RSSSince one of our customers would like to experiment with close collaboration across organizational boundaries (discussing information), I am currently comparing a series of tools. The table below represents my findings from testing the different alternatives. The information in the row “User friendliness” is subjective: it indicates how easy I could find my way around the tool. If you see information in the table that you consider to be not correct, please let me know or post a comment. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘tools’
Comparing tools for cross-organizational collaboration
Friday, October 2nd, 2009Play the Concept Game in a workshop at your organization!
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
In a previous post about the Future Workspaces Concept Game we have described how individials can be inspired by the concepts in the game and how it can help them think about how they want to live and work in the future.
When the Concept Game is played by more people in an organization, it can help that organization determine what aspects of future ways of working are important for the people in that organization. The Concept Game can be played in a workshop of 8 to 10 people. In the workshop, people first select their own favourite and not favourite concepts. Secondly, the choices are explained and discussed by the group. Finally, a coherent view is created on what issues and opportunities of future ways of working are most important for the organization. You can download a flyer about the Future Workspaces Concept Game Workshop here.
Business Twitter 101
Monday, July 13th, 2009
In her blogpost Twitter for Business FAQ, Meryl Evans discusses a range of questions people might have when starting with Twitter for business purposes. Unlike our focus on Twitter inside organizations, she focusses on using microblogging for communication with customers. Nevertheless, we see some similar questions pop up. For instance the question “Do you recommend having separate Twitter accounts for business and for personal use?” was raised in our experiment as well. And we provided a similarly ambivalent answer: in general, it seems better to use only one Twitter account to avoid fragmentation of conversations over multiple accounts and to increase the number of messages per account. However, when you are also microblogging on politics, religion, sports or other emotionally charged topics, it may be smart to separate that from your business account.
Concept Game Online
Monday, July 6th, 2009Within Future Workspaces, many concept ideas have been developed. The Concept Pool page on this website shows some of them. To inspire knowledge workers and to gain more insight into what concepts or concept areas appeal to them, we have created the Concept Game.
The physical version of the Concept Game can be played individually or in a workshop. It is also possible to play the Concept Game online.
Click here to start playing the Concept Game online. You will be asked to select your favourite and least favourite concept ideas. Please also tell us why you have selected these concepts and submit your choices. It will help us to focus our future plans and concept development.
The online version of the Concept Game was developed by Steven Haveman.
New way of working
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009A giant projection screen was recently installed in our Demo Room. It is meant for playing and viewing demos or to create a specific scenery in the Demo Room.
Concept Game
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009To inspire knowledge workers and to gain more insight into what concepts or concept areas appeal to them, we have created The Concept Game. This game can be played individually or in a workshop with a group of people.
Instruments: Personality test (NEO-FFI)
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
To test our hypothesis that personality is an important factor that determines what workspace fits a person, we use a standard personality test: the NEO-FFI test by Hogrefe. This test is a short version (60 questions – takes about 15 minutes to administer) of the test developed by Paul T. Costa, Jr. and Robert R. McCrae. The NEO-FFI provides an indication on each of the “Big Five” personality factors: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. (more…)
Instruments: SMS your opinion, instant gratification and playful illustration
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
As a low-threshold instrument to gather feedback and stimulate a team to reflect on their working practices, we ask them to send us their opinion by SMS. For instance, in order to stimulate reflection on the effectiveness of their meetings, we place little cards in their meeting room with: “How effective was the meeting you just had?”. (more…)
At your earliest convenience
Monday, November 3rd, 2008“Schedule and forget”
Imagine you would like to discuss an important matter with a specific colleague. You walk into her room only to discover that she is not in. You pick up your mobile phone, search for the phone number and call her. However, she rejects the phone call. You waste precious time walking to her room, your matter is not discussed and possibly you are annoyed by the fact that your colleague did not react. On the other hand your colleague is, due to your call, interrupted from her current activity. (more…)
Een kantoordag in 2037
Friday, October 31st, 2008In het jaar 2037 is informatie- en communicatietechnologie overal: de techniek is verweven met alledaagse objecten, zowel in huis als op kantoor. Robots nemen een deel van de taken over en de voortgang in nano- en biotechnologie is zodanig, dat ook die een onderdeel zijn geworden van het dagelijks leven. Dat alles heeft grote invloed op hoe wij zullen werken. Als voorbeeld een dag uit het leven van Paul, een hoogopgeleide werknemer in het jaar 2037. (full-text article: Automatiseringgids, 31 oktober 2008)
Challenges of the modern worker: element 4 “on top”
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008Today, together with Ruud, I dwelled further on the core challenges of the modern worker. We already introduced the core concepts of in sync, in touch and in flow, but we came up with a fourth called “in control” or maybe more appropriate “on top”. Key is that the concept of “on top” accounts for the needed craftmanship of the modern worker. As in the old times real craftsman knew their tools inside out, we think modern workers should be knowledgeable also on their tooling. (more…)
IBM opent Bluehouse, een ‘Facebook voor bedrijven’
Thursday, October 9th, 2008Vanaf 6 oktober is de netwerk- en collaboratiedienst Bluehouse van IBM online beschikbaar. De bètaversie van deze zakelijke Facebook-variant is tijdelijk gratis te gebruiken.
(full text article: Webwereld, 6 oktober 2008)
Best practices: Efficient task management with MS Outlook 2003
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008A lot of work comes in via your inbox each and every day. In this booklet, we discuss a number of features in MS Outlook 2003 that you can use to deal with this continuous flow of work more efficiently. As a stepping stone, we use a working method that is often taught in time management and personal efficiency courses for dealing with e-mail. (more…)
Brainstorm Organizr
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008A typical brainstorming session produces a handful of flipover sheets with tons of sticky notes on them, that is, until they all start to come loose! Ideal as this may be for storming your mind and structuring your ideas, it is certainly not a good format to keep your results until a follow-up session. Transcribing the results is cumbersome and, like taking a picture, it freezes the results instead of making them accessible for future sessions. (more…)
What Productivity Studies Really Show
Monday, July 28th, 2008“[...] Personal productivity is indeed personal, so always take study result findings around digital life and the ensuing prescriptive solutions with more than one grain of salt [...]” (Source: Lifehacker.com, 23 July 2008)
Boost Your Brainstorming Session with MindMeister
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Jotting a simple list is a great way to brainstorm, but when you want to visualize, organize, and untangle a deep set of ideas, you want a mind map. (Source: Lifehacker, July 14, 2008)
Bedrijven twijfelen over Unified Communications
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008Organisaties snappen redelijk wat Unified Communications is, maar meer dan de helft twijfelt over de toegevoegde waarde van de integratie van communicatievormen als e-mail, telefonie en video conferencing. (Source: Computable, 9 juli 2008)
Forrester: Mobiliteit blijft topprioriteit voor 2008 en daarna (in Dutch)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008Medewerkers beter faciliteren met mobiele toepassingen blijft de hoogste prioriteit voor bedrijven, zo blijkt uit de ‘The State of the Enterprise Networks And Telecommunications 2008’ van marktonderzoeker Forrester. (Source: Automatisering Gids, July 4, 2008)
No!
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Email is frequently used to assign work to others; it has become a “poor men’s workflow system”. Senders often expect a (nearly) immediate response, whereas recipients may think very differently – but are often silent – about that. A simple “No!”-button (“No!” for “I cannot do this”) can lower the threshold for the recipient to give a prompt reply and thus avoid unnecessary confusion for the sender (did she get my message?).