Paul Woods

Later this month I am speaking at the JuiceIT road show being run by Data#3.

The concept behind the session is that your IT team (and every other IT team in almost every organisation, anywhere in the world) have a huge opportunity to increase the effectiveness of your people.  Not just increasing the productivity of your IT team and the systems you look after (like all those Virtualisation/VMware fan bois) but EVERYONE IN THE BUSINESS.

That is a BIG DEAL.  And we are not talking about significant numbers either.  There are so many things that IT teams can do to increase the productivity of the business by 1%, 2%, 5%.  That might look small to you, but to management, share holders and share markets, they are improvements that could mean millions of dollars depending on the size and scope of your business.

Think about it.  How much time do you (or your Managing Director, or your HR team, or your Sales people) spend with Outlook every day?  Chances are more than your wife, husband, kids, friends, or your television… combined. 

… and when was the last time you sat down and explored (or more likely someone told you about) functionality in the product that you have not used before??

Most of you will not remember the last time.  And, I can almost guarantee that you don’t know anywhere near as much about Outlook (or Word or Excel) as you need to know. 

My gut feeling is that you could be wasting hours a week doing things that could be done faster, if only you knew how to make the most of the tools you already have at your disposal.

In the session my colleague Joseph Mortimer and I will dive into how you can get the most out of your productivity tools (Office, SharePoint and more), the key to ensuring that you get the results you want, and more importantly how to create the context to deliver a productivity environment that ensures that you meet the expectations of the entire workforce.

So if you are in Brisbane on Thursday March 11, or Adelaide on Thursday March 25 – make sure you register to attend JuiceIT.  Our session is just one of 25 at each event, which brings together vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, HP, VMware, Toshiba, Symantec, and many many more.

Over the last couple of months I have been fairly busy on the speaking side of things.  Here is a quick look at some of the topics I have been talking about:

Negotiation

A few weeks ago I delivered a guest lecture at QUT in the postgraduate Negotating Across Bordersclass.  This was a really good session that was supposed to last 30 minutes, but ended up going for 90 as we dug into my experience negotiating in the real world – house purchases, complaining to teleco’s, pay reviews and more. 

OfficeDevCon09 – Getting Productive (and getting a return) on Microsoft Office and SharePoint

This session was delivered at the community run OfficeDevCon conference, which this year was held in Brisbane.  Great turn out (not a spare seat in the house)… although I did get some feedback that the session was “Too Interactive”…

TechEd Australia – OFC102 - Productivity for the IT Pro, and The Productivity Myth (TechEd Online Tech Talk)

Microsoft TechEd Australia rolled around again this year on the Gold Coast, and I was lucky enough to not only  be a speaker in the Office Track, but also recorded a short video on my earlier post – “the Productivity Myth” with Alistair Speirs.

This morning I received an email from Microsoft…

Dear Paul Woods,

Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2009 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Word technical communities during the past year.

The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."

Toby Richards
General Manager
Community Support Services

My first thought… It must be the first time anyone has said Thank you for your technical leadership”  to a Marketer!

Seriously though, I am very honoured and humbled to be presented with this award – officially for my contribution to the Word 2007 community through my little pet project – http://www.thenewpaperclip.com/.   Thank you to the folk at the MVP program at Microsoft, thank you to Alistair who I am sure is behind my nomination, and thank you to the almost 300 000 people who visited The New Paperclip last year to overcome their challenges with Office 2007.  This is for you!