Just trying to get myself some gravity... with my family, listening to music, having a beer... at work building ideas
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Digital expertise recession proof?
There is a recession. Apparently.
I say apparently as it seems those in the design / media / PR / web presence sectors (forgive my sweeping catch all but you get the idea of the ilk I'm referring to) seem to not need new business therefore one can only assume they're recession proof.
I come to this conclusion given that over the last six months or so I have probably met, on average, around two experts a week who could've (should've) gone to any of my sites, pointed out their obvious mediocrity and suggested improvements.
However, zero such suggestions have been made.
Maybe I'm just being dumb but if I was a digital expert and I made a new connection, one of the things at the top of my list would be... CHECK THEIR CURRENT WEB PRESENCE.
If it wasn't up to scratch in my expert opinion then I would be pitching for that connections new business. But that isn't happening so I can only assume, those in web / design / brand / PR etc just don't need the sales as they're recession proof.
The fallacy of email productivity
Background - Email as a productivity tool is, in my opinion, a bad idea and here are some trends / reasons why:
"According to recent analysis by the Online Publishers Association (OPA), more people than ever are spending their time online visiting content sites which provide news, information, and entertainment. Despite the emergence of social networks, and in particular the rapid growth of Facebook, it’s content sites which engage web surfers’ attention the most these days – time spent on these sites is up 88% from only five years ago. That’s not to say social networking community sites haven’t grown too, it’s just that their growth hasn’t come at the expense of content. Instead, people are using traditional communication sites and services (think webmail, IM, and discussion groups) less and less and choosing to use Facebook and other social networks instead."
Source - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_eats_away_at_email_usage_on_tod...
The guys at 37Signals seem to have a similar philosphoy to me given this post http://productblog.37signals.com/products/2009/10/how-can-i-get-my-coworkers-...
- Conversation Threads - yes there is Gmail. But not 100% of the world's email users do so with Gmail. Further in a business context the application there is Outlook which attempts threads but fails. Email lacks the ability to construct and record conversations. Conversations are the interaction between people making decisions for next steps. Critical stuff. Especially in a business context, email is not the right tool for facilitating communications.
- Rich Media - in email, rich media gets dumbed down to attachments. Granted some applications, example again being Gmail, handle rich media so that the message is as the sender intended. This is the exception not the rule though. Messages supplemented by documents, images and video become messages only with attachments which may or may not work with your email application / computer operating system / applications
- Immediacy - email is a tool with inherent lag. I send email. Email response arrives when? It goes in to the ether... There is no framework to manage and progress the attempts of conversation.
Moreover than features are the use cases we have for email. They're insane. For me communications is this:
Business Networking - Linkedin - a rolodex on steroids with messaging built in. When I get a business message via LinkedIn I have so much more context to the sender thus the conversation than a stand alone email.
Home Networking - Skype / Social Media - My grandparents see their great granddaughter when they get in touch. They dont get caught up with email messages and attachments. For short messages we have the common platform of Facebook. If my grandparents are struggling to do something I don't have to decipher what email application they're using nor what file type the attachment is.
Production / Project Management / GTD - Collaboration Platforms such as Box.net - Assets such as documents and images are stored centrally with contextual comments of conversation. Progress is the upload of a new file or completion of an assigned task. I see this as a list of activities in an RSS feed. I do not need to wade through 30emails to work out we've
completed a graphic.
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