Patrick’s Musings

Thank you for visiting my site. If you’re interested in my take on random issues then read on, if you’re looking for information about my consultancy, please go to www.patrickkelso.com for contact details and information.

A month ago I took a leap into the unknown world of Smartphones and purchased a Blackberry Bold 9000. This is my first 3g internet enabled phone. After 3 happy years with my Motorola L6 and GPRS. Naturally I’m eagre to start using my GtD system on it. Especially as my employer blocks both Evernote & Sugarsync from the office.

I have installed Evernote for Blackberry, Remember the Milk’s RTM for Blackberry and SugarSync for Blackberry. Three fantastic applications that I use daily. Sugarsync is not strictly GTD, it’s a file synchronisation program that allows me to keep important documents synced between my 3 computers, PDA and now my Blackberry. How can I Get Things Done if I don’t have access to my files?

I also have Google Sync for Blackberry to keep my Calendar & Contacts up to date.

First up, gripes. RtM for Blackberry uses Blackberry categories to sync to RtM lists, not tags. As the Blackberry allows multiple category per todo item and RtM only allows an item to be in one list I think this is a big fail by RtM, who I normally think of as a fantastic and enlightened company. Sugarsync also has a major flaw, when attempting to open a PDF on my Blackberry it gives an error that I don’t have a default viewer installed. Despite the fact the Blackberry Messaging and Browser both open PDF files without an issue.

Now, the system.

• I use Evernote to capture all my notetaking thoughts. Minutes in meetings, pictures I take, audio thoughts etc.
• I rely on the task manager to know what I’m doing. Everytime I get a task I record it in the task manager. Using classic GTD style categories, @work, @home, @computer etc.
• I use the Calendar for fixed date events & the tasks list for due anytime events.
• I ignore emails and SMS when I am in a ‘non phone’ environment, for instance in a meeting.

Because I always have my phone on me, I can review tasks at will. When I’m on the train, waiting for the train, standing in line at the supermarket, I can whip out my Blackberry open the task manager and review my task list quickly and easily. The weekly review was always my GTD failure. I never did it. Now I do a daily or even hourly review. Not stricly what David Allen suggests, but the important thing is, it works for me.

Is it making me hyper productive? Not yet, but I think I’ve improved.

Tips:

• I wired the left hand quick access key to Evernote. Quick access makes a difference.
• I still stick to the ‘if it’s going to take less than 2 minutes and you can do it now, do it now’ rule.
• Buy an extended battery. All this lifehacking really drains the juice. Especially minuting a meeting in Evernote.
• I scan every paper document I get and put it in a Sugarsync managed folder. If someone calls me while I’m in thousands of kilometres from home to talk about an invoice they sent me, I darn well want to be able to find that invoice then and there. If I received it, it will be in Sugarsync.

Would you like to live next door to fourteen storey tower blocks? A huge overdevelopment has been proposed for Lewisham, at the corner of Old Canterbury Rd and Longport St. See map.

The development includes 14, 12 and 6 storey towers and a large supermarket mall with basement car parking. The developer has bypassed council and the local community and gone straight to the state government for approval under the controversial Part 3A law.

* Overdevelopment
* Traffic congestion and pollution
* Community disruption
* New precedents for building size for the Inner West
* Local shopping strips hurt - Petersham, Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill
* Interferes with the Cooks River to Iron Cove Greenway project

The Greens are campaigning to stop such a massive overdevelopment. You can view our webpage on this issue: http://marrickvillegreens.wordpress.com/issue/lewisham-part-3a-development/

A public meeting has been called for 7pm, Wednesday 20 May at Summer Hill Community Centre, 131 Smith Street, Summer Hill. See map to venue. Come along to see the developers plans, express your opinion, and show your feelings on this development.

I personally am concerned about the precedent this could set for the Summer Hill Mill site, just across the train line from this site.

What a fantastic 2 days. I didn’t want the conference to end. A huge thanks to Donortec & Connecting Up for organising such a great event. I’ve already implemented one thing and jumped up to start a NetTuesday group in Sydney.

I think I twittered more yesterday than in the past 2 months. It was great to have a dialogue going between each session, so you could sit in one room, but be across the stream of information in all the other rooms.

A lot of people were asking how they could use social media for their organisation, and the answer was invariably “it depends”. I’m putting together a presentation now on using social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to try and bring 3rd sector NGOs and Not For Profits up to speed on the possabilities available to them, as well as the pitfalls. Watch this space.

I’m also going to completely overhaul my Project Management presentation, as I learnt of at least 10 new tools over the past two days that I want to integrate and talk about.

I highly recommend everyone has a look at my Twitter friends list and adds everyone I’ve added in the past 2 days to their list, it is the most amazing group of people

FOOTSCRAY Community Legal Centre will call on Maribyrnong City Council to ban door-to- door salespeople after it was found that African migrants were signing contracts they didn’t understand.

FCLC manager Denis Nelthorpe will appeal to the council at its Community Access and Strategic Planning meeting in May to ban the practice in the municipality – or at the very least, ask retailers to leave the area alone.

“If a council, any council, was to take the step of saying ‘we want to ban this or we want to at least ask these retailers to stay out of our area’, my guess is every second council in Australia might well decide to follow suit,” Mr Nelthorpe said.

Source

I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve worked for door-to-door sales companies and their tactics are always less than ethical. They make a living of convincing people to sign up on the spot, making a decision that has ramifications often for years in a split second. I always did poorly and never lasted long in the job myself.

I don’t buy toothpaste without umming and arring (I’m open to suggestions on how you would spell that) for several minutes about this triple whitening action vs that 12 hour total protection. However when I was in Shanghai recently I purchased items without taking that time for the simple fact I recognised a logo, but couldn’t read any of the writing on it. These sales people use the same tactics, they sign people up for long term contracts for energy, phones or even donations to charities (big business, believe me), by presenting very little information, a big friendly logo of a well known company & making it seem like the offer will expire if they take the time to ask their family or friends about the offer etc.

I don’t know what the legality of banning door-to-door sales people is, but I know from my childhood that they never come into the house with the drooling boxers sitting in the front yard eyeing them off as they try to open the gate…

Last night Adam Butler addressed our monthly Ashfield Greens meeting, I’d already read his blurb, and subscribed to his blog in Google Reader, but it was nice to see him in the person, and add him on twitter (@bikesusenofuel). It wasn’t until he started talking about the proliferation of lawyers in parliament that I realised he was right, we do need more engineers in all levels of Government. We need people who think outside the normal box, people who can critically analyse an issue, and make a decision based on calm rational thought rather than the letter of the law or what is going to get more votes. I wish Adam success in his campaign to get on the Senate ticket, and look forward to extolling the virtues of Engineers Without Borders to him in the future.

Amazon has released a larger version of their increasingly popular Kindle. Designed with reading newspapers and textbooks in mind. I can’t help but look at it and think “Council Papers”. This may finally be the tool that convinces a lot of Councillors (and elected representatives at other levels) to ditch the 4″ stack of briefing papers for each meeting and transition to the digital age. One I might add I’ve been in since I was elected, using my underpowered and poor resolutioned Toshiba laptop for the purpose.

Ars Technica have a good write up on the launch.

Last night The Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson AM MP, announced the successful applicants for funding under the first round of the Government’s Geothermal Drilling Program. Full press release here.

With 2 grants of $7,000,000 to match a further seven million put in by each company that’s a solid boost on our way to lessening our dependance on coal. Geoscience Australia estimates that the potential of hot rocks is 26,000 times more than our current energy requirements. With just a few working plants Australia could have a reliable, redundant power supply, that is in the long run so cheap we could even export power to our neighbours.

Hopefully these initial trials will be productive and within a few decades Australia can turn off all its coal fired power stations for good. For more information on hot rocks geothermal power in Australia check out AussieHotRocks blog.

Just a quick post, new photos up from Canberra over Easter, the Easter Show & some old photos from the 25th Heritage Ball. All on my Picasaweb site.

A lot of my friends pointed out this week that Ashfield Council, for which I am an elected representative, was in the news a lot because of some problems with fines of a local business. Now while I am not defending the Council for what happened, I don’t know all the details to pass judgment one way or another. What did interest me though was the fact that the article in the Daily Telegraph, a News Limited paper, claimed this was all over two pot plants. They featured this photo:

From Council

The General Manager of Council sent out an email later that had other photos of Ellen’s Interiors, like this one:

From Council

See a couple more at my Picasa Gallery

Who ever said you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story obviously worked for News Limited.

As the T-shirts say, “Is that the truth, or is your News Limited?”