infoarch

Location-based web services are hot these days. Even though the amount of people is limited, but growing rapidly . I enjoy using and experimenting with Foursquare . Currently I can't give you many examples of how location-based services have helped me (except for the fact that I'm Mayor of six places and I was awarded some cool badges...). But I'm sure I will be able to soon. I think it's just interesting to use follow this area and see how others are using it to generate business. For companies I think there are many ways it can be useful. For one location-based services can be used as a people finder. And if you relate interests/expertise to those people, it's also an expertise finder. At least you could know where to find a person with/without a certain expertise. Current location-based applications will give you a 2D map telling you where to find that person. One thing I hope will happen is that location services will also be available in 3D ( Layar with Fo...

If you're not from Holland, you probably don't know the largest walking event in the world is currently going on in Nijmegen , my home town. It's called the 'Vierdaagse' (in Dutch. Literally: the 4 day one) or 'the Walk of the World' . It's a great event for participants and spectators. The whole city of Nijmegen is flooded with people from all over the world (people from 67 countries participated this year!). Men and woman of 65 years and older have to walk 30 kilometers for four days to get a medal. Men younger between 16-65 have to walk 4x50 kilometers. And ladies walk 4x40 k's. Very long walks, that require lots of training, focus and determination! Yesterday I volunteered to give water to the walkers (- you may have noticed my tweets /here are some pictures ). I love doing that. It brings back lots of memories of the hardship and joy I experience walking 4x50 two years ago . It's great to see about 45.000 people walking by focused on reac...

Luis Suarez , one of IBM's well-known social media evangelists and email killer, has a really nice post titled "Forget social strategy, think social philosophy: Hippie 2.0 ". I hope you go ahead and read it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about his post (by leaving your comments on Luis' blog). I'll insert my thoughts here (that don't only apply to social media, by the way): Nice post, Luis! I agree talking about the underlying philosophy and/or concepts of social media is insightful and helpful. I find talking in this way to employees and managers helps. As an IT manager in the company I work for said: "When deciding to do an IT investment let's not talk about money/ROI first, but first make a decision based on the story." In your terms: The philosophy should make sense and be understood first.

When do you have enough information to make a next step or a decision? As you may know I love to process lots of information. Depending on the type of information I'll dive into it deeply or just dip my toe in it. After processing lots of information deciding when enough is enough has become easier for me. But it's hard for me to describe when I stop taking in information. Dave Snowden's Cynefin model has helped me in this sense. (By the way Snowden is currently summarizing the Cynefin model/approach/concept in several posts . The Cynefin model basically says: look at cause and effect. Is the cause and/or effect clear? Is the relationship between both clear? Depending on your answer different 'next steps' should be taken. For instance if the relationship between cause and effect is completely unclear. This is the complex domain. Probing is the thing to do. Don't go a read volumes of books and articles. Probe and see what happens, then act, etc. Even though ...

Recently I did something stupid and I want to share it with you to keep you from doing the same. (Or maybe I'm just the only one who would do this...) For some time now I'm a happy user of Dropbox . Dropbox is basically your personal hard drive in the cloud. I'm using it to store a large part of my personal files. Dropbox works via a website, but you can also approach your files via Windows Explorer (as your other files categorized in folders). Recently I had to move my Dropbox folder to a different part of my computer (corporate disk quota problems...). After thinking it through a bit I thought: Ok, I can just copy this folder to elsewhere. If things go wrong I'll still have them in the cloud (because Explorer syncs my files with my files on the internet/in Dropbox). So I copied them and everything seemed to be OK. But every now and then we have a corporate sync tool making sure your corporate files can be accessed everywhere/everytime when you disconnect your l...

Some time ago I blogged about a course I followed: Realistic Influencing . I promised I would write about day three as well. Here's my list of learning points: When in a discussion you have opposite conclusions look for facts and criteria (refer to previous post) you agree upon and/or have in common and starting talking from there. Remember to summarize someone's criteria when you think you see one and ask for feedback to see if you're correct. We all have several different voices in our head. You can give them names. Like my Einstein voice telling me to be creative, think out-of-the-box, etc. But this voice can have contradictory voice telling me to be pragmatic for instance. Talk about these voices out loud in a conversation, it helps people understand what going on in your head. It also buys you time. During the course we also looked at Hersey & Blanchard's situational leadership matrix. I really like that model. It's a great model to use to ...

I've been wanting to point to a series of booklets about the future of work . These booklets have been put together by Novay . One of Novay's projects is about Future Workspaces. They have been and are conducting practical and fundamental research in the are of the new way of working. The booklets contain many insights from there work. The booklets are great to give away to management.