At the dinner table the other night, my older son asked me what Marqui was, and whether I used it. I told him I didn’t, and he asked if I was endorsing it. I said I wasn’t, that I was just writing about it. He wanted to know how that was different. My younger son piped up and said “Because she can say that they suck if she wants to!”
Yes, I could. I could write for three months (well, two more months) about how much I hate Marqui. But since I haven’t used it yet, it’s tough for me to say anything bad about them. And I can’t really complain about the terms of my agreement with them—I’m able to clearly separate sponsored content from non-sponsored content, and there are no restrictions on what I can write.
Thus far, I’ve written pretty general material about the blogosphere program Marqui is running, and about what CMS programs do, generally. Tonight I’ll start talking about Marqui more specifically.
Marqui bills itself as a “communication” (not content) management system. The content that it lets you manage, however, is very focused on communication. On their site, they say:
You enter a space online that lets you manage your website, brochures, events, e-mail campaigns, newsletters, grant proposals, press releases, donor outreach — any kind of communication. You input information once, Marqui will output to all sorts of formats. Input once, output many — that’s how it works.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like my department’s information needs. And right now, we do a lousy job of managing all that content. We duplicate things in so many places—catalogs, web sites, email messages, etc. Consolidating content, managing workflow, and reducing duplication are needs that probably aren’t unique to my environment.
Marqui is a hosted environment, rather than a package you install on your own servers. They call it “Software as a Service.” The cost ranges from $199/month to $499/month, depending on the scale of your operations. While that may sound like a lot, compared to the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that it costs to license some high-end, enterprise-level CMS packages it’s not really all that much.
That’s it for today’s hosted installment (a few minutes past the end-of-the month deadline, alas, but since most of it was written in January, I’m counting this as a January post!).
The relative quiet around here hasn’t been a sign of malaise. Instead, it’s been an indication that I’ve been deeply engaged in activities that take me away from the blogosphere…and for good reason.
At the beginning of the year, I think I tripped an internal circuit breaker on clutter—in my office, in my house, in my brain. I didn’t make any resolutions, per se, but I started looking seriously at how I could find a way to reduce clutter and the stress that it causes.
For dealing with household clutter and disorganization, I started with FlyLady. But while the basic approach is wonderful, I find the constant all-caps email reminders too much to deal with. So I went to the library and acquired FlyLady’s book “Sink Reflections.” From that, I learned that much of her method is derived from the book Sidetracked Home Executives by Pam Young and Peggy Jones. And it turns out Pam and Peggy have another (more recent) book on organization called Get Your Act Together!: A 7-Day Get-Organized Program for the Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed that sounded like something Gerald and I could really use to get our day-to-day activities better organized. I bought that one via Amazon, and it was money well spent—the book is well-written, entertaining, and full of good practical do-able advice. We’ll see how that goes.
I’ve also started tackling our most cluttered areas, one at a time, in an attempt to lighten my psyche a bit. I started with the drawers in the kitchen (a manageable hour-at-a-time project with clear rewards), and I was ruthless about throwing things away. It doesn’t make sense to try to store old knives and ladles for a garage sale we’ll probably never have time to hold. Then I moved on to the cupboards in the dining room, which have traditionally been where we hide everything before company comes over. That was a job, but it’s done now. And Gerald and I are working on the basement disaster area, as well, starting from opposite sides (I’m working through baskets, wrapping, and old toys; he’s starting with the workbench and tools) and trying to clear a path. As evidence of what pathological hoarders we’ve been, last night I found an old plastic garbage can (the kind people put in their bathrooms) filled with the contents of our junk drawer—from Tuscaloosa. We apparently dumped it out into this container and moved it up to Rochester back in ‘97…and hadn’t touched it since. <sigh> But we’re making real progress, as evidenced by the mounting piles of trash in the garage.
On the work and mind clearing front, I’ve joined the growing number of geeks gone wild over David Allen’s Getting Things Done method. There’s no question in my mind that it’s the most valuable book I’ve bought in a long time (and at only $10.20 on Amazon, you’d be nuts not to get your own copy). I’m carrying it everywhere with me right now. (Scoble, I’m so jealous that you got a house call!) I’ve got the book, and the only blog I’ve been reading regularly over the past week is Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders.
My office has been mostly cleaned out, my piles are greatly diminished, and my files are starting to take shape. I’ve also jumped on the Moleskine love train, and have acquired both pocket and standard-sized notebooks, as well as a fabulous Fisher Bullet Space Pen (black matte). It turns out that all those people who say that having a high-quality notebook and pen makes a difference in your willingness to carry them with you and use them are absolutely right. I love the silky feel of the Moleskine paper, and the solid feel (and durability) of the Fisher pen. It’s freed me from feeling lost and unable to work when I don’t have my computer with me, and allows me to sit anywhere—not just near a power outlet!
I’ve still got a ways to go in implementing a full GTD approach, but even my baby steps thus far are helping me to feel less overwhelmed and out of control. And Allen’s ideas for visualizing “WILD SUCCESS!” (with no “Yeah, but…”s) has helped me in getting unstuck from some important work that had really been stalled.
My next challenge will be figuring out how to balance and integrate the digital part of my GTD approach with the analog version. I’ve acquired DevonThink and OmniOutliner, and haven’t really been able to figure out how to use them well—until this week, when I found some great sites describing how others are using them. That’s how I learn best—by modifying what others have done. If you’re in the same boat, I highly recommend Steven Johnson’s recent post on DevonThink (and the NYTimes Book Review article he wrote on the subject), Frasier Spears’ post on OmniOutliner Pro, and on the analog side, Omar Shanine’s “How the Moleskine Rocked My World.”
So yes, I’m still here. And doing well, thanks. I suspect I’ll be blogging regularly again soon (I’ve even set aside a section of one of my Moleskines for blog post ideas).
I took a brief break from my organizational frenzy today to read some favorite blogs, including Bad Mother by the brilliant and funny Ayelet Waldman. I probably shouldn’t have, though, because her Potty Mouth post made me spit coffee all over my nice clean desk. Apparently she and her husband had a bit of a quarrel this morning, which was followed by this conversation with her son:
Zeke, age seven says to me, “Daddy is not a dick, mommy. If Daddy is a dick, then you are a bush.”I stared at him and said, “What? What did you say? How do you even know that word?”
He replied, “What word? You know, Dick Cheney and George Bush.”
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