Shared Spaces ... the Collaboration Advisor

Final Words, Apr 19

I said back on April 6 that I had A New Mountain to Climb, and that as of Monday this week I'd be working for a vendor of collaboration software. I can now stop being a tease and declare that I am henceforth the Global VP of Word-of-Mouth Marketing at Foldera. The press release that says as much will be out early tomorrow.

My two primary responsibilities (30,000 ft in David Allen lingo) are to:

1. Get the word out about Foldera, all over the world; and


2. Help make Foldera the best service in the world

As much as I'm jazzed about that, it does mean an end to Shared Spaces Research & Consulting Ltd. There's a degree of sadness in that, as I've met and communicated with many wonderful people in the last few years. I hope we can continue those conversations, although I will be wearing a different professional hat now. I have a small number of Shared Spaces projects to finish off, including coordination work for the forthcoming Collaborative Technology Conference 2006 in Boston in June. I will continue to wear my Shared Spaces hat for that.

Posting will cease here, and that includes Quick Links. Obviously I will keep doing that for myself and for others at Foldera, but those posts won't be published publicly. I encourage you to consider two other potential sources of your daily collaboration industry news fix: Ferris Research and CollaborationLoop's Industry News. The end to the posting here is also a signal that I failed what's I've long considered the Tris test of a true blogger ... making more than 1000 posts. This will be my 704th on this site, so I've fallen short. Tris actually didn't write it, but I read it on his site first.

Finally, I will be blogging elsewhere going forward, albeit with a different tone and focus.

• I will be a regular contributor to the Foldera Blog, which was officially launched earlier today; and


• As I have time, I will post to my own personal blog, that being www.michaelsampson.net. Note that I did say it was a "personal" site, not a professional one.

My new email address is msampson@foldera.com, and I'm msampsonFDRA on Skype.

Don't be a stranger!

Microsoft Extended Desktop PowerToy for Tablet PC Doesn't Work Out, Dec 28

Microsoft offers a number of free add-on programs ... called PowerToys ... for various editions of Windows, including a set for Tablet PCs. Given my success with dual monitors earlier this week, Eric asked me to try out the Extended Desktop for Tablet PC powertoy (a 2.23MB download), which is described as follows:

If you like using an extended desktop with your Tablet PC, then this utility is for you. The Extended Desktop for Tablet PC allows you to use the tablet pen to access the portion of the extended desktop that displays on an external monitor. This PowerToy will create a window on your Tablet PC that shows a duplicate image of the desktop on the external monitor. You can then manipulate the objects on the extended desktop within this window.

I installed it on my Tablet PC, and after using it for a few minutes, have decided that it doesn't live up to what it seems to promise, and have removed it. Here's how it works, and what I experienced:

• Unreliable Refresh. The Extended Desktop is a window that opens on your Tablet screen (rather than the external monitor), and is supposed to show a mirror image of what it on the external monitor. Even though I played with the refresh settings, I could not get the Extended Desktop window to reliably show what was on the external monitor. For example, I dragged MindManager across to the external monitor, and it did not display on the Extended Desktop window until I manually forced a refresh.



Caption: A print-screen of both monitors, with the Tablet PC on the left (at 1400x1050) and a Philips 20" on the right (at 1600x1200). MindManager has been dragged to the Philips monitor, but has not refreshed correctly in the Extended Desktop window on the Tablet screen. Click for a larger version (172KB).

• Doesn't Give That Much More Space. Look again at the image above. The MindManager map has been set to the exact size of the Tablet screen, without clicking Maximize. I've then dragged it across. Sure, there is some additional screen real-estate on the Philips monitor, but not a huge amount. This is because the Tablet supports such a great native resolution, and my Philips 20" is only 200x150 pixels larger. I really buy into the idea that larger screens aid productivity, but I don't think you'll get much of a productivity boost unless you go for a much larger screen, such as the Dell 24" which goes up to 1920x1200. In this situation, though ... I'm not convinced.
• Ink Quality is Stink. When writing in the Extended Window on the Tablet screen, for example in Sticky Notes, the ink quality is very low. I tried to write the same sentence under dual conditions ... firstly in the Extended Window when Sticky Notes was on the external monitor, and secondly with Sticky Notes directly on the Tablet screen. See the image below for the difference. Writing directly on the Tablet PC screen was VASTLY superior.



Caption: The first "This is an attempt to write" was written on the Extended Desktop window with Sticky Notes on the external monitor. Quality is very poor. The second "This is an attempt to write" was written directly into Sticky Notes when it was on the Tablet screen.

• Ink Doesn't Always Work. With a MindManager map on the external monitor, I was able to select an item via the Extended Desktop, but was unable to (a) modify it via the pen, or (b) create a new sub-item or branch. The ink gestures didn't work.

Conclusion: When I need to ink, I'll drag the window back to the Tablet PC screen.

Solving the Tablet Dual Monitor Problem, Dec 26

Eric Mack, the most famousist of Tablet PC acronym makers has said at numerous times (to me at least) that he can't get his Tablet PC to drive an external monitor and then be able to rotate the Tablet screen for writing at any angle. Here's what you normally get:

Caption: Toshiba Tecra M4 on the left, Philips 20" flat panel on the right. Tecra M4 displays fine, image on the Philips is upside down. Alternate theory: one screen displays properly for NZ users, the other for US ones ;-)

Last week I took delivery of the Toshiba Multi-Dock II, a rather expensive but very helpful accessory for the Tecra M4 (it's about 15% of the price of the Tecra). See the product tour to learn more about it. In essence, you connect the Tecra M4 to a panel which can then be hung on the Multi-Dock, un-hung and snaked out for writing, and swivelled within 5 seconds from portrait to landscape mode and back again. It's really neat ... and due to the external monitor port on the back end, it solves the dual monitor problem.

Caption: The images on both the Tecra M4 and Philips 20" display the correct way up.

And when you rotate the Tecra to get portrait mode -- for example to get more screen height real-estate to work on a MindManager map -- the image on the Philips is left unrotated.

Caption: Tecra M4 has been swivelled to portrait mode, and the image on the Philips monitor is left unchanged.

Finally, when it is time to ink, you merely lift the Tecra off the Multi-Dock and lay it on your desk. There is a built in angled platform, which is great for ink work.

The Multi-Dock has solved a number of real Tablet PC usage problems for me ... I will leave the Tablet as a Tablet from now on, and not as a standard laptop. The Multi-Dock is very much worth the apparently high price.

I wonder if Eric will get one ... :-)

Travel Update, Dec 7 and 8

With the When 2.0 conference completed, my focus turned to the other meetings I had arranged for Wednesday and Thursday in California.

First up on Wednesday morning was a meeting with a Californian-based law firm on collaborative infrastructures. It has been a long running user of Documentum eRoom standalone, and had some questions over its direction, with an especial focus on eRoom vs. SharePoint. We had a great discussion over about 5 hours.

My next meeting was down the train track a bit. I tried to get a taxi to where I needed to go, but after ringing about 7 different companies with no success, I hopped onto the CalTrain and then walked to where I needed to go. The chief marketing officer ran through their ideas about a forthcoming calendaring service, and I asked a range of why/how/why not questions, and gave feedback from my perspective. It was a good meeting, culminating in dinner at a local bar.

I had to go up-state a bit for my Thursday meeting, and was planning on taking a cab. When I was informed that the price would be close to $300, I elected to take the CalTrain into San Francisco, and then catch a cab from there. It worked fine, but meant that from the point of being dropped at the train station in Palo Alto, to getting where I needed to be over the Golden Gate Bridge took something like 2 hour 40 minutes of travel. I hadn't quite budgeted for all that time!

Thursday morning dawned fine, albeit after a fairly short sleep (due to watching Braveheart for the first time, and then being unable to get to sleep until 2.30am). I visited with a vendor planning some collaborative extensions to an in-market product, and again responded to their ideas, asked why/why not questions, and generally had a great time. Thanks to Mike and team!

With my meetings all completed, it was time to hit the cab back to the San Francisco airport (the T-Mobile WiFi network was awfully difficult to use), catch a plane to LAX, and wait for my New Zealand flight. After landing in LAX, I met up with Isaac Garcia of CentralDesktop, and we talked market place dynamics, product strategy, and other good stuff. I'm looking forward to the various goodies that Isaac & team have up their sleeves.

There was no business class upgrade on the way home, so I settled in for a long flight. Thanks to the lack of sleep the night before, I was able to get about 7 hours of sleep in a row. Not too shabby! I also got to read one of the more recent John Grisham books I had missed.

There was no Friday, so I landed in Auckland at 6.05am on Saturday morning, and then waited for a flight back home. I acquired a bunch of flowers for my lovely wife, a bag of M&M's for each of my sons, and a single red rose for Susanna (18 months). The gifts were gratefully received, although Susanna took one look at the rose, saw what the boys had received, and felt rather short changed! It is good to be home.

Thanks to all who made my trip last week such a rewarding and pleasant visit.

Travel Update, Dec 6

When my alarm went off at 6am, it felt like I was waking up at 3am ... but then, according to my body clock, it was. The When 2.0 conference was due to start at 7am at Stanford University, and when I arrived at 6.58am there were about 10 people milling around, including Ray Ozzie. Kudos to Ray for being on time, available to talk, and not hidden away in some protected tower.

I'll write about the content of the day at a later stage, but from an organizational aspect, Esther, Daphne and the rest of the team did an outstanding job. The setting was pleasant, the food was good, the sound system was 99.7% perfect, and the videographers didn't get in people's faces. For me, the first half of the day was the most interesting and relevant; I found the second half more tough going. I sat next to Rob Hof from BusinessWeek for most the day ... and was glad that I'd recently renewed my BusinessWeek subscription!

The conference had an interesting business model ... charge $1195 to attend a one-day session, get 165 people to attend, prepare a paper on the topic by interviewing the players, and then invite the players to be part of 4-person panel discussions. Ask some discussion-generating questions, invite questions from the floor, and give people lots of time during the day to mix, mingle, and talk business over good food and fine wine. Outgoings include venue hire, food and wine, sound system hire, video taping ... you do the math. Very interesting.

I walked back to the Westin, and then met up with one of the product managers from Oracle for dinner. We had a far ranging discussion about collaborative infrastructure, calendaring, platform vs. product, and much more. Thanks to Marten.

Travel Update, Dec 5

I woke on Monday morning to the sights and sounds of the Pacific Ocean, as experienced from floor 2 of the Hyatt Regency at Huntington Beach. I ate breakfast looking out through the trees toward the ocean ... it was a great way to start the day.

I was picked up by my client at 9.30am, and we spent the day discussing product features, product strategy, go-to-market ideas, and in-progress partnerships. These guys are working on a neat product ... but I'm under NDA until it is released.

By 3.30pm, it was time to head up to the Orange County airport for a Southwest Airlines flight to San Jose. I had not flown on Southwest before, but I was hugely impressed with their business ideas ... you can order a ticket online, you can change it without penalty when and if you need to, and so on. Sounds like the way the airline business should be run. Kudos to all involved.

After landing in San Jose, I took a cab to the headquarters of JotSpot, Inc., for its 7pm meetup. Although I didn't count how many people there were, my sense of it is that about 40 people showed up. It was neat to meet Scott and Joe. Four demos were given:

• The JotSpot Bug Tracker provides a wiki-based approach to capturing, assigning, closing out, and reporting on bugs or issues with a product. It includes a change log that tracks every change over time, by performing a delta comparison between different versions of the page. Outstanding bugs can even be grouped and graphed using the integrated JCharts open source charting application, through which charts are drawn on the server in PNG format, and then sent to the browser.


• Kathleen of Knowesys, a Jot solutions partner, showed something of their work. I didn't totally follow what they had done (I was getting tired!), but it was something about dynamically changing layouts and formats based on certain settings on configuration pages. I haven't done justice to the description.


• Scott Johnstone (sp?), the Head of Vertical Applications at JotSpot, Inc., demonstrated the Class Reunion Planner that he has built in the last 4 weeks since joining Jot. It looked good, and one lady in the audience wanted to know when she could get it.


• Finally, the man himself, Joe the CEO, demonstrated a beta edition of JotSpot Tracker, a replacement for some uses of Microsoft Excel. For spreadsheets that just show simple lists, in other words those that don't have formulas in them, the rows and columns can be pasted into Tracker. Every row is automagically turned into a wiki page, but is displayed as a spreadsheet table. Columns can be sorted, just like with Excel. Additional information, such as comments and notes, can be appended to each row, exactly unlike Excel. It was ... not bad. Formula-based calculations will be added, thanks to a new hire named Michael.

And finally, it was time to head off to my hotel. I had a reservation at the Sheraton Palo Alto, but my reservation could not be found when I went to check in. Melissa asked for my name once more, and discovered that I had been bumped to the hotel next door, the Westin Palo Alto. Some things in life are tough, but not that!

Whilst the hotel was very comfortable, I go on record again as saying that something stinks about Internet access at Westin properties. I wasted 90 minutes trying to get my computer connected to the Internet, including having service people calling to my room in person and by phone. A resolution was not forthcoming. I remain very unimpressed ... especially since I experienced very similar poor service when I stayed at the Westin Times Square in June 2005.

All-and-all though, it was a neat day.

Travel Update, Dec 4

I left New Zealand on December 4 to travel up to the US for some consulting work and a conference. I had paid for an economy ticket on Qantas, and received an upgrade to the new business class, with the lie flat beds. It was ... awesome ... highly recommended!

My good friend Eric Mack met me at LAX. After lunch and coffee, we:

• Recorded a podcast on wireless devices from 1990s. Eric and I talk about pagers from NewsPager, SkyTel, and more (Podcast, 2.9MB, 12m40s)


• Attended a show at Medieval Times. From the gruesome and thought-provoking museum of torture, to the knighting event, to the jousting and one-on-one sword fights, it was an amazing show. I have never seen anything like this before ... you *have* to go!


• Recorded a second podcast on Eric's Tablet adventures. The last time I was here, back in June, Eric was having a few problems ... he was YAVATU (yet-another-very-angry-tablet-user) rather than the desired YABHTU. Things have improved, although he's still not at the desired place.

Thanks for the neat afternoon Eric, and I hope that gash improves quickly! Again, sorry!

Magazine Subscriptions for 2006

Every year I spend a stack of money on business and IT magazine subscriptions (normally the paper variety). Here's my list for 2006:

Enduring Favorites
Fortune Magazine, for about the 8th time. This is my all time favorite business magazine. I love the case studies, the ideas about business, and the global outlook. Comes every fortnight.

Fast Company, for the 2nd time. The stories about innovation and design are great, and the layout of the magazine is second-to-none. I went without Fast Company for about 6 months, but really missed it. I've just re-subscribed. Comes monthly.

BusinessWeek, for about the 5th time, but after a 2 year break. I took a 2 year break from BusinessWeek because of the relentlessness of it ... it's a fairly hefty read week-to-week. But it really helps with keeping up with what's going on ... so I've just re-subscribed.

ComputerWorld New Zealand, for the 4th year. It is helpful to hear the local stories. Comes weekly.

I'll Subscribe for 2006 and Try It Out
Selling Power, for the first time. I'll give it a crack ... and see what I learn from it. Will come monthly, apparently, although I haven't received any yet.

SoundView Executive Summaries have been hounding me to subscribe for years and years. I finally gave in 2 weeks ago ... at $109 for a years worth of audio summaries, it's a pretty fantastic deal. Have already enjoyed about 7 audio summaries. Perhaps this will reduce the amount of money I spend at Amazon too (and for books that I don't generally get to read, regardless of how much I *really* want to).

No Thank You ... Cancelled Subscriptions
The Altantic Monthly wasn't really my thing. I subscribed because of an article about David Allen, but ... well ... haven't renewed.

Technology Review was alright, but didn't capture my attention. I decided to put the money toward BusinessWeek for 2006.

Unlimited is probably going to get drop-kicked from my list for next year. It comes monthly, and I'm about 8 months behind in my reading. That's probably sign enough that it's not right for me.

What About You?
What magazines will you / have you subscribed to for 2006? Which are enduring favorites compared to recent try-outs? And which ones have you stopped subscribing to, and why? I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I Didn't Realize America Has Had Higher Education Institutions for So Long, Oct 30

From page 11 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PDF):

I think that's supposed to be 1965 ...

Today I Want to be in Atlanta, Oct 1

Jake Vargo, the oldest son of my thesis supervisor Dr. John Vargo, is getting married in Atlanta today. John supervised my Master of Commerce thesis in 1994, and at that time Jake and his brother were little boys. They've both grown into very fine young men, and are a great tribute to John and Shary. I wish I could be there to cheer for Jake and his bride on this awesome day ... but since I can't, I send my best regards and pray for God's blessing on your marriage. Looking forward to the NZ edition of the wedding too!