Part of the solution to the "new poverty"?
There are certain convictions that I have that drive some of the ways I go about accomplishing the more mundane things in my life. I remember reading an article back in 1993 or 1994 from the president of Bread for the World. He mentioned that the new poverty would be defined by those who had access to information and those who did not. That set me on a course that impacts how I go about my daily work.
I am already in a push to be completely paperless in my work processes. I do not have a pen at my desk (I do have a pencil that is in need of sharpening, however) and carry a small PDA (Palm m500) with me into every meeting for note taking and task recording. I really dig online meetings because I can take notes on a wiki and immediately posting them after the meeting is complete. It is a bit of a challenge to go completely paperless, but I am in a mode now where this is getting to be less and less of a stretch for me.
My new challenge is to be completely operating system agnostic. I know this is a taller order, but I am going to try to do it. For this to happen, obviously, less and less of my process will rely on hard drive storage and access to installed applications. Managing information the way I do now, which mostly consists of the written word with occasional diagrams thrown into the mix, I think that this is a possibility.
I don't want to cheat and use OpenOffice.org for example, but I do want to do as much online a possible. My success will be measured by how much work I complete in a web browser in a given day versus how much is done outside of it. I know that this will give the people on my team a great deal more access to the work I am completing and the information I am creating.
I also hope to gain perspective and skills that will make me part of the solution to the problem that came to my attention 14 or 15 years ago.
I am already in a push to be completely paperless in my work processes. I do not have a pen at my desk (I do have a pencil that is in need of sharpening, however) and carry a small PDA (Palm m500) with me into every meeting for note taking and task recording. I really dig online meetings because I can take notes on a wiki and immediately posting them after the meeting is complete. It is a bit of a challenge to go completely paperless, but I am in a mode now where this is getting to be less and less of a stretch for me.
My new challenge is to be completely operating system agnostic. I know this is a taller order, but I am going to try to do it. For this to happen, obviously, less and less of my process will rely on hard drive storage and access to installed applications. Managing information the way I do now, which mostly consists of the written word with occasional diagrams thrown into the mix, I think that this is a possibility.
I don't want to cheat and use OpenOffice.org for example, but I do want to do as much online a possible. My success will be measured by how much work I complete in a web browser in a given day versus how much is done outside of it. I know that this will give the people on my team a great deal more access to the work I am completing and the information I am creating.
I also hope to gain perspective and skills that will make me part of the solution to the problem that came to my attention 14 or 15 years ago.
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