I’m changing tack! To follow my continued interest in creating better communities, better teams and better ways of working together, I’m leaving the social media ocean, which has met many of the needs of individuals but has struggled to build collaboration and dependable communities.

So  as I head into new waters, I’d like to invite you to join me.  The new waters are:

The Sea of Meetings

We all have meetings and I guess we all feel they could be a bit more efficient.  I’m going to be focusing specifically on the structure of meetings: agendas, minutes and actions – helping people to get the meeting, this fundamental unit of team work, right. How can we use web technology to make meetings altogether better and more productive?

The blog for this is http://www.themeetingminutes.com – a web resource for anyone searching for advice on running great meetings. It features my own posts and also guest posts – so if you have a view of meetings that you’d like to share – ping me a mail (toby@pailz.com) – and I’ll send you a brief.

TheMeetingMinutes.com - meeting advice blog

The Big Game River

Games are everywhere, we play them everyday, we just don’t usually call them out as such. Whether it is ‘levelling up’ at work with a promotion or losing points on your driving licence, the mechanics of gameplay are often used.  Over the next few years, as a new generation of workers join the workplace, those brought up with the benefits of game playing, will expect those same benefits when applied to work. Common game benefits such as transparency of how to win (which points make prizes) and visibility of progress and where you stand versus colleagues (leaderboard) will become standard.

I’m launching a blog to track and analyse this change – called ‘Gamification Of Work‘ – do subscribe and keep track on the Game Layer at the top of the world….

And social?

I’m afraid that means the end of blogging at The Social Bazaar – the social layer is built, it is now widely understood, now on to build the game layer…  join me

Spotify machine at nudge london

So we’re using the awesome Spotify music service here in the Nudge office and have come up with a few rules of use which I share here.

1. Only one person active at one time

You can either grab the keyboard of the spotify machine or move the mouse using WinVNC (a remote desktop tool) but only one person at a time.

2. Don’t queue thousands of tracks

Just stick to a couple of albums at a time, while Carpenters might be a nice album break from constant Linkin Park, no-one wants to hear every song they ever wrote – just because you could doesn’t mean you should.

3. Don’t delete the queue

Ok so you’ve got a song you must play – feel free to jump the queue but don’t delete the queue – hey it took me at least 30 seconds to get that play queue set up.

4. Don’t add to a playlist unless you’re sure

We have a few fave shared playlists – like the current Top 40, the Nudge HQ hot list and my own Wake Me Up which I use fairly  often in place or with caffeine. Our rule is keep emlean and clean.

5. Use Spotify Friends to expand your music taste

This neat little website holds some great playlists – why be a DJ when you can enjoy someone else’s taste…