Road Trippin’ for Research

Stephen Rouse over at IGLOO gave me a heads up on a new blog that tries to explore the "differences and similarities between US and European startup success stories". Created by three German PhD students who currently travel through the United States, Ventureroadtrip.com profiles entrepreneurs and investors in short video clips.

 

Ralf Schmelter, Carsten Ruebsaamen and René Mauer use the blog to capture some of the impressions from their research trip. For now they mostly seem to focus on short video profiles of startup companies. Once the research phase is over, I hope they will also share some of their insights and observations on emerging patterns/trends with us.

 

Ralf, Carsten and René are still looking for more entrepreneurs to participate in their research. For anyone who is interested, head over to Ventureroadtrip.com to get in touch with them.

Email overload through the ages

Here are two quotes from newspaper articles about email overload in the workplace.

It seems that people are so busy wading through the overload and responding that they don’t have time for real work. […] A few companies are taking corrective action. Computer Associates, based in Islandia, L.I., shuts down its E-mail system for four hours a day, between 10 A.M. and noon and again between 2 P.M. and 4 P.M. “People were spending too much time on E-mail,” said Marc Sokol, vice president of advanced technology. “We said, ‘Use it intelligently, don’t use it spuriously.’ ” Until employees got used to the restrictions, Mr. Sokol said, they found the experience similar to quitting smoking. Now, he added: “Productivity is up. It has caused people to be more thoughtful.”

 wit’s end: Coping With E-Mail Overload, The New York Times

Overwhelmed by e-mail? Some professionals are fighting back by declaring e-mail-free Fridays — or by deleting their entire in-box. Today about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel will kick off “Zero E-mail Fridays.” E-mail isn’t forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. […] E-mail-free Fridays already are the norm at cell carrier U.S. Cellular and at order-processing company PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services in Alpharetta, Ga.

Fridays go from casual to e-mail-free, USA Today

The biggest difference between the two quotes? Eleven years.

The New York Times article is from April 1996, the USA Today article from October 2007. Apparently not much has changed in all those years, even though “experts” were already hoping for better times in 1998:

Despite the e-mail glut problems, there is optimism among e-mail experts that new solutions - both technological and behavioral - will keep pace with higher e-mail volumes.

E-mail overload drives many users bananas, NetworkWorld Fusion (via CNN.com)

Ten years later, the technological and behavioural solutions still haven’t  fully caught up with the ever increasing volume of email (numbers are up from 15.1 billion in 2000 to 97.3 billion emails per day in 2007 according to IDC research quoted in the USA Today article). Otherwise we wouldn’t continue to see the same type of email overload articles year after year after year.

No doubt email overload has been and continues to be a problem for many people. Just this weekend I read a another article (in German) about a German company prohibiting email use two days a month. But I am not a big fan of organized email prohibition, whether it is a top-down decree by the company leadership or a bottom-up idea from a group of employees.

In the end, every individual needs to take charge of how they best manage their communication - every day of the week.

Because it gets worse. Thanks to other changes in technology and behaviour, (yep, I am talking about that Web 2.0 thing and the rise of, you guessed it, social media), email overload articles are not alone anymore. We now have journalists and a whole blogosphere continually discussing the potential benefits or repercussions of using blogs, RSS feeds, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the other tools for communication. How do we keep up with all of this if email management still is a problem? Will we still have a social media overload discussions in eleven years?

“There’s going to be a point where culture and common sense are going to start to take over,” [Rapport Communications consultant Gary] Rowe said, “because there’s only so much of this we can process.”

E-mail overload drives many users bananas, NetworkWorld Fusion (via CNN.com), June 1998

My guess is that every person needs to find that point for herself or himself. I wouldn’t wait for your company or colleagues to do it for you.

A friend of mine for years refused to get her own cell phone even though she saw many of the benefits. She argued that “once people know I have it, they will expect to reach me 24/7″. I never bought that argument (but she eventually bought a cell phone). A cell phone can be switched off. Email - and expectations - can be managed by ourselves. And so can social media tools.

Overload, more often than not, is a fact. But it can also be a state of mind.

Some changes around here

After about half a year, it’s time to start blogging again. I’ve given the site a new look and feel, and it will only run on the domain martinhofmann.net.

The old blog web address mrh.ca/tech won’t be used anymore, so please update your bookmarks. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, you should automatically get switched over.

I’ve decided to somewhat broaden the scope of what I will write about on martinhofmann.net. Public relations and technology are still a focus. But I will also capture and write about other stuff that interests me. Since my day job doesn’t give me a lot of opportunity to use my native language, I’ve also decided to start writing in German again. In the end, I am trying to have fun again with an old-fashioned personal online journal. We’ll see how it goes.

For anybody coming to this site to keep track of specific topics, the main categories are now easily accessible in the navigation bar at the top. I have also added a few RSS feeds to the main one in the Subscribe section on the sidebar.

My new site design is based on the combination of two of Brian Gardner’s fantastic Revolution themes for WordPress. The core theme I use is Revolution Pro Media but some of the design elements are also taken from his Revolution Tech theme. You can find out more about Brian’s themes and services here. I hope he’ll forgive me for creating a “frankentheme” from two of his designs. I really like it.