Although the authenticity of the studies covered in the article are questionable, Marc Abrahams’ Bored Meetings echoes my opinion on excessive business meetings. Office Space passively makes fun of this practice with the phrase “planning to plan” written on a blackboard in the background. Having too many meetings may have adverse effects on workers. Most meetings are intended to coordinate the activities of a group of people, but trivial meetings or meetings that rehash the content of previous meetings provide not much more than a reduction in available time to complete a project before its deadline.
I have heard about salespeople who lose interested prospects by excessively talking. People who were ready to purchase the product or service changed their mind simply because the salespersons continuously jabbered. The salespersons talked their prospects out of an almost certain sale. These salespersons lost the sale, because they lost focus on their objective. Everything that they say to potential clients should help them close deals. Instead, through excessive speech, these salespersons discouraged their audience from taking the desired action.
Meetings should also have an objective. This objective can be drafting a project schedule, providing a progress update, or possibly changing a company’s direction. Once its objective is met, the meeting should be dispersed out of respect for each person’s time. Every worker has tasks that need to be completed before a specified time. Completing tasks within tight schedules provides enough stress. Conducting meetings with little or no benefit increases this stress and may reduce productivity. Missed deadlines caused by excessive meetings demoralize teams. Before scheduling another meeting, determine the meeting’s objectives and benefits, and focus the meeting on its objectives.
Today marks the end of CES 2006, which was held this year in Las Vegas. The show spanned the Sands Expo and all the halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Over half a million companies were represented, including all the major players in the consumer electronics industry. Other major companies that do not have any consumer electronic offerings were also present.
Notable developments include TV over IP technologies and enhanced television display picture quality. Honda demonstrated their humanoid robot, Asimo. Rumors of a new logo and slogan for Intel are confirmed. Intel’s new slogan is “Leap Ahead,” and their new logo looks a bit anemic when compared to their earlier one. The Microsoft booth at the center hall was fairly expansive and featured their different product lines.
CES 2006 was a great opportunity to interact with several product vendors. It was like walking into a super Best Buy store and being able to talk with company representatives personally about their products.
The people on EFNet #C++ told me about the Uberman’s Sleep Schedule, and they encouraged me try it out and report on its effectiveness. It seems that it would take a super man to live on only three hours of sleep per day as is prescribed by this schedule. The article claims that the Uberman’s sleep schedule is effective, because it coaxes the body to fall quickly into the most beneficial phase of sleep. Methodical sleep deprivation is used to train the body to do this, but after the body has been trained, the article cites several advantages. These advantages include more free time and an increased sense of being healthy.
Perhaps, after most of my time-sensitive projects are completed, I can experiment with the Uberman’s sleep schedule. Maximizing the utility of every minute asleep to increase the amount of time awake per day is one way to boost productivity. I surely would love the benefit of having more time, and if bursts of energy throughout the day can be experienced with this schedule, I’m fairly certain that an increased level of productivity in my development efforts will be consistent.
After some thought, the Uberman’s sleep schedule seems like nothing more than a form of insomnia, but feeling sluggish after five or six continuous hours of sleep is less appealing than feeling energetic after very short naps. The Uberman’s sleep schedule can potentially serve as an excellent subject for a high school science project under medical supervision, of course.
Eryn Brown’s Revenge of the Dotcom Poster Boy, which is featured in wired.com, talks about Jason McCabe Calacanis. Calacanis’ story is very exciting. He pushed for content long before its recent surge in demand, which is driven by businesses looking to rank highly on popular search engine result pages. Calacanis’ publications allowed him to deal with the big time players of the technology industry during the dotcom era. His inspiring persistence allowed him to continue looking for opportunities at the dotcom era’s end.
Although Calacanis was not the first to develop a content network, he has been very successful in monetizing the network that he helped develop. Eryn Brown compares Calacanis with Gawker Media’s Nick Denton, noting that “Denton kept Gawker relatively small and focused, but Calacanis and Alvey went unabashedly for scale.” Taking on those kinds of risks requires some degree of confidence that may very well be confused with arrogance. He expresses his confidence by stating:
There’s no limit to how far I could go in AOL – it’s just the limits they put on me. I’m not in line to be CEO of AOL, but it’s obvious that’s where I’ll end up, if I stay focused. Somebody’s got to be the next CEO of AOL.
I would have loved the opportunity to hear Calacanis talk “about scaling up startups with in earnestness that would make a boom-era dotcommer blush.” Like Calacanis, I actively seek the opportunity to bring startups to the next level with some equity for my team.
Wired.com has an Associated Press article that discusses the NSA’s Lamest Spy Tool: Cookies. The first sentence in the article claims “the National Security Agency’s internet site has been placing files on visitors’ computers that can track their web-surfing activity,” without bringing up any of these files’ limitations. Articles like the one featured on Wired.com feed unreasonable paranoia by conveniently omitting the extent that cookies can track browsing habits.
