I’ve just started reading The Back of the Napkin which is apparently about Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, I’m interested in how this can improve my effectiveness so before I get too far with the book I thought it might be worth documenting what I have so far. Basically a personal short hand for taking notes. Not exactly a visual vocabulary for sure but it will be interesting to contrast this with where I end up after reading the book.

Like most people, this has evolved over time for taking notes in meetings, training, when reading, etc. I first noted this down when I covered it in some training I did on effective meetings a long time ago. The image below shows the key aspects of my key for note taking, mostly applicable to meetings. The key objective, of course, is to make sure I end up with a record of who, will do what, by when and also note informational items. All done in such a way that it’s easily extracted later (consistency being key here).

The key then looks like this…

An example of this in use might look like this…

For those that are using them here are the updated 2010 Task / Goal planner templates:

• Weekly Goal Planner
• Daily Task Planner

If you are not familiar then these are described in the EffectivenessSeries.

Super cool presentations with Prezi!

I was recently pointed at Prezi the new new thing in presentations and was instantly impressed by the eye-candy and then, on following their online demo stuff, even more impressed by the potential for presenting information of various kinds in a way that allows the viewer to see everything, move through logically or jump to something interesting and drill down. (h/t to@otfrom for the tip)

In an effort to understand it a little better I’ve been having a play. To speed up the process I have migrated (er, ish)  a ppt I did to support a speech I made at Toastmasters introducing Getting Things Done. The original ppt is available on slideshare here. The prezi is below, follow it through step by step or go mad clicking, zooming and swooping about. Bear in mind the original ppt was done to support an actual presentation not to simply be browsed.

That’s my best, er only, effort to date. For something truly cool, check out this one (not mine)… http://prezi.com/iwthettnve9q/

Image Credit: "Google Wave en la actualidad" by Rafa.Garcés on Flickr

My first thought with Google Wave was that this was something that was great, I could immediately see a bunch of uses for it…

• More feature rich chat medium
• Great for working collaboratively on creating text / documents.
• A half way point between email and chat for conversations that spam a couple of days (you know when you feel you’re having a conversation by email).

But I have to be honest I did think it was too much of a paradigm shift. It’s been said elsewhere, but I did think it would go the way of RSS where it was just too much of a different way of thinking for people to get it any time soon.

And then people in my contacts list started using it and I was surprised not just by how many but by whom. The people I’ve been waving with are mostly not the obvious web2.0 earlier adopters. And then I started seeing what people are doing with embedded gadgets and it’s power really started to become apparent.

Now something else has just occurred to me about Google Wave. It’s the perfect back channel. We all have people in our contact list that we send links, thoughts, questions, etc. to multiple times a day. Currently we either send emails, which is a pain a) because emails are too asynchronous, the paradigm is a letter and people feel obliged to craft a proper response and b) everyone battles with keeping on top of their inbox. Or we send links in chat which is too synchronous, the paradigm is a conversation and useful stuff is too easily lost in the chatter or we feel we’re interrupting and people are obliged respond (immediately).

Wave is the perfect semi-synchronous (i think I made that up) medium. You can drop links, thoughts, snippets, whatever into wave and your collaborators can review later. You can have multiple people per wave (teams), or multiple waves per contact (different projects). Now I think for a project team, or for a bunch of other uses, that could be really powerful.

I’ve got some invites going spare if you’ve not tried Google Wave and would like to. If I know who you are (or if I don’t and you think you can convince me you deserve one   then let me know.

I’ve posted to Slideshare a slide show about microblogging in a corporate environment.

I’ve adapted versions of this slide show for several different audiences now so thought it was about time I shared on Slideshare. My aim was not to go into lots of detail but more to challenge the naysayers or worse still those seeing it as another avenue for uni-directional coporate communications.

Me @ Velká kunratická

Well, it’s not been a great year for running events for me. Changing cities, countries and indeed continents coupled with a few calendar clashes meant that I didn’t get to the events that I hoped to and there were too few of them.

Fortunately it won’t be a completely event free year as I managed to squeeze in a little local event here in Prague a few weeks ago.

I ran the 76th Velká Kunratická Race. It’s a 3.1 k race through some hilly woods here in Prague. The event was smallish but well attended and very well organised.

Running a 3k race is certainly not something I’ve trained for but it was good fun to be out there trying work out how to pace yourself for a race that’s only three k but is comprised almost entirely of steep hills.

Ran it in 21:10 which considering I hadn’t trained for the distance, or at all for that matter, I thought was none to shabby.

Great fun, highly recommended.

As the astute amongst you may have noticed I’ve stopped doing weekly reports. A lot has happened since then, I’m working again, we’ve been on a fab holiday, I’ve read a bunch of books and lots more besides. So you can look forward to some interesting updates over the coming weeks, as time permits. For now, I think an explanation about weekly reports is required.

When I published the Effectiveness Series all of the other ideas where tried and tested, the publishing of Weekly Reports was a new idea that, as I stated at the time, I was trying out.

Well I did try it out and while there is a lot to recommend it, I’ve decided against using to going forward. My reasons are thus…

• It didn’t increase my effectiveness. I thought publishing the weekly report would add some gravity to the weekly review and my progress towards my goals. It didn’t. I think that I’m accountable enough to myself and being accountable to nobody-in-particular by publishing didn’t really add anything.

Additionally…

• Some things that would have made nice little short blog posts ended up as line items in the report and then didn’t seem worth a post. So the net effective on blog content seemed negative.
• What I was working on didn’t really lend itself to weekly status updates to the wider world. Either through being personal, actually confidential or simply long timeline stuff that just wasn’t interesting at weekly level.
• I’m now working again and, sadly, that means progress on non-work activities will slow, making it even more difficult to have something meaningful to talk about on a weekly basis.
• While I did get comments, mails and calls in response to the weekly reports, the interactivity doesn’t add enough to really make it worth doing.

So there you go.

Headlines

• A ‘regular weekend’ in Prague, which was nice after what seems like months of visitors and trips away (which was also nice, of course).
• Still looking for that great opportunity in the Czech Republic, don’t forget to write in!

Wealth / Career

• Job Hunting - Still the main focus of effort. Trying to get creative now.

Skills / Personal Growth

• Attended a Toastmasters meeting and evaluated (unexpectedly) my first advance manual speech.
• Finished publishing to the blog a new series of posts on ‘glue phrases’ in Czech and created flash cards for the same.
• Continued reading The 80/20 Principle (will I ever finish this). It’s a PMBA book.

Health / Fitness

• Couple of good runs.

Enjoyment

• Continued listening to the podcast/audiobook edition on Chris Anderson’s Free.

This is the eighth post in a series on ‘Glue Phrases’ in Czech, if you want to start from the beginning start here or you view all posts in the series here.

Language Words & Phrases
Useful Phrases
How do you say … ?
Jak Řekneš?

What is this ?
Co to je?

I understand.
(Já) rozumím.

I don’t understand.
(Já) nerozumím.

Could you repeat that, please?
Můžete to prosím zopakovat.

Could you say it slowly, please?
Můžete to říct pomaleji prosím.

Glue Words
Or. / Nebo.
But. / Ale.
And. / A.
Also. / Taky.
Of course. / Samozřejmě.
Because. / Protože.

If you have any suggestions or corrections I’d love to hear from you. All credit goes to E, all mistakes are my own.

This is the seventh post in a series on ‘Glue Phrases’ in Czech, if you want to start from the beginning start here or you view all posts in the series here.

Making Plans
Do you want to … ?
Chceš … ?

I am … .
Já jsem … .

I want to … .
(Já) chci … .

I don’t want to … .
(Já) nechci … .

Examples…

Do you want to go to the shop? / Chceš jít do obchodu?
I am going for a run. / Jdu si zaběhat.
I am going for a walk. / Jdu na procházku.
I want to go for dinner. / (Já) chci večeři.
I don’t want to go to the pub. / (Já) nechci jít do hospody.

If you have any suggestions or corrections I’d love to hear from you. All credit goes to E, all mistakes are my own.