For years Jane’s mantra has been “focus on the important, not the urgent.”  And my buddy is in good company! I receive Harvard Business Reviews’ “Management Tip of the Day” (most of which are superb — I highly recommend you subscribe to this — just file them until you get a chance in an airport to really read them!).  The “tip” today is “How to mitigate the urgent to focus on the important” , including:

1. choose 3 important tasks to focus on each day — only 3 - any more than 3 and you won’t get any accomplished
2. only check your email a few times a day so that you aren’t constantly interrupting yourself
3. have a scheduled 20 minute weekly meeting with YOURSELF

Superb advice.

It also reminds me that we need to start spreading the word about the “Executive Think Tank” LMD is offering at the SLA Conference on Saturday June 13th (page 9, Ticket Event #280)– a full day workshop with (are you ready for this?):
Clare Hart, Executive VP Dow Jones and President, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group
Darrell Gunter, Chief Marketing Officer for Collexis Holdings, Inc.
Kate Noerr, CEO MuseGlobal Inc.
Barbara Robinson, Executive Coach

These executives aren’t at the Think Tank as talking heads; they are there ALL DAY, as faculty, working with the participants on influencing, decision-making (when there’s no clear decision), judgment, saying no, & balancing your personal values when they don’t mesh with organizational decisions.  The Think Tank is for anyone working with senior management, reporting to management, or in a management role.  Last year’s Think Tank was a great success, and this year, thanks to feedback from last year’s participants, will be even better with a good blend of strategic thinking and practical application. This type of workshop, with this caliber of faculty normally costs more than $1000 - but LMD has been able to keep the fee at a reasonable rate.

Over the next week I’ll be sending more information to the list — and linking to articles we’ll be using.  In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact me. Thanks - and thanks to LMD for making the Think Tank happen.

Here’s an article I wrote for EContent on the FASTForward ‘09 conference.  And there’s lots more at the FASTForward Blog and the conference Twitter feed.

Although this article was about enterprise infrastructure, the title “Slashed Budgets?  Think Strategically, not Tactically” resonated with me.  Rebecca and I work with many clients who have organizational and financial challenges.  We have found that it definitely makes a difference to think strategically about what you want to have in terms of a service or product.  Once you have a firm view of what you want to achieve, you can use that picture to make decisions on how to proceed.  From the big picture, strategic view to the tactical.

During the presentation of innovation awards at FASTForward ‘09 there were some interesting comments about what search is.  Help me make a longer list by adding comments to this post!

Search is

• shortening the distance between users & offerings
• all about information management and information enables business
• a high end productivity tool

So many wonderful interviews from FASTForward ‘09 participants by Josh-Michele Ross in the form of videos.  Check out his coverage of analysts, researchers, CTOs & CEOs, authors, speakers and more.  And also the twitter feed from the conference.

A great presentation by Charlene Li at FASTForward09. She is the author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technoloiges, an independent analyst on emerging technologies, and former VP & principal analyst at Forrester Research.   She gave lots of great examples the use of social technologies to engage and transform user experiences: marketing by H&R Block on Facebook, customer support by Comcast on Twitter, and innovation by Starbucks with the use of customer feedback and input (My Starbucks Idea).

Don Tapscott, keynote at FastForward09, built on an his earlier books, Growing Up Digital, Wikinomics, and others as he talked about how a new generation is driving an age of engagement which aligns with the conference theme: Engage Your User.  He talked about his new book, Grown Up Digital, about how disagrees that the net generation or digital natives (also known as millenials and Gen Y) is the dumbest generation (especially check out out Don’s YouTube video on this site) , and about how this generation is a powerful force for change in our world.  He gave lots of examples including a digital native who has a year’s worth of one week jobs, and a 6th grader who went after financing for his business Playspan.  I loved how he talked about the net gen attitude: work=collaboration=learning=fun – that’s the kind of workplace we all should want to see.  And also his caution to organizations who do not allow the use of social tools like Facebook to be accessed.  Here’s something you can use if your organization is one of those:  I won’t go onto Facebook during work time or on work computers if you don’t expect me to answer company emails after hours or on weekends.  Nice!  Check out more info about Don’s talk and book, and also here, on the FastForward Blog.

The first FastForward conference since Microsoft purchased FAST Technology for 1.2 billion opened with lots of light an music and about 1,000 attendees from 29 countries.  It reflects a strong commitment, vision, and roadmap for search.  Today, Microsoft released information about new search products:  FAST Search for SharePoint which is the old FAST ESP tuned for SharePoint available at lower cost through SharePoint enterprise user-based licensing (a simplified package based on per uers licensing) that will be availalbe with the release of Office 14.  However, for those who want to get started right away, Microsoft will provide a licensing bridge for SharePoint clients, ESP for SharePoint.  Another new product, FAST Search for Internet Business, which will also be released with Office 14 and then roughly annually going forward, includes interaction management to help drive revenue for users, content integration and  simplified licensing.  For more info on these new products, check here.

The call for speakers for Internet Librarian 2009 is online with a theme, Net Initiatives for Tough Times:  Digital Publishing, Preservation & Practices.

AND, the opening keynote for the conference is Internet pioneer, Vint Cerf who is currently VP & Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. Most excitiing!