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You’re at an event or user group and find yourself chatting with someone new. A friend of yours strolls over and joins the conversation. Being the polite person you are you introduce your friend to the new person. They reply with ‘oh yes, we already know each other – Bob here is my brother…’

Easy to feel embarrassed right?

You shouldn’t – in a healthy group or event this should be happening all the time.

These days I make a point of introducing people whenever I can. I’d estimate that on 20% of those occasions they already know each other.

Far from being embarrassing it is actually a good thing.

Don’t apologise, instead follow on with something like this: ‘Oh good, just checking. Have you known each other for a while?’ etc – use it is a conversation starter. (Of course, if they are brothers, you may want to use a different line… )

Why? Because it really is embarrassing if you chat for a while and then the third person takes it upon them self to make the introductions. Or worse, they part ways never having been introduced.

Some caveats

Obviously you should use a bit of common sense.

• Introductions are best via a question: ‘John, do you know Cathy here…?’
• Don’t go introducing people who clearly recognise each other (eg they are already chatting ).
• And don’t go out of your way to introduce people who are in a hurry eg they may be just passing by to quickly mention something to you.
• Oh, and be careful introducing people if one of them is very well known (eg ‘Tim, let me introduce you to Bono…’). Famous people – at least those worth being introduced to – are usually gracious and take the initiative of introducing themselves. Which is why you’ll hear things like this at a developer user group: ‘Hi, I’m Scott Guthrie, pleased to meet you…’

Forgetting people’s names

We all do it. Don’t try to hide it.

If you obviously recognise them, and think the chat is going to be more than a passing hello, then bite the bullet and ‘fess up. A simple ‘I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten your name…’ is better than dancing around the ‘good to see you mate‘ routine.

And if like me you’ve been in situations where you chat with them later at the same event and you’ve forgotten their name again, just ‘fess up again: ‘I’m so sorry, this is embarrassing, but I’ve forgotten your name again…’ – they may be a little peeved, but that is still better than them realising via your use of ‘mate’.

What’s the point?

User groups, events and other community gatherings are about getting to know each other better.

So, focus on the good of ensuring everyone is included, and less on the etiquette and social dance that can otherwise detract.

Where: Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

This has easily been the best CodeCampOz I’ve been to (and I’ve been to all of them . Mitch and Greg have done another stellar job organising this event. All of the sessions have been high quality and relevant. Big thanks to Microsoft, Readify, IT Masters, SSW and CSU for their involvement.

The Twitter coverage has been a highlight (view the Hashtags summary here), and meeting people who I’ve been following for a while has been a bonus. Photos have been put up on Flickr thanks to Roger.

As Angus has reported, we’ve got tons of ideas and suggestions to take back and implement at Elcom.

I’m not really one for gratuitous praise or for singling out people, but I have to say that during Paul Stovell’s session I had the distinct feeling we were in the presence of greatness…

I thought I’d give a quick review of how Premium Economy stacks up.

I’ll break this in to 3 main areas: Staff, Stomach and Seat.

Staff

I’ll start with the staff – because this is generally the first experience you have with an airline. Check-in staff were OK. Not great, but not bad. They were helpful but not outgoing. I was wondering whether I’d be allowed to use the business class check-in lines, but no – stick to the economy lines (it may be premium economy, but it’s still economy right?). No problem, the line wasn’t long and the staff were efficient.

On board staff were a different story. I was upstairs, and we had two main stewards covering our section. One was bland and average, the other was bordering on annoying. He sported what I describe as a bored look of disdain on his face and seemed to be concentrating hard on doing the bare minimum his job required. I asked for him to repeat the selection of drinks and he gave me the ‘bother, bother’ look and simply handed me an orange juice. Not to worry – people like this are usually reflecting some kind of internal issue – and I suspect are not representative of the airline in general.

The Customer Services Manager (ie the bloke who hands out US entry cards) was a different story. Super helpful, cheery, and outgoing. If only he and the bored one could have shared some energy and come to an equilibrium…

I’m glad I waited until the flight home before posting this, so that I could include the return experience, on which the staff were better. Much better. The lovely Tracy looked after us efficiently and thoughtfully, all the while coordinating with her colleague. The Customer Services Manager was freakishly happy and cheerful just like on the flight over – they must have come out of the same factory

[As an aside, the best staff - at both check-in and on board - that I have experienced were with a little airline called Sunshine Airlines from Minneapolis to New York (and back). Virgin tends to have good, happy staff on board but their quality of check-in staff can be unreliable in my opinion.]

Stomach

On the food front the meals were surprisingly scrumptious. They were well prepared and had good quality ingredients (no tough & chewy chuck steak stroganoff here). I have no complaints about food at all, in fact I’d say it was better than expected.

Seat

This is the main point I guess. For me, being over 6′ 3” leg room is pretty crucial. On the long haul flights I need two main things –

1. To be able to stretch my legs out
2. Neck support

I’m pleased to say that on both counts the Premium Economy seats are satisfactory. They aren’t fantastic, and if you’ve flown business class then you’ll certainly be pining for those Skybeds. But then again, the fare is less than half that of a business class ticket, so I wasn’t expecting wonders.

The important thing is that I could sleep fine and thus arrive at my destination well rested. Sure the business class seats have all the comforts, but as long as I can sleep comfortably I’m happy. I’ve flown plain economy to LA before and – excuse my complaining – it was hell. On one flight I had the exit row and thus adequate leg room, but the lack of seat height really took its toll. I spent the first couple of days nursing a sore neck. For a gangly bloke like me I need to have neck support. Even those inflatable neck supports aren’t very helpful, because they don’t have anything to rest on…

But all that changes in Premium Economy – the leg room is extensive, the seats are higher, they lean back further and they have the neck support. Note that although they lean back further, they don’t recline that far, and no where near what the business class seats do. Sleep is definitely in the seated position. Also, the seats don’t seem to be any wider than normal, so you tend to find yourself bumping against the arm rests.

Using a notebook or laptop is easy in these seats (no problems with posture and hand position) and they have power sockets in most seats (2 sockets between 3 seats). The sockets take a variety of adapters. You may have to ask the steward to ensure power is on.

Below is 3 photos of my Premium Economy seat on the flight over from Auckland to LA (on Air New Zealand).

And by comparison here’s 2 photos of the plain economy flight from LA to Seattle (flying Alaskan Airlines). To be fair, domestic aircraft tend to have tighter seating than the international ones, but generally not by much. My knees are ‘resting’ on the seat pocket in front. And if the passenger ahead decides to recline, it gets very painful. I find it very difficult to use a notebook in these seats. I have a Dell D830 with a 15.4 screen and whilst not a huge footprint, I could only use it by awkwardly angling it on my stomach. After an hour or so it becomes unworkable in my opinion. Smaller machines may be more versatile. And there’s no power in economy on most domestic craft.

I made it to LA happy and refreshed, and was out the plane pretty quickly.

[I then had to wait in the customs line for over 2.5 hours and missed my connecting flight - but that's another story.]

Overall, but predominantly based on seating comfort, I give the Air New Zealand Premium Economy experience a rating of 7/10.

Here’s my rating scale guide:

1/10 : Flying plain economy in a non-exit row, in a middle seat

2/10 : Flying plain economy in a non-exit row, in an aisle or window seat

3/10 : Flying plain economy in an exit row, in a middle seat

4/10 : Flying plain economy in an exit row, in an aisle or window seat

5/10 : Flying  plain economy in an empty row and they let you lie down across the seats

6/10 : Flying Premium Economy, in a middle seat

7/10 : Flying Premium Economy, in an aisle or window seat

8/10 : Flying Business Class, in a middle seat

9/10 : Flying Business Class, in an aisle or window seat or in the new self-contained lounge beds

10/10 : Flying First Class (not that I ever have)

Or, put another way, I don’t dread the flight. Heading overseas, facing a 14 hour flight in economy is something no-one looks forward to, and I’m no exception, I definitely dread the inevitable pain to both legs and neck.

But I’ll happily fly Air New Zealand Premium Economy again, and will even look forward to the flight – which is perhaps the most telling point.

Bonus traveller tip: New Zealand airports (eg Auckland) accept USD and AUD at most stores and cafes. You probably know this of course, but it was a nice surprise for me, especially since I only wanted to buy a bottle of water.

A simple one. Sorry if you all know this already – but I keep coming across people who’ve missed it – so please read on.

You can easily hide the ribbon in any of the Office 2007 programs simply by double clicking on the tabs.

Thus

becomes

with just a double-click on the Home tab (or any tab).

Oh, and I assume you know you can customise the Quick Access toolbar easily enough:

As usual this Tip is covered under my ‘well duh’ Disclaimer.

Take this one for example, on entering dates in Outlook. I didn’t realise you could enter a date as easily as ‘next tue’ and Outlook would work it out for you automatically:

Gets converted to

As Kristel explains, there’s a bunch of terms that work, including ‘tomorrow’, ‘Christmas day’ and ‘in 6 days’.

Take LinkedIn for example. A year ago, this was a valuable tool, allowing us all to connect to business associates. These days, all I seem to get is requests to connect with recruiters, and poorly targeted job offers. Facebook isn’t so bad, but that’s more likely to be because I don’t have technology related keywords against my profile.

So, I’m wondering how long before the recruiters start swarming over Twitter? How long before we get shotgun broadcast @replies to everyone about new jobs?

My guess, the wonderful Twitter landscape we enjoy today will be polluted within 6 months. The Block button will be a regular in our daily use, and the ‘continual conversation’ we enjoy now will regularly be little more than a prelude to a job offer…

But hey, on the flip side, maybe there’s an opening for someone to develop a Twitter app for recruiters…

Here’s what RecruiTwit could do:

1. You seed it with a few people to follow (eg Scobleizer). Then it goes along following the followers of the seed people (all automatically of course)

2. Then, when you are ready with your job ad, you type in the description and click Send. RecruiTwit creates individual @replies to everyone you follow, spamming them with a ‘personal’ job ad tweet

3. In the Premium edition it’d allow you to use multiple Twitter accounts so you can avoid the Twitter API limitations (60 an hour currently I think)

4. In the Platinum edition it automatically creates new Twitter accounts for you every 7 days, since everyone will have blocked your existing ones by then

Am I being too cynical? You can reply to me on Twitter here if you like.

And it affects other programs as well including File Explorer, shortcuts, and in my case SharePoint Designer (and even Live Writer – with which I am currently writing this post).

Well, thanks to Jon Galloway we now have a (Microsoft non-supported) solution. Jon points to posts by Ed Bott and Kevin Dente, the latter being almost 4 years old. Some things never change huh?

Warning: All registry changes are ‘do at your own risk’ affairs, so be careful as always with this one.

Live: Consumer focus

Online: Business & Enterprise focus, hosted by Microsoft

Hosted services: hosted by Microsoft partners

And don’t miss the revenue sharing snippet at the bottom – Microsoft will share 10% of the CRM Live charge with reseller partners (its at the bottom of page 10 of the linked document).

(via Mary Jo Foley)