Phone found but still not working

I found my phone! Where was the phone? In a snack box that had been in the bag I carried onto the plane. While on the plane the phone must of fell into the box and the just put away on the top shelf in the pantry!

Called Three at 2:30pm Thursday, spoke to the call centre in India and was told it would take 3 - 4 hours to get re-activated. By bed time on Thursday night still not active.

Friday morning called at 11:30am, this time I was told that the process takes 24 hours and their servers are running slowly. I asked if the process could be sped up and was told "no it is all automated". Friday at 3:30pm, still no service, so I called again. This time I was told that the issue would be escalated and that the call centre operator would call me when the phone was activated, ETA 6-12 hours.

Today, 9:15am, I can receive calls, but not make them. Called Three again. Was told the issue would be escalated (again) and it would take up to 24 hours. Asked if I could speak with the department who would resolve the problem and was told they do not accept incoming calls. My only option was to wait until the job was completed.

9:30am, called Three again to see if the problem had really been escalated. This time the operated said that the issue had just been escalated (what happened yesterday I will not know) and it would take 2 - 3 hours to fix. I suggested that he did not make promises that would not be kept, so he then said it will take 24-48 hours more before the phone is activated!

I am now waiting on Three to process the request. Frustrating on top of everything else!

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Podcast for auction

The guys over at GDay World have been a couple of busy little marsupials over the last few weeks, with all sorts of stuff happening. Cameron is off to Demo@15 in Feburary to do several interviews, as such they have decided to auction sponsorship of their podcast during the event.

Not surprising given they just interviewed Jeremy Wright, for Ensight who auctioned himself and sold his blog last year.

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Podcasting, knowledge management & learning

On a raining Sunday morning here in Sydney I found an post from Cameron Reilly where he mentions he has his first podcasting client. Great to see organisations looking at new technology as part of their employee comm's toolkit, hopefully he will give us all an update as to how it progresses.

I have written a couple of times about the introduction of RSS into the workplace and the potential for RSS to be used to deliver both learning and knowledge objects directly to employees. On Friday I began thinking about how OPML could be used to deliver complete courses to employees, and the RSS feeds have the content which is a mixture of text and enclosures. The potential of it all this is huge, I feel we have some exciting times ahead for workplace technologies.

Updated: Added a link to Cameron's original post, opps

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Blogfolios?

I have written a couple of times in the past about ePortfolios and how I personally feel by leveraging blogs and wilki's we could quite easily build a ePortfolio without the need of specialised tools.

A couple of days ago Brian Lamb posted about how he and a friend (well mostly a friend) have modified MT to develop a portfolio for his work. The result seems quite good, and if a method of "certify" work was found the result might just satisfy the requirements of a complete ePortfolio.

On an interesting note comments on his blog question the whole need for ePortfolios which certainly require learning professionals to have a think about just taking an offline concept into the online world is the appropriate course of action. This thought process should not be limited to just learning, but everyone who is looking to develop an online version of a business process.

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What a week

Well today is my last day in my current job, I have 1 week off, move to Melbourne and then on Jan 31st I start at WMC.

This week started off in mixed fashion, we successfully found somewhere to live in Melbourne, after 5 hours of physically looking (about 20 online before we went). However I lost my mobile phone somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney, while this is one way to stop clients calling you it really sucks as no one can now contact me. I spoke to Three and while they can disable the handset they cannot redirect my calls without leaving the handset enabled. So I am without a phone until I start my new job.

The week has been spent handing over my work, which is strange as you begin to realise all the little things that really should of been documented! I should of started an internal blog several years ago and then it would have been easier.

Several scenarios are going to conspire to mean that my posting over the next 3 weeks will most likely be limited. Firstly, today I hand back my laptop which is my primary PC that I use for posting and reading all my RSS feeds. While I am taking the feeds in an OPML file my home PC does not have a reader installed, I might do this but for a week I am not sure. Secondly, on 30th I move to Melbourne and until the rest of the family arrives, a week later, I will not have a home PC nor will I have broadband. These two items are going to reduce my posting capabilities, however once I get my new work laptop I might be able to begin posting again. The final thing that is going to limit my posting is life will just be very busy while we finish packing and generally move house.

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Enterprise wiki providers fighting for customers

via Techdirt. While we now have two (at least) commercial Wiki software providers it seems they are fighting with each other over new customers. Personally I don't see it as a bad sign, more an interesting one.

Wiki's are a new concept and the selling of them within an organisation is going to take a fairly long period of time. In the meantime the only customers for these two players are existing organisations who have an understanding of the tools. The customers will probably have an existing open source tool, like TWiki, and want to leverage the benefits of a commercial offering. I completely understand where this is coming from being an early adopter of web based employee self service during the 90's. Many of the vendors spent most of the late 90's educating the Australian HR market on the benefits, not 7-8 years on every vendor has a solution and every client wants it. The same will happen eventually with wiki's.

I have looked at what JotSpot has to offer and the marketing hype sells a very good message, however time will tell if the reality matches once several organisations take it for a drive and we get some public feedback. What I think is missing in the marketplace is a combined tool the corporates can install, a solution that provides both blogs and wiki's in one package. This way both tools can be deployed and used where appropriate for the problems being faced int he enterprise. Take this a step further, the tool should also have traditional threaded discussions and email mailing lists as these are still needed for certain types of applications.

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State of Human Captial Industry

Found this on HRMarketing.com blog, while it is almost a year old I feel it does provide a great breakdown of the different areas within the HC industry.

Personally it is interesting to see the different areas as I have been trying to develop something similar to be the foundation of a systems view/inventory for my new job. While I have some old frameworks from previous roles, I like the way this is broken down.

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What to do on your first day in a new job

Michael the Canadian Headhunter had a great post (from Fortune) on what to do on your first day in a new job, very relevant to me.

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Gmail Accounts

I have 6 Gmail accounts to give away on a first come first served basis, drop me an email (mspecht at gmail dot com) if you want one.

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Sims on a TV near you

Given humans in my family are slightly nuts about the Sims, I think this would sell in our house.

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New Aussie podcast

Andy Grace has done his first podcast, going to listen to it today.

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Knowledge management at work

Knowledge at work blog has three interesting posts about KM. The first about 5 key concepts covers the 5 major areas of KM and a great place to begin thinking when you are starting to look at a KM system.

The second is about social bookmarks, such as Del.icio.us, and the potential for KM systems. The third is also related to tags and what the guys at Technorati are doing with them. These tags help with the online collaborative ontologies needed for KM systems to work. Coupled with categories (I wish Blogger had categories, might check out MT after the move) in blogs posts we can start to hunt down knowledge kept online.

I completely agree with Denham when he says:-

It is hard to articulate my excitement / gut feel that this going to be something important to knowledge workers - I just feel it!!

On a final note if you what to hear an excellent example of where KM would be useful go have a listen to the G'Day World latest On the Pod (a podcast from Australia by Mick and Cam) with Robert Scoble. About 45 minutes into the interview Robert ventures into how poor KM is within organisations. He mentions when he left NEC he had over 1GB of mail in his exchange folders. The data was owned by NEC, so he could not take it with him, however because it was in Exchange it was then not easy for anyone else to use the data either. It almost soundly like he was going to have the same issue at Microsoft with his Resources folder. Maybe MS needs some help with their corporate knowledge? :-)

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Finding a house

This weekend we are in Melbourne trying to find a house for the big move, which has been no easy feat. Due to most real estate agents only being open on Saturday we spent yesterday looking at 15 different houses between 10:30am and 2:30pm. Lucky we think might have found one.

Completing the application forms for the rental property is a major exercise, almost more references are required than to get a home loan! Oh well let's hope we get accepted so we have somewhere to live at the end of the month!

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BBC article on blogs & work

The BBC has this interesting item on blogging and work.

UPDATED: Blogger seems to have done something very strange with my post, I think it is now fixed.

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UK blogger sacked (dooced)

From the Guardian in the UK is a story of Joe Gordon being dooced by his employer Waterstone for keeping a blog.

Joe was sacked on 6th Jan a week ago, so far he has been interviewed several times, discussion has raged over in the UK, he has had over 180 comments in the last week on his blog and people seem to be divided over the whole issue. Several people have been writing about the event in their blogs and it has been in Boing Boing, CNET News and many other news sources.

What is interesting is there seems to be some question over if his employer had a online policy, Joe seems to feel none was ever presented to him and if it was he would have ceased his actions.

Bearing in mind there is no specific policy on blogs etc, only a very vague 'bringing the company into disrepute' which could be interpreted in any way the company sees fit. I and the union offered to cease if it caused such offence and to accept a warning and suggested a clearer policy be issued to guide other staff in the future, but this was disregarded.

So now it seems that the unions in the UK are getting involved, so things might get very interesting.

I have written several times about this in the last few months, sadly the trend seems to be increasing rather than decreasing, this is the here and here) this week about the issue both of which are very informative.

I guess the best take away from all of the comes from the Sun guidelines, via Blog Your Way, Think About Consequences.

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No iTunes story?

The 12th has been and gone (at least in Australia) and no mention of an iTunes store in Australia, I guess we just all need to wait a bit longer.

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can 43 Things promote online learning?

Here is an interesting goal that I found on 43 Things, the comments provided me with some great "food for thought". 43 Things is a "newish" social site where people create and share goals and experiences. A similar tool could be put to work within a corporate learning/mentoring environment or even objective planning. Thinking further about objectives, most organisations are trying to develop transparency and linkages between departments and management layers when it comes to objectives. A tool like 43 Things could assist in the alignment and cascading nature of objective setting. As people achieve their objectives entries can be made for all other interest parties to review and provide further feedback.

While the actual performance review might not take place in such an open environment the setting and achievement of objective could. Although there is a movement within HR that feels even performance reviews should be open and transparent.

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The Moon Gals no more

Zoe one of the Moon Gals on the Technical Careers @ Microsoft blog is leaving Microsoft to pursue other opportunities. Hopefully she will continue blogging in her new role.

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Live slowly

I started thinking about this while we were at Jonah'sfor our wedding anniversary in November, they had a number of brochures in the room with a message essentially saying something like "relax quickly" or "live slowly". This got me thinking about how we rush around so much and do not spend enough time reflecting on things. I sometime wish I could easily disappear for a remote beach in Fiji to reflect.

Today I found a post from Harold at Jarche Consulting that is talking about the same thing. Harold has decided to take "thinking longer" as a new year's resolution, I think I might do the same and pop it into my 43 Things list. While I do feel having my brain connected to the world would be great, the ability to disconnect is very important. Otherwise when can we just sit and think?

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IT support

one for those who have been on the other end of a support line

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iTunes music store in Australia?

Richard over at the Gadget lounge has an interesting lead (possibly the hottest yet) on the pending (I am hoping for a when not if) launch on iTunes music store in Australia. According to Des tomorrow Jan 12th is the announcement date, even if it is not and it is later in the month it will be fantastic!

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More on Google riches

Angus Logan has a couple of interesting snippets on the wealth at Google. Following yesterday's post on Googles potential hiring issues it all makes sense that they might be having a small hiring issue. I for one would probably find it difficult to work in the same cube as someone who has $1 million in stock options and I had none.

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HR Bloggers

I have been exchanging a couple of emails with Mark Willaman from HRMarketer.com on the different sources we read. During this exchange I was struck by the lack of prominant HR thinkers who blog, and those that do publish online seem to only have email subscription services.

For example the famous Dr John only has an email subscription model for his free articles and no blog. I have heard Dr John speak several times and always had the impression that he was on the leading edge, so this surprises me. Now for all I know is he has looked at these tecnologies and decided that they are not for him.

I agree with Mark, Dr John would make an excellent blogger. The Electronic Recruiting Exchange also only has an email model, no RSS, and the prominent HR mags none (which I have found), which is sad as I want to consolidate everything into my newsreader. I suspect the reasons are very similar to why IDG is currently no offering RSS. Listening to Mark Jones On the Pod with Mick & Cam (G'Day World), Mark provided an interesting perspective for me on the publishers point of view and how the advertising makes up such an important portion of their business (it is their business) and that there is no defacto method of measuring the "value" of an RSS reader.

HR people I would like to see blog. Dr John Sullivan, Row Henson, Karen Beaman, Bob Stambaugh, John Macy and many others. I have tried to find blogs for them but failed, if anyone knows of them please let me know.

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The moving process

We are right into moving at the moment, official date of move 7th Feb, less than one month.

This weekend we fly to Melbourne for the weekend to find somewhere to live. Spent the last couple of weeks reviewing domain.com.au and realestate.com.au and have narrowed things to about 15 places in south east Melbourne. The weekend after we prepare for a garage sale, then 29th is the garage sale and 30th I move (hopefully into our new house that is found this weekend :-) ). Then back on the 5th for my sister-in-law's wedding on the 6th, where Jayne is in the wedding party. Then 8am on the 7th the truck arrives, we then drive down on the 8th, and hopefully our things arrive on the 9th or 10th, it will be camping on the floor until then.

Once we have the house under control we can track down a school.

The boxes arrived from the removalist's and so now it is down to packing, not too bad as we have done this 3 times in the last 6 years.

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10 Buzzwords better left in 2004

Just catching up on some of my feeds and found this from the Monster Blog Top 10 buzzwords better left in 2004, very funny.

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Google having trouble recruiting?

From John Battelle's Searchblog I found an interesting post over at the Google Blog. What I found most interesting were the comments on John's blog where readers seem to feel that Google might be the cause of their own issues.

Over the last month or so there has been discussion in the last few weeks over the interview process (and the assocaited testing) on a number of different recruiting sites, including Johanna Rothman, a couple from the "Moon Gals", and Recruiting.com.

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10 Ways to use blogs internally

Jenny over at The Shifted Library posted and snippet from Cutting Through on 10 ways to use blogs in for managing projects. A good post covering many great areas of potential usage.

A couple of the items might be better suited for a Wiki, for example Issues Logs, or Capturing Requirements, but using a blog is a start. Further to this Tim at Cutting Through posted on 4 ways to use Wikis in project management, with some very good ideas.

What we really need to a tool that includes both types of functions as a framework for project management. I might look to see if Plone does this.

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PeopleSoft oh sorry Oracle

Well it looks like the courting process of PeopleSoft by Oracle is now over. After an 18 month chase the reluctant PeopleSoft has now been acquired by Oracle. Jan 14 is now the date when employees will find out who no longer has a job with the newly merged organisation, while the 18th is when customers find out what it means to them.

It is sad to see PeopleSoft go, they were the organisation who defined the modern day HRIS product. The forward thinkers such as Row Henson and others from within PeopleSoft, have had a profound impact on our industry, I can only hope that Oracle still provides an environment for these people to operate.

On the positive side of things the newly combined organisation has the potential to make a real and long lasting impact on the HRIS industry.

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Summer Sunday afternoon

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Free WiFi in Sydney

In the search for Cafes who are technology friendly I found a place in Ultimo that offers free WiFi to customers, @ 91 William Henry St.

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More on ePortfolios

A few weeks ago I mentioned ePortfolios and since then I have been thinking through the different items that would make up such a tool. An ePortfolio allows a learner to to develop a portfolio of work/artifacts that show their learning, skills, accomplishments and development. Blogs provide a framework publish these items and when the blog is outside a corporate environment can move with the writer. The draw back of blogs is there is no easy method for others to "certify" the work, once the learner has completed a learning session. The certification allows others to see that the artifact has a reputation that can be trusted. However trackback and comments allow an ad-hoc peer review process but this is not "complete" enough to certify the learner has actually achieved to the stated objectives.

Harold Jarche talks about some of the different components that might form the framework for an ePortfolio system, however he does not mention ePortfolios. He mentioned a tool called Ping that seems to be developing in the right direction.

Some of the tools being developed by Technorati might be augmented to assist, however new ones would be required to fully enable an ePortfolio. Maybe the vote extension could be enhanced to provide a framework for others to certify the qualify of the work. The XFN framework could help develop peer networks during the course of a learning activity.

I have been looking at Plone as a possible tool to use as the framework for a ePortfolio (thanks to George Siemens from eLearnSpace for pointing me in the right direction). The tools seems very similar to MovableType, I hope to get some time soon to install it and see where it takes me.

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Johanna Rothman on interviewing and project management

Johanna was interviewed by Roy Osherove while she was in Israel in early December, the MP3 file can be found at IT Conversations.

Johanna provides some text book items on both recruitment and project management, a highly recommended item, I plan to listen again and make some notes. Michael (Canadian Headhunter) has posted a great summary.

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blogs the double-edged sword?

Michael Gartenberg from ComputerWorld (IDG) wrote a short item yesterday on business blogging. He provides 3 areas for all businesses and employees to consider when venturing into this space.

I feel that companies (and employees) should not fear blogging, however they should understand it and ensure that their employees understand the organisation's view point. This can only be done through clear and consistent communication with employees. It is very hard to develop this clear communication "once the horse has bolted", therefore all companies need to be developing and communicating guidelines to their employees, before they see a post by an employee via PubSub, Feedster, Technorati etc etc.

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Triple J & podcasting

SplaTT has pointed me to a new service from Triple J on Podcasting. Just signed up and going to give is a try.

Great to see another Aussie podcast.

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Jeremy Wright was fired and other notes on blogs and work

A couple of days ago Jeremy was fired for blogging, over a seemingly simple post, however it was probably more than just this one post as he says himself. The story is quite complex but should be a lesson for us all.

Over the past year or so Jeremy has been very active in the business blogging space, he sold his blog, he auctioned himself on eBay and has now set up a InsideBlogging with Darren Barefoot (another Canadian blogger). A couple of weeks ago he actually resigned from his job, his employer had paid relo and there was a claw back clause in his contract.

This adds to a number of thoughts I have been having over the last week or so about my new job. Going into a large corporate I wonder what the acceptance level will be for my blog. I very rarely talk about work here, I try to keep my posts to industry items and other items that catch my attention. However I do occasional post something. There are two parts to this whole issue. Does the new employer already know about the blog? If so what happens if I don't mention it and continue, if not what happens if I do mention it? They should know about the blog, but I suspect they do not.

My thoughts here go further what about my extra activities with AHRI? (Which I am having to step down from as the SIG is only in NSW not Victoria but that is not the point.) Now this was on my resume, while it is slightly different the activities on the SIG include sourcing speakers, speaking at events, chairing events and generally being in the public eye over HRIS issues in NSW. Is this different to blogging on the industry, I think yes and no, but it does raise an interesting perspective. I think I will leave my ramblings here, but I DO need to resolve what I do about my blog and my new employer.

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Internet abuse (shameless advertising)

2004 seemed to be covered with stories of people losing their jobs over what they did on the internet. Whether it was downloading inappropriate content at work, sending inappropriate emails, blogs and other items people all over the placed ended up in the unemployment queues.

To this end the AHRI NSW HRIS SIG (which I am currently on the organising committee for) will be running an even on February 24th for HR professionals to hear from Charles Heunemann the MD of SurfControl in Australia. While IT understand the technology, HR really need to be the people in the organisation developing policy around what is acceptable use and then ensuring that the policy is effectively communicated to their employees. Why? If (at least in Australia) someone is to be fired due to inappropriate usage then you want to make sure there is no call for a wrongfully dismissal suit.

Further on the whole subject CIO.com has commented on how podcasting enters the mix of potential online issues.

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New resourcing blog

I have been checking out a new resourcing blog by Andrew Marritt, a great read. I would recommend it to anyone interested in recruitment.

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Wiki limitations

Jeremy Zawodny writes about what he sees as some of the limitations of Wiki's. His perspective is correct, and the comments on his post raise further questions and ideas.

Interesting I have been trying to set up a Wiki on our home server and teach my wife how to use it. The whole process has just got way too hard so I stopped, which is embarrassing given my promotion of the technology in this blog. Maybe it is just too geeky for me?

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A bit late returning

I am a bit late in returning to my blog, just can't seem to shake the holiday feeling, I guess that is what happens when you have 10 days off.

While the break was good, there was a black cloud over most of it, I suspect for most people it was the same. The Tsunami has impacted so many people. I am amazed at the power of the Tsunami and now the power of people to rebuild.

January is shaping up to be very busy. I finish with EmployeeConnect on Friday 21st and start at WMC on Monday 31st Jan, in the meantime we are busy packing. The removalists that arrive Feb 7th, the day after my sister-in-law's wedding, which I am flying back for. We then drive down to Melbourne on Feb 8th and I am back in the office Feb 9th.

My days at the moment are jam packed with knowledge transfer to others in the organisation. I am amazed at how much information there is to transfer, this process just hardens my belief that low level knowledge management is such an important requirement for businesses. While the tools are available, the culture within most organisations is not there to support the tools. To this end I have begun putting plans in place for what I can do in my new role, how can I start managing my knowledge from day one.

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