Danish furniture maker Holmris Hansen has launched this cool table. MILK is designed to remove all cable clutter from your view, and offers a lot of discrete places to store stuff as well.
Check it out here: http://www.milk.dk
- Jens Poder
A question is a powerful thing. It guides us to find the relevant answers. And knowing what questions to ask is a skill that can earn you a lot of money as a consultant.
A new batch of ChangeThis presentations have been released and one of these is "Questionating" by Corinne Miller.
Questionating is a process to develop, use and improve QuestionBanks. QuestionBanks are organized collections of thought-provoking questions, conveying expert—as well as diverse—thinking on a particular topic to inspire innovative solutions. QuestionBanks can be used anywhere decisions need to be made: new products and services, leadership, meeting and event planning, sales and marketing, strategic planning, etc.
Building a Questionbank is a 4 step proces:
- Identify question sources: Where can I find questions relevant to my goal
- Collect questions: For example; write to 30 project managers and ask them what to ask before you start your project.
- Sort
- Refine: When you have used your questions a couple of times, then cut out the non-effective questions, to get to the core selection of important questions.
I really like this approach. I reminds me of the zen-idea of starting with a beginners mind. I will try this out soon.
- Jens Poder
My colleague Claus Sølvsteen just launched a new blog yesterday, and with it, he launched a new concept: Markeshing - Marketing by Publishing.
Claus writes eloquently on how marketing is changing, in a world where everyone have the opportunity to publish their own media. Check it out!
- Jens Poder
Tags: markeshing, marketing, advertising, communication
I Mindmap all the time! I use it for brainstorming, for outlining presentations and for structuring the complex clouds of knowledge swirling around in my messy head. Sometimes I do it the old school way, markers on paper, but I also like to do it on computer.
Changing my computer platform to a MAC has rendered my existing license on Mindjets Mind Manager software useless (UPDATE: Mindjet wrote to me yesterday and told me that they actualy would let customers switch from Windows to MAC for free!). Instead, I have been trying out some free online mindmapping tools, and the one that has caught attention is a cute little one called bubbl.us.
Nice graphics and Super Fast
The cute thing about Bubbl.us is of course the graphics. I love cute, simple, “hug me” graphics, with low level of complexity in the user interface. And Bubbl.us certainly delivers on this.
Every idea has it’s own little cute glassy round-edged box. If you delete one it dissappears with a little animated explosion and a pow-sound. That’s the sort of thing that makes smiley wrinkles around my eyes.
It’s very simple to drag and drop to reposition ideas, and you can change the color of boxes.
Making new idea bubbles is very fast. As you type you just hist ENTER or TAB to start typing in a new box. This can be quite confusing, but it certainly lets you produce a lot of idea-nodes in a short time. Great for brainstorming.
I get a lot Ideas into Bubbl.us quite fast, but the result tend be a bit messy. But you can rearrange them later.
They should though consider supporting a wider range of keyboard shorts. Navigating around your mindmap with the arrows and being able to delete nodes would be nice.
I use the mouse a lot when I use Bubbl.us.
Save mindmaps online and share
You save your maps online. This means you can reach them from any computer, and you can share them with friend to do collaborative maps. You can also get a piece of code to embed it in your blog.
This is standard web2.0 features, but I haven’t really found much use for it. My mindmaps tend to be pretty personal and not very easy to share.
Compared to Applications
Compared to an application like Mindjet Mindmanager, there’s a lot of features Bubbl.us doesn’t provide.
This isn’t necessarily a big problem. A lot of features can really be a mixed blessing for an app, but there’s range of tasks that Mind Manager does that won’t be effective with Bubbl.us.
- Outlining and exporting to Word
- Handling tasks
- Very big and complex maps. Bubbl.us has a limitation in the screen-real estate. Also hierarchies between things tend to be les easy to visually comprehend
And then there’s the keyboard interface. The basic keyboard navigation is much better in a rich application.
Great for Outlining & Brainstorming
What Bubbl.us is really suited for is brainstorming and outlining.
An this is probably why I like it so much. It’s the way I start almost any creative project.
Just get a load of ideas of your mind into bubbl.us, sort them, and then switch to another app, and start producing your content.
PNG - export
One thing I really love about Bubbl.us is the export feature. You’ll find It in the lower right corner under the “menu”.
The specific feature I use is the “export to PNG file” feature. Why?
Well first of all… It’s just really convinient also to have an offline copy lying on your desktop to instantly check out.
But on top of this Bubbl.us exports your map as a beautiful PNG with a transparent background. This means, that you can use it on top of other pictures.
If I need to make an illustration for Powerpoint or Keynote, this feature will let me put a mindmap on top of the background image or other images without. This is really cool. Check it out here:
Conclusion
So all in all I’ll really recommend Bubbl-us as an online mindmapping tool for fast creative brainstormy mindmapping.
It’s not the most tooled-up mindmapper out there. My old favourite Mindmanager from Mindjet.com certainly has a lot more bells and whistles.
But the point is… most of the time these features aren’t really needed, and then they just get in the way.
Happy mindmapping.
- Jens Poder
Related links:
- Mindmeister.com - another online mindmapper. Resembles Mind Manager from Mindjet a lot. Has a couple of cool dashboard widget you can download.
- Mindomo.com - Also a Mind Manager wannabee like Mindmeister.
- How to make a mindmap - Introduction to the technique by mindmap-inventor Tony Buzan
- Mindmap Ressources Compiled - By Diyplanner; a long list of mindmapping ressources.
Tags: mindmapping, bubbl.us, tools, creativity
Have you ever failed miserably when trying to pitch an idea? Felt your energy draining away with every word leaving your mouth? And getting only halfway through your presentation before your boss started pummeling you with skeptical questions? Well… perhaps you should have prepared an elevator pitch.
Most of us rely on other peoples support to get our work done, whether we work in an organization or as freelancers. Sometimes you need to sell or get funding for an idea. In that case you have to convince some decision makers.
But you’ll also need the support of other people around you besides the boss. You’ll need the support and passion of people participating in your project. And on a broader scale you’ll need a lot of people knowing about and accepting your project, to keep them from getting in your way.
To do this you need to convince everybody that you know what you’re talking about, and that it’s of outmost importance. This is what well designed elevator pitch will do for you. It's the essence of your idea told in 60 seconds.
It’ll let you catch peoples attention, convince them of the importance of your project, and it’ll build their confidence in you. They’ll believe that you know what you talk about.
Here’s how to do it...
Get your listener hooked
Why should I care about your idea? I’m busy! And so are most of your colleagues probably. So catching their attention won’t be easy. You need a great start for your pitch. A great hook.
A good hook will be something surprising and unexpected. “Do you know we’re about to lose our largest customer to the competition? Well I have plan!” Is a basic one. It grabs the listeners attention. But please feel free to be more creative.
Know your Value Proposition
To be able to make an effective elevator pitch you need to get a firm grib of your value proposition. You can’t explain something in a short time, if you don’t know exactly what you are talking about.
I use a simple framework called an NABC for this. This is the method I learned at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park California, one of the world leading research and development firms. They have used and developed the NABC as way to ensure that all projects have considered the four basic parameters of value creation:
Need: Tell about the user need for your service. Be concrete and specific. What is the problem you're solving? Who has this problem? Real people with real problems are at the core of every value creation. You need to know these NEEDS to convince others of the relevance of your idea.
Approach: How do you solve this problem specifically? What is your take on solving it? Don’t get to specific. You’ll get a chance to tell more later. Right now you just need the general concept.
Benefits: What are the benefits of using your approach? What value does it generate for the users. Wat value does it create for your company. The more specific the better.
Competition: What is the alternative approaches in the market for solving the problem. How does your solution stand out? Is it better, faster or cheaper? This is a big one with corporate brass. Idea people tend to talk at length about their solutions but forget to tell anything about competition. This is suicide. Make your listener sure that you have a new approach that isn’t already solved by someone else.
Use storytelling
The trick is to tell it like a story. So the more concrete and human the better. Great communicators often excel at telling relevant stories, when they are giving a talk on a subject. And this very clever, cause stories are in their nature memorable.
Paint pictures with your words. Make it about people instead of numbers. What horrible conditions are these people struggling under, and how will your idea make their lives better?
And be passionate when you’re telling your story. Make other people care by caring yourself.
What are you asking for?
And finally, and very important, know what you want to achieve with your pitch. An amazing number of people forget this, and it’s quite embarrasing to see someone passionately promoting a cause, but neglecting to suggest a concrete action to be taking. So now it’s up to the listener to figure out what to do.
What are you asking for? Support? Funds? Attention? Point it out to the listener.
Often you just want the opportunity to get some time to tell about your idea in more detail, before making a deal. But sometimes you just want your listeners to think your project is cool and important, that’s ok as well.
If you have prepared the basic framework of your elevator pitch you’ll often be able to adapt it on the spot to a variety of listeners just by having a different “I would like you to” In the ending.
Preparing a solid elevator pitch will let you benefit when these opportunities suddenly appears. And as a byproduct it’ll force you to understand the essence of your idea.
- Jens Poder
I had quite a shock when I loaded all my old videos from my digital cameras unto my brand new Macbook Pro. Video Nirvana here I come, I thought, launching Imovie... and then... nothing.
All my precious videos of the kids taking their first steps and playing and having their birthdays, they DID NOT WORK! This wasn't video nirvana. It was video hell!
And this brings to part three of moving to MAC posts. How to handle all your video when you're used to a world of DivX, AVI and Mpeg file-formats.
VLC Player:
Just to calm your nerves, start by downloading this wonderful player. VLC Player. It'll play almost anything video on your mac.
Perian:
But to get the most of video on your MAC you'd like to be able to watch it in the native player Quicktime. Only then will you able to preview video using Leopards quicklook feature, which actually is quite nice.
Download and install Perian. A busload of codecs for your Quicktime player, that'll let it handle almost all formats without problems.
Flip4mac WMV Player
When using websites that embeds Windows Media (those who still do) this is a nice little feature, that let your browser and Quicktime handle windows media.
MPEG Streamclip:
Finally to be able to use Imovie to edit all your wonderfull toddler-shots, you'll need a program to convert them into .mov files. Well luckily we have MPEG Streamclip that'll let you convert your AVI's and MPEG's and DIVX's into MAC's native quicktime-movie format. Then you can open Imovie, and start editing.
And that's all you need to solve your video worries on the MAC.
- Jens Poder
Tags: MAC, video, Divx, conversion, avi
One of the main problems when moving to MAC is to find a good blog editor. A blog editor is a writing and managing tool, that will let you write in an application while offline, and then upload it to your blog.
Windows user will be using (or should be using) the Windows Live Writer, a really advanced blog editor. When moving to MAC you wont find anything as advanced as this. Instead there is a handful of less complex but quite useful apps. After some basic research I am now using the following freeware tools.
Blog Editor: Qumana
After some time I have ended up choosing the blog editor and manager Qumana. It handles all the top hosting solutions like typepad, wordpress, blogger etc. It offers a very simple and effective user interface to writing your blog post and handling tags and categories from your blog.
Inserting and uploading images is really easy. You can drag and drop and image from the desktop into your blog post, and Qumana will upload it to your blog and insert it in your post. Really easy!
It lets you insert video as snippets of code. But it can't display these embedded objects, like windows live writer does.
A nice touch is when you want to link to something, and have copied the URL to the clipboard. When you mark some text an hit SHIT-APPLE-L to insert a link, it'll automatically take the URL from the clipboard and suggest it. This really streamlines the task of inserting links.
It has a really well-designed and easy to use set of keyboard shortcuts, but support for standard text navigation like APPLE-ARROWS and ALT-ARROWS doesn't work, which is kind of annoying.
It also lacks tools for handling Header-styles (H3, H2 and such). This is a missing feature in many blog editors, and it's really annoying, if you like me use Headings a lot to subdivide blogposts.
Alternatives to using Qumana, that I chose not to use:
- ScribeFire plugin for Firefox: Simple and well integrated with Firefox. But no keyboard shortcuts. So if you want to make a lot of text bold in your text, then you'll soon be tired of reaching for the mouse.
- Marsedit2: Costs money, and is surprisingly lacking in features. It hasn't got a WYSIWYG editor but a HTML editor instead!
- Bleezer: To complicated to setup for my taste. But a nice WYSIWYG editor. Very early in development.
- Ecto: Originally developed for Linux. Resembles Qumana a lot, but... it's a little ugly and cluttered
Image Editor: Imagewell
This little baby is a lifesaver for the busy blogger. Imagewell is the tool everybody should download. Instead of firing up Photoshop to resize and crop a picture, you can drag and drop the image into Imagewell and set the size of the picture in no time at all. It even let's you FTP the picture to your server. I just save it to the desktop, and then drag and drop it into Qumana.
FTP program: Cyberduck
Here's the free FTP-program you'll love. Cyberduck is much easier to use than the old school WS-FTP i used for Windows. It let's you define bookmarks so you'll quickly be able to get to the folders you like.
Screen Dumps
And then of course there screen dumps. I didn't know how to do this in the start, but here's how to.
To enter screendump mode press SHIFT-APPLE-4. This'll get you into screen dump mode. Now you drag and drop a region, and screen capture will dump a file on the desktop (so you can drag it into Imagewell)
But if you want to take a screen dump of an entire window you can do it by hitting SHIFT-APPLE-4, and the when the screen dump cursor appears you hit SPACE. The cursor changes to a camera, and you can "snapshot" a whole window from your screen.
You could also install Jing, that'll let you snap videos of your screen to post talk-throughs of applications. I'm considering doing this in the future.
That's it! I'm am now up an running with an effective set of blogging tools. Tomorrow we'll look at video on MAC. How do you get all your AVI, DIVX and MPEGs to behave on your new MAC. Well with a few tools you'll never need to worry again.
See you tomorrow!
- Jens Poder
Moving To MAC articles:
For capturing thoughts on the run, I use a Moleskine pocketsize and a pocket lead pencil graciously sponsored by IKEA :) This is quite practical, as it lets my collect all my thoughts on the run. I used to use my cellphone as a dictaphone. This was really mobile, but I had a tendency to forget them, because processing these voice messages were rather slow.
Andrew Mason from the Did I get thing done blog, have refined this Moleskine setup using the ultraportable Moleskine Cahier and a Golf Pencil!
Check out his article right here.
- Jens Poder
I love this collection of images from the Kotaku gaming blog. He showcases the office environments of some of the most succesfull designers in the gaming industry. Most of the places looks like my bedroom, when I was teenager :) Especially the one with all the Wargames from the designers of "The Sims."
It's a strange thing really... Where I work we produce television, internet and radio. But our offices are really high tech, and strongly regulated. You don't put anything on the walls. You must use furniture chosen by the architect. And in the name of what? To look cool? I can't really figure it out.
I like the approach taken here in these pictures. It reminds me of David Kelley, the boss from Ideo design firm, showing a camera crew around the place. He pauses in front of a door, and with a smile beneath his Grouch Marx moustache and a hint of glee in his voice he says,
This is where the crazies live! This is where we do all our work.
I like it. It sends the signal to the workers, that weirdness is wanted and conformity shunted.
Check out the gallery and see the workplaces of Firaxis, the designer of "The Sims" and many more. Beware! It is different from the Unclutterer Workspace Pool at Flickr
- Jens Poder
Tags: play, work, IDEO, design, creativity
One of my recent post was about the great todo-manager for Windows, Tudumo. But since then, I have changed platform. I am now writing on a MAC. Unfortunately Tudumo was Windows-only. So I had quite a challenge on my hands. How should I handle my Getting Things Done routine on a MAC?
Well I did some research and narrowed it down to a shortlist of two apps:
- OmniFocus made by Omni group with Merlin Mann from 43folders on the team
- Taskpaper a wonderful tiny app, really cleverly made by Hog Bay Software
These were the only ones that integrated well with my GTD system. And very important, they looked nice :)
Taskpaper is the micro app with a really wonderful and innovative design, but lacking in features. Mainly it lacked a good "fast capture".
OmniFocus is the complete all in one package, but slightly bloated, and cursed with a rather non-intuitive keyboard-layout.
In the end I chose OmniFocus because I lacked a couple of critical features in the Taskpaper, but I would really recommend checking it out.
So here's how I use Omnifocus for GTD.
Omnifocus for GTD
OmniFocus has a couple of really great features for GTD'ers. Unfortunately the richness of features offered are a little overwhelming, especially in the beginning. It really could use some streamlining.
But lets run through the basic GTD phases.
Capturing Stuff
One of the main reasons that I ended up using OmniFocus is the nice capture function in Omnifocus.
Just hit CTRL-ALT-SPACE and Omnifocus will launch the capture window.
The great thing about the capture-tool in Omnifocus, is that it gives you the option to add project and context info right away, and as you start to type, Omnifocus will start to guess what context or project you're looking for. If you're not certain where to put it, you just wait, and it'll just end in your Inbox.
Capture with Omnifocus is fast. Hit hotkeys. Type. Choose project and content. Enter. Done!
Planning your Projects
The main concept in Omnifocus is the way you switch between planning and viewing actions. The designers of Omnifocus have come up with the idea to separate these different phases in GTD.
So while most applications require you to plan actions and chose actions to execute in the same view, Omnifocus offers a special view for each of these phases in the GTD proces.
So when you plan your projects and next actions you do it in "Planning Mode" (APPLE-1)
Here you can add new projects. Your projects are the containers for your actions.
When you begin to plan your project, you can list up all the steps you need to complete to finish it, and define the contexts (@home, @phone etc) in which these actions will be done.
When you switch out of "planning mode" to "context mode" (APPLE-2) you will see your list of next actions. Here you'll only see "available" actions. So Omnifocus will only list the first action from your project. When you tick this off as done, Omnifocus will grab the next one from the list. This is really clever!
If you want a project, where all actions can be done as soon as you feel like it, you can change the project-type to "parallel" or a "single action bucket". Then Omnifocus will put all the actions on the Next Actions List.
Advandced Planning with the inspector
The type of a project can be set by clicking on an icon on the project header.
But I'll recommend that you get into the habit of using the inspector. This is summoned with APPLE-SHIFT-I.
The inspector is context-sensitive. So if you have activated a project it'll let you
- Change the type of project.
- Put a project on hold for later or mark is a completed.
- Set a default context for a project (very convenient).
If you have activated and action, the inspector let's you modify basic stuff like the context and project of an action. But it also lets you set a start date and a due date for the action. This is really cool for deferring actions.
When you set the start date of project to someday in the future, this is the day the action will become available on your Next Action list. I use this all the time.
The hidden SWITCH button
Switching between planning and context mode will often be something you want to do when you're handling a planned action. Perhaps you're skimming your contexts on your next actions list and come across and action for a project, that isn't the actual NEXT action.
So you want to get into the project in "planning mode" for the action, and replan a little by inserting the actual next actions into the project.
Omnifocus have a great little hidden tool for this. If you choose customize toolbar (view > customize toolbar) you'll find the SWITCH button. Drag this unto your toolbar.
Now when you find action, where you need to replan something, you just hit switch to take you from project to context and the other way around. It's really neat.
Processing
So, processing in Omnifocus is really easy. You'll be able to assign actions to projects and contexts really easy thanks to the autocompleting input fields.
Adding new projects in planning mode, and having quite a lot them won't mess up your system, because you get to skim next actions only when looking at the context list.
If you don't put a context on an action it'll just sit there in your project list. This is a handy way to handle someday/maybe items. I put these in a couple of someday/maybe projects, without assigning contexts.
There's a special type of contexts called "waiting" if you need to keep yourself reminders of delegated tasks.
And you can defer actions to a specific time in the future by adding start dates.
Everything you need to handle a GTD system is available, when you get to know Omnifocus.
A bit to complicated
And this is perhaps my primary concern with Omnifocus. It is a quite complicated application.
It offers a lot of pretty complicated tools, that just clutters the app, and overshadows the main tools of Omnifocus.
You can for instance design your own views, called perspectives. This is really quite over the top, and it seems more like a bad compromise caused by lack of focus on offering users a few really welldesigned filters/views. Keyboard shortcuts is another headache. I have used apps like Tudumo and Taskpaper, where an intuitive keyboard layout lets you do everything efficiently.
In Omnifocus I find myself reaching for the mouse all the time.
The keyboard shortcuts are poorly chosen. Core functions like adding actions and projects are difficult hard to remember three-finger shortcuts. I constantly confuse adding projects (SHIFT-APPLE-N) and adding actions (CTRL-APPLE-N).
I miss a stringent concept for the user-experience when using Omnifocus. When I use an app like Omnifocus I want to feel efficient and competent.
If Omnifocus wants to be the primary MAC application for todo-lists, and charge a hefty 80$ for a license, then they need to apply som focus to this. The user-experience is simply under to much pressure from an avalanche of features.
A system you can Trust
But even though Omnifocus is haunted by these interface problems, I will recommend it to anyone using GTD.
The basic design that splits planning and context mode in two separate work areas is a really powerful concept.
It lets you get all your stuff of your mind into projects in planning, but it only serves you the relevant next actions on your todo lists.
When you put something in there, you can rest assured, that it will pop up on your context list at the right time sometime in the future. And that's really cool. It actually helps you reach a state of "Mind like Water"
You can check it out yourself by downloading it with a 14-day trial from Omni Group.
- Jens Poder
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