Month: January 2005

Phone found but still not working

I found my phone! Where was the phone? In a snack box that had been in the bag I carried onto the plane. While on the plane the phone must of fell into the box and the just put away on the top shelf in the pantry!

Called Three at 2:30pm Thursday, spoke to the call centre in India and was told it would take 3 – 4 hours to get re-activated. By bed time on Thursday night still not active.

Friday morning called at 11:30am, this time I was told that the process takes 24 hours and their servers are running slowly. I asked if the process could be sped up and was told “no it is all automated”. Friday at 3:30pm, still no service, so I called again. This time I was told that the issue would be escalated and that the call centre operator would call me when the phone was activated, ETA 6-12 hours.

Today, 9:15am, I can receive calls, but not make them. Called Three again. Was told the issue would be escalated (again) and it would take up to 24 hours. Asked if I could speak with the department who would resolve the problem and was told they do not accept incoming calls. My only option was to wait until the job was completed.

9:30am, called Three again to see if the problem had really been escalated. This time the operated said that the issue had just been escalated (what happened yesterday I will not know) and it would take 2 – 3 hours to fix. I suggested that he did not make promises that would not be kept, so he then said it will take 24-48 hours more before the phone is activated!

I am now waiting on Three to process the request. Frustrating on top of everything else!

Podcasting, knowledge management & learning

On a raining Sunday morning here in Sydney I found an post from Cameron Reilly where he mentions he has his first podcasting client. Great to see organisations looking at new technology as part of their employee comm’s toolkit, hopefully he will give us all an update as to how it progresses.

I have written a couple of times about the introduction of RSS into the workplace and the potential for RSS to be used to deliver both learning and knowledge objects directly to employees. On Friday I began thinking about how OPML could be used to deliver complete courses to employees, and the RSS feeds have the content which is a mixture of text and enclosures. The potential of it all this is huge, I feel we have some exciting times ahead for workplace technologies.

Updated: Added a link to Cameron’s original post, opps

Blogfolios?

I have written a couple of times in the past about ePortfolios and how I personally feel by leveraging blogs and wilki’s we could quite easily build a ePortfolio without the need of specialised tools.

A couple of days ago Brian Lamb posted about how he and a friend (well mostly a friend) have modified MT to develop a portfolio for his work. The result seems quite good, and if a method of “certify” work was found the result might just satisfy the requirements of a complete ePortfolio.

On an interesting note comments on his blog question the whole need for ePortfolios which certainly require learning professionals to have a think about just taking an offline concept into the online world is the appropriate course of action. This thought process should not be limited to just learning, but everyone who is looking to develop an online version of a business process.

What a week

Well today is my last day in my current job, I have 1 week off, move to Melbourne and then on Jan 31st I start at WMC.

This week started off in mixed fashion, we successfully found somewhere to live in Melbourne, after 5 hours of physically looking (about 20 online before we went). However I lost my mobile phone somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney, while this is one way to stop clients calling you it really sucks as no one can now contact me. I spoke to Three and while they can disable the handset they cannot redirect my calls without leaving the handset enabled. So I am without a phone until I start my new job.

The week has been spent handing over my work, which is strange as you begin to realise all the little things that really should of been documented! I should of started an internal blog several years ago and then it would have been easier.

Several scenarios are going to conspire to mean that my posting over the next 3 weeks will most likely be limited. Firstly, today I hand back my laptop which is my primary PC that I use for posting and reading all my RSS feeds. While I am taking the feeds in an OPML file my home PC does not have a reader installed, I might do this but for a week I am not sure. Secondly, on 30th I move to Melbourne and until the rest of the family arrives, a week later, I will not have a home PC nor will I have broadband. These two items are going to reduce my posting capabilities, however once I get my new work laptop I might be able to begin posting again. The final thing that is going to limit my posting is life will just be very busy while we finish packing and generally move house.

Enterprise wiki providers fighting for customers

via Techdirt. While we now have two (at least) commercial Wiki software providers it seems they are fighting with each other over new customers. Personally I don’t see it as a bad sign, more an interesting one.

Wiki’s are a new concept and the selling of them within an organisation is going to take a fairly long period of time. In the meantime the only customers for these two players are existing organisations who have an understanding of the tools. The customers will probably have an existing open source tool, like TWiki, and want to leverage the benefits of a commercial offering. I completely understand where this is coming from being an early adopter of web based employee self service during the 90’s. Many of the vendors spent most of the late 90’s educating the Australian HR market on the benefits, not 7-8 years on every vendor has a solution and every client wants it. The same will happen eventually with wiki’s.

I have looked at what JotSpot has to offer and the marketing hype sells a very good message, however time will tell if the reality matches once several organisations take it for a drive and we get some public feedback. What I think is missing in the marketplace is a combined tool the corporates can install, a solution that provides both blogs and wiki’s in one package. This way both tools can be deployed and used where appropriate for the problems being faced int he enterprise. Take this a step further, the tool should also have traditional threaded discussions and email mailing lists as these are still needed for certain types of applications.

State of Human Captial Industry

Found this on HRMarketing.com blog, while it is almost a year old I feel it does provide a great breakdown of the different areas within the HC industry.

Personally it is interesting to see the different areas as I have been trying to develop something similar to be the foundation of a systems view/inventory for my new job. While I have some old frameworks from previous roles, I like the way this is broken down.