| September/October 2008 Volume 4, Issue 4 |
IN THIS ISSUEFrom the Board From the Editor:We would like to encourage anyone to submit articles to the ICCA Greater Boston Chapter newsletter. If you know of anyone interested in free publicity, ask them to write an article of any size or topic pertinent to our organization for submission in the next issue of our newsletter. The good news is the smaller the article, the better, since long articles are hard to read on-line. We are very open to ideas and suggestions regarding article topics in all sections of the newsletter, including: Submit ideas or articles to:Song Han Next Deadline:October 15, 2008 for the November/December Issue Board of Directors:PresidentRobert Goodearl Vice President and Secretary Michael Kibler Treasurer James Connell Past President Norman Daoust Click for Board contact info |
Please log our October meeting into your calendar: Wednesday evening, October 29, 2008, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Our presenter is a regular speaker throughout the country and an excellent presenter! While there is no charge to attend, you must register for a free Expo Pass to the Software Development Best Practices Conference and Expo at www.sdbestpractices.com by October 23. That pass also entitles you to admission to the keynote presentations and technical sessions throughout the week, the exhibit on Tuesday and Wednesday, admission to the opening night reception, lifetime membership to the all new "myDrDobbsEvents" professional networking tool. Thanks to Think Services, think-services.com, a division of United Business Media, for graciously hosting our meeting at this annual conference as they have done for the past three years. This is an opportunity to learn about a current topic and network with technology professionals from around the country. Mark your calendars and register today at www.sdbestpractices.com. Norman Daoust Feature Article You Can Get There ... ... From Here!Warren Avis, founder of the Avis Rent A Car Company said, “Nothing is smarter than a group.” I agree that two heads are better than one, but better still is a group of people getting together to encourage and share with each other. It can be a key ingredient to pushing your ideas along at a faster pace. Let’s face it, when six other people are going to ask questions about your progress, you have a tendency to stay on task. It was my good fortune to be in a mastermind group for eight years. That is a pretty good run for seven very busy people. We committed to each other a full morning and part of an afternoon once a month. Out of that group came several books, many ideas for workshops and keynote speeches, promotional campaigns, businesses born, launched and sold or folded. We came together and devoted undivided attention to each member giving them a chance to express their triumphs, disasters, frustrations, and exhilarations. We would allow them a chance to talk while we listened, nodded, ask for clarification, added subtracted refined, organized, and encouraged. A mastermind group is a high value activity. Our format was simple, a brief “check in”, a twenty minute verbalization of our personal agenda ending with a Q&A. At that point the next member would jump in. The schedule was only a stated format. Sometimes one of us needed more expression time and it was cheerfully given. At no time that I recall did we ever feel as though we couldn’t provide one of us with the extra time needed to percolate a project or idea; it seemed like a natural support progression. Along with our monthly meeting, we socialized on occasion and retreated at the beginning of each year for three days. Each of us would make a verbal commitment to a plan we wanted to carry out over the next twelve months. It’s interesting how committed you can become after writing something down and saying it, and knowing six other people are going to hold you accountable simply by asking questions over the next several meetings. Accountability, um….it can be quite a motivator. I strongly urge you to find and join a mastermind group, or pull a couple of like minded people together and make a commitment to be a sounding board for each other. A real mutual respect and understanding is born out of this kind of experience. At times it will be magical and at other times a refuge in a storm. In my line of work, facilitating workshops, and doing keynotes for conferences, much of my actual work product is produced in one or two person environments. While I might do a speech for an audience of 25 or 5,000, the prep is typically done as solo work. Not only is it good practice, it’s healthy, to be encouraged, challenged, and pushed, toward an objective. Don’t hesitate, jump in with both feet, mastermind…..it can be very rewarding. ©Tony Ruesing , CSP Reprinted with permission from the author. Tony Ruesing is a Certified Speaking Professional who sprinkles his programs with a little bit of magic to drive home his point and have some fun with his audiences. He is the author of two books and over fifty articles on communication, leadership, stress, personal development, and mastermind groups. His aim is to help people reach more of their full potential and encourage them to be more loving in a world full of compromise. Through his Like a Pro series his core message is….We all need a little grace. To learn more about Tony go to: www.tonyruesing.com Feature Article Publish a Book and Leave Your Competition Behind!The pinnacle of what I call “the expert’s edge,” i.e., that dreamy, competitive advantage when your competition seems to have all but melted away, may well be reached when the time comes for you to write and publish a book. Though such an endeavor can seem overwhelming and near-impossible, there’s no denying the impact of pulling it off. By writing a book, you make all the pieces of your expertise fall neatly into place. Your insights over the years and lessons gained will all combine to fill your book’s pages as a record of your high-tech expertise and life’s work. Though the same can also be said about writing articles, a book allows you to truly strut your stuff and delve deeper into your knowledge to fully promote its market value. A second impact of publishing a book will be the increased number of invitations to make presentations before audiences composed of your target market. Authors of books tend to top the list of desirable speakers for planners of business events, so your new authorship will add a new venue for meeting prospects as well as a higher degree of credibility. Both your book and your speaking gigs in turn can lead to business media breaking down your door (or at least beginning to look for you). Reporters, editors, and even bloggers are all eager to publicize credible business experts—meaning that by writing and publishing a book, you may end up traversing other prominent media (and Internet) channels as well. If any (or all) of this appeals to you—and it should since significant competitive advantages can be hard to come by these days—do you then just sit down and start writing your epic tome? Not quite! First you’ll need to address one critical initial question: Will your book’s ideas advance your business goals? To answer this question, consider these questions first:
These questions have to do with the “thoughtleading” image that would best suit your business development strategy. To identify this correctly, zero in on what currently defines you as most valuable to your target market. What do you typically say at a networking event when asked what you do? What would you write down if you had to bang out a quick e-mail outlining your value proposition to a hot prospect? How do you tend to articulate the benefits to someone hiring you as you deliver your sales presentations or when pitching a new prospect? Your book should reinforce your answers to these questions—reinforcing and clarifying your value proposition. Your readers after all are potential new customers for you or at least potentially strong new word-of-mouth referral sources. Maybe you have a novel way of analyzing your clients’ hi-tech resources, a process you’ve employed again and again, with stunning results? Or are there ten common mistakes you’ve noticed that your competitors make repeatedly, but which you avoid? Perhaps there are dangers looming on the technological horizon that you’ve been advising your clients to watch out for? Topics such as these are the kinds of stuff which you can expand into the pages of a full book and bring to life in a manner that your competitors can only dream of. Are You Ready to Take the Plunge? If by now I’ve convinced you that writing and publishing a book might be worth your while, you should be ready to go. This, of course, means finding a way to set aside a large amount of time and emotional energy, coupled with the will to see this formidable project through, come what may. But for many would-be authors, the questions above are tough ones. In addition, simply carving out the necessary time can present a challenging commitment that at first glance can’t even be imagined. So, the faint of heart should not even consider actually writing and publishing a book. This is a commitment akin to every other major life goal—getting (and staying) married, having a baby, raising a family, buying a house, studying for a Ph.D., or starting a business. It will demand a lot of your time, persistence, reflection, research, organization, and writing. Yes, don’t forget that minor detail: writing—writing, more writing, even more writing, and then—rewriting! If you’re not ready to tackle a book, that’s fine, recognize it and move on. But if you are ready, start laying the groundwork. Flesh out your ideas, begin your rough first draft, research appropriate publishers or literary agents to submit a book proposal to, and go full-tilt toward finishing your final manuscript. You might consider self-publishing, which is not a bad option these days, given print-on-demand technology. Above all… get started! Once book authorship becomes a new item on your resume, you have joined a very elite club—one that will automatically lift your stature as a professional a few rungs higher. Your business prospects will elevate as well, and if you use this new tool wisely, the elevator will keep taking you to higher floors. Meanwhile, you'll put most (or all) of your serious competitors back in the lobby. Ken Lizotte Ken Lizotte is Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) of Emerson Consulting Group Inc. in Concord, which enables professional service firms to position themselves as “thoughtleaders.” This article is adapted from his new book The Expert’s Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time (McGraw Hill). He can be reached by visiting www.thoughtleading.com Toolkit for Consultants Review of Nifty SaaS ToysThe industry trend known as “Software as a Service” (SaaS) is producing some pretty ingenious new online tools. This article reviews some relatively new SaaS toys that I’ve found very nifty! Jing Project This procedure involved running a series of shell commands on Linux. Jing runs on Mac and Windows, not Linux, so I recorded a Linux command prompt that was running in a Linux VMWare instance on my Mac. When I started recording, it gave me a 3-second countdown until it turned the mic on, then it started making the recording. When I was done, the program copied the URL of the recording I had just made into my paste buffer, so that I could paste it into an email or wherever I wanted it. You also have the option to save the recording locally, but that’s old school! When a person receives my email, s/he clicks on the URL, then sees my recording or images—just via the URL! It took me a few tries to get the recording right, because my home office isn’t quite as soundproof as I’d like, and my 3-year old somehow got past the normally shut dungeon...errr…office (basement) door, and shouted loudly asking to play with Daddy. Adam@Home has nothing on this home office! Cool Toy: Jing The Jing software is free. Screencast.com is free for 60 days. After that, it costs $7/month or $60/year, if you keep the bandwidth usage below 25GB/month. Jott Jott is a replacement for digital voice recorders. I’ve long been a fan of digital voice recorders—always hoping to capture that fleeting thought before it slips away when a critical mass of neurons connect. I’ve gotten some mileage from digital voice recorders over the years, and I sometimes use the voice recorder app on my Blackberry. The problem for me is that I sometimes let messages sit for an embarrassingly long time before I get around to replaying them. Enter Jott. You create a free account on Jott.com and associate your phone numbers with it. Instead of using the voice recorder, I call a phone number, which I have set on speed-dial (866-JOTT-123). I say “Me” or “Myself” (as in “Note to self”), and then leave a message. I hear a “Got it!” reply, and then I hang up. Jott emails my recorded message to me and transcribes the text of my voice message. The transcription takes a few minutes, but it’s surprisingly accurate. I tested it with a poor cell connection, and Jott got every word right. I don’t know whether smart voice recognition software or a bunch of secretaries listening and typing away powers the service, but it works! The website provides some nice features for managing your jotts, such as building a “to do” list from them. You can also send jotts to others via distribution lists, but so far I’ve just kept my jotts to myself. Cool Toy: Jott Google Apps In addition to maintaining its King of the Hill status as the top search engine, Google has some pretty cool SaaS offerings, collectively called Google Apps. Google provides online tools for creating and collaborating in real-time on spreadsheets, documents, and PowerPoint-like presentations. Using just a browser, for example, two people can simultaneously edit a spreadsheet from different places, with each using just a browser. Each person sees the other’s changes as s/he makes her/his, with perhaps a few seconds of delay between updates. If they happen to try and edit the same cell at the exact same time, one of them may lose their changes, but the loss is limited to a few seconds of work. Similar real-time, concurrent edit functionality works for docs, and I suspect (but haven’t tried) that it works for presentations. I still like having the vast functionality of the old guard Microsoft Office apps at the ready (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel), but for many spreadsheet needs, the basic spreadsheet/presentation/doc applications provided online by Google Apps meet the need—without having to install anything on your computer. But “Wait, There’s More!” The Google Calendar is a pretty cool calendar sharing and management tool. It makes it easy to combine personal, business, and public calendars in a single view, and also it can grant varying degrees of access to different people. What I found really cool was the unexpected and free synchronization with my Blackberry. All I did was connect my Gmail email account with my BlackBerry, then one day I noticed that my BlackBerry calendar had useful info in it, despite the fact that I hadn’t put anything in. After a double-take, I noticed that the info had come from my own Google Calendar. Social Networking There are all sorts of social networking sites; some are geared for keeping in touch with professional colleges; others are geared for keeping in touch with your old high school and college crowds, and all sorts of others. I must admit, I haven’t spent much time on social networking sites other than to accept the occasional invitation, or on rare occasion, to send one. But I find things like the various sites’ weekly “who’s up to what” reports pretty interesting. Here are just a few that I’ve been dabbling with:
Just remember—even though these web sites take reasonable precautions to protect your privacy—it’s good practice to assume that anything your type will one day show up in a court room, projected onto a big screen. All that stuff is saved and can be subpoenaed! Moral of the story: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” – especially online! As Long as It’s Free … There are so many good, free tools out there that sometimes people get the sense that they shouldn’t ever pay for online software or tools, since there is almost always a free option. BZZZT! WRONG ANSWER! If computers and technology are your profession, it’s worth investing in tools to get and stay at the top of your craft. For everything from text editors to email clients to configuration management systems, usable free options are available. But free doesn’t make them the best options for you. If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, take the time to evaluate your options. In some cases, the free solutions are the best choice, but for some things, commercial solutions provide an obvious edge. For those systems you spend the most time on, insist on the best. If it happens to be free, great! If not, break out the plastic and invest in your Consultant’s Toolkit! Expect More SaaS Offerings Keep your eyes open for SaaS offerings these days, which of late are starting to offer some fairly powerful functionality (like voice recognition and dictation) online, and for free. Send Your Reviews! Got something you’d like me to mention in a future article? Send it to me at cttyler@gmail.com. Send something as simple as “Check out blah-blah-blah,” review comments, or write a full-blown review of your own, and I’ll consider it for inclusion in a future article. By C. Thomas Tyler Founded in 1976, the Independent Computer Consultants Association (ICCA) is a national not-for-profit organization of independent computer consulting firms sharing the highest ethical and professional standards. The ICCA Greater Boston Chapter Mission Statement: The ICCA offers great services and benefits to its members including business and health insurance, marketing programs, a National Conference, standard form consulting and subcontracting contracts, and many discount programs. For additional information regarding the ICCA or to search the National Membership Directory, visit the national website http://www.icca.org or the Greater Boston Chapter website http://www.icca-boston.org Legal StuffPublisher: Greater Boston Chapter of the Independent Computer Consultants Association, http://www.icca-boston.org US Mail: ICCA, Greater Boston Chapter |