the blog Synergy

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Help!

We are going to need a lot of activity from new bloggers in the next 30 days to reach our original goal of 100 posts by 100 bloggers in 100 days. Currently, there are 50 members on the 100 Bloggers team, but only 26 have posted. Today is Day 70 of the effort. Our deadline is December 30.

Please send recommendations, etc... to 100bloggers@gmail.com!

Monday, November 28, 2005

All You Can Eat Pickles


All you can eat pickles with every meal! Check out this blurb at Seth's Blog.

Friday, November 25, 2005

The death of a genius

Farwell George

Some folks from other parts of the world will not know him well.

George Best - my greatest football hero is dying.

It is Friday 12.40 pm here in England and all soccer fans are awaiting the announcement of George's death.

He is joining God and heaven will be richer for his presence.

God bless you George.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for:

for being able to write
for having such good friends
for being able to run
for having a good family
for having a good job

for just being able

My thanks to you for your contributions to this life!


More blogs about happy thanksgiving

Monday, November 21, 2005

Slacker Manager on Motivation

Researchers say,
"People with low job satisfaction are most likely to encounter emotional burnout, reduced self-esteem, anxiety and depression..."

Visit Slacker Manager for a link to a "nice free e-book (with) good content and pretty pictures."

...

Bioteaming Manifesto

I just posted on an article I found on Ken Thompson's blog and as I continued to explore, I found this manifesto that I think would be most interesting for us to explore.

If there is a good answer to the question he raises, we might be able to use it.

Cooperative processes are not the automatic results of implementing collaborative, real-time communication technologies, but the result of a carefully designed and systematically maintained virtual team development plan.

For those of you who have already exposed themselves to the positive advantages made available by the use of cutting-edge communication and collaboration technologies, this should sound as a familiar melody. How many times have you been witness to technologically-based collaboration projects that have miserably failed? Why is there so much disjoint between technology potential and the productive use that business team members make of them?

If the solution is not in the technology enabling such networked business teams to easily interoperate, where is it then?

I'll be reading the rest of this shortly.... I am intensely curious now...


Updated: The manifesto was published by ChangeThis in November, 2005.

Credit for trying

I read about a new effort to develop a standard in The Bumble Bee today. I must say that in this case, I'll give them credit for trying but reserve final judgement until I see what the outcome is.

Frank Post, Marketing Director of British Standards said,

"With outsourcing and off-shoring becoming typical operations for business, there is an increased emphasis on managing effective external relationships. In larger organizations there is also often a need to manage internal relations between businesses and departments. The new standard on relationship management will provide a structure for managing these effectively".

“The standard will address the most challenging aspect of relationship management by providing a strategic framework to facilitate cooperation and integration. It will have wide applications for Government, Industry and Societal organizations on how to collaborate and manage valuable business relationships,” said Mr Post.

I can see standards for processes, whether service or manufacturing but for managing relationships? Gee have we come thus far that we need a standard on how to behave when working together?

Let see, we already have policies on diversity, affirmative action, sexual harrassment... the list goes on. I guess I answered my own question.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Some rambling 'Trevor thoughts'

As my guilt trip for not posting anything for a while on Blog Synergy here are a few un-coordinated thoughts on a cool but sunny afternoon in England

I have noticed how some Blogs have more and some Blogs have fewer comments. I have noticed that there seems often to be a sort of pause in Blogging. Is that just my imagination or is there a sort of trend emerging?

I visit Tom Peters Blog every day for my 'Tom fix' but even that one has slowed down recently.

I suspect we all have regular visitors to our own Blogs and we all must keep our Blogs 'alive' and 'interesting.'

People are all busy and like everyone else I do not have a chance to visit Blogs as frequently as I could or indeed should - but for me it really is a simple case of balancing precious time.

What do others think?

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Lisa Williams - Local Blogging

Via Halley's Comment, I found this good piece on Local Blogging by Lisa Williams.

A fairly long piece compared to most blogging posts but well worth it.

Lisa tells of how she developed H2OTown and began writing her "citizen journal" to capture and report the info that doesn't make it to the papers at all, or makes it to the papers late. Watertown has a weekly paper that doesn't publish much real news and when they do it is well after the news was really new.

The decline of newspapers has been discussed well elsewhere. Lisa provides a nice summary from her perspective on how that is really happening and how the growth of "citizen journalism" will step up to fill that void when the local papers stop the printing presses.

Read it!

Two examples in her posting of blogs that are serving the purpose of providing local news for their community. One is a group effort, multiple authors. One is a solo effort. Both are successful. I would tend toward the group effort. No single point of failure. Others can help cover. And each point of view contributes to the whole. The multiple view point would help address any question of balanced reporting, or would it?

What do you think?

Monday, November 14, 2005

Always carry a pencil

When you see the title as "always carry a pencil" you might think of trial and error, learning from mistakes, starting over... and that is a form of collaboration.

Patti Digh
talks of words, thoughts, even living life in the margins.

Read Patti's posting. I give you permission to follow the link then return to continue here. (Even if you don't return here, you have my recommendation and encouragement to read Patti!)

Marginalia enables the sharing of the topic and more importantly, those thoughts that lie off the topic as well. This is also called co-creation is it not?

There is joy in approaching something with clean margins. Virgin thought comes to mind and where does one take it from here/there? The world is open to all possiblities.

There is also wonder in approaching something with writing in the margins. You do not approach it alone. You are there with more than the author. The path less traveled becomes an option.

The pencil/highlighter is good for hard copy. Commenting (on blogs) is good for soft copy.

Where do we go from here?
You can help to take us there!
This is open for comments, don't be bashful.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Third Age Blog Carnival

Yes, a new carnival starts this week on the Third Age Blog. It will rotate amongst volunteers each week thereafter.

The current schedule can be found here.

Guess what?

If you look closely, you'll recognize one or more of the bloggers with a posting in the first carnival when it comes out on Tuesday.