Tools I Use: Scheduling

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I have saved so much time scheduling calls or meetings because of no back-and-forth using assistant.to

It is simple to use with Gmail along with Google Calendar. And it is free to use.

If you don’t want to be limited to just Gmail nor picking times yourself that would work for you in the future, I have saved even more time by allowing people to schedule time with me based on my calendar availability for Zoom.us calls using calendly.com.

The combination of Zoom for calls and calendly.com save countless hours each week.

Yes, if you really want to discuss something productive for 15 minutes with me, schedule the time here and you will see what I mean.

If I need to schedule a group of people (3+) together for a virtual group meeting days or weeks in advance and want to offer a few choices in dates and times, I use zvite.co, which is free to use.

There are some other appointment scheduling apps available if you prefer to do your own research.

Questions?

Launching Rights.tech

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Since no one else has done this to my knowledge, I thought it would be interesting to launch a series of audio interviews with professionals talking about Rights Management. It is called Rights.tech

Questions like “What is copyright?” and “How to register copyright?” has already been done by others. I am not interested in repeating it because that broken record has little success of audience engagement. The size of that issue is mentioned in several interviews. I was more interested in sharing the perspectives of professionals on the status of this market.

I reached out to the top professionals in the field of Rights Management globally about what they thought about the market.

Here are the 5 questions I asked everyone interviewed:

  1. Who are you and what do you do?
  2. What are the biggest challenges and successes you have seen with Rights Management?
  3. What is changing with Rights Management or needs to change?
  4. What advice would you like to share with people interested in Rights Management?
  5. Where can we find more information about Rights Management?

A few declined to be interviewed, but most welcomed it because this is an underserved market (IP and content licensing not so sexy) and it is complicated. I like niche markets for this reason.

Starting in May 2o16, Rights.tech will have new interviews throughout the summer with standards bodies, vendors,  licensees, licensors, consultants, create creators and associations with interests in Rights Management.

I reached out to a few conferences about this, but since I am leveling the playing field and I am one of the few consultants not in the pocket of any vendors (yes, I remain vendor-neutral), do not expect to me to be headlining anywhere on the conference circuit. That is what consultants call ‘partnering’ or ‘preferred’ solution providers. I don’t prefer nor partner with any vendors because I am a vendor-neutral consultant.

How do I remain vendor-neutral and interview Rights Management vendors at the same time?

No sales pitches allowed in the interviews. No money exchanged either way. Release all the vendor interviews on the same day. Everyone is interviewed based on who they are and what they do, however not who they work for. No favoritism. I bet most people did not know there were this many Rights Management vendors on the market today. There are others, but they declined to be interviewed.

Same with the standards bodies. There are too many of them. Not all were keen to be interviewed. Sadly, some were just too disorganized to be interviewed.

To listen to this series about Rights Management, visit Rights.tech

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Launching Tagging.tech

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Launched in March 2016, I wanted to compare the human-generated keywording services to the computer-generated information.

Tagging.tech is a resource of information about the global keywording services, image recognition and video recognition technologies.

To listen to these audio interviews, visit Tagging.tech

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Tools I Use: One Phone

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I only have one phone. Yes, one (1) mobile phone. It simplifies life.

No home phone. No one of any value called us at home. Killed off that phone line.

No fax nor telex (that is so last century). No paper to scan either (that’s for another post).

No office phone. If a workplace issues me a phone, I program the office line to automatically forward to my phone. Minutes are not an issue since I have plenty of them.

I am not a slave to a phone nor multiple phones. However, access and simplicity for myself as well as anyone trying to call me (for the immediacy) is key.

I believe that in the 21st century, we have no reason to have multiple phone numbers nor phones. No juggling phones necessary.

Work-life balance

Most mobile phones have caller ID which identifies the caller, often by name. You can either take the call or you will not. That is the balance within your 168 hour week.

I do not need two or more separate devices to determine if it is work-related or not. I have met people that have up to five (5) mobile phones (often executives). Where is the balance there? I call that a juggling act, not a balancing act. Most of these people are dead and not of old age. Simplify your life rather than cluttering it.

It is very simple. One phone number to reach me. Period. If you can’t reach me, you can leave me a voicemail or text me. All to my one phone. I will follow up when I am available.

I accept a very few unscheduled calls from people calling me when it is not a robocall, some other useless call I don’t care about and when I am not on airplane mode working. I will tell you if you are wasting your time and mine very directly. I am really not shy about this. People deserve honesty 100% of the time, even if it bruises their ego (sometimes people mistaken ego for feelings). They’ll live. They deserve to know even if they call me names afterwards. Why? Because few have the courage to do this, so they rarely hear it. This not because people are too nice, but because many are too afraid to offend or have any form of confrontation.  I call it candor. Try it. You really should. With respect. And setting the scene for direction of the conversation with some framing.

Battery life

Many people struggle using a mobile phone charged for the entire day. That is the top buying criteria when I get a mobile phone. It lasts all day, or I don’t buy it. I am not blind (yet) so I don’t need a big screen. I know how to dim my screen to save battery life. I put my phone on airplane mode when I am in meetings that don’t require internet access. I am conscious of what apps suck battery life. All cars I ride/drive in have a phone charger, and I carry a phone charger with my laptop just in case. Be prepared.

Mobile hotspot

My mobile phone has the option to be a mobile hotspot to provide my laptop a wifi connection from anywhere I have mobile phone connection. I am not one to go off grid even if I were to go camping like I did when I was Boy Scout. This hotspot feature has proven invaluable many times in case a wifi connection is spotty or if I run into an unreliable ISP.  This is a second option for data which sometimes becomes the only option in order to remain connected  for online collaborative meetings, podcast interviews, webinars or quick email.

Unlimited data plan

In the early days of mobile phones, people talked a lot,m but the mobile phone provider would limit the number of minutes you could call per month. Now our Voice (minutes), Messaging (unlimited) and Data plan should be as close to unlimited as possible. This is a given cost of doing business for any basic or advanced operations today. When you are remote this matters even more. You learn quickly where dodgy spots are and adapt to avoid them.

Global Calls

If I need to call someone across the globe, I either use apps like Google Hangout,  Skype, Whatsapp or Zoom. Most people I need to speak with know how to use these tools. Otherwise, I use these tools to call their one phone. I am not the only one with just one phone.

Questions?

Tools I Use: WordPress

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Since I started blogging back in 2009, I have used WordPress. There are/were other blogging platforms, but WordPress is the one for me.

WordPress is one of the easiest and most popular blogging platforms to use.

I have all of my sites hosted on WordPress. Including this one.

In December 2015, I was able to speak briefly with WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg during Wordcamp. He is a nice guy and has a brilliant business model for Automattic. You can learn more about Automattic by listening to a great interview with Matt by Tim Ferriss.