Month: November 2008

Telepresence voice

Grandma in GrizedaleI’ve just witnessed a bunch of people using a high definition video conferencing system for the first time. It was only a single screen system, so not the fully fledged thing, but I noticed an interesting phenomena – telepresence voice.

We all recognise people’s telephone voice, so I was interested to see this move over to a telepresence system too.

One of the reasons that we have a telephone voice is that most phone calls are working at a reduced frequency range so we have to speak a bit clearer. When phone systems were first available people tended to speak loudly because they knew that someone was a long way away – and so you speak up.

The microphones on telepresence system are also high definition and will pick up a full spectrum of sound and yet the people in this call all spoke loudly and deliberately clearly.

The other thing they did was to treat it like a synchronous communication device where only one person can speak at a time. It was almost like they were talking to someone on a satellite phone waiting for the person on the other end to respond before continuing. It was definitely not a fully fledged conversation.

I wonder if it will change over time as they become more comfortable, or perhaps some of them will permanently have a Hyacinth voice.

That's obvious – isn't it?

One of the lessons that I am learning in my meaningful conversations is that the obvious isn’t perhaps so obvious.

Today I noticed these instructions on my deodorant. They’re obvious – aren’t they?

We all have a wealth of experience that defines how we see things, influences how we interact with things, defines our perspective and gives us the framework for what we regard as obvious.

I’ve been using spray cans most of my life, so of course it’s obvious what to do.

I’ve been driving in the UK for nearly 20 years, so of course it’s obvious that I drive on the left.

I’ve been to airports hundreds of times, so of course it’s obvious what I can, and can’t put into my hand luggage.

The amazing thing is, there are hundreds of things that are obvious to me, that are not obvious to anyone other than me.

Having discussions with people changes my framework of obviousness. It sometimes extends the things I regard as obvious and sometimes it makes me realise that I’m one of the few people that think something is obvious.

It’s only common sense after all .

Citrix Community Verified: Engaging the Community

A Trip to Hadrian's WallThe IT landscape is composed of millions of moving components that we plumb together to create thousands of applications. We then take the thousands of applications and plumb them together to make systems.

But how do you know what works with what, how do you find out what the problems are. You’d think that this was a simple question, but it’s not. There are many reasons that it’s not simple, one of the main ones is the relationship between organisations. It’s very difficult for one organisation to validate the work of another organisation without a lot of work. Lots of the larger vendors run verification programmes but they can be expensive especially for the smaller application vendors.

Citrix has recently taken a different approach – community verification.

The IT community is integrating applications and components all of the time and Citrix is hoping to tap into all of this knowledge, but also to make it available to everyone else.

“The Community Verified site is a platform in which third party products are added and verified by community members. Community members are helping each other by posting and voting on third party products known to work in their environment.  These products do not get any Citrix Ready program benefits.”

There’s no warranty involved here just the knowledge that someone else has gone ahead of you and managed to succeed, a very valuable asset. The voting system also enables you to put some weighting behind your confidence.

In my experience it’s not integration of applications from the large well known vendors that cause the problems, it’s integration of products from smaller companies. These companies have less extensive experience and who would be struggling to undertake a formal verification activity anyway. A community based approach gives a very valuable middle ground.

My Tools: Keyboard Shortcuts Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallI feel a little embarrassed writing this post because I feel sure that everyone who reads this blog must know about these shortcuts – but I’m also constantly surprised by what people don’t know.

So for those of you who didn’t know:

  • Ctrl+X is Cut
  • Ctrl+C is Copy
  • Ctrl+V is Paste

The first thing that I want you to notice is that these three keys are right ext to each other on the keyboard right there almost next to your Ctrl key – XCV.

The second thing I want you to know is that these are universal shortcuts, they work everywhere.

If you are a complete mouse junky then you are probably not working in the most efficient way that you could be. There are some things that are just quicker with a keyboard and cut, copy, paste operations are definitely more efficient with a keyboard.

Select with the mouse of you have to, but even that can be better done with a keyboard.

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Meaningful Conversations Day 2: Breakfast with a friend

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallOn day 2 of my quest to have a meaningful conversation every day, today I had breakfast with a friend.

The conversations were all personal so I’m not going to detail them here.

It feels like a different conversation to business ones but they still require the same set of communication skills. So I’m not sure that I want to consider them as different conversations, just different subjects. I need to think about how Powell’s five levels of communication apply.

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Meaningful Conversations Day 1: Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc..

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallLast night I decided that I needed to have more meaningful conversations to hone my communications skills.

I have, at least, managed it for one day.

Today’s conversation was on Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc. with a colleague who has been asked to write some short opinion type papers for a customer on the subjects and is only just learning themselves.

It was a good conversation because it turned out to be a real communication challenge. How do you communicate this stuff in a couple of pages and give some value. it’s easy to write a lot and still not give any value. How do you even talk about it without using buzz-words and meaningless acronyms?

It made me realise that I need to invest more time in making this stuff simpler so that any communication can be of real value. The conversation felt a bit like I was putting someone under a waterfall and asking them to drink it all in which is never very effective.

One day own, discovered some challenges, now I need to turn them into lessons.

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Communication

A Trip to Hadrian's WallToday I have finished work with a reoccurring question on my mind – “how do I communicate better?”

I’m not sure whether it’s just me, or whether this is something that we all struggle with. I have some information that I need to move from my mind into someone else’s mind.

For thousands of years we have spoken; for thousands of years we’ve drawn pictures; for hundreds of years ordinary people have been able to read and write; businesses spend billions every year on technology in the hope that it is improving the way that its staff communicate – and yet we still can’t make the distance from one brain to another brain any shorter.

So I’ve decided that I need to do something.

I’ve decided to try and have a meaningful conversation with someone every day. I’m not talking about information sharing I’m talking about communicating. Hopefully this will lead to better communication all around.

“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.” – George Bernard Shaw

If I’m successful I’ll let you know, if I’m not I’ll simply forget that I ever write this post and so should you.