‘But it’s 118 pages long!’ exclaimed the project manager. ‘We can’t expect a service provider to read this when they turn up to do work for us.’

Picture this: I’m at a meeting with a client (a big Aussie company), presenting the draft of a document I’ve just completed for them. We (that’s me and the team I wrote the document for) are now socialising the document within the organisation. Considering what was presented, I was somewhat taken aback (to put it mildly) that the comment about the document’s length was the first piece of feedback we received.

One of the most startling implications of Einstein’s equations is that two people with independent reference points will see the same event as occurring at different times. To see something happening at the same time, the viewers must both be looking at it from the same place. On the surface this may not appear to have much relevance to process, but it does—a process operates according to the same law.

We all know how to speak with, email and text each other. But sending a message is only one part of the communication process. We don’t all have a good understanding of how our communication may be interpreted. The different personalities of the recipients of our communication have a direct influence on how they’ll perceive our message.

Damn the laws of thermodynamics! There are power losses all over the data centre which contribute to poor energy utilisation. These losses present themselves as heat. If it wasn’t for energy losses we would have perpetual motion data centres. 

In this last part of my Love me, tender series,  I attack … I mean, I cast a critical eye over the response requirements for procurement documents. By ‘response requirements’ I mean the content you expect from a service provider to demonstrate they’re right for the job, and how you want that content to be presented.

Read my three final tips for procument document writers.

On a recent trip to the USA, I took the opportunity to pick up an iPad—once we walked into the Apple store it was always going to be tough to leave without one (or at least order one!).  I was curious to really understand what the fuss is about.  Mr Jobs seemed to think it was another game changer from Apple, others say it’s just for consuming content, the media were split.  So, I thought I would share my thoughts, not just on the device but on how it will change the way we work or, more likely, the way future generations will work.

I happened to attend a debate presented by intelligence² titled Governments should not censor the internet. It was about governments’ role in censoring the internet (topical to us in Australia) to protect the ‘vunerable’ from content that is deemed too explicit or anti-social.

So, are data centres part of the problem, and do they have a part to play in ensuring the likes of you and I are kept safe from information that could corrupt us?

Which is more important to your organisation?  People or process?

This reminds me of that unanswerable question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Do you get lots of requests for clarification to your RFPs and other procurement documents? Do you receive responses with varying content and levels of detail that make comparison difficult? These are measures of how clear your procurement documents are.

The question is: how can you make them clearer?

Should we care about mobile phone security? As a business? As an individual?

In the days when your mobile phone only contained your contacts list and your text messages, the answer was, ’not really‘.  But smartphones have made the situation dire—for individuals and for companies.