August is traditionally holiday season across the northern hemisphere. How was yours? I did sneak a break in, camera in hand, but other than that it was an active month. Glancing around the blogs, those interested in cloud computing might appreciate Nailing down the Cloud – A Definition for cloud computing (from BusinessTechFeed), which attracted a number of diggs – thank you. I am looking forward to the Next London CloudCamp event. Cloud computing and Saas remain controversial (see: SaaS – Dead Before it is Born?!), which adds to the interest. Most importantly, they are always a good excuse for a sunset picture!

OK, I’ve got that out of my system. The bass guitar blog continues to grow at a pace, providing amusement in the office (2 string bass anyone?) and I’m looking forward to time with the Digital Mission companies during the New York / Web 2.0 mission. I’ve already had the chance to meet up with the folks at Huddle and there are other familiar faces too. If you are there, drop me a tweet or an e-mail and let’s meet up. Tonight I’ll be at the Chinwag Live (Search vs Recommendation) event.

Back to things here on the WOWNDADI blog, the following posts piqued people’s interest this month:

PowerPoint and Presenting

• 10 Things Not To Do In Business PowerPoint
• 10 Tips for better Powerpoint
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pitcher

Productivity and Business

• Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour
• How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work
• Randomness, Virtualisation and Getting Things Done

 
With Do Your Employees Dance? getting a fair bit of external interest. Once again, I really appreciate your comments about and on the blog. Up next… How to write a speech (or make a presentation) in 5 minutes… Secrets from a hurried presenter!

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There is one consistent item on the editorial calendar of the WOWNDADI Blog: The end of month round up. Reviewing is a great productivity habit and sometimes it can be fun too. This month’s certainly has been! Some highlights:

• MediaCamp London and lunches with the Social Media Mafia.
• TechCrunch Pitch! My signature low-light photography turned up on TechCrunch and TechCrunch UK – thank you to Mr Butcher for an excellent event – it also inspired the post: “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pitchers“.
• WordCamp UK – There is a competition for the best write up, please do VOTE.
• CloudCamp London – more on cloud computing and hosted applications to follow.

As well as IoD activities, getting businesses up and blogging and psychology assignments. I also just heard that I have been quoted in Director magazine in a piece on social media in business. I haven’t even mentioned building a Wi-Fi enabled field or recent interviews yet…

There are some big things in the month ahead, which I will be blogging about, of course. As an aside, effective use of powerpoint in business is one of my passions, even if it does seem a little Business 1.0 relative some other activities. There is a new course I’m building on that topic, I will be looking for beta customers, so do drop me a line if you are interested.

Back to the point, this months Top 10 was as follows:

1. 10 Tips to Gain You a Better 08.
2. WordCampUK 2008 a Qik look back.
3. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour.
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Pitchers.
5. 10 Things Not To Do In Business PowerPoint Presentation.
6. Future of The Web – Part II – The Future.
7. Living in the Cloud Computing.
8. WordCamp 2008.
9. Avoiding a Business Communication Crisis.
10. Do your employees dance? – on social business.

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For this month, I’m putting a slight twist on the usual top 10 post: I am going to split it between the Top 5 posts here on WOWNDADI and my favorite 5 posts from blogs that mentioned the blog.

Most Popular Posts in the Last 30 Days

1. It’s the User Experience as much as the Technology!
2. Apple, iPhone and Business Productivity – Post Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote
3. Personality Sorters and Social Media – Part I
4. Personality Sorters and Social Media – Part II
5. Are You Paying Attention?

Top 5 links

1. Getting Organized by Mark of Productivity 501 featuring interviews with myself and a number of other productivity bloggers. An epic post with some gems in there.
2. Blogger Advocacy – Employ Yourself by Steve Lawson. A different mindset for solo workers.
3. Links of Interest  from Productivity 501 – featuring Speeding Your Email.
4. Karl Bunyan, who was on the marketing panel at the social media business: blog post about the event (glad you liked the photo Karl).
5. The Successful Blog Directory welcome to you if you found the blog this way.

Following on from Five Quid and a Crate of Beer – Starting the New New Business it was interesting to read the New York Times article yesterday: no flotations this quarter (US side at least). The world is changing. Speaking of which, check out this post to see how social media is getting in on the recruitment process works:  ”pick-me“ - and fill in the survey while you are there.  I think that interviewer is going to be in for a surprise, unless of course they’ve already read the post!

The coming month is busy from an events perspective, so just the highlights: On Saturday the 4th of July is MediaCampLondon. Registration is free and it is a great opportunity to experience an unconference first hand. I look forward to catching up with some familiar faces, as well as meeting some new ones. Then on July the 10th is TechCrunch Pitch, I’ll be there watching the 10 slides company pitches/presentations. Should be interesting.

Lastly, Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008 in Birmingham is WordCamp UK. The first WordPress WordCamp in the UK and a great opportunity for the WordPress community to get together. Book yourself in quick (register here). Not only will I be at WordCamp UK, but redcatco are an event sponsor, as well as providing the audio setup, we’ll be producing some podcasts of the event, if all goes to plan.

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• Building for Accessibility and Getting Ready for HTML 5
• WordCampUK, Communities and Goops
• WordCamp UK 2008 – A Qik Look Back…
• WordCampUK 2008
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May in the UK is always an interesting time – two bank holidays, a school half-term and pseudo random British weather all synthesize into a zigzag journey. The highlight of the month was attending NESTA’s Innovation Edge 08event, as you can see from the posts (Gordon Brown attracted lots of comments, as did Tim Berners-Lee).

The breathing space also gave some time for catching up with the family and doing some thinking, which means that June will be even more exciting. But before that, here are the most popular posts (by pageviews) from May. If there is something you particularly like, then go ahead and digg/stumble/del.icio.us as you see fit, it is very helpful feedback of the warm-fuzzy kind.

1. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination.
2. Gordon Brown at NESTA – The Innovation Edge.
3. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour.
   
4. 10 Things Not To Do In Business PowerPoint Presentation.
5. Never Loose Your Voice Again – It’s the future.
6. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work.
7. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
8. 7 Common E-mail Mistakes and How Not To Make Them.
9. Speed Reading – An Essential Survival Skill.
10. Watch out for the frogs!

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• June Top 10 Links and the Month Ahead
• April top 10
• March Wrap up…
• February Top 10 and Round Up

Hail is falling outside as I write this, pinging off of the office window. It may be May, but clearly no-one thought to tell the British weather that – snow in April?

A quick pause to look back at April shows that it has been a prolific month on the blog, with 14 posts and some very thoughtful comments (thank you Steve, Matt, Luke, Anne Marie, Bob and all), room for plenty more!

This months top 10 posts, by number of visits:

1. 10 Things Not To Do In Business PowerPoint
2. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
3. Want to Get More Things Done? Go Ahead and Stick Your Head in a Bucket
4. How to Deal With Being Overwhelmed at Work 2
   
5. Speed Reading – An Essential Survival Skill
6. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour
7. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work
8. As a Matter of Fact, That is a Matter of Opinion
9. Seize the Day – In Memory of Galba Bright
10. Learning Your Way to a Better Memory

I’ve had lots to think about in this last last month. Time is one of our most precious resources, invest it well. Here’s to a productive May.

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• June Top 10 Links and the Month Ahead
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• March Wrap up…
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I’m some what hesitant to post on April the 1st, for fear of not being taken seriously! However, it is past midday here, so rest assured that this is the normal end of the month wrap up post – with no artificially added jests.

It has been a busy time on the blog, although you might not have noticed if you are reading via RSS. There have been a number of changes in the design. There is now a blogroll, which will grow over time, and ‘translate’ buttons on the site. This is based on Google’s translation capabilities – which are quite impressive, including user-contributed corrections. Posts can be translated into French, German, Spanish or Italian at the click of a button. I’ve decided that I sound distinctly more stylish in French, but sadly that is where my language skills stop.

As so many people come to the site via stumbleupon, the ShareThis WordPress plugin is now in place. This should make it easier to add posts to your social bookmarking application of choice. If you like something, do share it, or add a fave for us on Technorati, everyone loves a bit of encouragement, especially a British Blogger.

The month’s top 10 posts, by number of readers were:

1. Mini-bar Meet Up – Some New Technologies.
2. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination.
3. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour.
4. Power up your business with a Wiki.
5. Be More Productive By Understanding How You See the World.
6. E-mail 2.0.
7. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
8. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work.
9. Where Are You Going? Vision, Mission and Values – Part I.
10. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness.

Just off of the bottom of the list, cruelly disadvantaged by being posted later on in the month, is: Learning Your Way to a Better Memory. Here’s to a productive and effective April.

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• June Top 10 Links and the Month Ahead
• May Top 10 Blog Posts
• April top 10
• February Top 10 and Round Up

A leap year, and a surprise extra day in February. What did you do with your extra day in February? I had the day off. Well, not quite. I helped a couple of friends, caught up on some sleep. I also read some academic papers on learning and development. Perhaps I should get out more?

Cutting to the chase, here is the regular monthly wrap up and February’s top 10 Posts, by number of views:

1. 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08 – still 5/6 of the year to go!
2. Mini-bar Meet Up – Some New Technologies – A report on the February Meet Up.
3. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination – Still popular.
4. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour – Overcome productivity blocks.
5. Watch out for the frogs! – A classic post.
6. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work
7. Practice to be Crisp
8. Preparing to Present – A Check List
9. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
10. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness

Interestingly, the top 5 posts read via RSS this month were quite different:

1. Getting Started with GTD
2. Blocking FaceBook Manages What?
3. Setting Deadlines is Life – Part II
4. 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08
5. The Rather Complex Issue of Identity

From today we’ll be switching to full feeds for all new posts on the blog, rather than just the most recent one. This should make life easier if you are following via RSS. The partial feeds were an artefact of the redcatco homepage structure. That is about to change fairly radically, so keep your eyes peeled.

Special thanks to Stephen of HD BizBlog, Kate Davis of Blog to Discovery, Stephen Hopson of Adversity University, Rob Moshe and Istvan for their comments and interaction this month. Also, check out Creative Agency Secrets thoughts on practice Practice to be Crisp in: “My challenge – practice business development.”

Lastly, it isn’t too late to add your mission statement. Here’s to an exciting, productive and original March for us!

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• June Top 10 Links and the Month Ahead
• May Top 10 Blog Posts
• April top 10
• March Wrap up…

Time for the regular “end of month” summary post, all be it a few days into February.

The last couple of months have been packed with meeting brilliant new people, for all sorts of different reasons. Photographers, speakers, designers and others have all given me new perspectives and a stronger appreciation of their talents, and of my own strengths and weaknesses. More than ever I want to get out to the next TED event that I can, or find an equivalent of TED in the UK (any one know of one?).

Hanging around with talented people is inspiring. For me, one of the great things about blogging is the brilliant people I get to meet. The conversation has been quieter this month, as many of the discussions have been face to face, rather than in the comments. Do add your comments to posts, I value them very much – even a single sentence can spark an inspiring discussion.

The ten most read posts in January were:

1. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour (with 3,815 views this month).
2. Watch out for the frogs!
3. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination.
4. A Sense of History.
5. 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08
6. Getting Started with GTD
7. Never Lose Another Thought Again!
8. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
9. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
10. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work.

The close runner up was 5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Choice. Thank you to all who have commented or linked to posts – I plan to make one by one mentions during the rest of the month!

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A Happy New Year to you! 2007 is yesterday, 2008 is today. I am thinking about what gave the best returns in ’07, and plan to focus my efforts in those areas for ’08 – an “RoE” model. If you’ve been dragged through the mill on large IT projects or vendors, you will be familiar with the concept of ROI – return on investment. RoE is the productivity equivalent: Return on Effort. What was the output, based on what you have to put in. It isn’t about being lazy and not putting the effort in. It is about being efficient, investing effort into the things that yield a return.

A new year gives the euphoria of a clean slate to work from. It is a bit of an artificial fresh start, but a new calendar year does bring a focus to putting out the old and bringing in the new. Enjoy making your New Year’s resolutions, but do start by focussing on one change, then you can build from there. The others will be there for you to come back and work on. It is better to fully succeed in making one change, rather than partially make five.

These were the top 10 posts during December, just in case you missed any of them:

1. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour? (more than 20,000 views in the first week)
2. 5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Choice
3. 10 Tips To Gain You a Better 08
4. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
5. A Presentation Lession From Al Gore
6. Watch out for the frogs!
7. The Rather Complex Issue of Identity
8. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
9. You’re Having a Laugh Aren’t You?
10. A Little Bit of Philosophy Really Does Make You Smart

Her comes 08, make it great!

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Quite a few things for the usual end of month post. I’ve tweaked the layout of the site slightly, after BlueFroX’s naming and shaming of the site’s look. It really is time for me to get a graphic designer / theme designer or at least help from a willing volunteer for the site. Visual design really isn’t a core strength for me, but I’m fascinated by it. That is always a dangerous combination. I’m also blogging at my personal home page for things that aren’t so relevant here.

Thank you to David of Outside of the Triangle and to Luciano of Litemind for the kind mentions on their blogs. Also thanks to everyone who has posted comments or emailed me over the month, especially Judy Martin, Bob Leckridge, therapydoc, Floyd Craig, Jennifer Mannion, Nathan Ketsdever, dogtrainingtipstricks from Switzerland, Galba of Tune up your EQ and to Melanie of galvanized for her thoughts and pointer to the her post: So THIS is Progress?

Now, without further ado, let me reveal the Top 10 posts, by page views, for November:

1. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination (over 850 views in a single day! Thank you Stumblers!)
2. You’re Having a Laugh Aren’t You? (not far behind)
3. 5 Ways to Reduce the Stress of Choice
4. Twitter – Trick or Tweet?
5. Ways of Keeping a Record
6. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an hour
7. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
8. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work
9. Too Much Choice – Too Little Happiness
10. 10 Tips for better Powerpoint

No watch out for the frogs…

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Monthly review time on WOWNDADI. I’ll take the apparently increasing speed of time as confirmation of my failing youth or increasing middle age. Either that or we are just enjoying life.

My personal highlight this month was holding the world series trophy after the Red Sox win in Boston, briefly meeting John Henry. This may be lost on my UK and European fellows, but was a big deal to my American friends. It was odd to come back to the hotel see the trophy and the people you were just with up on the TV screen. An obvious violation of 7 and a Half Tips for Getting a Great Night’s sleep in a Hotel, but hey!

A lot more new subscribers this month. A big hello and welcome to you all, thank you for reading and commenting! October saw the highest number of comments on the WOWNDADI blog. October’s top 10 read posts is a big shuffle from September:

1. Their Problems are not Your Problems
2. Why Don’t You See What You Can Do in an Hour
   
3. Wikipedia – A Means not an End
4. 10 Tips for better Powerpoint
5. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
6. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
7. LinkedIn Opens the World and Closes a Window
8. Communicating With Yourself – More on the iPod
   
9. iPod to Go – The iPod as a GTD capture device
10. A Presentation Lesson From Al Gore

November’s study for me will include critical thinking, understanding who we are and dealing with people that we find difficult. That will influence the upcoming posts, together with something else that I have been up to! I am very please to have been asked to do a few guest posts, and a couple of people have offered to do a guest post on WOWNDADI, which I am really excited about. More on all of that soon.

By the way, those bloggers that are facebook users out there might want to join the UK and London Blogger groups on FB – Thank you to Sandrine for bringing people together and bringing a bit of buzz from the French blogging scene to the UK.

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At the end of each month I look back through the month at the top posts. The highlight of this month was Priscila‘s big and growing Personal Development Blog List, which has ushered in a sense of community in a global crowd of bloggers.

1. Habitual Habits
2. iPod to Go – The iPod as a GTD capture device
3. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Wo
4. ThinkingRock is 2 good!
5. iPhone Hits the UK
6. 10 Tips for better Powerpoint
7. Ready. Aim. Focus. What’s the point
8. Are we are all becoming slightly famous?
9. What does success look like? Start with
10. A Presentation Lesson From Al Gore

And four other posts that tied for position 11:

• Communicating With Yourself – More on the iPod and iPhone…
• The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
• Moving Mac
• A WINning strategy for productivity

Thank you for making it a very enjoyable month! Keep rating posts, sending emails and adding comments, and a very big thank you to those who have been spreading the word about this blog, joining as subscribers, linking, stumbling and digging.

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Last month’s top 10 is a little later than advertised. I’ll blame the blog move, which has lead to lots of refactoring. I’ve enjoyed reading back through old posts and the comments.

Anyway, straight to the top 10 posts from August:

1. Get out of the groove…
2. 10 Tips for better PowerPoint
3. Watch out for the frogs
4. See it, hear it – not the death of PowerPoint
5. A WINning strategy for productivity
6. 3 Things not to forget in a presentation
7. ThinkRock is 2 good!
8. A Time To…
9. How to Deal with Being Overwhelmed at Work
10. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination

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Slightly later than advertised, here is the end of April review. The half year mark looms large, time to review annual goals and assess progress. This has been a great month of learning, which I am keen to document over the next few weeks. A new environment has put me on a steep, but great, learning curve. This has slowed down my writing and blogging in the process, but has created a few new neural pathways!

I have managed to get back into book reading again, especially the more diverse reading I have longed to do. My favourite book at the moment is Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916, documenting Sidney Rogerson’s time on the front line during the First World War. It seems to be fairly unknown and unmentioned, apart from a little press attention a while ago. It is brilliantly written and it has broadened my perspective on humanity and what is good and bad in today’s world. It brings life into sharp focus; Highly recommended reading.

The top 10 posts for April, but number of views, were an utterly different spin to last month. “Watch out for the frogs!” became a top favourite out there, followed by the post on ThinkRock 2, which I am still enjoying using:

1. Watch out for the frogs
2. ThinkRock is 2 good!
3. Overwhelmed by the to do list? Get back on track and stay on track
4. A good tool is hard to find!
5. Get Laddered with ThinkingRock
6. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
7. Being organised – the wiki way
8. You Live, You Learn – Learn to Learn, Learn to Live
9. See it, hear it – not the death of PowerPoint
10. What does success look like? Start with the end

My favourite from last month, just outside the top 10 posts was “Drucker’s Life as a Knowledge Worker” which I’ve found helpful to read back over. I have also added a ‘contact’ form to the About tab on the blog and would love to hear from you, either there (or via comments is great too!). Big follow up to the Frogs post soon… I’m also amazed that this blog seems to be in the 10% of blogs on Technorati, which both pleases and perplexes me. I’ve not really viewed it as a technical or a news blog, although I do work in both of those areas.

Have a brilliant weekend!

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How about this for the first law of blogging? “The number of blog posts is inversely proportional to the number of things going off in the blogger’s life”.

I am hoping for some semblance of order to start to return by the end of this week, so that I can finish off a couple of key posts that are lurking in my drafts. Some helpful things I have discovered about learning, and some thoughts on one on person-to-person communications, versus network-based communications (phone, email and video conferencing).

In the mean-time, here are the top ten posts from March, by number of hits:

1. The Now Habit – Dealing with Procrastination
2. Overwhelmed by the to do list? Get back on track and stay on track
3. Get Laddered with ThinkingRock
4. A good tool is hard to find!
5. Being organised – the wiki way
6. 3 Things not to forget in a presentation
7. What does success look like? Start with the end
8. Understanding the reality of the situation – part II
9. Planned Abandonment – Having an end at the beginning
10. Do something different, for a change!

I am surprised by two things. firstly, the number of hits – thank you all! Secondly, that my personal 3 favourites didn’t make it into the top ten:

• Dealing with the Do Its That Just Don’t Get Done
• Watch out for the frogs!
• Ready. Aim. Focus. What’s the point?

But there you go! Do stay in touch via the comments and emails, and keep working out what needs doing and do it. Have a WOWNDADI week!

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