Sametime 7.5 Podcast

Still awaiting with much anticipation the release of Sametime 7.5. Since Lotusphere in Jan we have grand plans for developing plugins for Sametime 7.5 so are very keen to get our hands on it.

Anyway here is some more tidbits of information. Get the podcast here. 

Blog Spam

You probably havn't noticed as I was keeping on top of it most days but my blog has been suffering from a bad case on Blog Spam. I have been deleting the spam everyday for the last month or 2 since it started. Well good news, I upgraded to Blogsphere V2.5.5 a couple of days ago and one of the fixes/enhancements was improvements to how it handles spam. It seems to be working great, not a single spam since the upgrade. Well done to the blogsphere team. 

Back from Phuket

Alas I am back at work from Phuket. We had the most fantastic time. Great resort, great weather, awesome food, shopping (wow did we shop!! The MBK Centre in Bangkok was covered inch by inch). Daily routine was along the lines of get up around 8:30am for a dip in the pool, huge breakfast, walk along beach, looking around Patong, markets etc, massage, beer on the beach, little lunch maybe, relax by the pool in afternoon heat, nap a little, read a little, head out for dinner and some night life, and then do it all again.

Some key highlights - Elephant Trek, the Novotel Resort in phuket is just fantastic, the Thai people are just the nicest people I have ever met.

Of course spending plenty of time with Jayne was great as well.

1 tip for people visiting, the Fantasea show is pretty good but don't be tricked into going early. We were told we had to leave at 5:30pm for the show and then arrived at 6pm. The show didn't start until 9pm so we were stuck in a tourist trap for 3 hours!! The show is good by the surrounding theme park is sooooo tacky. Was fun anyway. 

Off to Phuket!!

Well I have been a bit slack over the last week with the blog. I have been pretty busy trying to close off a heap of work before having a break. We are off for a couple of weeks in Phucket. Warmer weather, cocktails by the pool, daily massages, bit of shopping, and a heap of relaxing. So that is it for the next 2 weeks for me!!! 

Home Working

I try to work at home at least 1 or 2 days a week. I find that I have a real productivity boost when working at home in particular when doing tasks that need concentrated effort. Even though I normally divert my office phone to home, I seem to find that I get less distracted or if I do receive a call I get back to what I was doing quicker. When I am in the office (which I do need to at least a few days a week) I find that I have many more interuptions. I guess these interuptions are an important part of what I do as well though so its not that I mind. I tend to try and spend at least 5-10 minutes talking with each member of the team just catching up with where they are at and providing input where I see it is necessary. I am a bit of a believer in the One Minute Manager management book and take a lot of my approach for management of the team from this.

As far as working from home though I see there being many advantages:

1) You can skip out on that drive to work. It isn't like it is long (20 mins each way) but by the time you have parked the car etc and got the laptop fired up in the office I have probably wasted an hr. This hr can either be more time for work or more time for me.
2) Ability to focus without distraction. It seems to be way to easy to get distracted in the office.
3) I can spread my day out better. The commute to my home office is obviously less than a minute to walk from say the kitchen to my office. I can also fit in a few personal tasks throughout the day when I feel like a break. Then when I want to get back into it I just start working again. I can easily get 8-12 hours of work out of a solid day at home.
4) My dog Jess just loves it when I work at home. She mainly sleeps at my feet. I also think this is good for my state of mind.
5) I am more relaxed.

One of the key things when you do work at home though is making sure you don't let the work invade on your home time. It is so easy just to keep working. I tend to manage this by keeping it to my office. When I am there I am working, when I am upstairs I am relaxing (although I tend to slip on this sometimes like right now. Doing this in front of the TV).

As far as clients are concerned it really has no effect where I am. They ring(Skype or Phone), I answer. They email, I answer. Office or home is pretty irrelevant. Of course when I have face to face meetings I normally go to the office that day or just meet at the clients office.

All up I would encourage anyone to give it a go. If you do the type of work that where you are doesn't really matter then why not work from home a bit. I know I think it is great.