I've long been a fan of Daily Dose of Imagery. Photographer Sam Javanrouh walks the beautiful streets of Toronto. I'm constantly impressed with his use of color, character and composition to move me to see new sides of everything from architecture, found objects, celebrity appearances and political rallies. I am cautious with what I let into my mind in the background, but Daily Dose of Imagery has earned its way onto my screensaver.
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/10/09/04/
Check it out.
Causeit is about having businesses be a form of self-expression. We're here to help people have their innate desire to be of service to community happen every day, not just once or twice a month at a volunteer position. The desire to be creative doesn't need to be encapsulated in dusty art supplies or a forgotten guitar. The desire to use the word love in regular conversation needn't be at odds with a 'day job.' Causeit is about finding your vision, making it happen in the real world, and building a team around it to make it bigger than it ever was going to be before! We exist to be of service of your dreams. We know you have a vision for the world and for your life—and we're here to make sure that your dreams happen. We bring the best of coaching, consulting and branding to bear on the real work of your life: making a difference.
Before I forget: I love black tea when networking. I just do.
Living a truly ethical life in which we put the needs of others first and provide for their happiness has tremendous implications for our society. If we change internally—disarm ourselves by dealing constructively with our negative thoughts and emotions—we can literally change the whole world. We have so many powerful tools for creating our ethical and peaceful society already in place. Yet some of these tools are not reaching their full potential. […]
When we are committed to the ideal of concern for all others, it follows that this should inform our social and political policies. I say this not because I suppose thereby we will be able to solve all society's problems overnight. Rather, it is my conviction that unless this wider sense of compassion which I have been urging the on the reader inspires our politics, our policies are likely to harm instead of serve humanity as a whole."
—The Dalai Lama
One of our clients is looking for someone with 3-5 years of Microsoft .NET development experience (VB and/or C#). Experience with any or all of: WPF, LINQ, relational database programming, CSLA Business Objects, Web-Services and XML/XSLs is highly desired.
You need to be made of awesomeness, as our project manager puts it, and be both extremely reliable and easy to work with. Don't bother if you know you're kinda flaky—it won't be fun for anyone, and you will be let go. If you are reliable and easy to work with, great! Extra-special brownie points go to Seattle folk, as the client is based there.
E-mail your resume and cover letter to dotnetjob2010@causeit.org. Please do not call—we are not screening developers for this client, just forwarding on your information.
When does it make sense to bring a project manager into your small business?
People have different roles for project managers within their business. In my business, I have about eight hours of meetings with project managers per month. In those meetings, I process the tasks in my inbox and triage them into Remember the Milk, have conversations with the project manager about the feasibility of the commitments I have taken on/will be taking on/would like to take on, and start to get in communication with anyone I need to repromise to, revoke promises to or reschedule with. I also have higher-level conversations about processes for efficiency, total workload capacity and balance between different types of work.
For some small business people, the project manager also does a bit of cat-herding—checking in on tasklists and duedates, especially those which are past due. When they spot something which is lagging behind or flat-out has not been done—especially if there is a recurring theme of delay on that type of task—they have a conversation with the team member to see what they need to be effective. Sometimes that conversation looks like coaching to uncover any emotional or contextual roadblocks, and sometimes it is a process conversation to see what would make it easier to complete that task consistently.
Project managers also are likely to assist in the scoping/estimating process of bids to make sure that time conflicts, logjams and cost overruns are prevented wherever possible. For example, Causeit worked with one of our project managers in the process of constructing a bid for a large flat-priced graphic design project to ensure we met a minimum hourly pay rate and, thus, profitability.
In a smaller business, the project management accountability often falls on the business owner, general manager or an account manager. First steps for additional project management support, with a generally effective team who sometimes get overwhelmed (rather than a team with systemic problems around accountability, self-discipline and communication) are to implement some simple, low-cost solutions centering around reminding people of the promises they made. Technology solutions like Remember the Milk automate some of this process, and work particularly well when paired with a meeting with an outsider or other strictly-accountable team member who gently causes the conversation to come up on a regular basis (once or twice a week is best) and to stay on track.
In short, project managers serve to make sure the actions of your games get moved forward by ensuring actionable promises are made, recorded and managed. Contact us to have us facilitate an introduction to some of our favorite project managers, like Jodi Sweetman and Amye Scavarda!
Gmail—everyone seems to know what it is, and a huge number of people use it. Hands-down, it's recognized as the best 'deal' in the free webmail scene. But why?
A screenshot of Gmail's conversation view
In short, it comes down to Google's core values. Among them are "Focus on the user and all else will follow," and, paraphrased, "don't be evil." Running with this direction, Google's team (and a huge user community) turned on email on its side by acknowledging two core things: 1) people have conversations, not messages, 2) humans don't always think linearly and 3) keep powerful features easy.
Staying in the conversation
Gmail offers something few other email clients have been able to touch: effective threaded conversations. What is a thread? Imagine passing a note back and forth in class—writing a reply on the same page that you received a message on. Gmail pieces together the messages going in and out of your address to provide a cohesive view of a conversation—even if the messages are weeks apart—so that the context of messages is clearer. This way, instead of wading through pages of 'quoted' messages, which are often hard to read, a user can collapse and expand messages which came before and after whatever message they are reading. Often, this makes each message shorter, too, as introductions and conclusions are less necessary.
Needle in a haystack
Gmail also acknolwedges another truth—it's often easier to search than to sort. Since one conversation (Gmail parlance for a collection of messages) may reference multiple topics or a couple of different people, Gmail leverages its class-leading search technology to make it possible to effectively search all of the conversations in an account. That way, users don't have to try and remember when a message came in or even who sent it—they just search like they would Google. Searching email isn't new—but having instant results with miniatures 'teaser lines' of each message (much like a web search) was groundbreaking when released and is still basically unmatched in other clients.
Powerful, easy features
Gmail also does something almost no other mail client or service does successfully—it keeps its powerful features out of the way, but still accessible. Gmail offers a feature that many users may not be aware of: Labels. For example, all messages I receive from certain domains or addresses get labeled 'Clients'. Some of those same messages, depending on their content, might get labeled 'Deadlines.' Unlike most email applications, which would take these messages and move them into another folder, Gmail tags them—so that I can see the message both in my inbox, or when I look only through the lens of 'Clients'. An unlimited number of Labels can be combined, so that 'Finance' and 'Response required' can be independently or jointly applied to a message.
In another stroke of genius, any search you perform can become a filter or saved search—in other words, if you search for messages from clients which include attachments, Gmail offers the option to save that search as a filter so that you can then apply actions, such as labeling all of those messages automatically when they come in in the future (eg, 'Client Files').
Signal to noise
Perhaps the most powerful bit about Gmail is that it allows you to reduce the clutter and excess you view. First, Gmail has perhaps one of the best spam filters in the market. I have never had a conversation marked as spam accidentally, and I see maybe one spam message every three days in my inbox. One click of 'Report Spam' and I will never see that message again. Google combines the input of all of its users to have one of the most up-to-date anti-spam services anywhere.
Using a tool Gmail calls archiving, conversatons can be removed from your inbox without deleting them. This allows you to complete old conversations (which will come back into the inbox automatically if a new message is added to the conversation). For example, when I'm done conversing with my insurance agent about renewing my policy, I can click archive. At that point, I can still find the conversation through search or by clicking on the "All Mail" tab. From there, I can always bring the conversation back to the inbox if I want or need to. As a productivity tool, archiving is indispensable—it allows users to remove the clutter in their inbox and be clear about what emails still need to be managed or replied to.
Using the filters function discussed earlier, newsletters and other 'sometimes I want to read them' emails can be automatically archived, so that they are not in the way but can still be referenced. This is great for managing email subscriptions and listservs which can otherwise dominate an inbox.
In short, Gmail is the web app with the single biggest positive impact on its users—and absolutely no hit on their pocketbooks. The time it saves and the reliability it provides make it the first technology shift we recommend to our clients who don't already have it. Try it today!
Happiness is the main object of our aspirations, whatever name we give to it: fulfillment, deep satisfaction, serenity, accomplishment, wisdom, fortune, joy or inner peace, and however we try to seek it: creativity, justice, altruism, striving, completion of a plan or a piece of work.
- Matthieu Ricard
Remember the Milk (or RTM for short) is a powerful, flexible and simple tool for managing tasks. Small business owners (and busy folk everywhere) know that having a mere to-do list is insufficient. Remember the Milk works by helping you quickly enter and triage your tasks so that you can get back to doing whatever it is that you do best without worrying about, well, how to remember to get the milk. And, like so many great web apps these days, it's a free service.
Remember the milk accomplishes sorting of tasks through a number of criteria:
The core service is free (save for certain reasonably-priced special features such as the iPhone app)—and it's a lifesaver. Every week I review my calendar and my task lists with a colleague, and we enter new things into the list while checking in on overdue tasks. Little to nothing falls through the cracks now, and if it does, I know about it quickly. While inputting all my work into Remember the Milk was sobering as I dealt with the amount of tasks I have every week, Remember the Milk allows me to know exactly when the tasks for the day are done and when 'someday' projects like updating business plans will be picked up next. Most importantly, it lets me say yes (or no) to requests from colleagues with complete knowledge of my project load.
For further reading, check out this excellent summary of David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology
Photo courtesy .fabio under Creative Commons license.
We can bring our spiritual practice
into the streets, into our communities,
when we see each realm as a temple,
as a place to discover that which is sacred.—Jack Kornfield
In my work with clients, I often remind them how important it is to carefully review documents before signing them—especially as it relates to inserting yet more provisions.
For a while now, Causeit has been searching for a new office space. After a round or two of false starts, including one we were almost ready to sign on, we found the perfect spot. What has the new place work so well is that we carefully crafted a list of wants (negotiable) and needs (non-negotiable) before we ever saw an office. We even came up with a one-sheet of what it might look like and a list of our needs and wants:
Our mini-floorplan and wishlist
This meant that when we looked through the lease (a generic and exhaustive document covering almost every industry and largely, of course, favoring the landlord,) we were able to quickly identify potential sticking points. Some of the changes we made:
How many times have you wanted to work on a simple document with a friend or colleague, only to be stopped by problems constantly sending files back and forth? Or needed to share a spreadsheet with a client, only to find their copy of Excel won't open your file? As part of our series on web applications for small business, we'll take a look at Google Docs as a way to save you money.
Google Docs is a free service which allows you to work on basic documents (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) in your browser. At a basic level, it provides the most commonly used functions of programs likes Microsoft Office for free. Your files are stored online, instead of on your computer—which means that crashes and viruses don't affect them, but your ability to access the web does (for example, if your cable modem goes out, you can't access your documents until you find another internet connection). This sort of online file storage is referred to as 'the cloud' in Web 2.0 parlance.
Google Docs also allows for the wonderful experience of jointly authoring or editing a document. Say, for example, that you are working on a notice from the board of your neighborhood association. You could try to get everyone together in the same room to edit at the same time, or attempt to pass around a document (while tracking revisions of it) or delegate the task to just one person.
Instead, Google Docs allows you to create or import a document and then share it with other users (either in an editing or read-only capacity) to make it easy for everyone to contribute (or just comment). No downloads, installations or virus-scanning is required. This is also a great way to work on joint budgets or other technical and rapidly-changing information. During one busy period, my partner and I used the spreadsheet function to track apartments we were looking at and the status of each rental application. It saved us a lot of 'missed leads' or duplicate communication. Google Docs can even send notifications to other users when a file is modified, taking out the step of emailing 'look at this change.'
While there are a few bugs in its implementation (formatting isn't as fluid, as, say, Apple's iWork program, or even Microsoft Word), the convenience of shared documents and the ease of use make Google Docs a great tool for just about any user looking to either save money on Office or bring friends and co-workers into the editing process.
At Causeit, we often use outlines or other organizing tools to help process the huge volume of information and brainstormed ideas in staff or client meetings.
comapping.comWe've struggled to find a solution that works to meet the needs of our clients across the board, though. Simple solutions like word processing documents are often too limited, graceful desktop apps cost money and/or are platform-specific and may not share easily, and web apps online only work with a good internet connection and often have limited features.
In a blog entry from GTD Times we may have found a solution in Comapping. It's not 'battle-tested' yet, but seems to be an affordable software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for sharing thoughts, collaboratively authoring outlines and mindmaps, and even beginning the work of coming up with task delegation. It looks like it will work both online and offline (using Adobe Air), and the interface, while not the sexiest, is a good blend of power and entry-level accessibility.
Jury's still out, but you can check it out at Comapping.com.
When the weather gets foul, as it has recently here in Portland, business can grind to a halt. Service-based businesses, however, can use it as a chance to get a leg up on their less-prepared (or less-committed) competition.
The general guideline to keep in mind is that your clients are encountering big hits to their routines and likely their own profitability, efficiency and stress levels. You can help ease their weather pain. A well-prepared plan of your own can make you stand out from the competition by providing special attention to your clients, while 'snow-day' time can allow you to catch up for the end of the year.
When you see storms coming, make sure you've at least:
Oregon Department of Transportation TripCheck and Google Maps traffic view
For all the Portlanders our there, here are a few great foul-weather driving tips a business associate forwarded to Causeit.
Networking is the practice of creating community. Creating a business requires creating teams of people. When you're a small business, many of the people on your 'team' are other businesses and professionals you meet in your daily adventures.
Where can you build community? What communities are you already in?
Networking in mixed crowds. Ask genuinely what people are interested in, and be prepared to answer the same question. No one wants to hear a sales pitch at a friend's barbeque, but will gladly tell you all about their career or their vacation plans.
Followup. Make sure that you follow up with people you meet, to cement the connection you began to create when you first talked to them.
Convert to next steps
Manage your success
Who's affected by your decisions?