Information Sanity

You know I got dragged to the blogging world kicking and screaming…I was doing radio news in the days when I had the UPI and AP teletype machines clacking by my ears and I still have boxes that say teletype ribbon.. (you don’t know what a teletype ribbon is….?)

Anyway I digress… I was one of those PR people who said, give me a story in a daily newspaper that reaches half a million and I’m happy.   But this blogging world is pretty cool and allows me to – heaven forbid… be my own publisher.

So on Information Overload…just like many of you, I start my morning coffee at home before 7, checking work email, personal email, Facebook updates, text messages, Twitter and typing my son’s daily chore list  before I head to work.

So forgive me that I didn’t have time to check the (hardcopy, printers ink on your fingers version) Columbus Day Wall Street Journal ‘til noon when I read the cover story of the Technology Section on Why Email No Longer Rules.. and what that means for the way we communicate

In the lead story Jessica Vascellaro writes about a shift from e-mail to social media and about how it is contributing to information overload.

She says that email is so old world and “Twitter, Facebook and countless others” are more today, always on.

I can buy that…you can get instant response from IM, you can find out if someone is even logged on or left a status update, you can share so many more experiences through photos and Youtube.

What does amaze me… the growth.  She quotes a Nielsen number that says in August 2009, 277 million people used email, up 21% year over year, but social networking users had climbed 31% to 301 million users.

And because the old ways don’t go away…she leads right into the thoughts that float on this site…too much information.

With so much more information coming at you, how do you determine what is important?

I have seen first hand some of the Xerox research projects (on a trip to Grenoble, France, but that is another story) on how we will be able to sort, prioritize and do more with this stream of information.  Jessica mentions filtering programs, some even available on Twitter today.

But I love her closing comment…”you can argue that because we have more ways to send more messages, we spend more time doing it.”

Amen.

- Bill McKee @xeroxprguy

Newsflash!!!  The US Congress is not immune to information overload.  Maybe that is why it seems like it takes forever and day for anything to get done on Capitol Hill.  Well, I am sure there are a few other reasons out there as well, but according to this article in Mashable, a study in the National Journal found that the crush of incoming and ever changing information is a huge issue facing members of Congress. 

Perhaps our elected officials (or their staffers) should take some time out in a couple weeks to attend the online conference being hosted by Basex around Information Overload Awareness Day on Aug. 12^th.  While I don’t think the cure to information overload will be created at the online conference, there is a healthy list of experts coming together to share ideas and best practices including the end customers such as Dow Jones, Morgan Stanley, and a CIO from the US Air Force. Check out the agenda at www.informationoverloadday.com.

·         Each year the amount of information created in the enterprise, paper and digital combined, grows faster than 65%.

·         Non-productive information work, such as reformatting documents or reentering documents into computers, consumed more than $1.5 trillion in U.S. salaries last year.

·         Survey respondents spend as much as 26% of their time trying to manage information overload.

·         Respondents split their time evenly between dealing with paper and digital information, but 71% prefer to deal with digital information.

·         The amount of time U.S. information workers spent last year managing paper-driven information overload cost $460 billion in salaries.

·         Reducing the time wasted dealing with information overload by 15% could save a company with 500 employees more than $2 million a year.

Sure, we poked fun and came up with a fake illness called IOS. 

But when you look at these stats — Wow.  Maybe there is more truth in our humor than meets the eye.  These stats say just about everything there is to say about the cost and challenges of information overload and the price we as knowledge workers are paying on a daily basis.

I can’t take credit for coming up with all this research.  It’s all IDC’s work.  Today on this site, we are publishing a pretty comprehensive white paper that Xerox commissioned IDC to work on.  What is contained in the 12 page report are some great insights into the problem, but also some solid suggestions on what to do about it and where to start if you are serious about fixing the problem.

So take a few minutes and check it out. 

Information Overload.  It just seems to be an everyday part of life lately.  And those that complain about the challenges IO presents need to get over it and move on.  Popular perception is that there is no solution to this problem.

Well.  As you have likely seen from my previous posts – I tend to disagree.  Just getting over it isn’t going to help and frankly if we keep at this pace of trying to share more and more information — things are going to break.  This past week, I joined up with a group of others that think the tech industry itself needs to band together to come up with some a solution before we reach our breaking point.  That group is IORG (http://www.iorgforum.org/). 

While the group is in its early stages, what most impresses me about IORG is that they are making the effort to figure out the solution from a cross industry perspective.   How do we keep some notion of sanity in an environment that is just crazed.  While I have only just now joined the board as the VP of Marketing – I’d encourage you to stay tuned this fall as we gear up for a conference in Palo Alto to discuss just how we go about slaying the preverbal windmill called Information Overload.

Separately — for a few yucks – you should check out the new videos we created at Xerox on the challenges of information overload.  I am sure you can identify with some, if not all, of the side effects caused by trying to process too much information.

Last week I had the opportunity to chat with two really smart analysts on information overload – Jon Gantz and Angele Boyd – both from IDC.  Three things struck me in the conversation:

1. This is a problem that is only getting worse – for everyone
2. Nobody is going to solve this problem in one fell swoop.  Can’t eat an apple in one bite
3. You likely have technology that you bought already that is capable to helping you start tackling the problem. 

It was the third example that really made me pause and in line with what I blogged about last time – what technology do you have to help slay this dragon called Information Overload.  For example, a lot of people scan stuff and send the documents to their own e-mail.  But how many companies actually scan a document and then parse the data and use it to populate fields in enterprise applications?

I know that I use the SmartSend technology that is part of my company’s MFPs to scan and send info to co-workers around the company.  Its pretty easy, print a cover sheet, scan the cover sheet and the document, select where you want it to go to – and off it goes. 

But how cool would it be if my doctor’s office actually took the scanning idea to the full level and instead of copying my insurance card for the umpteenth time, they actually scan it in, suck the data from the card and populate the forms they have to fill out for every patient.  It might actually free the person at the front desk to do something other than re-keying the information they just copied.

As Angele said during our discussion, in this day an age, the more RIO you can get out of the products you have, the better.

Now I know that last post I said I was going to focus on finding simple ways to get ore efficient – but there is just something I need to get off my chest first….

Attention Mr. and Ms. Marketing guru at the dozens of companies who fill my mailbox every day – you have got to try harder.

You see – sending me the same catalogue and Val-Packs you send my next door neighbor doesn’t cut it anymore.  Gone are the days when I have the time or the interest in flipping through the same spring catalogue I got two years ago.  With the economy the way it is – I am hording all the cash I can.  If someone is going to pry the dollars from my hands, you are going to have to entice me with something specific.

Last Friday I just had to laugh.  On the way to the mailbox at the curb, I saw my next door neighbor.  As we both opened our mailboxes – we joked about how we both were getting the same outdoor furniture and clothing catalogues and the same coupons for 20% off our next visit to a particular store.  The reason we laughed:  he is 78-years old.  I am just about 40.  Do you think we have the same tastes in shirts at this point in our lives?

But I did get one thing that my buddy next door didn’t over the weekend, and this is my point: A local sporting goods store flyer was in my mailbox saying that last year I had a purchased some lacrosse gear for my son and given how fast kids grow – would I be needing anything for the upcoming season.

Simple, professional marketing flyer with a personalized note incorporated in the text.  To me that is customer service.  And you know what – I am going to one night this week be popping into his store with my son and a small wad of cash I pulled from under the bed.

Just goes to show you what a little effort will do these days…

Complaining about information overload feels odd these days.  But after three months of trying to buck up and deal – I just have to vent. 

You see – information overload was bad last year – but in the wake of layoffs happening throughout corporate America, the volume of incoming information has just gotten worse.  To say I am knee deep in “stuff” is a profound understatement.

That said, I don’t think my plight is a lot different than most people in the corporate world these days.  I bet a math wiz could create a formula that could calculate the ratio between the increase of information overload to every laid off employee.  I am sure it is directly proportional.  That said, and I am sure all of you agree – I’d rather be overloaded than unemployed these days.

So here is what I am going to do.  Rather than moan about the 10,000 things in my “inbox” or ask for some new technology that costs money, I am going to spend the next couple weeks trying out a few simple tricks using the technology I have in my office to see if I can get more efficient.  

And along the way I’ll report back to you what is working and what isn’t.