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Martin Hofmann

a personal blog about technology, communications and other stuff that interests me

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Archives for March 2008

Email overload through the ages

by Martin · Mar 31, 2008

Here are two quotes from newspaper articles about email overload in the workplace.

It seems that people are so busy wading through the overload and responding that they don’t have time for real work. […] A few companies are taking corrective action. Computer Associates, based in Islandia, L.I., shuts down its E-mail system for four hours a day, between 10 A.M. and noon and again between 2 P.M. and 4 P.M. “People were spending too much time on E-mail,” said Marc Sokol, vice president of advanced technology. “We said, ‘Use it intelligently, don’t use it spuriously.’ ” Until employees got used to the restrictions, Mr. Sokol said, they found the experience similar to quitting smoking. Now, he added: “Productivity is up. It has caused people to be more thoughtful.”

wit’s end: Coping With E-Mail Overload, The New York Times

Overwhelmed by e-mail? Some professionals are fighting back by declaring e-mail-free Fridays — or by deleting their entire in-box. Today about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel will kick off “Zero E-mail Fridays.” E-mail isn’t forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. […] E-mail-free Fridays already are the norm at cell carrier U.S. Cellular and at order-processing company PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services in Alpharetta, Ga.

Fridays go from casual to e-mail-free, USA Today

The biggest difference between the two quotes? Eleven years.

The New York Times article is from April 1996, the USA Today article from October 2007. Apparently not much has changed in all those years, even though “experts” were already hoping for better times in 1998:

Despite the e-mail glut problems, there is optimism among e-mail experts that new solutions – both technological and behavioral – will keep pace with higher e-mail volumes.

E-mail overload drives many users bananas, NetworkWorld Fusion (via CNN.com)

Ten years later, the technological and behavioural solutions still haven’t  fully caught up with the ever increasing volume of email (numbers are up from 15.1 billion in 2000 to 97.3 billion emails per day in 2007 according to IDC research quoted in the USA Today article). Otherwise we wouldn’t continue to see the same type of email overload articles year after year after year.

No doubt email overload has been and continues to be a problem for many people. Just this weekend I read a another article (in German) about a German company prohibiting email use two days a month. But I am not a big fan of organized email prohibition, whether it is a top-down decree by the company leadership or a bottom-up idea from a group of employees.

In the end, every individual needs to take charge of how they best manage their communication – every day of the week.

Because it gets worse. Thanks to other changes in technology and behaviour, (yep, I am talking about that Web 2.0 thing and the rise of, you guessed it, social media), email overload articles are not alone anymore. We now have journalists and a whole blogosphere continually discussing the potential benefits or repercussions of using blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the other tools for communication. How do we keep up with all of this if email management still is a problem? Will we still have a social media overload discussions in eleven years?

“There’s going to be a point where culture and common sense are going to start to take over,” [Rapport Communications consultant Gary] Rowe said, “because there’s only so much of this we can process.”

E-mail overload drives many users bananas, NetworkWorld Fusion (via CNN.com), June 1998

My guess is that every person needs to find that point for herself or himself. I wouldn’t wait for your company or colleagues to do it for you.

A friend of mine for years refused to get her own cell phone even though she saw many of the benefits. She argued that “once people know I have it, they will expect to reach me 24/7”. I never bought that argument (but she eventually bought a cell phone). A cell phone can be switched off. Email – and expectations – can be managed by ourselves. And so can social media tools.

Overload, more often than not, is a fact. But it can also be a state of mind.

Filed Under: Communications, English, Ongoing, Technology

Schnee im Maerz

Schnee im Maerz

by Martin · Mar 9, 2008

So langsam koennte der Fruehling dann mal kommen. Gestern gab es noch mal einen Schneesturm in Toronto. Jetzt liegen schon wieder 30 cm Schnee. Noch so einen Sturm und wir brechen den regionalen Schneerekord, der seit ueber 70 Jahren existiert. 

snow_in_march

Filed Under: Deutsch

TopLinks plugin for WordPress

TopLinks plugin for WordPress

by Martin · Mar 7, 2008

Thornley Fallis and 76Design have released two plugins for the WordPress blogging platform today: TopLinks and FriendsRoll.

“TopLinks replaces the manually edited blogroll with a widget that automatically generates a list of the Blogs and sites that I most often link to. […] FriendsRoll enables your readers to sign up to appear on your list of Friends. Any data they provide will stay with the blogger, not reside on some external site. So the relationship is directly between us.”

Joe Thornley, CEO, Thornley Fallis

I tried out TopLinks on my blog. It works well but I couldn’t get it to look right (yet). It doesn’t fit the way my sidebar is set up (1 custom column on top, and 2 widget-enabled columns on the bottom). Maybe I’ll find a way to customize it and reduce the width of the TopLinks box.

Not sure whether TopLinks really needs to be a replacement for the traditional blogroll. For my blog, I’d see it more as an addition.

Congrats to TF and 76Design for a great idea! if you have a WordPress blog, definitely check it out.

toplinks_logo

Filed Under: Communications, English, Great stuff

CPRS writing workshop for junior practicioners

by Martin · Mar 4, 2008

Great writing skills are a strong asset for anybody who wants to get hired in PR. The student steering committee of CPRS Toronto and News Canada are offering a writing workshop for junior practitioners. Good initiative!

Scheduled for March 17, 2008, the event is led by News Canada’s Managing Editor, Jane Stokes. More info and registration on the CPRS Toronto website.

Filed Under: Communications, English, Events

A new kind of telescope

by Martin · Mar 1, 2008

From the TED conference:

"Science educator Roy Gould and Microsoft’s Curtis Wong give an astonishing sneak preview of Microsoft’s new WorldWide Telescope — a technology that combines feeds from satellites and telescopes all over the world and the heavens, and weaves them together holistically to build a comprehensive view of our universe. (Yes, it’s the technology that made Robert Scoble cry.)"

(found via Don Dodge’s blog | client disclaimer)

Filed Under: English, Innovation, Technology

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