The files will be forwarded to your mailbox. Note: Some mailbox services have restrictions on the size of incoming mail. This may prevent you from receiving large notebook files. If this happens, contact your local postmaster for help. Some email systems are unable to forward your return-address correctly to LISTSERV. If you suspect that this is the reason for lack of success, try the following commands:
GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105B TO Your-Correct-Return-Address
GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105C TO Your-Correct-Return-Address
GIVE KIDPLAN LOG9105D TO Your-Correct-Return-Address
Making it work ——————— Making online conferences and task force meetings work, can be a challenge. Most of the dialog is based on the written word. The flow of information can be substantial thus causing an information overload for some participants. To overcome this, many companies appoint moderator-organizers for their online conferences. This person:
Adds value by setting agendas; summarizing points; getting the discussion(s) back on track; moving on to the next point; mediating debate; maintaining address and member lists; acting as general sparkplug/motivator to keep things flowing by making sure that contributions are acknowledged, relevant points are noted, new members are welcomed, silent "Read-Only Members" are encouraged to participate, and the general atmosphere is kept appropriate to the goals of the conference/task force meeting.
Great online conferences don't just happen. Hard work is required. A few people must be responsible for getting the meetings fired up and keep the discussion rolling. The meeting's organization may depend on the number of participants, where they come from, the exclusivity of the forum, and the purpose of the "meeting." In large meetings, with free access for outsiders, the best strategy may be to appoint a Moderator-Editor. This person
Filters contributions, gathers new information, summarizes scattered contributions, does background research.
Filtering may be needed in conferences that are open to customers and media. The main purpose, however, is to help participants cope with the absolute flow of information. A conference can have an educational purpose. If so, you may bring in someone who can add value by bringing experience and expertise to the group. You will also need someone to do all the dirty jobs everyone expects to be done - but never notices until they are not done. This person must keep the show running by serving as a benevolent tyrant, sheriff, judge, mediator, general scapegoat, and by playing a role in setting the general policy and atmosphere of the meeting. Now, back to the 'normal' applications of the online resource.
Monitoring what others do ————————————- The best business opportunities are outside your company, in the external world. We need to monitor customers and markets, find technologies to help develop and build products, research new business actions, find new subcontractors and suppliers, people to hire, and persons to influence to boost sales. In this marketing age, where sales calls cost hundreds of dollars and business-to-business marketers use the telephone or the mails to reach prospects, complete and accurate market lists are most valuable commodities. There are many other questions: What are our most important customers and their key people doing? What new products are they promoting? Who are their joint-venture partners? What else may influence their willingness to buy from us? What prices are our major suppliers offering other buyers? Should we get other sources for supplies? What major contracts have they received recently? Will these influence their ability to serve our needs? What new technologies are available now and how are they being used by others? Threats are the reverse side of opportunities. What are our competitors doing? What products and services have they launched recently? Are they successful? What are our competitors' weaknesses and strengths? What relationships do they maintain with our most important customers? How is their customer support functioning, and what methods are they using in their quality assurance? Each company has its own priorities when it comes to watching the external environment. The information needs are different from company to company, depending on what products and services that are offered, the technological level of the company, the markets that they address, and more. Needs and priorities also differ by department and person, for example depending on whether a user is the president, a marketing manager, product manager, sales man, or has a position in finance or production. Remember your priorities when going online to search. You cannot possibly capture and digest all information that is there. Your basic problem remains to find the right information in the right form at the right time.
Build your own, local 'database' ———————————————— It does not take much effort to check one hundred different topics from multiple online sources on a daily basis. The computer will do it for you. Also, you do not have to read all stories as carefully as you would with printed material. Most experienced users just read what is important now, and save selected parts of the retrieved texts on their hard disks for later reference. We handle printed material differently. Most of us make notes in the margins, underline, use colors, cut out pages and put into folders. These tricks are important, since it is so hard to find information in a pile of papers. Not so with electronic information. With the right tools, you can locate information on your computer's hard disk in seconds. In seven seconds, I just searched the equivalent of 2000 pages of printed text for all occurrences of the combined search words 'SONY' and 'CD-ROM'! My tool was the shareware program LOOKFOR (see Chapter 14). It searched through 4.2 megabyte on my 80486-based notebook computer. If you use an indexing program, the search may be completed even faster. I guess you can see it coming. My personal databases usually give more direct value during my working day, than what I have on paper, and have available online. My hard disks contain megabytes of texts retrieved from various online services, but only what I have decided to keep. This private database therefore contains more relevant information per kilobyte than the online databases I'm using. Searching the data often gives enough good hits to keep me from going online for more.
| I repeat: You will often get better results when searching your | | own subset of selected online databases, than by going online | | to get information. It is usually easier and faster. |