Siri – Virtual Personal Assistant

Imagine your day is filled with meetings or you’re busy with whatever it is that’s diverted your attention. You may need to book a table for dinner tonight, buy concert tickets, book a flight for that much needed getaway, BUT you have no assistant nor have you got time to look things up. Siri is a virtual personal assistant app that can do all this for you! The input device is your voice and operates the same way as Google Voice Search. The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store, but only works in the US at the moment.

The other day, I demonstrated it to a work mate. I asked for a dinner booking at a restaurant that serves duck in Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia. Siri came back telling me I need to book a flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne and asked if I’d like to look at some flight schedules!! However, it didn’t tell me which restaurant it had in mind for me. But then again, Australia is not flushed with businesses with an online presence and APIs to go with it (API – application programming interface – this allows software applications to talk to each other). For a lay person, what Siri does is recognise your voice request and inputs those details into, for example, an airline booking webpage and then presents the results to you for your decision.

It’s a shame Australia is so far behind to make use of Siri.

-TH

Tags: coolness, G Media, gadgets, Garion Hall, gmedia, Personal Assistant, Siri virtual personal assistant
Posted in Blogs, General, IT

On the road armed with an iPad

Recently I was in the US on business and the trip coincided with the launch of Apple’s iPad. I decided to head down to the nearby Apple Store, approached one of the Apple Genius and asked if I could pick up a 16GB iPad. She said the 16GB and the 32GB iPad models were sold out in that store. I asked her to check the other stores in the Los Angeles area and they too were sold out of both models. I walked out with a 64GB iPad under my arm.

I sync’ed the iPad with my MacBook and transferred my powerpoint presentation to the iPad, edited and animated the slides, hooked the iPad up to a projector and walked through the presentation. It was so easy!! It was less hassle and in less time than firing up the MacBook and hooking it up to the project. As I was on my way to San Francisco on a Virgin America flight (you can connect to the internet on the flight!!! $14.95 for a 30 day pass), I went through the presentation once more, surfed the web, emailed work and friends, checked out FaceBook and LinkedIn, bought the rad Siri Personal Assistant app (will write about this on another blog) from the App Store on the iPad. Apart from presentations, I used Pages (word processor) and Numbers (spreadsheet) to finish off meeting notes and reviewed some financial data. All this was done, literally, at the touch of the screen. The UI was easy and intuitive – it took me less than 10 mins to read through the instructions and master all the finger gesture commands.

As I expected, the presentation went like a treat. Using the iPad allowed me to be more personal with the people I was meeting with – they sat next to me looking and pointing to charts and graphics immediately before us rather than at some projector screen 5 meters or so away. I now use my iPad as my notebook, taking meeting notes and saving it to my directory. Having experienced how suitable the iPad is for me, I can’t wait for the 3G version which would allow more mobility.

- TH

Tags: Apple, G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, innovation, iPad, iPad review, iPhone, review
Posted in Blogs, General

More wisdom from First break all the Rules!

Back again for more wisdom from “First, break all the rules”, an unconventional look at how to manage staff. Managers must first find and address employees’ needs in order to build a nurturing work environment enabling company vision, mission and goals to be met. Buckingham and Coffman suggest the following 12 questions to measure the strength of a workplace. They are designed to produce positive answers, the more yes’ the better the workplace.

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the past six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?
12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

While they may appear overly simplistic, they are actually designed in a bottom up hierarchy that highlights employees’ needs. Being a relatively new manager at G Media, I had a go answering these myself and my answers were almost all positive. I assure you there was no bias, knowing that my boss – Garion Hall can read this any time. This is not particular news to me in any case, as I am fairly happy going to headquarters everyday with my to-do list and leaving with some sense of job satisfaction at the end of each day. For comparison purposes, I applied the same questions to my last position and needless to say, my decision to move on was the right one.

Tags: book club, First Break all the Rules, Garion Hall, gmedia
Posted in IT

Drum roll please…

The management team at G Media are all keyed up at the moment as our fearless leader Garion Hall is about to unveil our revised and super charged Performance Review Policy.  Garion has spent a billion hours, give or take, researching, measuring, benchmarking; you name it he’s done it and all in the name of accurately measuring and recognising G Median’s game-changing performance.

I had a sneak peak at it the other day it looks pretty amazing!! It made me think about my role as a manager. A manager’s most important and most difficult job is to manage people. You must lead, motivate, inspire, and encourage them. Sometimes you will have to hire, fire and discipline employees.

People don’t really work for companies; they work for managers. To the extent that you can be a good manager, you can keep employees, keep them happy, and reduce the costs associated with employee turnover. In the process, you should make your own job easier.

Employees are one of a company’s largest expenses, unlike other costs (buildings, machinery, technology, etc.) employees as assets are highly volatile.   Managing performance is not always easy, as there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to managing people and their performance.  So as a manager how do I ensure I am getting the best from each individual…??  Well I’m no leading authority but this is what I have learnt in practice, through observation but mostly reflection.. Lots of cringe worthy reflection!

Make sure your people have everything they need to do their job well.

By hell or high water, you have to get them what they need to do the job, and do it right. This includes:

• Proper training
• Proper tools
• Properly defined position descriptions and KPI’s.
• Well documented processes and procedures
• Adequate and proper motivation
• Trust in you as their manager (and yes, they absolutely need this in order to do the job well. It’s not optional.)
• Appreciation/Morale

Get everything that impedes your people from doing their job out of the way.

This is often the most difficult for me.  It’s not glamorous or fun work. Slogging through this stuff takes lots of time and energy. I know it leaves me drained, but, it needs to be done. What to look for when you are clearing a path:

• Old processes and procedures that are no longer needed
• Non-productive meetings
• Work that is not related to the core mission of your team
• Lack of communication.
• Unrealistic expectations from customers, other management, or even the employees themselves.

Make sure your people are performing, and make sure they know you’re all over it…
Once you’ve got the first two sorted, it’s time for some accountability. The key here is defining “job well done” in a way that can be objectively measured and inspected. Your people should know:

• What is being measured
• Why it’s being measured
• That you expect them to uphold a certain level of performance
• You will be regularly inspecting for that level of performance
• What steps you will take if that performance level is not met
• What is offered if they exceed that performance level

Phew!!  A lot to take in right..? Hang in there still a tiny bit more.  Employees are responsible for their own performance within the team. As their manager, I am accountable to our (awesome) board of directors ensuring results in my department, concrete measurable results.

Everyone in the workplace has an important part to play in organisational performance. Good organisational performance is the result of high quality functioning by the individuals within it.  Go Team!!

Tags: G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, management, motivation, performance review, staff, staff management
Posted in Featured, General, Production

We’re about to dive into “First, break all the rules” by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, G Media Bookclub’s first book. Traditionally, management crafts the ‘perfect’ mould for their ideal manager, recruit using this mould, lumps someone into it like play dough, then becomes frustrated when the manager’s magic wand does not yield the ultimate objective, whatever that may be – profitability, providing best service, technological advances and so on. The book questions the validity of doing so, by examining what makes employees tick.

Firstly, the authors distinguish between skills and knowledge, which can be taught and talents, an innate instinctive skill set that cannot be learned but will determine ultimate success or failure. The reason being that talents are ingrained in an individual, impulses they’ve grown up developing their entire lives. When applied in the business situations will, not only come naturally, but always garner the best results, because it is the person’s speciality. For example, this talent is easily recognisable in athletes, they’re at the top of their game because they are the best, due to their talent – they can run the fastest, hit the hardest, quickest reaction time and so on. Whilst most of us will concur that this makes logical sense, the same theory is lost on most in the business world.

Staff are hired based on their resume, a piece of paper that lists their skills and knowledge, gained from their educations, whether it be in schools or past work experience. While the ability to learn quickly is a talent, it’s the application of those skills learned that matters. It is HR’s responsibility to find that talent in staff, both existing and new, in order to foster business success. To do that, we need to sniff out talents at the interview stage by asking open ended questions, allowing the prospect to showcase their talents, which may or may not be suitable to the organisation.

We at G Media, have not veered too far from the traditional forms of recruitment thus have had varying degrees of success in hiring and retaining suitable staff.

Tags: Book Clucb, Curt Coffman, G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, Management approach, Marcus Buckingham, recruitment, retaining staff
Posted in IT

Self confidence building for women starts with building self esteem

As the Production Manager at G Media I spend most of my day working with young women, whether it is staff or models.   As part of my induction I spent many weeks with Garion Hall discussing and learning about the many issues young women face in today’s society and how they take their toll on self confidence.

G Media takes its responsibility to women very seriously.  We collaborate with our models and staff to create an environment which supports the development of individual self confidence so that they in turn can make good healthy decisions for themselves.  Over the last 10 years Garion Hall, CEO, G Media, has worked extensively with social researchers, health workers and local women’s support groups to better understand what we can do every day at G Media to empower woman who value who they are, feel confident and believe in themselves.

We believe that once a woman recognises her-self worth and confirms that she is a marvelous achievement then her feelings and trust in her own self worth will soar.  Confidence comes from a different place inside ourselves, we carry ourselves differently.

All of our experiences in life are opportunities to learn and connect more deeply with ourselves. The more we connect to ourselves, the more healing we do. When a situation makes us feel angry, sad, sick to our stomach, fearful or off centre in any way, our body expresses this discomfort by a physical contraction. This is a signal for us to reconnect with ourselves.

I love it when I see this reconnection in the young women we work with, and they love it too. When young women start believing in themselves and replacing negative thoughts with satisfaction and confidence, their whole life changes. They are no longer making decisions for the wrong reasons; the decisions they make are decisions that are good for them. I get to watch their appearance actually change too. They stand straighter, they walk with a sense of sureness, and they speak with confidence, because they are.

As a woman, there is nothing more inspiring to me than a young woman learning how to stand in her power or a woman standing strong in her power. I feel so lucky in my life to be able to witness these miraculous changes in the women I work with everyday. It reminds me how big love is.

Tags: confidence, G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, self esteem
Posted in Blogs, Featured, General, Marketing, Production

Why I love my typewriter

I am lucky enough to work at G Media, a company filled with bright, tech savvy employees who do amazing things with all the latest and greatest technology and software, what else would you expect from a progressive media company whose fearless leader, Garion Hall, is always raving about some new ‘thingy’ he has discovered that is going to change the way we do business. Inspiring stuff! Which makes it difficult for me to admit that I have been harboring a deep dark secret; I love using typewriters. I know it’s not cool, but I do.

My love of using the typewriter began when I purchased my second-hand Olivetti manual typewriter. I would spend hours taking longhand notes for school assignments, and then typing them up. My typewriter always encouraged me to get the story right first time round. I would pound away at the keyboard, each letter typed  followed by a resounding ‘click’. I was mesmerized by the brisk action with which it’s hammers sculpted its letters onto the paper and the reassuring ‘bing’ when I had arrived at my manually set margin, then I would reach for the jabby little carriage return lever and move to the next line. I loved the portability, the lack of electricity, of not being “plugged in” to the wall.

I never ever had an accident where I pressed a button and accidentally deleted my work, never to be seen again. And no-one ever tried to hack into my typewriter! It was very secure and I didn’t need to remember a password. Typewriters are much more straightforward to use than computers as they only have one function – typing, it is the simplicity that I long for sometimes.

I am feeling particularly nostalgic about my typewriter as this week I ‘lost’ a document I spent a significant amount of time working on and wanted to present to Garion. Needless to say I was devastated when I couldn’t find it. This would not have happened if I had typed it up on my trusty Olivetti, black words on white paper rolling up in front of my gaze. I know, this may sound like an impossibly Spartan ideal, where cut and paste is done with scissors and glue, and deleted words remain on the page as angry little blobs. But today I am left jaded by my smarty-pants computer.

Tags: computers, G Media, Garion Hall, gmedia, internet security, technology, type writer, typing, word processing
Posted in Blogs, IT, Web Development

GMedia Bookclub is Launched!

Lead by Garion Hall, staff at G Media are always encouraged to research and develop, not only individually but for their team, company and industry alike, across all functions of the business. Thus the establishment of the G Media Bookclub, the rules of which are:

1. be armed and ready with a yellow highlighter

3. implement the lesson learned in our daily business decisions

Having completed almost 20 years of studying, it’s fair to say I’ve read about many management theories and “how to” guides, so I was rather dubious about rules number 2 and 3 above, when handed “First, break all the rules”. Luckily I had a 300 page guide on how to break all the rules in my lap.

Loathed to mark up a perfectly brand new book, this series of blogs will showcase the interesting bits I did find, somewhat to my surprise. Basically it’s a how to manage guide for managers. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman looks at staff management from a different angle, backs it up with empirical research spanning over twenty five (that’s right 25!) years, completed by the Gallup Organisation. Their comprehensive research includes interviews with factory hands, receptionists to senior executives across thousands of companies spanning all industries.

Tags: Curt Coffman, First Break all the Rules, G Media, Gallup Organisation, Garion Hall, gmedia, Managing the managers, Marcus Buckingham
Posted in IT