Down to do the final (university) staff workshop of the season, I was supposed to be doing a couple of hours on the deep web this morning. A dozen people turned up which was gratifying. But then a major power outage rather put paid to that. (Apparently a power failure in our server building had then had a knock on effect on the backup servers (in another building) would you believe). So it was very unusual but not much we could do with a workshop so based on the internet and no electricity, internet etc.

However, I happened to have a poster on my window with the main PowerPoint slide on it to keep my thinking about the session. With the attendees keen not to have a total loss of their time, they patiently sat through a fifteen minute version of the 'workshop' with me talking to my poster and giving them 'homework' of some of the interactivity I had planned. They seemed quite impressed that I could do that and it be useful to them.

I was tired enough at that point of the week to be relieved that I was spared two hours worth of presenting, but it did make me wonder if perhaps we should create 15 minute versions of all of our workshops. Market them for busy people with little time!

In any case, several of my workshops have a 'key' slide which is very graphic and which I work from a fair bit. Definitely worth making posters of all them just in case!

Lusting after an iPad really badly but my wife thinks I'm just being greedy with an iPod Touch and a Sony ebook reader. (Not to mention the work laptop). Trying to explain it fits a niche between all of those isn't working!

Still, I have a plan. There's a conference on handheld learning that's giving one to every delegate who books before the end of June. As I've been tasked with representing the Library on the handheld learning committee at the university, it seems only right I should attend...

Interesting use of Google Docs this afternoon.

In a couple of weeks it's the Library staff training afternoon and the Map Librarian and I have been asked to put on a little sketch. (Evidently the sketch we did for a recent event on customer service went down altogether too well.)

F wrote the last script but as I hated my lines so much I thought I'd see if I could persuade him to let me help write this time. We used Google Docs but not at a distance. We sat in the same room and took turns writing lines - him at a PC being projected onto the wall and me on a laptop. It's probably about as close as we're going to come to the kind of things we've both seen on TV with teams of scriptwriters for sitcoms.

It was a good laugh and we both really buzzed with the ideas and such that we came up with and both liked the process of writing together and using Google Docs for the purpose. Highly recommend it.

Doctor's appointment this morning. :-(

Difficult meeting today with my new liaison officer for the electronic and electrical engineering department. She's lobbying the (also new) Dean not to have a major database 'cancelled'. We bouhgt it 18 months back with some left over money we had that we'd lose if we didn't spend. We knew it was just for one year but even a year's worth of use was better than nothing. I need to explain to her that characterising it as a 'cancellation' might be politically useful to her, but isn't true of the decisions that were actually taken.

Of course, if the Faculty want to come up with some money to contribute to its admittedly rather large cost, then brilliant. It is an excellent database. Even though it's only been available for a short while we're already get enough hits on it to make the cost about $5/hit which I think would improve over time. But even if we cancelled a fair few journals to pay for it, we'd still be left with no book fund for the next year.

Managing this kind of stuff is probably the part of my job that I like least.

Read Getting Things Done by David Allen over the last few days and been trying to implement it. I'd heard good reports of it and am feeling so overwhelmed I just had to try something. I've surprised myself (a tad cynical about managing my time any better) about how well it works. I think I've got the process weighed off, now it's a matter of getting into the discipline which follows - reviewing and tracking everything.

The key points for me have been:
- track everything - so your brain is not trying to keep stuff in mind
- tweak the process to suit your own situation - but don't skip bits
- timetable the weekly review - so it doesn't get lost in all the stuff you're doing.

What's been best for me has been having a 'zero inbox' for several days now which relieves a lot of stress, shows the system works and makes it worth doing just for that.

More info and some freebies here: http://www.davidco.com/

Back from a (short notice) trip to Sweden for five days to help a friend sail the small boat he'd bought from Stockholm down to Kalmar.

The weather could have been kinder. Often it's 16 degrees at this time of year, can be 26. We had 6. And boy was it cold. At one point I had layers of just about all the clothes I'd taken. The full set of waterproofs and two lots of thermal underwear were a crucial bit of packing.

But it was a great adventure and good to spend time with my friend and his two young lads. Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'm very glad my fairly full diary just happened to have a few days free at the right time.

On the way home I stopped at a science and technology librarian get together for about 60 of us. That was good too and somehow I've been volunteered to do the write up.

Birthday today and had thought it would be quiet (!) and I could catch up. Fat chance...