Are you?
Creating Culture Together
A community leader asked me today about a question on social media:
Is Social Media detrimental to productivity in the workplace?
Here is my response:
Basically what is happening is that many employers are loosing quality educated people because the prohibit these types of activities in the workplace. I might be different ,but I actually encourage social media use in the workplace and expect communication on that media to be like any other communication used in the office.
Since social media to the 20/30 age group crowd is like a pen and paper to the other generations by actually removing the ability to use this technology in the workforce we are actually putting a message out that says “we are not interested in the 20/30 something crowd”.
That group of our society are flocking to other communities that have companies that embrace this type of activity in the work place and shunning smaller cities that might “hang on” to old values not because they don’t want to but they fear the future.
A forward thinking blogger said yesterday “Sometimes we spend too much time defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.”
Last weekend Greg and I spent some great time in Franklin TN absorbing the culture. What a great place to see young, old, educated, spiritual, physically fit people working and living- creating culture together.
Creating a culture of EDUCATED people is a key to a any successful community.
What are some ways you can create culture in your community?
How are you using social media in your workplace?
What are some of your rules for using social media in your workplace?
Email Clean Up
Recently I have been working to decrease the amount of email that hits my inbox. Over the years I have used rules inside of outlook to automatically move messages from some senders to various folders inside of outlook and review them when I have time.
Now the problem exist that those folders are becoming over flowing.
Google Reader has helped me greatly to improve my email organization. Many emails that I receive are also available as RSS feeds so I have unsubscribe from the emails and subscribed to the RSS feeds through Google Reader. Google reader is organizing all my once emails into a nice RSS feed. An example I read several hundred blogs. I used to have emails come in whenever new blogs are posted to remind me to read them. With Google Reader I no longer have to subscribe- they come to my Google reader.Google reader gives you several other tools. If you have a item that you think others might like to read you can email to them right out of Google Reader.
Google Reader also allows you to create a shared items page of your favorite reads for others to read. You can read my shared items page at https://nibbypriest.com/recomended-reading/.
Using all this new web 2.0 technology I still get the dreaded forward messages from many people. Most of which I always delete.
I found http://www.stopforwarding.us/ its a great kind way to encourage people who send you those redundant forwards to stop.
What have you done to help rid yourself of email hell?
Email Bomb!
We just returned from a few days of adventure and relaxation and just plain ole doing something different with my niece and nephew River & Sister Kally in St Louis Missouri.
We did several things all of were quite different and somewhat ordinary.
We laughed a lot, played games, talked listened to music. All good.
Constantly I am working because of my *choice* to have technological gadgets (e.g. iPhone) and make myself totally connected. I realized what a impact that has on my ability to disconnect. Having and being a part of a small business has its perks, but many times you pay the cost in other areas of your life.
I constantly checked my iPhone for the latest email messages. Several came and really didn’t realize how many came in till I consciously decided not to look at it every time I heard the chime of a new email in the box. I felt the need to constantly check my twitter feed and my Facebook notifications.
Many times when I looked at my email they were another “bomb email” from the office and it put a damper on my mood and ability to communicate with the people that I was with.
So I few times I felt this was a negative in my ability to have a good time on vacation.
Do you think it is important when you go on vacation to turn off your email and other means to be connected?