I spent some time tonight finishing the module selection and site setup for Cashkeeperscanada.com. We’re doing a re-launch of the site in June using Drupal 6. Tentative date is June 7th, 2008 (6/7/8).

I needed to do a conference call to participate in a meeting last night. There was a phone in the meeting room the rest of the group occupied, but it couldn’t do conference calling. We were stuck.

I did a quick search in the Skype help file and conference calling on Skype can include other skype users and direct phone calls. Skype phone rates of 2.5 cents/minute apply unless you’ve signed up for their unlimited plan. The cost of unlimited North American calls is only $30/year. That’s right: the cost is per year.

So I called up the people we needed to and hooked each of them into the call and it worked seamlessly. The call quality was clear enough that we had people on speakerphone and the conversation was clear. It was awesome. I’ve always disliked phone technology for these types of services because it always seems kludgey and costly. Skype has helped me eliminate both of those barriers.

One of the things I’ve noticed recently is that the more hierarchical an organization, the less initiative is taken by its members.

If you look at more collaborative groups, initiative seems to be taken more quickly for a few reasons.

• the group has assembled usually for a specific purpose.
• the group has an understanding and an acceptance of that purpose.
• the members’ opinions have an equitable weight.
• less effort is placed on process and more effort placed on results.

This is one of the reasons grassroots advocacy groups can get things done more quickly. You can see time and time again, however, that as such efforts mature, process becomes more complex and momentum slows.

I bought an mp3 player yesterday and already I’m building the habit of dumping my to-dos, etc. into it. The voice recording was the best thing about this player, and the $70 price tag (taxes in) for 1GB was great value.

When I’m running around I find it difficult to take notes, and so ideas, tasks in my head eventually fall out, unused or lost. We’ll see if this increased capture results in greater productivitiy, but for now the relief is just that I’m not storing it in my head any more.