Yesterday was DC’s first BarCamp, and I hope it can set the tone for what’s to come in the DC technology community. Unlike the more business-oriented groups like NVTC, GBTC, DC Tech, and MD Hi-Tech, this was by tech people and for tech people. There were noticeable lacks of business topics, VC & legal attendees, and explanations of acronyms. It was beautiful.

The conference was organized by a team of volunteers and paid for by numerous sponsors. Fleishman-Hillard Inc. was kind of enough to donate their office space. There were no set topics, but the 110 attendees presented on 27 hot issues (with varying degrees of preparation). The topics ranged from user experience to Second Life to Getting Things Done. But more important than the details of the content was the energy of the attendees.

Not since the heyday of Netpreneur have there been so many people in one DC room so excited about what’s happening online. This was evidenced by the high level of conversation, the community-willingness to share, and the pure geekery of the attendees (everywhere I turned were MacBooks, iPhones, live bloggers, and people uploading photos to Flickr).

I can’t thank the organizers (Justin Thorp, Jason Garber, M. Jackson Wilkinson, Rodney Degracia, Martin Ringlein, Peter Corbett, Nick O’Neill, and Justin Stockton) enough for the time they so graciously volunteered. Without question this and the upcoming DC Startup Weekend will lead to more technology businesses, higher quality applications being developed, and many new friendships.

You can read some other good conversation about BarCamp at Russell Heimlich’s blog, the Viget Blog, and many other sites. And you can find hundreds of pictures on flickr. See you all next year!

tag: BarCampDC

When I started SET, everyone was a prospect and most people were intimidating. But to truly succeed, you have to accept that few are good prospects and you can’t allow good prospects to intimidate. That’s okay, the way you perceive yourself and money change a LOT after being in business for a few years. Taking that to heart is what will help you to convert good prospects into great business.

When I got started at my business, I’d never sat at a bar, let alone “networked.” All these suits seemed to know what they were talking about–they were leagues above me. Over the next few years two things changed–I developed a formidable business and gained the confidence to see myself as an equal. Truthfully though, one really only needs the latter. Confidence and being personable are more important than “actual success” when you’re clinking beers. And I’m not trying to be sly, it’s just that there isn’t and never can be a real measure for success–while being a politician or exec at Verizon may place you in control of money and influence, they’re positions to which I neither envy nor aspire. Success is what you want to make of it.

Which brings me to the second part: money. I came to business soon after college, at a time when I respected money in a very different way than most businesspeople: everything was too expensive for me and the value of the dollar was quite high. However, I learned quickly that $50/hour was not exorbitant when you were only billing two hours per week. I remember the first time I had a “4-digit project”–who would’ve thought I’d be fighting for 6-digit projects just a few years later?

Which brings me to the point of this article: there’s nothing to stop you from winning a dream project. Continue reading…

I have some dreams I’d like to pursue, and all of them depend on more mobility and fewer time on business minutiae. I’m already fairly mobile but there are some issues I’d have to address to be completely mobile. I pose them here as I imagine others will have similar hurdles…

When I say that I’m fairly mobile, I mean that:

• Our work product and project management are all accessible and managed via the internet
• Very rarely do my employees and I need to work in the same facility–office, home, or cafe all work fine (and we all have laptops)

However, there are still things that require physical presence, increased comfort levels with various remote technologies, or changes to our existing processes. In addition, there are things that I personally need to stop doing myself and find a reliable way to outsource. Here’s the list… Continue reading…

Rob Pegoraro wrote in today’s Post how Facebook is now becoming not only the home for personal interactions but business ones. He also raised an excellent point about how Facebook could theoretically allow us to divide which parts of our profile are exposed to our various contacts. While I think that might be one solution, it doesn’t truly address the issue, which is the ways in which our contacts from various settings are come together as we share more and varied information online.

While widespread social networking hadn’t gained steam when I was in school (P2P file-sharing was the big thing), after college I quickly jumped on the Friendster (now sinking) boat. And through inertia I eventually found myself on LinkedIn, Facebook, and (shiver) MySpace. It was easy when LinkedIn was the only business site, Facebook had nice privacy controls, and MySpace was the ugly step-child that you had to deal with because he worked the door. Now the lines have blurred.

For my friends that are reading this, you may find this a wake-up call. After all, it’s going to be a little while before the non-techies of the business-world really start using FaceBook–but it’s quite likely to happen. That means that all the photos, tags, notes, and bizarre status messages may be information you’ll have to second-guess before posting. Continue reading…

This entry is an exercise in applying the 80-20 Rule, or the Pareto Principle. In the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss explains that the day he spent applying this principle to his life he “literally changed [his] life forever” (pg 70). I’m wondering if Tim’s life was just more messed up than mine because I’m not finding the dramatic insight I’d like. Or maybe I’m going about it all wrong. Fellow 4HWW’ers: if you’re reading this I’d appreciate any insight you can offer into a better way to go about this. How have you applied this to your lives? What sort of “sources” have you considered?

The initial two questions that Tim proposed:

1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

Here are some of the things that I came up with as leading to unhappiness and/or problems (from my work life):

• When business is slow
• When I’m disorganized
• When I’m distracted and unproductive

But those are all more states of being than particular sources. Continue reading…

If you’re unsure whether you should let someone know, you probably should:

• If someone requests something of you (that takes more than a few minutes), confirm it. Let them know when to expect its completion or what will happen next
• If you’re working hard on a project for someone and run into snags, let them know your situation
• If you can’t meet a deadline, speak up

Everyone’s busy, and we all have too many emails. But working with people shouldn’t be a mysterious process–if people are waiting for you, let them know what’s up. If you think that things are taking longer than you expected, chances are that those depending on you are wondering what’s going on, too.

I’m no rocket scientist here, and you may think that this is patently obvious. But why is it that clients get frustrated, projects delayed, and heck, relationships of all sorts fail–it’s from a lack of communication. Not just quality of communication, but its quantity–people often just don’t think an update is necessary. But when it comes to business, it is almost always helpful. Let me offer you a common situation and explain how communication would have helped.

Situation: on a development project, there were things that hadn’t been accounted for (maybe it was the client’s fault, maybe the developer’s, etc.) and the project would thus take a contractor many days of a few hours’ work instead of one day of a few hours’ work

Some reasons for communication: Continue reading…

I like to have fun at work. I may not have gray hair yet, but I don’t plan on accelerating the process by working with difficult or (gasp!) boring clients. No, really, most of the work we do is actually quite enjoyable–especially because of the wonderful clients we have–and I don’t want to sacrifice that quality of life for another paycheck. So, after a painful conversation with client that was being altogether too serious, I started thinking about what my clients need to know about the way I work.

I tend to be playful (or sarcastic), but I follow through with what I say I’m going to do. I also don’t keep quiet when I’m not happy with an approach. When a company first starts working with us they may feel we’re overstepping…but they soon learn that my team and I know our stuff . Anyhow, this inspired me to come up with a sort of manifesto to consulting.

My approach to consulting:

1. If I say I’m going to do something, I will.
2. If I believe there’s a better solution than the one I’m tasked with, I’m going to mention the better solution before proceeding.
3. I’m going to have fun.

I mean all of those things to their logical conclusions. Continue reading…

This post is part 2 of a series that began here. In the last article I discussed two Outlook techniques for assigning tasks to emails. Below I’ll discuss (some of) the approach I use for generally organizing my day as relates to Outlook.

My approach to personal information management comes from a few sources:

1. From Getting Things Done (GTD) I learned that you need to trust your productivity system to keep you in check, so that you don’t have to second-guess things (did I write back? don’t I have an appointment soon? etc.)
2. In The Four Hour Workweek (4HWW), Tim provided additional motivation that the world isn’t going to end if you delay responding to inputs, and that you should do everything in your power to batch your responsibilities (or better yet, outsource them, but that’s not for this post)
3. I like holding onto things long after I probably should, so I need some sort of super fast filing & retrieval system (while still keeping out of site the things that are no longer relevant)
4. I will not check many places to keep track of things, so I need everything organized in as few screens/programs as possible

Let’s start with the setup: In the morning my Microsoft Outlook is set to Work Offline; when I am online, all email notifications are disabled.

My portable device: I have a Motorola Q that synchronizes via ActiveSync. I can literally type an address into an appointment and by the time I’m in the car that address will be sync’d to my phone so I can enter it into the GPS. Reminders and everything else in Outlook (except notes) are also in live sync. No iPhone for me (yet).

The only way I can really think of to begin this is with the beginning. Continue reading…

(For Part 2 of this series, click here)

Given that I’m supposed to be an “efficiency trainer” and my platform is Microsoft Office, I run into a lot of people complaining about how difficult and counterintuitive Microsoft Outlook is. The Outlook as we know it has gone through six versions since Windows 95, and there have been a lot of productivity-enhancements . I don’t believe that one needs to use to-do list managers, web based calendars or external RSS readers to stay on top of their life. Not to say that they’re not all valuable in their own right, but if you’re already spending a lot of time in Outlook then it can be helpful to keep things in one place.

In the first segment of this Outlook series (this article), you’ll find two ways to get your time-consuming emails into your task list (one way for Outlook 2000-2007 and one for just Outlook 2007). These should help to get your Inbox to empty and allow you to perform your tasks when you need to–without having to stare at not-yet-relevant messages. In my next post I’ll mention how this relates to my personal application of The Four Hour Workweek‘s email management ideas.

The following two techniques are based on the assumption that something you can’t respond to now would be better filed away as a task to deal with later, when you’re reminded to perform it.

Continue reading…

March, 2008: While Google may have sent you here, I’d highly recommend reading the UPDATES HERE which incorporate Apple’s news. The article below relates to the present state of the iPhone, but the link will take you to the proposed changes that will be out this summer. I intend to follow and update you on all the Microsoft compatibility with iPhone issues. You can subscribe to this blog here by RSS or email, if you’d like, or check back periodically.

The iPhone does not support ActiveSync but it does handle Outlook data synchronization and Exchange email downloads. Since I was so curious about this topic (being a Smartphone user) I figured I’d post some of my research on what the “Exchange” account setup feature does provide on the iPhone, and what’s missing from a normal ActiveSync-enabled device.

Microsoft ActiveSync sychronizes one’s email, calendar, contacts, and tasks (not notes) from their Outlook account or Exchange mailbox store to a mobile device. With an Exchange server, this happens wirelessly. When one only has a POP/IMAP account, calendar, contacts, and tasks can only synchronize when connected via a cable (or through third party wireless synchronization software that is installed on one’s desktop). ActiveSync for Exchange also provides mobile device policies that enable Exchange administrators to configure phone password policies and remotely reset a phone’s data (such as if a phone is stolen or an employee terminated).

The iPhone has a screen for entering Exchange server settings, but as of now it only communicates via IMAP4 (see page 45 of the iPhone manual). Thus the email will stay wirelessly in-sync whenever email is pulled down from the Exchange server. This does not enable wireless synchronization of contacts, calendar, or tasks (well, there is no such thing as “Tasks” on the iPhone). It presents a few other problems: Continue reading…