Dave's Whiteboard

As the social media guru Douglas MacArthur should have said, old technology doesn’t die, it just fades away.  What’s fading on me, lately, is my Palm Tungsten PDA, one of the two that Noah used on the ark.  It’s the third Palm I’ve owned, though the second one’s life did end prematurely when a heavy shelf decided to part company with my office wall.

The PDA doesn’t have Internet access, can’t make calls.  What it used to do, reliably, is synchronize my contacts, my calendar, and my to-do list so I could use these things either on the PDA or on my laptop.

A while back, the calendar stopped synching, which means the PDA won’t remind me I’m supposed to be at the dentist’s or that the scope of work is due at the client’s on Thursday.

I’ve decided not to try fixing this thing.  My idea of a good time, or even a mildly tolerable bad one, doesn’t include textual analysis of error messages when they boil down to “nope, that didn’t work, either.”  Instead, I’m trying to figure out what I want to do electronically so I can choose a suitable solution for myself.

The status quo:

• I use Outlook for email.  I’m an independent practitioner, so it’s not like I’m required to use it.  I’m just accustomed.
• I use Outlook’s calendar and to-do list a lot.
• My portable phone’s a very basic model.  It makes calls.  I don’t have a text plan; it’s too much trouble to enter text when you only have 12 keys.
• Most of the time, I work from my home office.  Most of the rest of the time, I’m using my own computer at some client site.

So, I’m considering getting a smartphone to replace both the PDA and my current phone.  I still want synchronization, by which I mean I want to be able to rely on either the smartphone or my computer for calendar, contacts, etc.

I am not welded to Outlook, though by nature I’m reluctant to shift fundamental applications.  If I had to switch email, I’d be looking for solid evidence that the New Thing linked well with calendar and to-do stuff.  And if I were really unhappy, I might go to the recommender’s house and let the air out of a tire or two.

I’m not opposed to an iPhone, though I do think Apple’s business model includes the Beanie Baby approach: create the appearance of exclusivity, then charge more.   I talked a bit yesterday with a Verizon salesperson about the new Droid phone; I’d like to hear more from people who do the kind of stuff I’d like to do.

So–how should I be thinking?  What am I overlooking?  Feel free to add a comment here, through Twitter, on LinkedIn, or at dferguson [you know] strathlorne [ditto] com.

CC-licensed image of PDA sketch by andreaspopp.

From Geek & Poke, shown here under a CC license.

The Washington DC Metrorail’s system has been on Twitter since March, according to a recent Washington Post story.  As the article points out, the tweets (mainly aimed at riders of the subway system) haven’t completely mastered Twitter’s 140-character limit:

• No Line: Beginning this evening at 9:30 pm, Red line trains will not operate between Brookland, Fort Totten, and Takoma stations while Metro
• Blue Line: Due to scheduled track maintenance there is no Blue line train service between Rosslyn & King Street. Shuttle bus service is est
• Red Line: Due to track circuit repairs at Fort Totten, every other Red Line train will offload at New York Avenue station. Customers are en
• No Line: Every evening during the month of August, Red Line trains will share one track, starting at 9:30 p.m., between Fort Totten and Tako

As the article notes, this pattern has inspired complete-the-tweet contests at the Unsuck DC Metro blog.

Metro hasn’t asked for my in-depth analysis, and I don’t have a lot of data to go on.  I do see some areas worth investigating, though:

What’s the point? I think it’s a great idea for a transit system to get instant updates to interested passengers — but is that what Metro wants to do?  And if so, does it also want to hear back from them?  Maybe the answer’s “yes, but not through this account.”  That’s okay, too.  My real point is that you first figure out what you want to accomplish, then choose the tool(s) that will do the job.  I can imagine a little family of Twitter IDs:

• metroupdate for, well, updates from Metro
• metrotalk for sending messages to (and getting them from) Metro; this ID would monitor all the messages sent to metroupdate
• line-specific IDs (the Metro system has color-coded routes: the Red Line, the Orange Line, and so on).  Ironically, I found MetroTweet, an unofficial service that converts Metro’s email alerts into line-specific tweet streams.

Who’s tweeting? Is this a regular assignment?  Something for Colleen to do along with her “real” job?  Or is it a communications Post-It that gets handed to anyone in the office with a little spare time?  Which leads to a related question:

Has the tweeter seen the tweets? Like someone with a bad phone connection, he might assume that since he knows what he meant, so does everyone else.

Who’s following? Commuters tend to have strong opinions about the level of service, and often many ideas about how to improve it.  Is Metro making any use of that source?

I also detect a certain inertia in the text of the message.  Stock phrases troop through the stream like clichés in a sports interview.  Let’s try fixing a few:

• Orange Line: Trains are sharing the same track between Vienna/Fairfax-GMU and West Falls Church due to scheduled track maintenance. Expect d (140 chars)
  • Orange: single track between Vienna & W Falls Church (track maint).  Delay likely both dirs.  (92 chars)
• Red Line: Trains are moving at reduced speeds between Fort Totten and Takoma stations due to track circuit repairs. Expect delays in both di (140)
  • Red: reduced speed both dirs bet Ft Totten & Takoma (circuit repair).  (70)
    Maybe it’s the English teacher in me; I figure if you’ve reduced speed, I’m going to be delayed.

It’s too easy a target to go after the bureaucratic passive voice (“bus service is established”), and you probably can’t completely avoid the local-politics burden of multi-name Metro stations (Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter is one place, not three).

I’m also thinking about the feedback Metro must be getting on this, some of it likely sarcastic, impatient, or both.  Which brings up another performance challenge: there isn’t a lot of time for that learning curve.  At least not once the act goes on the road (or the rail).

I think Metro’s experience is a good example that “training” isn’t going to automatically fix things, though after the Post article I’m sure board members will call for that.  A little pilot testing could have paid off, and a performance-improvement approach certainly will.

“Plan B” image adapted from a CC-licensed photo by petrr.

Mark Oehlert thinks Twitter can be a good thing.  Though I haven’t discussed this nuance with him, I’m pretty sure he’d say it’s not good in and of itself; what matters is the use you put it to and the value you get out of it.

Take live-tweeting.  That’s when people at an event tweet about it in real time.  On the one hand, I can see how that might drive others crazy–the presenter, say, or the people sitting next to the person tapping away relentlessly.

Yet live tweets can accomplish other things:

• They can help participants connect with one another.  If you’re in a huge keynote with hundreds of other people, you really don’t get reactions from folks more than three feet away.  Live tweets allow you to scan the reactions of others, even if you don’t send out your own response.
• They can expand the conversation: people will tweet links to related topics, the presenter’s site, and so on.  This post is a direct result of seeing one of Mark’s tweets.
• They capture unexpected connections: a live tweeter may have special knowledge of the subject, or related experience, or what I think of as something relevantly tangential (as opposed to tangentially relevant).
• They bring outsiders into the event.  During the ASTD conference last May, for example, I learned about presentations thanks to live tweeters, even though I was unable to attend.

So what? Just a few minutes ago, I followed that link Mark tweeted.  It was for a tweetbook–a collection of tweets around some topic.  In this case, the topic was the recent Open Government and Innovations conference:

That image is a link to a sixty-two page PDF document.  As Andrew Krzmarzick explains:

How often do you leavea conference and ask yourself, “That was nice, but now what?”

A few of us were pondering that precise predicament at the conclusion of the Open Government and Innovations Conference (now affectionately know as “#ogi”) when I mused that we should create something called a TweetBook — a neatly packaged compliation of all the tweets from the conference.

Then I saw a series of seven blog posts from @pbroviak on GovLoop and learned that the two-day grand total included 4,423 tweets from 629 contributors that comprised over 150 pages when dumped in a Word document.

Within days, a band of volunteers (including some who had not attended the conference) produced the tweetbook, reformatting and organizing tweets covering dozens of sessions as well as keynotes and plenary events.

So the comments didn’t just disappear–they’re ready for people interested in the topic to use as they will.  Like the folks at GovLoop, “a social network connecting the government community.”

UK-based Donald Taylor posted a useful and engaging explanation of how people use social media.  There’s a viewing/contributing axis, a content/people focus, and a gentle reminder that it depends on who’s doing the using.

That’s the SlideShare presentation; here’s the post as it appears on Don’s blog.