Look how old this is! I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 17 years 3 months 1 day ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
This month’s Oregon Computer Consultant Association meeting is tomorrow night, and were having a presentation about reducing e-mail clutter that promises to be enlightening. The subjects are e-mail reduction in Outlook, and a second part about using the new Windows Home Server product.
Excluding spam, I am personally plagued by nearly 800 e-mails a day, only a small fraction of which I actually need a reply. Many require only Outlook auto-filing for future reference, and many just require a quick review, and manual placement into a folder.
The vast majority just need a simple read and delete, and I’ve really thinned out what I have to look at, but in the end, there are still over 200 e-mails a day that I have to open.
Last week I discovered another e-mail in my inbox that should have garnered an immediate response, and by the time I got back to them, even though they expected up to three business days, the issue was no longer relevant, and my reply was no longer needed. This wastes their time as well as my own.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and likely won’t be the last, and that’s why I’m excited to hear a presentation tomorrow night at the Oregon Computer Consultants Association by an independent consultant named Scott Hanselman.
I’ve never met him, and he’s not a member, but he does operate a popular website, called HanselMinutes and hosts a weekly Internet radio show there, as well as having a popular blog at ComputerZen.com
Date:
Tuesday, August 28
7:00-8:30pm (no-host dinner at 6:00)
Location:
Rheinlander German Restaurant
5035 NE Sandy Blvd
Portland OR 97213
He’s giving a two-part presentation:
First – “Let go of the psychic weight of the 10000 emails in your Inbox and enjoy the bliss you can get with “zero email bounce.” We’ll talk about what that is, and how you can implement it in your daily email workflow, in Outlook, or in Gmail and other clients.”
Second – We’ll talk about Windows Home Server. Scott has been beta testing WHS for the last 6 months and living with it day to day. We’ll see what it offers, if you should build or buy and what it provides over one of the off-the-shelf NAS solutions.
His bio is below, and I hope to see you there:
Scott Hanselman was the Chief Archiect for Corillian Corporation and a Principal Consultant at STEP Technology and has been in technology for the last 15 years. He’s written a number of books on .NET and Microsoft technlogies and has a popular blog at http://www.hanselman.com and a weekly podcast on iTunes and at http://www.hanselminutes.com. He’ll be starting a new job at Microsoft as a Program Manager in the Developer Division this fall.
Question on consulting agencies. Agency offers bonus of one week pay after 1500 hours. Does this come out of the agency’s pocket or do they charge the client where you are working for it??
What is typical for this type of thing??
I’m a little unclear –
Agency offers bonus of one week pay to who, the consultant?
If the agency is offering a bonus then it comes out of the agency’s pocket, and I doubt they DIRECTLY pass along the charge as a “consultant bonus” to the client.
However, agencies typically will charge the client however and wherever they can, and after 1500 hours of your time anyway, they can afford to pay a weeks bonus!
If I misunderstood, please let me know…
Yes you understood, that is what I was thinking, that it would come out of the agency’s pocket, and the client wouldn’t be charged. Thus their incentive to get me out of there after 1486.5 hours so the agency didn’t have to pay the bonus.
That seems like awful shortsighted thinking on their part… hard to believe!
Overall, my experience with agencies has been poor, and prefer facing the end client for responsibility and satisfaction.