Working With The System

I just finished reading a post by a buddy of mine, Ross Johnson over at 3.7 Designs. He was talking about the need to develop systems in business. From what I've experienced, he is absolutely right.

In order to succeed and grow my business, the methods I used to use have had to evolve. For example, when I was only consulting part time, I could easily keep track of the jobs just in my head. Not long after I went full time, though, and more business started rolling in, I found that just trying to keep things in my memory wasn't going to work.

Now, I've got a two-tiered system to keep track of my various projects. I keep a brief status message on my white board for each client. It's just their name and a one-word status message ("discussion", "quoted", "approved", etc), but it keeps things much more organized and gives me a birds-eye view of the status of my company. The second tier is a spreadsheet where I keep track of the details of the project, including contact information, work specifications, and next steps.

I also have a system now which keeps me in contact with my business network. Making calls, attending networking events, sending out my ezine, and meeting with people one-on-one all fall into this system. Using it, I not only have the benefit of a daily blueprint of what I'm doing, but can also analyze my processes and make improvements.

I fully expect these systems to keep developing over time as my business continues to grow and its needs change. The old ones will evolve and I'll come up with new ones to streamline other activities with the ultimate goal of being as efficient and as effective as possible.

After all, the goal of my business is to support my life, not the other way around.

So, what parts of your life could benefit from developing a system?

Remember The Milk Add-On

I just wrote about "Remember the Milk" in my e-zine this past week. It's a great tool to keep track of all of the tasks you might have to do in your everyday life. A number of folks who follow David Allen's "Getting things DONE" teachings apparently swear by it.

Today I found out about a nifty new add-on for RTM if you are also a Gmail user and your browser is Firefox. This tool displays your RTM task list right alongside your email in the browser window. No longer do you have to switch windows in order to add new items to your task list. Everything is right there.

I've already installed it. I'll have to let you know if it radically transforms my life or anything.

So, what tools do you use for your task lists?

Best Laid Assumptions

About a week ago, our area had almost a foot of snow fall on us. Flights were cancelled, schools had snow days. It was a veritable Winter Wonderland. With that much snow, we were pretty much guaranteed a White Christmas.

Now, due to temperatures in the 40's and the torrential rains we had overnight, I'm looking out on a landscape which definitely doesn't fit that definition.

Of course, the lack of a White Christmas probably won't kill me or even inconvenience me much for that matter, but it does put me in mind of more serious examples of counting on things staying the same.

I'm working on updating and upgrading the website for Bruce Donovan Construction. In talking with Bruce it was clear that he understood that he not only had to be on the Web, but he had to look good on his site and provide his visitors with what they wanted -- in this case a portfolio of current and completed jobs, including photos.

Bruce could have ignored the situation, but more and more people are making their decisions based on information they get from the Web. If he hadn't met the need, I'm sure one of his competitors would have.

Construction isn't by any means the only industry where the technology of the Web is changing the playing field. Think of the difficulties that travel agents have had over the last decade. Now, you'd better be able to plan my whole vacation for me (at ridiculously low cost), otherwise Expedia is waiting. Local booksellers? As if the 800-pound gorilla which is Borders weren't competition enough, the 80-ton dinosaur of Amazon might easily crush you and never even realize you were there.

Even in my own business of web-development, nothing is assured. Tools are coming out which could easily make me obsolete. Website templates, gadgets and widgets, high school students who can undercut me -- these are all factors which I must be aware of. What value can I add which can offset them (and, worse, offset those which I never would have expected)?

I don't really have any answers right at the moment, but you can be sure I'm keeping an eye out.

So, how has technology changed your business, for good or for ill?

More TV on Your Desktop

Yesterday I wrote about Hulu, a service which allows you to play high-quality streamed video of both current and classic television programs on your desktop. Hulu is in private beta right now, which means if you want to use the service, you have to sign up to be a beta-tester and then wait for them to sent you an invitation.

This procedure can take some time so, if you would like to test the offerings of Hulu while you are waiting, you can point your browser to OpenHulu. This is one of several services which are licensed to stream the Hulu content. The site is still a little rough -- they are openly asking for help to refine the interfaces -- but the content is the same as you will get on the main Hulu site.

As an aside, I am continually bemused by the variety and quality of services which are coming out on the Web. I've been using the Web since the days of the earliest visual browsers and I remember when streaming audio was choppy and difficult to listen to. Now we have remarkably clear video streaming and Hulu is already experimenting with high definition video.

Amazing stuff.

So, what Web stuff have you found to be the most surprising and cool?

TV on Your Desktop

I was fortunate enough to be reading TechCrunch today when the notice went up that there were some private beta invitations available for the much-anticipated Hulu.com service.

What? You've never heard of it?

Hulu is a site which provides premium content on the Web. "Premium content" includes both current and classic programs from a variety of providers, including NBC Universal, FOX and a smattering of others.

When I logged in I was able almost immediately to stream a recent episode of "Monk" to my computer screen. I checked out "The Office" and browsed through a number of clips from the Sci-Fi Channel, including their recent "Tin Man" miniseries. I was especially thrilled to discover that Hulu has the complete run of one of my favorite short-lived shows, "Firefly".

The video quality was remarkably good. Despite that, my desktop computer had no problems keeping up with the playback. My "so old that Moses must have brought it down" laptop was even able to do a fairly respectable job (though I didn't try to run it on full screen mode -- I'm not expecting miracles, after all).

The videos show with "limited commercial interruption". In the case of the hour and 26 minute "Firefly" pilot episode, this meant that there were 5 30-second commercials. Not a big deal, but if you really can't stand commercials, then you may have a hard time since there isn't any convenient way to fast-forward (though you can attempt to restart the video after the ad spot).

Some interesting features include the ability to "pop-out" the video to a separate smaller window, go to full screen mode, and even to embed clips or even whole videos in your content. The latter facility even allows you to specify a smaller chunk of the video if you wanted to make commentary on a specific part of the offering. I would have loved this tool back when I wrote about meeting Gil Gerard of 1970's "Buck Rogers" fame (Hulu has a selection of Buck's adventures in their library).

I'll be interested to see how this develops. Right now the catalog of videos includes whole seasons of episodes, but not usually the entire run of a show. Will they continue to add episodes until the entire run is available? Will the episodes expire? Do people even want to watch TV this way?

So, how would you use the Hulu service? Or would you?