Why I no longer get email on my Blackberry

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Tim Keller

After my rant last week about constant partial attention, I tracked down the research that sparked some of this thinking – a 2007 article by Hewlett in BusinessWeek.

Researchers at Kings’ College London University have found that, across the board, communication overload causes a professional’s IQ to drop 10 percentage points. It damages a worker’s performance by reducing mental sharpness. The drop in IQ is more significant among men than women.

I’m quite protective of what IQ I have, and so I’ve embarked upon a mission to reduce the push inputs in my life.

I have two email accounts. A personal gmail, and a work Google Apps account. Previously, both were delivering email to my Blackberry. Now – thanks to a few simple filters in the BIS web interface – I only get important email from work colleagues who have my address in the To field.

The same goes for Skype and IM in general. Gone. I’ll turn Skype on when I need to record a podcast or hold a meeting.

The difference is amazing. For the last two years, I’ve begun my day by waking up, and scanning through the 20-odd emails that have arrived over night. By the time I’ve reached the office my inbox can contain 35 read (but un-processed) emails. And then the day begins.

Hewlett goes on to report:

IT consultant Linda Stone has shown how “continuous partial attention” can be seriously dysfunctional. When a professional is bombarded by multiple information streams it becomes hard to sustain focus. Innovation and creativity suffer—as does the quality of decision making.

In the post-knowledge era, we need employees who can think, decide, and execute consistently. They need the freedom to dig into a problem for long stretches of time in order to deliver quality output.

So, apparently men can’t multitask. I tend to wonder if anyone should even be allowed to multitask?

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Special Knowledge Butterflies

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Tim Keller

Flying poses some challenges. It requires at least an hour-long process of security, and baggage checks… not to mention the cost of the obligatory cuppachino while one waits for the gates to open. Boarding is followed by a further 30-minutes of thumb-twiddling while the cabin crew apparently “arm doors and cross-check” (which I still don’t understand).

Nevertheless, I love flying.

The two hours between Cape Town and Jo’burg means no phone calls. There’s absolutely zero chance that anyone can make my phone ring. No amount of conviction or persistence on the part of the callee will result in my phone shouting at me. It means no email – and it means that there’s nothing I can do about the few hundred messages that are waiting for me to respond, archive or defer.

Bugs can be reported, features may be requested, servers can explode, but I’ll be inoculated in my green hurtling fortress of solace.

Thinkers from Uber Productivity nerd, Merlin Mann, to SaaS guru and 37signals founder, Jason Fried, have expounded at length about the crisis unfolding in the post-knowledge workplace. One in which we react to the issues as they arrive, rather than proactively harvesting the completion of well planned activities. One in which there is so much extraneous noise the we end up time-division-multiplexing our work into ten second sprints, eventually finishing few of them, and being absolutely not great at any of them.

Don’t get me wrong. Reacting to incoming issues in the workplace has it’s place. Especially if you’re a Fireman, Neurosurgeon, or Air-traffic-controller. However, post-knowledge workers (who, by the way, are borderline ADHD by design) need a distraction-minimized environment where they can cultivate and harvest their creative outputs regularly.

How many creatives do you know that conduct their work behind iPod headphones? They’re not doing that because they’re into music. They’re doing it because they’ve found a plausible way to deny distraction. I many cases, they’re just listening to silence in the hope that the visual message of wearing the headphones will preclude the need to respond to whether they think that office birthday cakes should be chocolate or vanilla. Plausible deniability. What a life.

They need serial challenges which offer significant dopamine return upon completion. And this completion is not reached when the task is extinguished. Oh no, this task is complete when the post knowledge worker feels that they have just delivered the best work of their life. The post knowledge worker can feel the elation of great work coursing through their veins.

Yeah. We’re a pretty complex lot.

The worst thing you can do to your post-knowledge workers, is lead them to believe that your project-schedule is more important than the excellence of their work. Yes, you’ve got to ship. But what use is shipping, if your rushed product isn’t excellent?
Ask any company of post knowledge workers that actually produces excellent output – Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Pixar or Valve. They favor Not Shipping over Shipping rushed work. And so should you.

I was more productive today than I’ve been all month, because I spent 4 hours on a plane, without a connection to the world. How productive would your team be if you gave them the best environment to work in, and the trust to make them feel like the special butterflies they (think they) are?

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The EdTech Conference 2011

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Tim Keller

So, we’re doing a conference. Its called EdTechConf and I’m really excited about it.

It’s happening from 13-14 May in Cape Town, and 20-21 May in Worcester.

Join us for two days of input and discussion around questions such as:

  • Can we reach our pupils with technology in a way that doesn’t wreck our budgets?
  • Is Social Media a teaching tool or a hindrance?
  • Should we ban cellphones in our schools when almost all our pupils use them for communication and learning outside the classroom?
  • Can a research project mean more than a quick Google search? How can we teach digital literacy in ways which are cost-effective, meaningful and budget-friendly?
  • Is a computer lab needed in a 21st century school?
  • What are the pitfalls of using technology in the classroom?

This event is not to be missed. Sign up now and follow the conference team on twitter. Do it.

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Where Do You Go?

Posted on January 2, 2011 by Tim Keller

2010 saw Location Services rise to popularity, and it is clear that – aside from Tablets and Android phones – 2011 is going to be the year of Location-aware services.

I’ve been using Foursquare regularly for about a year. Foursquare is a service offering mobile applications for all major mobile platforms which allows you to “check-in” at a venue (like a mall, movie theatre, or restaurant). You can then optionally share this information with your 4SQ, Facebook, or Twitter friends.

Today, thanks to SmarterWare, I discovered an interesting Foursquare+GoogleMaps mashup called Where Do You Go. It aggregates your last 12 months of check-ins into a stunning heatmap of your most “checked-into” places.

There’s an increasing amount of concern around Location Privacy, and this service certainly gave me pause for thought. However the service doesn’t pull data from the last 24-hours, and offers one button to delete all your cached data from their servers. Since its only building a heatmap based on my whereabouts over a long time, and since its already pretty clear that I live in Cape Town, I was willing to give it a try.

Furthermore, its an open source project with its code hosted on github.

So, what does your heatmap look like? Where Do You Go?

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Vintage Lifestyle Mag – Launch Pics

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Tim Keller

I had the opportunity to shoot some pics at the Vintage Lifestyle Magazine launch party, held at Starlings Coffee Shoppe last week. VLM is South Africa’s first vintage fashion magazine, and is backed by a passionate team of young entrepreneurs.

See them all, right here.

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What I do

Posted on December 14, 2010 by Tim Keller

A lot of people ask me what exactly I do. I do a few of things… here’s some of them:

  • staffroom – school admin, assessment and management… done right, finally.
  • uniti – unified collaboration for teams, companies, government agencies and first responders.
  • The Cavern Today – a very geeky podcast about, well, geeky things.
  • Flickr – In my head, I’m a pro photographer. In reality, I’m still working on it.
  • LastFM – I love good music, good podcasts, and riveting audio-books.
  • Twitter – Me in a 140 characters or less
  • World of Warcraft on US and EU - Unproductivity at its best.

A follow-up post with more depth is in the works. Happy Holidays!

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Learn, Unlearn, Relearn

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Tim Keller

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
- Alvin Toffler

Art Preston’s post concerning “The Grading Conundrum” once again raises the debate of how we measure and assess our school students. South African schools have been through a whirlwind of change, re-change, and – sadly- un-change in the last two decades. It is clear to me that teachers, our nation’s most endangered resource, are disillusioned and fatigued.

This instability of assessment standards has lead to a gross instability in the quality and manner of teaching across the country.

The complete lack of consensus on assessment standards and methods is clear to us every day at staffroom. Every new school we sign-up has a different approach, and our system has become very good at being flexible to their needs. These staffroom schools are some of the best in the country. If they can’t reach consensus on how to assess, who can?

In thinking about assessment there are, of course, two extremes – a heavily quantitative method resulting in a percentage rating per student, and a heavily qualitative approach whereby students are assessed on competence and demonstrated ability.

As a Computer Scientist, I do value the quantitative aspects of data.  When I taught IT to High Schoolers – my fancy Excel spreadsheet (later, staffroom) calculated their overall average percentage for that course. It was trivial to bin my class into percentile brackets and understand how I was doing in terms of the expected bell curve.

But for many parents, the typical “59% for Mathematics, 61% for English, etc.” report leaves them wondering what they are doing wrong with their child. Many students will tell you: “I’m really good at Algebra, but I just can’t do Geometry. So I got 80% for Algebra, but only 39% for Geometry. That’s why I only got 59%.” That 59% for Mathematics tells the parent nothing about their child’s particular strengths and weaknesses in the subject.

And, no, mapping a 1 to 7 code/level scale to these percentages instead of A+ to F- does not help.

If World of Warcraft has taught me anything, its that kids (okay, and adults) crave achievement. There’s nothing better than finishing a dungeon and seeing that golden achievement pop-up on your, and your guild’s, screen congratulating you on the effort. You carry that achievement with you for the rest of your character’s existence in the game.

If students were as motivated to achieve in school, as they are in Warcraft, they would do a whole lot better. And, again, no – the current farce that is annual school prize-giving (in which everyone gets a certificate regardless of effort) is not sufficient. I believe Achievements must be rewarded immediately.

In the age of transparency, students and parents want measurable data and facts. They want to see their current status, and see simple step-by-step action plans to success.

Imagine if our students’ report cards looked a little more like this:

Schools seem to be in the business of helping students to unlearn what they pick up in the real world of cell phones, games and facebook. What if, rather, our schools unlearned their 19th century habits, and relearned what 21st century students need to get out of the education process. Let’s embrace our students’ world.

In the 2st century, education is about project-based learning, connections with peers around the world, service learning, independent research, design and creativity, and, more than anything else, critical thinking and challenges to old assumptions.
- Prakash Nair

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Chasing Friday

Posted on September 24, 2010 by Tim Keller

Chasing Friday

I recently had the opportunity to shoot some photos of local band, Chasing Friday.

Despite only forming three years ago in Sept 2007, front-man Phill Black, Neil Broers, Gus Warden and Nico Mouissie, have already gathered local fame with their eclectic and quirky take on college rock. Their achievements already include their single, Campus Girl, being featured on the SL Magazine compilation, two of their music videos airing regularly on MNet and Mnet HD television, and winning the Cape Town leg of the RBF Battle of the Bands.

Check them out at:

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uniti successfully deployed for the Soccer World Cup

Posted on July 10, 2010 by Tim Keller

I’ve been rather quiet of late – here’s why: Our team at Umoya have been hard at work on supplying our uniti app to the National Disaster Management Centre for 2010.

In September 2009, we starting building Umoya’s next software platform using staffroom (our school management app) as a base. We distilled the framework down to its core, and called it the ChirpFramework (a reference to staffroom’s original name – ChirpSchool). We chose PHP on the front-end so that our developers could rapidly deploy new features, and MySQL on the backend as we understand its performance characteristics in staffroom. In between, we have some bits holding things together.

Since November we’ve been actively developing uniti – our unified collaboration app for business and government. Here’s some more about it:

DISASTER management centres around the country will use software developed for the World Cup to coordinate a multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral approach to expected xenophobic attacks and their consequences.

The need to manage the risk of disasters during the World Cup prompted the Western Cape Disaster Management Centre to ask Cape Town ICT company, Umoya (www.umoya.net), to devise a web-based platform that has since streamlined emergency communications country-wide.

Known as “uniti”, the software helped more than 350 disaster management workers, including command and control centres, to share real-time information that provided up-to-the minute readiness to deal with any eventuality during the World Cup said Peter Beretta of Umoya.

“The National Disaster Management Centre has procured the program for operations in all provinces, where it is being used by Disaster Management themselves, as well as elements from the police, Red Cross and other government entities,” said Beretta

Jackson Rikhotso, Western Cape provincial deputy director responsible for disaster preparedness, said the “uniti” software “helps us to get accurate information for proper decision making”.

“It contributed to the smooth running of the World Cup,” said Rikhotso.

Hailing Uniti as a “major milestone”, Mlungisi Gongqa from the national Disaster Management Centre in Pretoria said: “For the first time in the history of national disaster management we are able to network with everybody across the country, and improve response time.

“We can report and analyse situations more quickly.”

Gongqa said on Friday: “We are already plugged into Uniti in all the provinces so it will be easy for picking up xenophobic incidents as they arise from municipality to municipality and from province to province.

“We will use Uniti to log in every incident of xenophobia, and will follow up on every one of them, no matter how small.”

Andre Harrison, also of Umoya, said: “Although Uniti was developed for the World Cup, it has legs beyond that. To help the country cope with attacks and their consequences, the system can be developed further to make it more specific for the needs that arise out of the displacement of people. As these events occur, the software is able to develop in synch with what is happening.”

Beretta said Uniti facilitated communication between line functions like police, ambulance and fire services, and was already being used by some district and local municipalities, including the City of Cape Town.

The management of refugee camps was being developed to link all the camps and their managers, who could communicate with each other easily and quickly.

“Camps that have the Uniti software will, because of their integrated communication, be able to register the refugees in and out of camps, keep full biographical details of displaced persons, and provide accreditation details of NGOs, social workers and people working in the camps.

“The software also facilitates the transferring of people between camps. It is able to link family members in different camps. Part of the software is a web presence that allows details of missing persons to be published on the website.

uniti’s core is the thousands of contacts it provides of individuals in all areas able to respond when disaster threatens.

“A centralised address book of all relevant disaster management, police, emergency services, defence force and fire department staff makes it possible to reach the relevant person when necessary,” Beretta said.

“Your data base gives you the name of the relevant individuals, contact details and photographs of each. All you need do is click on ‘call’,  and the program dials your landline or cell phone while calling the other person.”

The “uniti” system includes the ability to listen in on or join two-way radio talk groups, voice recording, situation report logs, a forum for text conversations, and a web intranet facility for posting alerts, updates and images. It also plots the recorded incidents using Google Maps.

“It is already being used daily for communication between Disaster Management and emergency services. The program allows everyone to know when and where anything is happening. We get several hundred entries a day from users.

“We have designed it so that it is mobile. You can access it from your cell phone or a laptop and it is rapidly-deployable anywhere because it is a hosted application and only requires access to the internet.”

It takes two hours to train someone to use the system, he said.

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Twitter on AppSpot?

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Tim Keller

This evening, while Googling for something unrelated, I came upon a Twitter status page. I clicked through and thought nothing of it. Later I came back to the tab and the URL caught my eye: http://7920074.appspot.com. What?!

Am I missing something, or is Twitter testing their web interface on Google AppEngine? I seriously doubt it… I guess this is just some hacked up transparent redirect to twitter.com?

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