Now let’s turn to better ideas for taking notes. I admit that I need to work on this. So don’t expect to see me actually doing many of these.
Have a central location for your notes. I work for Architects. They always seem to have a notepad or journal where they take all their notes. I often wonder if they actually ever go back and read them. They go to meetings with the same journals. They are small or large. Thick and thin. Just about everything you could think of.
Use an organizer or planner. Franklin Covey has these things. I know people to live and die by these things. They jot down everything that could/should/sould ever happen. They plan it all out and refer to it all the time.
Share your notes with others. This is akin ot meeting minutes, but is actually your notes about or during the meeting. They are not official, but they do record your perspectives. These are shared with others after the meeting so that everyone is on the page. It also makes you take better notes if you know others will be reviewing them.
Be consistant. Keep notes the same way allthe time. If you use a highlighter – define what color means what. If you use abbreviations – use the same ones all the time.
Write notes on the agenda. If you are given an agenda, take notes on the back of that paper. Or take notes on the agenda itself. Write between the lines, you always try to read between them any ways.
.
I have Sticky notes all over my office. I have slips of paper scattered everywhere. I have notepads filled with scratched out notes. All this helps keep me on track, but is often not the most enlightened way of making notations of things that I need to do. It also does not record what I need recorded in a very organized manner.
I need to get better at this. Any ideas from you would be helpful. What are you doing to keep track of the random things that come across your desk every day.
Here is what I have learned.Keep good notes. I fail at doing this allthe time, but I am try to change my ways.
Here are the things that I try to include in every little not I jot down…
Rule #1 – Don’t assume you will remember anything. The minute I get done writing a note, I shift gears to another subject or get interrupted. Write it all down.
Name – write down the persons name that the note is about.
Reason – write down the reason for the note. Do you have to do something or deliver something? Do you have to make a call or send an email. Write down the next step you have to do.
Date and time – make a note of the date. If the slip of paper gets shuffled around you may forget when you wrote it.
Phone Number – if you have to call someone – include the number. When you return to the note, you will have it handy.
Group – Make some kind of note as to what group this note pertains to. If you have several areas of responsibility, this might help jog your memory when you get back to the note.
Do you have any ideas about what is needed to keep a good note? Leave a comment.
I had a chance at the end of last year to have a virtual interview with Ed Mueller, Chief Marketing Officer of Bentley Systems. It was in the form of questions and answers via email.
Here you go…
How do you think CAD technology will impact the nation’s infrastructure in 2009? How is Bentley poised to provide this?
Information modeling will still be the means used to design our nation’s infrastructure in 2009, much as it was in 2008. At Bentley, however, we believe that this technology can do a lot more in 2009, thanks to V8i. The result will be better-performing projects, delivering better-performing assets, while consuming the fewest nonrenewable resources.
So, for instance, the V8i products that make up Bentley’s buildings solution will enable designers to use applications not just to draft buildings, but to design the site with civil engineering software, analyze its energy performance and structural integrity, and perform construction scheduling without leaving the V8i environment. This, of course, contributes greatly to better-performing infrastructure.
The V8i portfolio also supports integrated project delivery, in which the deliverable is much more than paper drawings. Information created during the planning and design phases is reused throughout the project and during the operation and maintenance of the infrastructure. A stumbling block to this reuse of data has been that various disciplines in the project lifecycle require data in different formats, scoping, and level of detail. The interoperability platform in V8i lets practitioners of each discipline persist, share, and visualize infrastructure asset data in a common way leading to better-performing projects.
Many of us have been using CAD tools for quite some time. What are the core capabilities of Microstation V8i for your users?
Our comprehensive V8i software portfolio offers infrastructure professionals streamlined workflows among multiple disciplines and across project teams. It provides software products for all of the solution communities Bentley serves, including roads, bridges, rail and transit, campuses, factories, buildings, power generation, mining and metals, oil and gas, water and wastewater, electric and gas utilities, communications, and cadastre and land development. As a result, V8i features the breadth and depth of technology needed for fully integrated project delivery throughout the infrastructure lifecycle.
V8i delivers the most comprehensive suite of software products ever assembled in a single release. It does this by leveraging and extending core capabilities that are available to all of the applications in the portfolio. V8i gives users choices that address the many challenges faced by professionals from multiple disciplines working on a wide range of infrastructure projects.
The core capabilities include intuitive design modeling, which lets users seamlessly transition from conceptual modeling and visualization to fully complete architectural and engineering models in a single environment. Conceptual tools make it easier to intuitively sculpt solids and surfaces. Generative tools make it easier to iterate through many design alternatives.
Through the flexibility of this powerful toolset, infrastructure professionals can explore and embrace innovations in a more timely fashion to improve the performance of the projects and assets their teams deliver.
Additionally, our new Luxology rendering engine incorporated in the MicroStation product and all MicroStation-based applications provides near-real-time rendering in the design application. This saves time and improves the quality of rendered images for stakeholder review and buy-in.
V8i also includes dynamic views that make working in 3D much more interactive and more informative. With interactive dynamic views, V8i leapfrogs current approaches to solving the problem of drawing coordination. It does this by actively supporting the workflows of distributed multidisciplinary teams all working on the same project to deliver concurrent integrated documentation packages.
But V8i goes one step further by helping users simplify the 3D model creation process. Using something called “display sets,” V8i users can easily change the way different parts of the same 3D model are displayed in the same working view to interactively visualize and resymbolize 2D and 3D designs in real time. This means that teams can quickly improve the quality of integrated documentation packages and reduce the time spent creating 3D models and preparing and coordinating 2D documentation.
V8i’s intrinsic geo-coordination capability lets users coordinate information spatially from many sources using common coordinate systems. Users can locate files spatially with real-world context in ProjectWise for content management or in Google Earth for visual review.
By using V8i, infrastructure teams save time coordinating information from many sources, improve the quality and reliability of information leveraged by other practitioners, and reduce the risk of errors on site arising from poorly coordinated data.
V8i’s incredible project performance lets users work faster and collaborate more effectively to make the process of work sharing across multiple, distributed offices easy and efficient, even for the world’s largest infrastructure projects.
With Delta File Transfer (DFT), V8i solves the “big file” problem that traditionally slows productivity across distributed project teams. Transferring only changes to files, DFT makes ProjectWise V8i the killer app for project team collaboration – with 10x performance gains being the norm for average file sizes.
And with full read/write integration between ProjectWise V8i and Microsoft SharePoint, any project team member can quickly find project information stored in many different systems using a single web browser interface.
Lastly, the V8i software portfolio includes an interoperability platform to persist, share, and visualize infrastructure asset data in a common way. This enables practitioners to reuse project and asset information throughout the infrastructure lifecycle while reducing data translation costs, limiting project rework, and creating better-performing assets.
Our old friend from Autodesk is taking on a new job…
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090113/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_ceo_14
SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo Inc. named technology veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive Tuesday, bringing in a no-nonsense leader known for developing a clear focus — something that has eluded the struggling Internet company during a three-year slump.
The decision to lure Bartz, 60, away from software maker Autodesk Inc. ends Yahoo‘s two-month search to replace co-founder Jerry Yang, who surrendered the CEO reins after potentially lucrative deals with rivals Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. both collapsed.
I am not the kind who really makes New Year resolutions, but I am the kind that asks myself a lot of questions. So I made up a word for it. “Questilutions” (pronounced kwes-che-lew-shens).
This is the process I go through to get myself moving into the new year. The questions start my thinking about what I need to start doing or stop doing. The questions are meant to lead to actions.
The problem with resolutions is that they are personal in nature. No two people will come up with the same resolution even if given the same circumstances. So if I wrote down my resolutions, it might be interesting to you. It might spur you on to make up some of your own. It may make you chuckle at my blue sky, wishful thinking. But you would not adopt them as your own. The determination of what you need to do is predicated on your specific environment. You would sit and think of your own and make up your resolutions that match your situation.
So what I have come up with is a series of questions that could be used to frame you resolutions. Here is the list: (in no particular order)
- Who can help you do a better job and how can you connect with them on a regular basis?
- What one thing could you do this year to increase your enjoyment of your work?
- What is the most important area in your CAD environment that is not working as good as you want it to and how can you make it better?
- What skill do you most want to improve or learn this year?
- How can you find out what your strengths are and work even better in those areas?
- How can you get home earlier in the evening without reducing your effectiveness at work?
- What three family events will you absolutely attend this year that you may have missed in the past year?
- What will you change in your actions to make sure you complete what you have started?
- If those who know you best, gave you some advice, what would it be? What will you do about it?
- What is the single most important thing you can do to improve quality in your CAD output?
There are more on my BIM Manager site. You may come up with some yourself.
If you have defined an action plan for yourself this year… share one thing via a comment to this post.
Happy New Year!
A CAD Rant Warning… I am about to go off on an issue.
Where is my money back guarantee on software (CAD or whatever)?
When I buy most things – I can return them. When I put out my money to select a piece of software based on marketing promises, I want a guarantee. If it fails to do what it promises to do – I get my money back.
I know that Autodesk does provide (I think) a 30 day return policy. If you bought the wrong thing or want to upgrade you can return it. I have never tried that policy out yet.
How can you find out in 30 days if the software can do what it says it can? It takes me that long to install it and settle in to using it. Most folks don’t install it on the day they buy software like CAD. It takes a little while. And sometimes we have to upgrade our systems to get it to run effectively.
So 30 days is not enough.
Should there be a refund policy if you only get 50% productivity out of the software? What if you only use 35% of the commands? What happens if you do not get all of the productivity that you think you should?
What if you could buy only the commands you use? What if the software checked in and reported the commands that we actually used and your cost was based on that? I am not saying we go to Software as a Service model for CAD, but sometimes it may be kind of enticing.
What do you think? Do you want your money back? Do you want to only pay for what you use?
Post a comment…
.
I always look forward to this publication, since it has some amazing projects in it.
You can see it online now… click on the link below
From their press release:
Bentley Publishes Digital and Print Versions of ‘The Year in Infrastructure 2008’
Annual Publication Features More Than 250 of the World’s Most Extraordinary Projects
Bentley Systems, Incorporated, the leading company dedicated to providing comprehensive software solutions for the infrastructure that sustains our world, today announced that “The Year in Infrastructure 2008” is available in digital and print versions. This 192-page yearbook highlights the extraordinary work of Bentley users improving the world’s infrastructure and the quality of life for us all. It features descriptions and color illustrations of the more than 250 project nominations recognized and 23 winners honored in the professional and academic portions of the 2008 Be Awards of Excellence competition. New this year are two categories – “Sustaining Our Society” and “Sustaining Our Environment” – that emphasize the world’s ever-increasing sustainability challenges.
Previous years are access here
.
Cleaning your desk off at the end of the year can provide a good sense of completing the old year and ushering in the new one. By reviewing what is needed and what is not, you get the chance to see if you are making progress.
Someone told me that the “National Clean Off Your Desk Day” is the second Monday in January, so I must be starting early.
I tend to work in flurries. Stacks of papers, sticky notes, scribbles, letters, hard copy scattered all over my desk while I am working through an issue. When I get the job done – I clean up.
Here are some more tips that I wish I would follow:
- The top of your desk is not for storage. It is a work surface. Don’t keep things on your desk longer than they have to be there. Move them to storage on ly if you need to keep them. Otherwise, take action on them and get rid of them. Don’t keep items on your desk that you do not use every day. If you need them every so often, then put them somewhere in reach other than your desk.
- Empty your inbox at least once a week if not every day (you do have an inbox don’t you?). Mine gets piled pretty high before I get to it. I find that most of it is just junk mail and items that I do not really need to address right away so I tend to push it off. Not a good idea. I have found a few invoices and payables in there from time to time that have not been taken care of – not good. Just when I think I have it under control – stuff starts piling up again.
- Personal items should be limited. We have an office policy at my firm that states that you cannot have all the “stuff” that people usually have in their cubicle or office. Keep it within limits. So much of our area could be claimed for personal items that it might start looking like a college dorm room. It is not. It is you “work” area. keep it looking that way. A couple of photos is enough – it’s not like you are going to forget what your family looks like.
- Keeping the clutter down can make you more productive, but don’t go overboard. Remember that you do have to actually work on things, which means at any given time there may be a smattering of papers, books and items on your desk.
Just be sure to clean up when you are done.
The firm I work for – HMC Architects – produced a sustainability focused Holiday Card. No paper copies were created.
It takes you to our company holiday greeting site that has a link to design a snowflake.
The snowflake is made up of building components from our projects.
Enjoy…
Loading ...