed or animal any different to homo sapiens - there is no barrier except one that is perceived or projected.

So why do we find it so hard to communicate? Why are we more content identifying and vilifying the one rotten apple, thereby brushing aside the fact that we need to understand and support the earnest intentions of the rest of those politicians who are determined to make some sense of the management of this country?

The job I choose to do is around enabling this explanation to happen, but I am increasingly frustrated by the reluctance to listen. I can enable communication until your ears bleed, but if there is no willingness to listen then there seems little point.

Democracy relies on the intelligence and candidacy of the community - should we not start taking account of our own actions?

It is too easy to lay blame at the door of corruption - pour sugar into sachet… we need to wake up.