I’ve been enjoying practicing Inbox Zero as described by Merlin Mann at 43Folders. For the last couple of weeks I have kept my inbox close to or at zero and WOW, it’s an amazing feeling.

Merlin’s got quite a rant going on the subject which is well worth reading.

Get yourself over to www.inboxzero.com and then let us know in the comments what you think about it.

The latest revision of Ubuntu, 7.10 aka ‘Gutsy Gibbon’, came out this week. I updated my home computer last night and am very pleased: Flash and Java are now included, both of which used to be huge hurdles. Also included in the new distro is Compiz Fusion which gives a slightly new aesthetic, 3-D effects, and some advanced desktop features (this Fusion demo will blow your mind!). Fusion requires a newer video card, but it plays very nice with older hardware. Most exciting, IMO, about Gutsy Gibbon is that you can print. Finally. It’s the simple things in life that make me happy, and successfully printing a page is a joyous event that has been absent in my previous experiences with Ubuntu.

Check out Brian DeLancy’s history and review of the new Ubuntu at O’Reilly’s ONLamp.com

The Apple Blog has a nice review of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). TAB covers the big and little, good and bad changes to Apple’s operating system. I’m particularly excited for the new Finder, which looks very iTunes-esque and even includes Cover Flow. Leopard ships October 26, ZingIT review to follow shortly thereafter. Get excited.

UPDATE: Paul Thurrot (yeah, the Windows guy) has a pretty sweet collection of screenshots from his recent upgrade to Leopard.

I was having a conversation with some partners yesterday about how, as an organization, we don’t have well developed skills in delegation - that it often becomes ‘dumping’. I then ran across a pretty good list of responsibilities for both parties in a project delegation scenario. From MIT’s department of IS&T…

When you take on a ‘project’…

• clarify with the sponsor (or delegator) the scope and expectations for its completion.
• Determine where the importance of this task fits in the “big picture.”
• Make sure the criteria for success have been spelled out in sufficient detail.
• Agree on the differing roles and responsibilities of each person involved.
• Get the authority to obtain the necessary resources.
• Settle on a date for an early progress review.

Whenever delegating a ‘project’…

explain the scope of the task as well as:
• expectations
• importance
• criteria for success
• roles
• responsibilities
• resources
• review process

Good article about tea in today’s NY Times:

Flying to a remote corner of India and braving the long drive into the Himalayas may seem like an awful lot of effort for a good cup of tea, but Darjeeling tea isn’t simply good. It’s about the best in the world…

Link: http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/travel/14Tea.html
PDF: nytimes_high_tea_indian_style_14oct07.pdf

New York. Restaurants. Wow. Extremely well fed. Not enough time.

db Bistro Moderne Friday Night
Modern French-American bistro (duh)
Our ‘fanciest’ for the weekend - changed into nice shirts on the street after having been walking for a while.
What we had: The db Burger - stuffed with short ribs, foie gras, and black truffle, which is their trademark dish. Several of us had cocktails, great Old Fashioned. Other dishes included bacon wrapped salmon with roasted figs. Had some Madeira for dessert.

Otto Saturday Lunch
Mario Batali’s pizzeria
Billie’s favorite of the weekend. Most tables had young children. Lots of space.
What we had: Pizza Lardo (wow, texture), Pizza Vongole (mountain of clams, in the shells, atop the pizza), Pizza Quattro Stagioni, Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Alphonso Olives (purple). Good service.

LAN Saturday Dinner
Japanese Fusion
What we had: Sushi. Inventive. Fresh. Actually got Toro. They had a woman sushi chef! We were obviously the last people on the priority list for service, but they did a good job. Elph had a glass of Tokaj that he’d read about but never tried. Yummy desserts.

Shake Shack Saturday Afternoon
Union Square’s burger and shake joint in Madison Park
Billie stood in line for an hour and 40 minutes, waited another 20 minutes for food.
What she had: cheeseburger, rootbeer float

Union Square Cafe Sunday Brunch
Our second annual Sunday brunch at USC.
Our server Basha was great! They treated us very well. Love the service there!
What we had: raw oysters and champagne, grilled fillet mignon of tuna with wasabi mashed potatoes, black bean soup with Sherry, calamari, gnocci, USC french toast - they brought us several complimentary desserts. Had a nice cup of Sencha. We had a great window seat.

Little Giant Sunday Dinner
Friends of Zing, nice ambiance, music and light were great, it was getting cool and damp outside but it was warm inside, service was a little gruff
What we had: burrata, swine of the week - pork chops, egg cream with Stoli vanilla, short ribs, ginger mojito, cote du rhone (they had no Cab or Syrah). JoeG drank a Bee’s Knees - honey infused vodka, splash of ginger ale, twist.

More pics added to the NYC 2007 photo album.

As some of you know I have been in search of the perfect syncing tool for a while now. I’ve tried many and none are perfect. In fact, many of them screw up my data in creative ways. Plaxo may be not be an exception, it’s too early to tell, but it’s worth noting here because of a couple of properties. One it is a nicely designed web app. Two it integrates very nicely with iCal.app and Addressbook.app on my Mac. Though I have been too afraid to touch the iCal sync yet. Third, and the most interesting, it does a bit of social networking moves like LinkedIn and Jaiku.

What am I looking for? I would like to keep my Entourage and Mac apps in sync. That’s done nicely through Sync Services which Entourage integrates with. But, I also want to post my calendar to Google’s Calendar for others that use that system. That’s where it get’s wonky.

More on Plaxo later. Check the comments.

Long overdue report on mini games from the Great Game of Business conference.

Why have Mini Games?

• To foster teamwork and communication
• To teach and reinforce business skills
• To instill the desire and habit of winning, not of competing with each other
• To let “cave dwellers” know they can’t bring the group down

Mini Game Design:

1. Choose the game.
2. Set the targets.
   It is also important to teach the impact of winning to the bottom lines.
3. Identify who is involved.
   Anyone who is able to influence the score should be in the loop. It would be upsetting to have another department ruin the players’ chance of winning because they didn’t know what was going on.
4. Determine the time frame.
   Long enough to be able to change behavior but short enough to see results. A longer-term game could have some milestones celebrated to keep people involved. Create frequent wins.
5. Decide on prizes.
   Consider creative incentives that will be motivating for different kinds of people. Having t-shirts as prizes gets old, especially for staffers that have been here longer.
   Do a cost analysis of prizes and potential savings as a result of the mini game.
6. Design a scoreboard.
   Everyone should know how to calculate the score.
   Review the score regularly so everyone knows if we’re winning.
7. Play the game.
   A kickoff meeting to launch the mini game will create enthusiasm.
8. Evaluate the results.

Mini games must have qualifiers or things that should not be allowed to slip. For example, if the mini game is focused on going the extra mile for every trouble ticket, one qualifier could be that average resolution time should not drop below 1.6 days.

This summer I participated in the U of Z Leadership Workshop by Ari Weinzweig. It was held over two months, consisting of five sessions and a project.

My classmates were all intelligent, motivated, inspiring, and enthusiastic people. We had different experiences to share, having come from different areas of the ZCoB. Together we read stimulating material on leadership, effecting change, then discussed how it applies to our organization and us personally as leaders.

In addition to the readings, we each picked a project to effect a change in any level of the organization. I chose to do the Zingtranet Forum! The Zing Forum is a new feature on our intranet where staff members can post thoughts, ideas, questions online about various kinds of Zing business. It’s a great way to tap into the collective knowledge of the ZCoB in a structured form.

Following the BLC process, I wrote a vision, compelling reasons and interviewed a microcosm of people across the organization on how to tell everyone about it. Almost half of them suggested running a game. It seemed a perfect fit! A forum follows the Network Effect which means that a service becomes more valuable to a customer as more people use it. A game that incented people to post would increase its value as well as expose it to more users. The game ran for exactly a month. At the end of the game, we had 437 posts, 91 topics in 22 categories, and a bunch of happy prizewinners!

If anyone wants to learn more about what the Leadership Workshop was like, or if you’re interested in the Forum Game, feel free to contact me!