Back In Texas

Just spent most of the week in Los Angeles. Had a couple of back to back SME functions. One was a leadership conference, the other was a workshop on Lean tool and die making. Both were taking place with Westec as a backdrop.

The workshop turned out to be a dud. No one attended.

The leadership meeting was a follow-on to one we held in Oconomowoc last fall. There were about 60 people in attendance. Last year we had brainstormed "vision." This year the topic was metrics.

I got some favorable comments on a technique I used to collect ideas. The technique is called "brain writing." Mostly, I think it was because they hadn't seen the technique before. The technique generated about 200 ideas, which is modest with 60 people. But we only ran it about 10 minutes.

Ros Jay discusses the tool in her book "The Ultimate Book of Business Creativity." She attribute the creation to the Batelle Institute in Frankfurt, Germany.

I've found some references on the web, for example here and here. I use the technique as one of my examples in the brainstorming class. I use a sheet of paper rather than index cards.

Public Relations

I've been searching the net for small business topics, in particular, the various forms of financing. I'm helping one of the SCORE volunteers develop a workshop on Alternative Sources of Capital.

My search led me to an Inc. Magazine article on borrowing from friends and family. But that's not what this post is about.

The sidebar had a number of related article links. Three of them were about blogs and blogging.

When Blogs Go Bad, by Jory Des Jardins, ran in the November 2005 issue of Inc. Magazine. In a nutshell, some marketing ideas can be misunderstood. How do you do damage control in the blogosphere?

Blogs have attracted a lot of attention in the marketing community. It is another channel for building relationships and brand loyalty. Not all the blogosphere is political commentary. But once again it is the two-way nature of the technology that gives it an appeal.

Multitasking or lack there of

Well, I've been posting on blogs, just not here. I am informally supporting three technical groups in the SME organization.

One group, The Human Side of LEAN, has a weekly phone call on Tuesday nights. I've been posting my meeting minutes there. I use Mind Manager to take notes while I have the conference call on the speaker-phone. Keeps me engaged.

The second group is a task force. The blog portion is some discussion and a repository for public whitepapers. We didn't make it "visible" on Blogger. The team is using a combination of email, word documents, and some blog activity. We are considering going to a secured bulletin board.

The third group isn't very active, yet. We have a monthly call concerning LEAN Tool & Die Making. We have a conference coming up at the end of the month, so a lot of time being spent getting ready for that.

One thing I've found is engineers aren't always aware of newer technology outside their field. A lot of folks use the web but haven't every read or used blogs.