Between a Doc and a Hard place – In Search of Meaning for Evernote

When I first heard about Evernote about a year ago, I thought it would be the perfect thing for me. As someone who is constantly searching for information online (only to misplace it later) this app seemed like my savior – a way to organize my own thoughts into a coherent narrative.

But, the truth is that life just isn’t that simple – Evernote is not just an app, it is a discipline, and as in any discipline, you have to train yourself to be effective. Unfortunately, that is exactly opposite of what I expected, because call me lazy, but I expected it to be a completely intuitive out-of-the box app. I wanted something that would force me into organizing my thoughts.

What I got was another repository for my data, another place along with my Google Docs, Microsoft One Note (which seems to work better for me), my Chrome bookmarks, my Dropbox, and of course, all my other Office necessities.

So, where did our relationship go sour?? Well, to start with, I love the fact that I can tag anything and find it later on Evernote, BUT what I really need is someone to remind me to search for those tags later. For example, I have a nice little task app for my phone called Astrid tasks that likes to remind me when there is someone who called who I may want to call back, or whether I want to create a checklist for a scheduled meeting.

The second thing I would like is SUPER-ULTRA-UNBELIEVABLE cross-platform synchronization. Yes, Evernote, I welcome you to snoop through all of the documents on my computer and index my deepest darkest data, then organize it into nice little categories. Finally, when I am working on Word or Excel or writing and e-mail and happen to type a certain keyword, you would look over my shoulder and remind me that I have lots of relevant information on that subject. Is that too much to ask? After all, what I am seeking is that killer app that will actually complete my thought process and make sense of it all.  

In a sense, Evernote kind of reminds of the kettlebell exercise method. How’s that you say? Well, a couple of months ago a good friend and workout fanatic offered to teach me an amazing new exercise technique that he hadd certified in that uses kettlebell weights, a technique apparently developed by an Russian Ex-commando. It only took 10 minutes twice a week. That was all a known exercise hater such as myself needed to hear. But herein lies the small print.

How long does it really take to get to that 10 minute workout? Since the exercise depends on very exact motions and posture so as not to damage your back, it takes many many many boring repetitions to train yourself to perform the movements properly, and then and only then can you get into that wonderful twice a week 10 minute routine. The mind-numbing repetition nearly caused me to lapse into zombie-ism.

The point that I am trying to make is that Evernote is lovely if you enjoy organizing things, putting them into neat little boxes for safe-keeping, and then gently taking those things out, returning them when you are done. What I need is a robot that picks up all those things that I have left strewn about fold and organize them and put them in boxes all on its own.

I haven’t yet given up on Evernote. In fact, I just recently re-installed it, but then again, I also haven’t given up on the kettlebell – I’ll go back to it… someday!

IE Online Representin’

After a long furlough, my latest assignment is to discuss the web presence of one our favorite or most hated websites. Brainstorming for this blog has led me to the sad realization that I only frequent about 5 sites on a daily basis, and one of those is the IE website.

So, at the cost of being unbelievably boring, I think that IE’s web presence is something to think about. At #11 (according to FT.com, no longer a top-ten school? DAMN!)  IE manages to fill up some pretty expensive seats in its IMBA program, and many other programs – from the Master of Communications to its law degree. Does this have anything whatsoever to do with its online presence? Well, probably not.

I have no idea to be honest. Very few people have told me that they found IE online (though there are a few). I, myself, found IE at a good old-fashioned MBA fair. But after spending some time here, I know that this is an area in which IE invests heavily.

Almost every major event is live tweeted, retweeted, streamed, then tweeted some more. Of course, some of our professors maintain a massive online presence. Seems like the Faceboook community is mostly student driven, and as you would expect, it is bustling with innumerable packages of information being passed back and forth from student/s to student/s. The school even has its own built in Linkedin community. Don’t know how much outward going that is.

So A+ for social presence, but when it comes to the school’s own internal social network, IECommunities, there is much to be desired. With few people actively on the intranet, there seems little point to keeping it as alive. The school’s announcement and curriculum site, which uses a system called Blackboard leaves something to be desired. Is a search bar too much to ask for! But, hey, you get used to it.

Of course, from what we’ve heard IE is one of the top online B-Schools in the world, but as I’ve never met an online student from IE (well, they are online), I really can’t tell. Plus, it’s started offering the newest buzz word on the web MOOC – Massive Online Open Courses online, so people from all over the world get to try some tasty free education samples.

So, yeah, I think IE is pretty good at this online thing, and I think it’s getting better. Then again, being online is a double-edged sword, with our school’s brand image at stake, so I hope that whoever in charge of that is very very careful!  

Is Google Evil?

If you want to know if Google is evil, you should ask yourself the following question – was the Roman Empire evil? Because to understand Google, we need to move out of the realm of ordinary business, and see Google for what it is: the first true empire in the most recently discovered habitable area – the internet.

 

This isn’t a metaphor – think about how much time you spend on your computer and smartphone (Android?) each day. Think about how often you search Google, look up an address on Maps, or download an App on Google Play… oh, and don’t forget Gmail. And just as any empire before it, Google continuously strives to expand its reach. For Google, that means expanding into our physical reality using innovations like Google Glass, self-driving cars, and communications infrastructure. So, Google is an empire, and we are all its citizens for as long as we choose to inhabit the internet and use technology. But is it evil?

The measure of Google’s good, rather than its evil, is in its amazing adoption and daily use. Arguably, Google makes our lives better with a few negative side-effects. Yes, Google wants to be everywhere we are, and yes, Google would like to know all about us, even better than we know ourselves. But for now, I believe that Sergey’s and Larry’s motives are mostly positive. As was the case with the empires before it, Google facilitates technological progress and bridges cultures, but it commits many “atrocities” in the process. The act of collecting our private information and exposing our private lives could be considered “a necessary evil” to facilitate the plethora FREE life-enhancing services it provides.  

In his “Letter from the Founders”, Larry Paige writes, “Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world… we make our services as widely available as we can by supporting over 90 languages and by providing most services for free.” It is difficult to find evil in such altruistic goals, but the vision is undoubtedly global and expansionary.

Couple that with Google’s well known motto “Don’t be evil”, and you begin to realize that there is no coincidence in Google’s action. Google’s founders have known all along that they would be in a position of unimaginable power. So the question – is Google evil? – can be answered by the question: Are those who control it evil?

It is impossible to read the minds of Larry Paige, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt, but in my view, the answer is a resounding no. Yes, we are spending more and more time online and have forfeited much of our privacy. Google, however, is not the cause of this, but rather a part of an irreversible trend. People are actively volunteering their personal information on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other social channels, and aggregator cookies track our usage statistics to profile our usage and consumption patterns. This is the new world in which we live in, and for now Google may actually be protecting us, rather than hurting us.

I believe that Google today is not evil, but the question we should ask is who will control Google when Larry and Sergey are gone, and will THEY be evil?

Thoughts about capitalism

Today in critical thinking in IE Business School, our professor Rolf Olsen, brought us to think about complex economic system by examining the grain trade in Rome. Unprecedented for its time and over a thousand years later, Rome was a city of 1 million people dependent on a steady supply of food arriving from all corners of the empire. Some was paid as tribute (taxes) but most arrived through a well-developed economic system, where money was exchanged between different profit making agents. Sometime around the third century AD, all of this suddenly stopped, and noone is exactly sure why. What is known is that towards the end of the “original” Roman empire, the Romans had dilluted the quality of their copper and silver coins to the point that  they were only 10% pure, and people lost faith in the monetary system. 

Rolf’s analogy was anything but coincidental – the analogy to today’s economy was clear. It begs the question, are we in that same place today. Will our financial system, with the United States in the role of the Roman empire collapse completely. Have we learned enough to prevent this, and can we rely on technology to steer in the same direction. 

Although I am not a big fan of Marx, his claim that capitalism contains in it self the seeds of its own destruction rings truer than ever, because the constant race after returns on equity and investment creates growth even when none is needed, growth for the sake of growth. 

At the same time our technology ensures that we can produce more than we will ever need. It seems that high unemployment levels are here to stay as the number of people required for manufacturing and agriculture declines, and the number of people needed in services is soon to follow. How then will people be able to pay for this surplus? How will they be able to pay for even their basic needs. I believe that the capitalistic system as we know it is dying.

The ability to produce is less and less dependant on human capital, but the ability to consume invariable depends on our ability to produce as human capital. If this paradigm no longer works, we will have to find a new paradigm. Ironically, as my friend Alex stated the other day, the technological advancement brought about by free market enterprise, i.e. capitalism, has made for the first time socialism a feasible system. As someone who grew up in a socialist system, I find this prospect less than attractive. But that is a subject for my next post…

 

IT Management and Innovation Class Lesson 1

Watching Big Bang Theory in class and blogging is homework. This is going to be fun!