Near UT? Contact me about having your workplace communication evaluated this summer.

Do you want a thorough evaluation of how people work and communicate in your organization, and a list of recommendations for improving it?

This summer, I'm teaching a class in which students will work in teams to do just that: enter organizations, observe people at work, interview them, and analyze the results in order to make solid, data-driven recommendations. Deliverables will include an interim report, a recommendation report, and prototype solutions.

So I'm looking for organizations (in the loose sense) that are

• near the UT campus
• relatively coherent (someone at the site can authorize the study)
• amenable to having small teams visit, observe, and conduct interviews
  

If this sounds interesting, drop me an email and we can chat further.

"I, for one, would relish the opportunity to delete my Facebook account and go all-in with Google."

At FastCompany, Chris Dannen thinks the improvement to Google Profiles might make it a Facebook killer. Possibly - but wasn't Jaiku supposed to be a Twitter killer?

"My advice to anyone who finds Blackberry or laptop use during meetings rude or distracting: have fewer meetings or get to the point faster."

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch reacts to a survey on whether people think that PDAs and laptops contribute to a decline of workplace etiquette. The last sentence in this quote nails it:

One thing Baby Boomers apparently really hate is when the rest of us are not paying attention during meetings and instead checking our e-mail or Twitter accounts on our mobile phones and laptops. A full 69 percent of Baby Boomers surveyed agree that “PDAs and mobile phones contribute to the decline of proper workplace etiquette,” while only 47 percent of Gen Y workers see what is the big deal. (By the way, who says “PDA” anymore? I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that it must have been a Baby Boomer who put together the survey).