Write Technology

Outsource Your Work with a Smile

I'm usually not a big fan of outsourcing. In a previous job, my husband was paid to fix the code that was written by the outsourced team. Yep, they paid to outsource it and then paid to have my husband fix it. That's certainly not the first time I've come across outsourcing where the quality suffered.

But this is a little different. An article in today's NY Times talks about Serebra Connect. The task-auction site is an offshoot of Serebra Learning, an eLearning company based in Canada.

SerebraConnect is sort of an eBay for your task outsourcing. But here's the feel-good catch: Most of the work on SerebraConnect is being completed by students in developing countries who have taken courses from Serebra. SerebraConnect was launched in October 2007 to give these students a chance to use and develop their new skills.

Need a PowerPoint revised? How about a logo designed? This is a great idea for small businesses. The article mentions "a Madison, Wis., company posted a PowerPoint project that would have cost $2,000 in Madison, a woman in the Philippines offered to do it for $200, 10 times her $22-a-month pay as a teacher." Great experience, and cash, for the seller; great value for the buyer.

How does it work?

Sample tasks posted on the site: creating a logo for a dental practice, translating e-books from Arabic to English and building a Web site with Flash. The average price is $200. It is free to post or bid on a task. The buyer sends the payment to Serebra to hold until the task is completed. Serebra then takes a 10 percent to 15 percent cut and sends the money to the seller via PayPal or MasterCard’s Payoneer. Sellers on the site are rated on a five-star scale based on reviews from buyers as well as how many Serebra courses they have completed.

How can these folks afford SerebraConnect classes? It sounds like they run anywhere from free to $12 for students located in developing nations.

As much as I dislike outsourcing, I find this to be a great idea. I like how it is actually working to help people, to provide learning and experience, as well as money.

What do you think of this concept for outsourcing?

Cheers!
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Find Michelle Lentz here on Write Technology, on Twitter, Pownce, and FriendFeed.

Repost: Personalize Your Invitations from LinkedIn

I'm reposting a post from May 31 of this year. Yeah, I know it's a bit soon, but there's a reason. I don't know if it's because of my increased visibility from bub.blicio.us, from public speaking, or from GCASTD, but in the last two weeks I've been slammed by LinkedIn invites. I don't know all the people who invited me but most of them just used the default invite. This tells me nothing about them - no contact information, no reference to where we met, nothing. So I thought it might be time to re-post this. I figure I'll post it every two months if I have to.

---

Because I have started doing a lot more speaking and more public blogging, I get a lot more LinkedIn invites.In many cases, these folks feel they have a personal connection and don't realize that I have a heck of a time remembering names without a memory jog.

Would you send out an invitation to a party without thinking through the invitation and considering the wording? Probably not. I wish more people applied that same logic to LinkedIn invites.

Michelle:

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- John Doe

Now, I probably do want to connect with John Doe. He's probably a great guy and might even have some great contacts. But because I need a memory jog sometimes, I'm not sure who he is. I also question how seriously he takes connecting because he didn't bother to personalize his LinkedIn invite and just sent the default.

Now, I admit to having done this myself once or twice. I get lazy and send the default invite, especially when I'm connecting with good friends. But if you're reaching out to someone you met via Twitter, briefly at a conference, or someone who you know because of their blog, go ahead and personalize your invite. Not only will it jog your connection's memory, it will make you stand out a little more as well.

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Find Michelle Lentz here at Write Technology, on bub.blicio.us, on Twitter, or Pownce.

Local Web Workers Can Breathe a Sigh of Relief

This has nothing to do with technology, but a lot to do with working from home. As a virtual office worker myself, I admit I felt a tiny flutter of panic when I heard Starbucks planned on closing 600 stores. I spend a lot of time working in coffee shops, where I can be around people (as opposed to my TV) with good music and tasty chai tea lattes. Really, I go for the interaction with live humans, but the other things are nice benefits.

According to news in yesterday's Business Courier, the Cincinnati area won't be losing any Starbucks in this first wave of closings.

On the list of the first 50 stores to be closed, the largest amount (five) to be closed in one city will be in Las Vegas. States affected by the first round of closings include Alabama (four), Arkansas (two), California (eight), Iowa (one), Illinois (two), Indiana (two), Kentucky (one), Louisiana (two), Maryland (one), Minnesota (seven), Missouri (one), Nebraska (one), Nevada (five), New Jersey (one), New York (three), North Dakota (one), Ohio (two), Texas (five) and West Virginia (one).

The two Ohio store closings are both in the Columbus area, and the Kentucky closing is in Louisville. The two Indiana stores are in Indianapolis and Bluffton.

So local virtual office workers can sigh with relief, for now.

Now is Gone. Did you miss it?

Well, you can try to catch it this Thursday.

Social media and collaboration is the future, and the here and now. The collaborative Web isn’t just for teenagers – it can be used for networking, and for business.       

Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few.      

Web 2.0-savvy panellists include:

• FRCH & PR Blog’s Kevin Dugan
• Web 2.0 consultant Michelle Lentz
• Pause Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Bergman      

This is your opportunity to get the answers you want about Social Media and how to use it effectively. Join The Women’s Circuit as we talk about the best ways to integrate social media into your business or organization.   

Thursday, April 10, 2008
11:30 am – 1 pm
@ Airport FastPark Offices
250 West Court Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202

Members are encouraged to bring your friends and colleagues.**Non-members are welcome.**
Lunch will be available, please RSVP at RSVP@TheWomensCircuit.com by 4/8/08.

A Much Needed Break

As many of you know, we've had two close deaths in rapid succession here in the Write Technology family. After a particularly rough autumn, we're taking a vacation. The office is closed from November 14 through November 25. We're heading to the southwest to recuperate, rejuvenate, and regenerate. The only computer I'll have with me is my iPhone, so email access will be extremely limited. The office will re-open on November 26, after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping to leave technology behind for 10 days.
We wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving weekend and we'll see you when we get back!

Offices Closed + Conference

The offices of Write Technology will be closed through the end of the month. We'll re-open on Monday, October 29.
We will be out this week due to another death in the immediate family, followed by the Learning 2007 conference next week. As of right now, I'm still attending the conference and intend to post.

Update

Write Technology has been waylaid in the month of September by a death in the immediate family. My apologies for the lack of blog posts.

I purchased a couple of different webcams in order to create the vodcast of my iPhone review. I didn't like any of them, and that in itself is a post waiting to happen. As for the iPhone, with the exception of what I consider some serious flaws, I love it better than any phone I've had thus far. However, it's a 4GB phone and well, it's now obsolete. Thanks Apple.

I'll get back to a regular blog schedule in October. Thanks for your patience. Sometimes family just has to come first.

Changes, they are a-comin'

The ASTD TechKnowledge Conference recently inspired me to make some changes within Write Technology. These are changes I've been thinking about for a while, but the time has come to start the ball rolling.
I want to move forward from creating standard eLearning for my clients. I want to start pushing them forward into collaborative learning, using blogs, wikis, RSS, and other tools to harness the existing knowledge surrounding them. I've got some great ideas as to how to implement this in a corporate environment.
Am I advocating switching from traditional elearning entirely? No. Just like I believe that not all training works best electronically, all learning does not always lend itself entirely to group collaboration. At least, not yet.
So, watch the Write-Tech main site in the next few weeks for some changes on the front and training pages. The world is changing. Several speakers at the conference pointed out - the world is changing. Adapt or die and learn.

We're Back!

A little fancy footwork and a few hours later, we're back ...
Write-Tech.com is back live (which means you can click on all those buttons at the top of this page). Forms aren't in top working order yet, but I'm getting there. Email is also back up and working.
Write-tech.com has moved to a new hosting home at 1and1.com. While they've only been our home for a few hours, I currently recommend them for ease of use and speed in setting things up/transferring/pointing DNS  I'm also really happy with their 90-day guarantee.
As for my original hosting company? Well, the phones are disconnected, so I'm assuming they have disappeared.

Open Sourcing the Bill Gates Workflow

A few days ago, I posted an oft-Googled article from Fortune magazine talking about how Bill Gates gets things done. The Download Squad can't do anything about the various hardware he mentions, but they do come up with reasonable and free/low-cost alternatives to the software Gates uses throughout his work day. The open source software includes Open Office, Mozilla Sunbird/Calendar and Thunderbird, Backpack, Bloglines, and more. I recommend glancing through the comments for more ideas as well.

Roll Your Own Bill Gates Workflow for Free

Technorati Tags: Bill Gates, open source office, paperless office