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Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Jack Vinson writes about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and more. As of December 2007 Jack will likely start writing about product management too.

Webinar: Surprisingly compelling remote demonstrationsYesterday

I attended a webinar today by Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative on the topic of doing remote demonstrations and doing them well.  Given the title, I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was certainly compelling and done well.  It was one of the few webinars where I found myself actually paying attention during nearly the whole event.  While the focus was remote demonstrations, I think this advice applies equally to webinars.

How did he do it?  He was enthusiastic and communicated that to his audience.  He was prepared and he used as much audience interaction as he could squeeze into the webinar while still presenting the material in question.  That's the biggest difference: really bringing the audience into the remote demonstration.

Preparation: Be ready for the demo, and prepare your audience at the outset.

Of course, you should have your slides working and your demo up and running already.  And you need to be familiar with the features of the tools you are using for the demo (highlights, pointers, ...).  The kind of preparation Peter suggest is right at the start of the webinar.  Use the interactive features of the webinar tool to ask people if they can see the top right and bottom left of your screen (with a mouse wiggle).  Make sure people can hear.  Make sure you can hear people (in small enough audiences), and make sure you can mute people.  Ask people to tell you who they

The end of BlogWalkYesterday

Lilia Efimova, Sebastian Fiedler and Ton Zijlstra have announced that they are formally closing the BlogWalk series.  I hosted one event in the midst of a January blizzard in Chicago and enjoyed it very much.  Here is my initial summary of the event.

The End of BlogWalk

We have decided to formally end the BlogWalk series.

After 11 sessions, bringing over 250 people interested in social media from all kinds of academic and business backgrounds together across three continents, we look back on a series of very inspiring meetings, that generated all kinds of spin-off and combinations of people collaborating.

Thank you for creating this series and inviting me to participate!  And thanks to everyone in the larger community who has participated directly and indirectly in these conversations.

Typealyzer says my blog is INTJNovember 30

Typealyzer says that this blog appears to be of the Myer-Briggs type INTJ.

The analysis indicates that the author of http://blog.jackvinson.com is of the type:

INTJ - The Scientists

The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

I assume you can point Typealyzer at just about any website.  Google.com doesn't have enough text to analyze.  I tried several blogs that I happened to have in local memory, and many fall in the INTJ bucket.

[found via David Snowden, who

Collaboration, or walk before you runNovember 28

James Robertson has an initial model of collaboration, based on the idea that you have to form the capacity, then build the capability, and then create a strategy around how it fits into your organization. 

I've seen a number of discussions lately that all say the same thing: jumping immediately to a solution is often a recipe for disaster, even when it's the "right" solution.  The problem, of course, is that people want to know that you can fix the problem or that you have the best way to implement a specific kind of project.  And how better to prove that than to show them THE solution? 

Maybe there are better ways - but they require that you (the "expert") have a much stronger foundation in the how's and why's and the circumstances around why such solutions might be worthwhile.  Rather than diving into the "solution," establish why such a solution is interesting, establish where the organization is in terms of readiness, and then walk with them through the process of devising a sensible solution.  People that follow various change management approaches might see some familiar themes here.  James' model is an attempt to build this framework around the idea of collaboration. 

Three tiers of collaboration

... Within an organi

PDF isn't the right way to deliver helpNovember 28

James Robertson points to an aspect of one of my minor peeves with software: manuals that are online PDF's.  PDF manuals: the wrong paradigm for an online experience

Mike Hughes writes about the problems with PDF manuals. To quote:

Let me describe a familiar user assistance experience. A user installs a new application, and when the user wants Help, the application directs her to the user documentation on a Web site or CD-ROM. What the user finds there is a PDF file containing the manual—or a collection of PDF files, representing a library of manuals, including a user guide, configuration guide, troubleshooting guide, and various references. And the layout of each of these PDF manuals is exactly the same as if it were a printed book. This raises an interesting question: If we’re giving manuals to users to read online, why do we design and write them for paper?

I hadn't even thought of this aspect of usability, but I have to agree. 

My beef is usually that I need help precisely when I am in the middle of something and don't have the time (or connection) to go off and download a bulky PDF file.  Why can't they have context-sensitive help or otherwise useful information, such as context-setting