October 15 is White Cane Safety Day. So what’s the deal with the white cane?
I collaborated with the Society for the Blind to understand.
See what’s possible at vspblog.com 
White Cane Safety Day
Reply
Tag Archives: collaboration
…a Perfect Meeting?
Meetings. Meetings. Meetings. If used intelligently, meetings can help to share sensitive information face to face, discuss and gather information, educate and motivate, direct and decide. But if not managed correctly, meetings can kill productivity, waste valuable resources, or demotivate employees.
Read Matthew Hussey’s post: “7 Steps to a Perfect Meeting” and see if there are suggestions you can use.
Socialcast to the rescue
Social networking exploded at my workplace with the recent soft launch of Socialcast.
As an internal-use-only social networking tool, Socialcast opens up a conversation space that knocks down territorial walls, expedites knowledge sharing, and builds community.
For example
Just this month, our mobile clinic team began sharing their experiences on the road as they serve various communities, the underserved, the uninsured, and victims of natural disasters. Before, attempts to communicate back to us at corporate consisted of emails with attached photos that bogged down servers, created duplicate copies, and often missed entire departments of interested audiences not served by the email sender.
Now, they post a quick update on Socialcast, add a photo (linked to, not copied a gabillion times), and subscribers immediately see the update.
Resistance is futile
Yes, we do have resistance to this tool. I’ve heard “geez, not another site to go to. I already read email and our intranet.” Or, “I don’t get Twitter and I hate Facebook.” And I understand those fears. Continue reading
Draw me a picture (at SXSW)
Not able to attend SXSW (the South by SouthWest conference), I have to live vicariously through the tweets, blog posts, slideshares, and other conference notes from attendees who happen to be among my social media contacts.
So, this set of hand-drawn notes by ad agency Ogilvy appeals to me on several angles.
First, it’s visual. Colorful. Image-based, more than text-based content.
Second, it’s good for business. Clever that this agency differentiated itself from others, the illustrations open potential business opportunities for Ogilvy, simply because presenters and followers who request a free 11×17″ print might linger, browse, and perhaps do business with Ogilvy.
Third, it’s cleverly different. Unlike the presentations posted on other sites, notes posted on blogs, and photos and tweets, this visualization of the content got my attention.
Prepare to be visually fascinated!
See http://ogilvynotes.com/
Wiki while you work
What’s a wiki?
Our intranet pagemasters participated in a lively discussion surrounding the use of wikis for collaborative workspaces.
- Cynthia Q, my crime partner in our portal group, first layed out the wiki landscape for me several months ago, demo’ing its features and showing me how editing permissions work.
- Just the other day, TaeAnn, my bud in the Customer Care division, wowed the pageMasters with a demo of how four (five?) teams in her division have run with the wikis, using it for team solutions, info sharing, decision-making, reference and resource noting, etc.
- Information Technology has a dozen pockets of techies, project managers, and other early adopters using wikis for instantly-accessible repositories of constantly shifting team info, code snippets, system notes, trouble-shooting tips, and shift-coverage historical reference.
I’ve been waiting for more than a few months until the right topic and collaborative space idea appeared. Finally, today, I played with the wiki and here’s why.
Continue reading
"geeWHIZ" 