Plan E

I was out for Sunday lunch last week with some old friends. They were bemoaning, as let’s been honest we have all been known to do even on a Sunday, some of the annoyances and idiosyncrasies of ‘corporate life’.

I found myself asking them what they were doing to try to change it. They just looked bemused. “It’s just the way it is” the collective they said.

What really interested me, was that in this specific instance they weren’t getting frustrated by ‘the big things’ - the things that may well genuinely be out of their control - like corporate strategy and direction, leadership, professional/personal development, company values etc etc etc. They were frustrated by the little things that effect day-to-day business practice and process.

And it was annoying – because the more we got into it, the more we realised that we shared a fundamental belief that if companies, departments, project teams, individuals allowed themselves the time and gave themselves the permission, we could be doing all kinds of both corporate (gaining productivity, saving cost) and personal (easing frustration) good. How? Just by making small, almost imperceptible changes and tapping into tools, experience and functionality both inside and out of the corporate network.

Now I’m no expert in this, although I’ve been known to dabble, so I suggested that the next time any of us get frustrated by something at work, we take a moment. And instead of just counting to 10 and simply getting on with it, we allow ourselves the time to sit back for 5 minutes and think about how it could be changed, or speak to someone who could help, or get onto Google – whatever! – and find out if there is a cunning different way. If there is, try it. If it doesn’t work, well, so what.

Now the results are hardly stellar so far, but one week on there’s been some interesting progress.

One of us, working on a global project team where the mammoth spreadsheet from hell flies across time zones from one end of the globe to another – making revision and version tracking almost impossible – persuaded the group to try Google Docs. So far, so good on that one. It’s not confidential information so any of those concerns don’t stand – its just information that’s hard to keep track of.

Another, frustrated by the sheer volume of email traffic that was interesting but not urgent, spent 2 hours during the week setting up folders in outlook so that he didn’t even have to worry about them hitting his inbox. He set aside 30 mins on Friday afternoon to go through them all and reckons that it saved him at least 2 hours of faffing and being interrupted and diverted through the week. So he’s pretty much net neutral so far and is hoping to reap the time reward from here on.

Another, and I really like this one, set up a group del.icio.us account for everyone on her team so that interesting stuff online could be tagged for the team to read at their leisure, rather than adding to email overload with yet another group email being sent around.

So as I said, hardly stellar, and certainly not revolutionary, but already these small changes are making a positive difference to the way they feel when they go into work in the morning whilst helping the companies they work for to boot.

And the best bit? We got to share these tips and then think about how we can apply them to our own working practices and benefit from our collective experience. Because as for my personal frustrations, nothing annoys me more at work than everyone spending the time figuring these things out for themselves.

So if you’ve changed something at work, or the next time you do something differently, drop by here and tell me about it. You’ll be doing me, and loads of other people, a big big favour and may very well learn something new in return…

Sports Personality of the Year is on the Beeb this evening, and I'm waiting with baited breath to see what the new format is going to be like as this programme, above anything else, signifys the start of Christmas and needs to be watched on a big sofa, in front of a roaring fire, with the fairy lights twinkling on the new, not yet drooping, Christmas Tree and a glass or two of mulled wine in hand. I hope they don't spoil it, as the lack of an obvious winner makes this year makes it all the more interesting, despite being a sorry
advertisement for the state of British Sport. For what it's worth, I'm rooting for Beth Tweddle (the gymnast). Anyone who is still that supple at 21 deserves to be recognised.

Anyway, whilst waiting for this highlight of the festive programming calendar, I came across a posting on John Robert's Blog , responding to the question "What was your first Amazon purchase"?. Intrigued, I had to find out for myself.

It turns out that the first purchase I can find was in early November 1998 and it was Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. How embarrasing. Infact, thinking about it I was probably simply too embarrased to actually walk into a shop and buy this at the time, and I certainly can't remember actually reading it as back then it really wasn't the kind of thing you wanted to be seen with on a daily commute.

My second purchase, shortly afterwards was Net Future: The 7 Cybertrends that will drive your business, create new wealth, and define your future". Now that's more like it. Although funnily enough, I'm not sure I ever actually read this either. A quick dig around at home and what's more I can't actually find it, so I've put my hand in my pocket a second time round as I'm now intrigued to see which of those 7 Cybertrends predicted back in 1998 hold true as we go into 2007 almost 9 years later.

Looking at my Amazon history after this and 1998 was clearly my first recorded year of online Christmas shopping, with a flurry of activity in the last 2 weeks before the 25th December. Amazing to think that back then online shopping was largely limited to books and CDs. This year, 95% of my shopping has been done online already (I'm aiming for the big 100) without a book or CD in sight.

So, a nostalgic trip down memory lane - thanks for the prompt John - and just in time for the nostaliga of another year of British sporting greatness...

We're not used to doing stealth launches here at CNET Networks UK, so our latest project - the launch of atlarge.com is an interesting experiment on two fronts.

Firstly, its the first time we've launched a 'non-media' brand in the UK market. By that I mean that atlarge.com is about functionality first. It is an information service which brings user-generated content to the fore - written by business travellers for business travellers. The only input from our editorial teams is when they too are travelling and use
the site to share knowledge as any other user would. New territory for us and exciting territory too.

Secondly, we are relying in the first instance on word-of-mouth and connected communities to populate the atlarge.com database. We figured that niche, 'social networking' is exactly that - it can only be as useful to the community it serves as the effort they put in to getting it off the ground. So we've just kind of "put it out there" and are waiting with interest to see what happens. Thanks to the teams over at sites like Mashable a number of blogs have already picked up on the service and we're hoping that if they like what they see (which they seem to) it will slowly gain momentum and deliver the value back to the community that we want it to.

So what does atlarge.com actually do? It aims to provide, with the help of people like you, the information and advice that globetrotting business travellers need to get connected from any of over 2,500 commercial airports in the world.

Travellers can tell each other what they have found useful (and not so useful) - posting descriptions and ranking information on areas such as wi-fi, 3G, power points and even the quality of coffee and seating. Check out my review of Geneva Airport (GVA) and you'll start to get the idea. As an aside, you'll notice that I didn't spend long at the airport - it always ends up being a bit of a rush and you'd be wise to never travel with me, as several colleagues who have missed flights and even ended up in wrong countries can testify...

Anyway, atlarge.com is free to use, is quite addictive once you get going and we hope that it will take some of the pain of being a road warrier away - check it out, contribute if you can, and definately let us know what you think.

Last night found me at the Women In Technology Awards held at Billingsgate Market in London, about 10 mins walk from our offices here at ZDNet UK (although 10 mins felt a lot longer in the killer heels I was wearing - next time I will follow the example of the sensible half of our party and get a cab).

An obsersvation - there were 12 of us there: 4 boys, 6 girls. Of the boys, Tom had a bowtie that wouldn't sit properly, Matt forgot the buttons to do up his dress shirt, so Mike had to lend him one of his and then we resorted to safefy pins, and Ritchie, who hasn't yet set up a Biog here (he's our FD in case you wondered, and is clearly shy) was wearing a kilt. He is Scottish tho so that was allowed.

I'm not aware of any disasters amongst the girls so clearly the moral is that you don't have to be a woman to work in technology, but when it comes to dressing up, it helps. Mind you, three of us turned up wearing the same dress which made me think that the awards should have been renamed The Stepford Wives In Technology just for us.

It was a good evening, although I did think that this may be the one event in the year that I went to where they would have organised enough female toilets to not have to queue.

Clearly, I was wrong, and ended up using the mens as usual.

What it did remind me, is that I am really very lucky to work for a technology-centric company where there is absolutely no evidence of discrimination against women at all. At least half of our broad management team is female, and the UK board that I sit on is exactly 50/50. In fact, if you fancy working here (male or female!) get in touch.

I don't consider myself a feminist by any stretch of the imagination, but was shocked to learn that at present, women still make up only 22% of the hi-tech workforce. You can see it on this site too - the majority of our readers and members are men, and we've got so used to it that we just consider it normal.

So here's a plea to the women out there who are working in tech and reading this post. The ZDNet UK community, like the company that works behind it, is aggresively gender neutral. This is a place for you to to be heard too - join in and have your say.

Finally, congratulations to last nights winners.

The relaunch of ZDNet in its current Beta format has started to cause quite a stir and as I was mooching around reading what the world is saying about the site, I came across this piece written by ex-ZDNetter Wendy McAuliffe over at Liberate Media.

Wendy mentioned that she was disappointed that much of what we've done didn't happen whilst she was here (I think Wendy left ZDNet in 2000/2001...)

Which made me think - why didn't it?! What couldn't we have done then, that we are doing now? And the truth is, I've come up with very little. Infact, I can only think of 3 things:

1. The XMLHTTP code that enables AJAX to work was produced by Microsoft as part of Web Access 2000. Whilst we don’t use XML on ZDNet.co.uk we use that module to produce our Tag Clouds and it also sits behind the “Check Username Availability” function in our registration pages. So if Wendy left in 2000 then I guess we couldn’t have done that, but I’d be willing to bet there would have been another way of doing this – it just wouldn’t have been so clever.

2. It wasn't until 2002 that broadband kicked off in the UK when Ben Verwaayen (who had just been appointed BT CEO) announced huge price cuts and the take-up rate accelerated within months. In fact, broadband developments were such a big deal that we even had the Broadband Informer newsletter on ZDNet -dedicated (funnily enough) to everything broadband and written by our very own Graeme Wearden. So again, when Wendy was here you wouldn't have been able to watch the kind of multi-media content that we now produce on ZDNet.co.uk - or very few people could have anyway as the bandwidth simply wasn't there to deliver it properly.

3. Love it or hate it, the phrase 'Web 2.0' wasn't coined until 2004, so how could we have done some of the stuff you'll find across ZDNet.co.uk now like the professional networking functionality etc before the catch-all phrase to describe this kind of stuff was invented???!

Of course, we could have invented it. It’s only a phrase afterall, and frankly, if I'm right, then the tools were there do to it when Wendy was here.

And that, as far as I can tell, is about it. Am sure the team will tell me otherwise :) but the basic point is this - the main reason why we didn't do it before is because we didn't think of it.

I'm glad we have now. This is only the beginning.