Connect with WorkSmart

wiresAs you would expect, WorkSmart is all over the internet!

The first thing to do is to join the site. Membership is free, and means you get the regular email newsletter. In the future it will also give you access to exclusive member resources – more on that soon. You can sign up here if you haven’t already.

Next, WorkSmart is of course on Twitter, where you can get alerted to new articles published on the blog, and to interesting links as we spot and curate them. Follow @worksmarthq now.

Are you a big Facebook user? It might be that the Facebook page is the best way to keep up to date, and to have your say on the articles and other content that are published there. Like WorkSmart on Facebook here.

How about Google+? I’m not convinced either, but there is a WorkSmart page there, which also has content posted up as it gets published on the blog. Follow WorkSmart on Google+ here.

Last but not least, WorkSmart currently has two (count ’em!) boards on Pinterest. One features all the posts that are published on the blog – so if you like to get your content in Pinterest, they are all there waiting for you. The other one is where content is curated from across the web, and is called Bookmarks.

So, you really have no excuse not to keep up to date with what is happening here! It will be great to see you on our various channels.

What’s on your tablet, Nick Jones?

NJ-headhsotNick Jones is Head of Digital and CSR at Visa Europe. Responsible for protecting and improving the reputation of Visa Europe across digital channels owned and earned.

Previously he worked in government at Number 10 and the Central Office of Information. You can find Nick on LinkedIn here.

Which tablet do you use most?

iPad mini

What do you use your tablet for most?

  • Email
  • Web browsing
  • Social networking
  • Note taking
  • Photography / video

What are your favourite apps?

What add ons do you use with your tablet?

Logitech Ultrathin keyboard case because the soft keyboard doesn’t allow easy tabbing when taking notes.

What does your tablet not do that you really wish it could?

Outlook integration so the work calendar and email were easily accessible. There is the Good app but not approved for work.

What’s on your tablet? is a regular series of posts about how WorkSmart readers use their tablets. You can take part too – just fill in the survey.

Collaboration or cooperation?

coopStowe Boyd is a great writer on technology and the impact it has on organisational culture.

You can follow his blog here, which is updated several times a day with great titbits and articles.

He has written a post for the CMSWire website, entitled The Fall of Collaboration, The Rise of Cooperation which is a really interesting read.

In it he mentions a great quote from Marshall McLuhan: “Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!” – I can see myself repeating that in meetings in the future, for sure.

As we move into a new way of work — one based on more fluid and looser connections, grounded in freethinking, humanist and scientific approaches to the social contract — it’s becoming clear that the traditional model of “collaboration tools” is based around outmoded structures of control rather than the shape of our work today, or the nature of networked sociality. We need a different take on the tools we are using to get work done, one based on open cooperation at the core of our work instead of closed collaboration running alongside it.

His idea seems to be that the notion of collaboration has come to mean big, corporate platforms and processes. Cooperation on the other hand is more about individuals finding their own way to work together, using the most appropriate tools for the job.

Is this how you see things? Has the word collaboration become tainted by association?