Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips A recent manager wrote his thoughts in the air with his finger. There was some good, some bad, and some annoyances with this habit. But, as with most things people do, there was plenty to learn. I worked on a short project recently where the project manager wrote in the air. To […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Handwriting is not dead. It lives on despite the computer age. Cursive, however, is on the way out, and I for one am happy to see it go. (Start writing comments about how bad a person I am) Time magazine mourns the death of handwriting. That is a nice headline, but I […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Most organizations have “magic words.” Utter these words and things happen. If you don’t know the words, work slows and frustration rises. None of this makes any sense, but nonsense continues to exist and often thrives. Years ago, a colleague who lived in a nearby rural area wanted to construct a building […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I dislike most meetings as they are not a time to accomplish work but merely a time to socialize. The worst type of meeting is one that is going to be short. Short meetings waste more time and last longer than any other type of meeting. I dislike the majority of meetings. […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Producing a lot of documentation doesn’t ensure project success. Sometimes, when emphasized incorrectly, a lot of documentation can ensure project failure. Keep in mind the purposes of documentation. This week during one of those little lulls that occur in even the busiest of endeavors, an engineer and I were chatting. For some […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I like writing exercises – things that make me think. I came across a good one today from Kenneth Davis at ManageYourWriting.com. He calls it the Alphabet Shift. choose a word you’ve written beginning with a letter from the first half of the alphabet. Replace it with a more effective word beginning […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips My grandson taught me about the physical limitations of eBook readers. Those limitations are real. This points me back to the best use of eBook readers – holders of workplace documentation. I wish we would go back to the projection glasses that people tried a couple of decades ago. I guess the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I often see poor photographs of technical products on the Internet. Today I saw an excellent image that communicates much about this product from Nvidia. One of my frequent complaints about photographs of technology is the lack of scale. Someone will show their “new, smaller footprint widget” sitting on a nice, shiny […]

[Read more →]