Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Here's my first piece for the FT's Digital Business section - looking at just how businesses can get the most from instant messaging...

Glue that can help teams bond and gel

It is all to easy for office communications to disintegrate into endless telephone tag or firing e-mails to colleagues who are away from their desks.

So it is hardly surprising that instant messaging quickly moved from the consumer world into the enterprise – the mix of quick text chat and knowing who is logged on and ready to respond (“presence” information) was an answer to perennial problems.

But instant messaging (IM) is not just about quick conversations. IM technologies can be a social glue to help hold business communities together, allowing teams to communicate and share information without being tied up in more formal channels.

Read and enjoy!

First rule of the day: when you get an urgent calendar reminder make sure that you check the subject of the message and all of its contents.

Otherwise you will be running round in circles and panicking while looking for your company's shuttle return form so that you'll get it in in time for what turned out to be the deadline for the flat management company (which marypcb sorted out while you cooked dinner last night), which is over a month before Companies House will actually send you the form you need for your company. Which of course is why you won't find it. And the date field in your standard cover letter is auto updating, which is why it has today's address in it, not sometime at the end of last April.

Doh!

[Slaps head.]

[Takes several deep deep breaths.]

Well, at least I'll have got web filing set up in plenty of time for Fehen Consulting, so I'll save myself some cash...

However, I am an idiot.

Back to writing about web CRM then...

One of my favourite web comics, Christopher Baldwin's Little Dee, drops a rather nice little Tove Jansson reference...

( clicky for strippy )