Google is planning on launching an experimental, ultra high-speed (over 1 gigabit per second) network, and test it in location(s) across the country. “The level of community support” will be one of the key criteria used by the Google decision makers. You can do your part by nominating Ann Arbor at A2Fiber.com

Later in the day I learned that local complimentary currencies had evolved to include sophisticated technological solutions built on the loyalty/rewards card systems. Sonoma has just such a system, though it wasn’t clear that there was a compelling case for businesses to participate. There are also local paper based systems, like BerkShares in western Mass that are amazingly well integrated into the local economy, including having the local banks placing the script into circulation.

I then attended a session on BALLE 101 and a session on Slow Money. Both thought provoking but as a reaction instead of a direct learning.

The evening plenary included community based wind power initiatives, tribal lands wind power, and Hunter Lovins on the state of everything.

Enough thinking – we ended the evening dancing to a local band.

To summarize, because of the time lag on email it is important to batch or streamline the process from everyone talking to find a mutually acceptable date to a model where a range of options is provided and everyone responds to a single source that gathers the information and then either informs the group of the best choice or upon failure offers a new range of dates. The web site http://meetomatic.com/ does exactly this and tends to work well for most situations. A person can also do the same role as Meet-o-matic by emailing a range of choices, gathering, then informing. Of course, online calendars from group members can help too!

Excerpt from “Support for Decisions by E-mail” by Jacob Palme

Problem: Interaction time (the time from a statement to a response) is in e-mail usually 6-48 hours, while the interaction time in face to face meetings is usually seconds or minutes only. This means that processes, which require many interactions, will take longer time through e-mail. In a face-to-face meetings, people can keep their attention on the same issue during the whole discussion, while in e-mail, they will do other things inbetween.

Solution: In some cases, this can be solved with a different algorithm. A simple example is the booking of the time for a future meeting. With face-to-face meetings, the usual algorithm is as follows:

1. Someone proposes at date for the next meeting.
2. Everyone else checks if this date is acceptable.
3. If the date is not acceptable to someone, that person proposes a different date.
4. Back to step 2 until a date is found, which is acceptable to everyone.

With e-mail, this algorithm will not work at all. With 6-48 hours loop time it may take weeks to schedule a time for a meeting. Instead, another algorithms may be used:

1. One person proposes five alternative dates, and asks everyone to reply to that person personally, indicating which of the dates are acceptable to them.
2. The proposing person collects the responses, checks which dates suites the largest number of people, and schedules the meeting for that date.
3. If none of the suggested dates are good enough, back to step 1.

The second algorithm is much faster, because usually only one loop is neccessary. Important differences and similarities:

* With both algorithms, the goal is to find a date suitable to all or most of the participants.
* With both algorithms, the actual decision is not made automatically by some computer process. The decision is made by one or several people, aided by data collected by the computer.
* The human decision process in the face-to-face process sometimes can include that someone says “hold the meeting without me” or “well, OK, I will reschedule my other commitment for the proposed date”. With the e-mail variant, such additional factors are also taken into account, but sometimes by the chair alone, which decides “we will have to hold the meeting without Johnson this time”.

In our IT department within Zing we’ve worked really hard to be strong contributers to the positive culture that our business has created and it’s been powerfully rewarding. We consistently receive the highest service rating for our work within our organization and providing that level of service is inherently personally rewarding – it’s a great feedback circuit.

Our challenge is to continue to provide knowledgable IT support in a rising tide of higher expectations, more complex offerings from vendors, increased security concerns and compliance standards, all within an industry that is traditionally not inclined to embrace technology.

For that reason it would be great to share with other geeks in our world.