SubscribeIn this pre-Christmas, bumper edition of The Commscafe Chat you will find your two intrepid investigators of all things ‘Business Communication’ considering the following:
On organisation versus creativity :::
Lee admits he is slightly more disorganized than most — he couldn’t even organise a drink in a brewery; Allan finds no difference in his output whether his desk is neat and tidy or, as Lee’s is usually, a complete schemozzle; Lee finds that all of his creative juices can get poured into looking at ‘organization’ as a mini-project in and of itself, but that the project is only short-lived. Both Allan and Lee love nothing more than big sheets of A3 paper and plenty of pencils and pens to get the creative juices flowing for our clients. Lee then progresses his doodlings via MindManager mind-mapping software. Allan tells his clients “don’t go in and start creating your presentation with PowerPoint!” Lee raves about Beyond Bullets, Cliff Atkinson’s book and blog. Both Allan and Lee rave about Garr Reynold’s superb blog Presentation Zen.
On organizing rss feeds in GreatNews (and other feed readers) :::
Lee references Mitch Joel and his discussion about organising feeds. Lee questions how he can follow 250 feeds, Allan says he follows 400+ and Shel Holtz reckons he follows around 700. Whilst two years ago we might have been able to scoop a story, these days with 55million blogs around, that’s highly unlikely to happen (except for Rubel, for example). Where value is added these days, Allan argues, is in providing commentary — the ‘what this means’ factor. But should one add personal, non-business, feeds to one’s blogroll? Or indeed post personal, non-business information? Both of them explain how they organise their feeds, noting that some days the newest bloggers around (such as some of Robert French’s Marcom/PR students at Auburn Uni and Robert’s alumni) are the best reads of any of them. Allan pines for the day when an intelligent blogreader can determine how important a post is, based on your previous tag history, to which Lee wouldn’t be surprised if Google were already working on it.
On offline blog editors :::
Lee shocks Allan by confirming that he has indeed once more attempted to use RocketPost, but goes on to confirm why he again dumped it and sticks with his beloved Zoundry — whereas RocketPost has had a chequered (to say the least) history, Zoundry has never stopped working for him, their support and development team are ‘on the ball’ and incredibly helpful, and Zoundry integrates beautifully with GreatNews, Lee and Allan’s news/feed reader of choice.
On Allan’s two year blogging anniversary :::
Lee congratulations Allan on his two-year milestone, and lets him know that we miss him when he’s busy. Allan worries about Lee’s recent hospitalisation and is glad to hear that things are okay now.
‘Draft’ versus ‘No Draft’ :::
Allan and Lee agree to disagree that the draft is a good idea. Allan thinks that the maturation process is not for the military or government to sort out on behalf of parents; Allan thinks that the Draft couldn’t be any less than three years because it takes so long to train someone up to be useful, whereas Lee thinks that you don’t need to train draftees up to be specialists. Allan thinks that letting these draftees working around the community means that you have plenty of sullen people who would resent having missed two years of job or study possibilities. Both Lee and Allan volunteered to serve their country and agree to disagree over the Draft issue.
Agree with them? Disagree? Let them have it — both barrels! Drop your comments on the show blog, or even better send a Waxmail to our new Gmail account: commscafe at gmail dot com.
All in all, 44 minutes of caffeine-fuelled hyperbole and satire, which you can either download and listen to right away, or else subscribe to via your rss podcatcher. And if you are an iTunes user, you can find our podcast in the iTunes Music Store (for free, of course!) Beware, though: iTunes has a funny habit of not picking up all of our chats; you are better off copying our rss feed and then, in your copy of iTunes, go to ‘Advanced’ in the top menu bar, ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ and paste in our rss feed there.
Until next week: take it easy, take some risks, take your hands out of your pockets when you talk to me.
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Thanks for the mention Lee. I’m going to check out this episode right away
hello
i just visited ur website…check out this 3d mind mapping tool Nelements http://nelements.net
zahid
Thanks for the mention, fellas. We appreciate your support.
As for blogrolls, I fondly remember the day I made Allan’s “Coffee Stain at the Bottom of the Cup” section of the list. I still tear up a bit at the thought of it.
The Draft? I didn’t serve in the military. Almost did, but chose college. Actually, I wish I had, now. I did, however, serve in nonprofit areas for about 10 years.
I’d support a universal service draft that would either be military service or community service (Peace Corps, Americorps?). Perhaps it could be configured so that you began your service between the age range of 18 to 23. This way participants might choose to enter after high school or after college. Serve two years and you’re out, if you wish.
That being said, I do agree that the all volunteer path will likely do a better job of bringing in the best, and most motivated, individuals. Forced service too often brings in the wrong people for the wrong jobs … unmotivated and more trouble than they are worth.