Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’ (source)

I would describe Yammer as the in-house Twitter for companies, with more than 140 characters allowed.

Since I don’t work for an organization or company I haven’t had the chance to experiment with it. You can only form a network when using a valid company email address, meaning all with the same domain-name. This is to prevent ’strangers’ to get into the network.

However, last week my co-worker Joitske suggested for me to take part in an initiative by her and Christian to join the ‘non-existing organization for independent consultants net4dev.org’. By assigning people an email address using that domain we can now exchange more in depth about work, without having to worry clients (or family) ‘listening in’ to what you’re saying.

We’re only using it for a week and it needs more members (interested?), but I can see this can grow into a great networking tool for us independent workers.

Some of the features I like and use often:
- different views on the same content;
- full screen mode (no other windows visible);
- import .pdf in a project.

And today I discovered a new one:
- a screenplay mode.

The screenplay mode uses some presets, such as “Scene heading”, “Dialogue”, “Shot”, that you can select which translates the text you write into a page lay-out suited for screenplays.

So far, most of my video work were projects without a clear scenario. For tomorrow’s client project, however, I took the classic approach and created a scenario first, using Scrivener. And it really helped to structure my ideas and streamline it into a document that I can use while filming tomorrow.

I’m convinced that I can do a lot more with Scrivener, but even for the few features I use, this piece of software is worth more than €30,02 ($39,95) for a licence. Go try it for yourself (Mac only!).

(about the number in the title)

Last week I ordered a whole new toolset for planning: a magnetic board and magnets.

I wanted something to schedule my week in blocks of various activities: reading, writing, video-editing, sports, chores, etc. (see my notes on what the colours mean)

I wanted something that I can’t ignore by closing the laptop and pretend there is nothing to do. The tiny board (A4-size) now stands on top of the piano in the living room.

I wanted various colours to be able to see at a glance whether the week is balanced or not.

It’s a step towards a more structured worklife (and it already helps me keeping up with the ‘one blogpost a day’)

More complex as a technology is my typewriter. What a difference compared to the first typewriter invented. Those machines were designed for one purpose only: typing letters on paper. My typewriter (sorry, it is not a friendly name for a Mac) is much more than that. I can read letters, watch movies, read the news on it and that is just from the perspective of consumption. On the production side, I can create movies, I can create news (by publishing articles on the Net) AND type letters.

I’ve written a few years back about the screen as teenagers umbilical cord. Looking at my own behaviour that is even more true now than it was back then (even though I’m not a teenager ). I phone through skype, read my mail through gmail, follow friends on Jaiku/Twitter/Facebook, get inspired on Youtube and follow peoples holidays through Flickr.

I have the privilige to meet people from all over the world. I have the privilige to connect with them online, no matter where they are, no matter where I am.

What really changed for me in the past few years (has it only been 5 years since I started blogging?) is the type of people I’m able to connect with. More conversations on abstract and academic level. Meeting wonderful people at conferences and being able to connect with them afterwards, hence strengthening a bond that otherwise would not have come about. Even to the extend that those people are willing to let us stay at their place for a couple of weeks (and others staying at our place). I never found those connections at university.

Finishing my Master’s on the topic of blogging, trying to make a living of consulting the things I learned in the process (and not as succesfully as I perhaps hoped), moving from just blogging to tagging, wiki’s, social networking, presence streams and video sites. There is so muched new stuff I learned, just through experiencing and playing with it.

On the other hand, some things stayed the same. I still live in Enschede, together with Ton, I even went back to the fencing club I left behind when I went off to university.

It’s not just the communication tools that helped shape my life into what it is now. It is the power of the machine under my fingers. The combination of my MacbookPro and iMovie made me go back to editing movies, the thing I learned and loved to do at university. Feeling not completely alone while working from home, alone. Being able to ping Ton when I’m at home and he is halfway across the country, on his way to a client. Watching Dutch TV when I’m on holiday in Canada.

The combination of all the opportunities above shaped my routines, but at the same time they keep shifting. New tools are being developed all the time, some will stick with me longer than others. Some have more impact than others. Changes in infrastructure, such as moving from PC to laptop and the invention of RSS, are more dramatic than the change in software packages I use to benefit from those infrastructures.

To end my thinking here, I want to conclude with this: If I have to pinpoint just one thing that really changed the way I work, it has to be WiFi. That is the infrastructure that makes me move from one place to another, seemlessly tapping into my networks and work (but WiFi is useless without a laptop, so it’s hard to pinpoint just one thing ).