I don't want to stereotype, but...

I can't help thinking the (American) inventors of the "SarcMark" needed it because of their renowned skill with irony.

The SarcMark (see right and buy it at sarcmark.com) is a new punctuation character that can be used to indicate sarcasm.  So if I say "This is the biggest advance in written communication since Caxton invented the printing press" you are probably wondering if I am taking the p*ss or not.

Verbally, our transatlantic cousins would make this clear by saying "Not" at the end of the sentence, but over here we expect the sentence structure to carry the sarcasm/irony.

Thank heavens we finally have an end to sarcasm-confusion misery. My life is now absolutely complete. I really have no idea how I can have lived so long without this most useful invention. Move over, Caxton, your work pales by comparison. I wouldn’t know sarcasm if it came up and bit me on the bottom.

Now here is a new take on the wedding ceremony: having been declared "husband and wife," the groom takes time out to update his relationship status on Facebook.

Nothing like being up to the minute.

www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2009/bride-groom-update-facebook-status-p1.php

It would be even better to have updates of the ceremony on Twitter, so when it reaches the point of  "Does anyone know of any reason why these two should not be joined?" we can all Tweet "Info junkies should not be allowed to breed!"

Best wishes to the happy couple.

A great story on a number of sites (including news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8248056.stm) about Winston the pigeon being faster than a South African broadband connection.

Winston flew 60 miles with a memory stick on his leg to a site where they uploaded the data - all within two hours. In the same time they had uploaded 4% of the same data sent by (a very slow) broadband connection.

When Googling to find this story, it did occur to me that the Mr Winston Pigeon of Boulder, Colorado must be wondering why he has so many new hits on his Facebok site.

One of the things I love about the internet is the fact  that a very small proportion of users can actually generate enough business for the right idea.

I would not have throught that many people were interested in sending email after they had died, but "The Last Messages Club" www.lastmessagesclub.co.uk/lmc/Main/Home.asp will let you do just that.

You can send messages on birthdays, anniversaries and other occasions (like weddings or births).

My first reaction was sadness: why not say these things to someone while you are still alive?

My second was mischievous. How about an email sent on the event of a wedding saying, "I’ve met your partner’s ancestors and we all agree you shouldn’t go though with this."

My third reaction was nervous: given it sends emails after your death, would you sign up for a 30-day free trial?

OK, it’s from AOL which explains the triumphal tone, (after all, wouldn’t you want people to be addicted to your product?) but some of these results are quite staggering .corp.aol.com/press-releases/2008/07/it-s-3-am-are-you-checking-your-email-again

23% check their mail as soon as they wake up

28% check work email while on holiday

62% check work email over the weekend

50% checked email while driving

38% check in a business meeting (presumably to see if there is anything more interesting)

25% check email while on a date (presumably to see if they had any better offers).

I know this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but I can’t help wondering what is so attractive about communicating with someone who is not there - rather than the one sitting opposite..

There should be a Darwin Award for the most stupid use of IT. A great illustration comes from the Telegraph about how some people’s brains lag behind the technology.

A user of Twitter (a twitterer?) was offered a job at Cisco, the internet company. She tweeted, "Cisco offered me a job. Now I have to weigh up the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."

Now, how likely is it that an internet company will monitor Twitter for occurences of its name?

It wasn’t long before Cisco rescinded their offer and tweeted, "Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web."

Presumably she now has plenty of time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Some great research from Christine Porath and Amir Erez on rudeness in the workplace (bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2009/05/harm-caused-by-witnessing-rudeness.html). Apparently even witnessing rudeness or bullying can make people less co-operative, less creative and more aggressive themselves.

So anyone trying to emulate Alan Sugar (the epitome of aggressive management in the TV show "The Apprentice") should start to rethink their approach (and understand how they are responsible for a less effective work place).

And if we put this onto email it’s easy to see how flame wars start. People write things in email they would not say to someone’s face - then the recipient feels more aggressive anyway, so they’ll probably read it with an aggressive tone of voice in their own head - and then they’ll fire an even more aggressive one back.

What an awesomely negative feedback loop!

And the way out? Reject that aggressive style and certainly don’t let your internal Alan Sugar anywhere near the keyboard.

A few years back I was running an email sesssion in Marseilles for (ironically, as it turned out) and electricity company. There was a power cut - and because the taps were electronic, you could not wash your hands.

The CEO of a UK High Street chain banned email for a week. Staff were walking around saying "I can’t do any work..."

Google hit a traffic jam www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html and people could not access their on-line banks.

Now let’s talk about dependency.

While the New Labour "Red Rag" website saga hoo-ha rumbles on (emails leaking from Gordon Brown’s office about smearing conservative politicians) here at Expert Messaging we have just received our very own example.

An email arrives from the Head of HR of an as yet unnamed company - addressed to someone here with  "fyi" in the body

Further down we see "Confidential" from their Finance Director and some very personal information about a member of their staff.

So, the FD sent a confidential email to the Head of HR - who forwarded it to us instead of someone in her own company.

I think they need to have a session or two till they understand why we tell people "Emails are about as private as post cards."

Free session for the first person to guess the company! (and it’s not the Cabinet Office this time)

Brilliant!

The problem of email has been solved!!

All Hail Gmail!!!

My work here is done!!!!!

www.commonknowledge.org.uk/wordpress/

Talking to the HR Director of a high-street chain last week, she reported another story of the unintended effects of email.

The MD finally hit his personal limit (if not his quota) and banned email for a week. Apparently large numbers of staff felt they could not do any work at all.

This is odd when you think about it - the phone still worked, their pens still worked, their legs still worked - and yet...

Maybe staff felt they couldn’t pretend to be working any more.

I've been having an interesting exchange with Professor Steven Birmingham (of Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, USA) about the disinhibiting effects of email.

We have probably all experienced the fact that some people will say things in an email that they would not say to someone’s face (and they will say things after a few pints that they would not say sober).

Steven is developing an experiment to compare the two by getting different groups to give feedback about good and bad websites.

Group A view a good and a bad website and give verbal feedback to the designers.

Group B view the same sites then email their feedback to the designers.

Group C have a couple of beers, view the sites and give verbal feedback to the designers.

The expectation is B and C will both be less inhibited in their feedback than A. I’ll post the results when they come through.

Of course, if the beer drinkers over-indulge they could declare their love for the designer and be their best mate forever.

It is always fantastic to have your sense of reality confirmed by some data.

OK, I’ll own that statement: I find it fantastic when my sense of reality...

Two questions then: do you think email is the main way people communicate in organisations? And do you think people in smaller organisations are more likely to communicate face-to-face than those in bigger ones?

Yes to both? Correct.  And an instant poll of over 400 people on LinkedIn confirmed this most satisfactorily.

If you would like to see the results broken down by other factors, please have a look here polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/20883/cbgzf

Talking to some HR directors from multinationals last week showed up an interesting element in the "Don't take your Blackberry on holiday" debate.

One of the surviving banks (beginning with a "H") has a policy of forbidding its staff dealing with email while they are away.

Yes, they forbid them to log on to their work email for a couple of weeks.

And while the reason is not philanthropic, it does make good commercial sense: they reckon if someone is conducting a fiddle it will show up if their activities stop for two weeks.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

 e-sonnet

Daily diaspora of signals, neural

Sparks, paperless clutter, fact-opinion. 

I am viral, extra-mural. I am plural. 

I’m the “e” in evolution. I’m Darwinian. 

I’m the encroacher. I’m the great Instead:

Of letters, notes, talk, postcards, memos, syntax —

The phisher-king preying on the easily led

The spam that seeks to fertilise your inbox. 

I am the information superhighwayman 

Demand your time with subtle menaces 

And blandishments to tempt you to reply to them — 

Exemplary parthenogenesis.

I breed, though I am neither male nor female.

I’m victorious. I am legion. I am e-mail.

Many thanks to Matt Harvey for permission to publish his poem. More about Matt at www.mattharvey.co.uk/

Ahh the season of email and alcohol is upon us.

This is preceded by the standard disclaimer: I am not recommending this, but have you heard about email roulette?

Towards the end of the office party, people get together and log in. Everyone sends a rude email to their boss - and the winner is the person who leaves the longest time before recalling the email.

Let me repeat that disclaimer - and also point you towards Google Mail Goggles which is designed to stop late night drunken emails being sent to your ex (either to say what a big mistake it was to split up - or how it was the best thing you ever did).

Goggles asks you to complete some simple maths within a time limit. If you get the sums right within the time - you are deemed sober enough to send the email. If not....

I wonder if this will ever happen enough times for people to realise how dangerous it is?

The latest in the continuing saga of the wrong person being copied into an email exchange centres on cuddly chef Jamie Oliver.

A retired teacher sent him an email complaining about the level of  swearing in Jamie’s TV programme. One of Jamie’s researchers (the appropriately-named Kris Boobyer) sent an internal email asking "What should we say apart from F*** off you ***"

And of course that was copied into the reply to the teacher by mistake.

I am becoming increasingly convinced there is another force in the universe, and if you write something rude about someone, the force takes over and they end up with a copy.

If in doubt, don’t send it.

A reader writes (Thanks, David) with his collection of favourite Out of Office messages.

Yes, yes, standard disclaimer, your message should say that you are away, when you will return and who they can talk to in the interim. Now on with the messages you should not use:

• You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn’t have received anything at all.
• I will be unable to delete all the emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
• The email server is unable to verify your server connection. Your message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and try sending again.

For a long time my favourite Out Of Office story was somebody’s message "I’m on holiday and you’re not. Ha Ha Ha." Yes I know it’s not terribly professional, but it did make me laugh. However, my favourite story now comes out of Swansea in Wales.

Road signs in Wales have to be bi-lingual, so when Swansea council wanted to put up a sign informing drivers, "No entry for goods vehicles. Residential site only" they emailed a request to their translation department.

A very prompt reply came back with a couple of sentences in Welsh which they duly put on the road sign.

So there is now a sign near Swansea that says (in English) "No entry for goods vehicles" and (in Welsh) "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Probably due to an early morning yoga class I was being a lot more aware of my journey to the office.

Walking across Paternoster Square, I took a moment to listen to the clock striking on St Paul's Cathedral and actually took notice of the statues. I also spotted a number of people sitting outside cafes, beavering away at their mobiles and Blackberries: already at work, carrying their office around them.

Walking over the Millenium Bridge (aka the Wobbly Bridge) I saw the river was just at its peak flood: gulls and a few bits of rubbish were neither flowing up nor down; the river was poised to start its ebb back to the sea. I followed a man listening to something on his big headphones. He didn't realise his back pack was open and he’d dropped some papers and a book. I picked them up and ran after him.

And at either side of the end of the bridge were two people supposed to be handing out cards for a new gym. They were so wrapped in their conversation that they didn’t  engage at all with the people they should have been handing out cards to.

Wouldn’t it be great to put our attention where it needs to be: if we’re at work, let’s be at work. And if we’re not, let’s take time to smell the roses (or even just the exhaust fumes).

Things must be getting bad when people start praying for help with their email.

Yesterday’s Metro (a free newspaper for commuters in the UK) carried a prayer on behalf of www.backtochurch.co.uk which included the lines:

"Dear God,
...I’m not just another login name...I have stuff going on...Egos at work to deal with, an overflowing inbox. So please give me strength. Guide me to focus on what’s really important...
Thank you, Amen"

And if praying doesn’t actually reduce your overflowing inbox you could give us a call on +44 (0)20 7633 0050.

We can probably help with the "Egos at work" as well.

Ooh that last entry struck a chord. Thanks to Simon from Docklands for this one.

A senior manager in a household-name company keeps sending emails to a group of 20 people along the lines of "Could someone do something about XYZ problem?"

He hasn’t twigged that nobody is picking these tasks up - as everyone is thinking one of the other 19 is going to do it.

There’s nothing like good email management (and this is nothing like good email management)

Many thanks to Andy for sending through this fine example of how to use email to boost stress and slash productivity. It was sent within a public sector organisation to about 4,500 staff.

OK, someone has told 4,500 people that absolutely nothing has changed: let's work out how much that cost.

Assume it took an average 5 minutes to be interrupted, open the email, read, read again, guffaw with incredulity, delete it and then refocus on the task they were interrupted from.

4,500 people having to do that totals 375 hours - about 10 working weeks. Assume an average salary of £25,000 and the cost of that single email comes to nearly £6,000.

(and that's about what it would cost for us to train their managers not to do it again.)

Delighted to run a session for a PR company yesterday (hallo Switch Communications) so I can keep up with developments in the language.

"Chillax" is a mixture of chill+relax. It’s used in the sense of "Let’s chillax for a while."

And "K" is now used as an abbreviation by people who are too busy to write "OK"

Soon we’ll have 26 standard messages we can communicate and conversations will run something like:

"U?"

"K. U?"

"K2"

"R"

Which reminds me of the old joke about the new prisoner on his first night who heard someone call out "23" and everyone laughed. Then another called out "64" and everyone laughed again.

So he asked his cellmate what was happening. The cellmate explained that as they’d all been banged up so long, they knew all of each others’ jokes and abbreviated them to numbers to save time.

He invited the newcomer to call out a number as well. So he called out "12,395" and the entire prison erupted in laughter for 10 minutes. "What was so funny about that one?" he asked.

To which his cellmate replied, "They hadn’t heard it before."

What a story it’s been about John and Anne Darwin.

If you haven’t come across this, have a look at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571951/How-the-John-and-Anne-Darwin-story-evolved.html.

As a tale, it has a wonderful balance of tragedy and farce that you wouldn’t believe if you saw it on the telly. Farce: how could he believe he could get away with pertending to be dead and coming back again "with memory loss"?

Tragedy: that someone would destroy all their social and family relationships just for money.

Two things stand out for me about this story: firstly that the tale started to unravel when somebody googled "John Anne Panama" and found a picture of them apparently alive, well and happy.

Secondly, Anne’s defence of allegedly being controlled by a domineering husband fell to pieces when loving and affectionate emails from her to him were produced in court.

If you’re thinking of emulating the Darwins, email  Expert Messaging first for a chat about the pitfalls and dangers inherent in the medium. We could coin a new phrase, "email will out."

Some business north of the border takes me to Glasgow airport. This is fantastic for two reasons.

1) It’s the spiritual home of John Smeaton, the baggage handler who punched a burning terrorist this time last year. Did you know people have been donating beer to him online? (johnsmeaton.com/) Isn’t the internet wonderful?

2) The airport provides a translator at the head of the taxi queue. He asks (in an accent suitable for Sassenachs to understand) "Where would you like to go?" You then tell him your destination "Buchanan Street" and he translates it to the taxi driver, "Tek hin doon Byookana Stri ye ken."

What we need now is an email translator that converts the tone you write in ("Hi there. How’s it going?") into the tone the recipient prefers ("Dear Mr Williams...")

If anyone at Microsft develops this idea into a business proposition, I assert my rights as the originator.

A friend of a friend (no, really, I spoke to him) told of a disturbing experience he’d had.

In his usual daze, he crossed the road on a zebra crossing (if you don’t know what this is, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing) and was harangued by a very angry driver, brandishing a short piece of scaffolding pole who shouted "Say thank you, you ****."

This is one of the joys of living in London. However, it did strike me as an effective communication strategy that applies to email etiquette too.

The driver clearly conveyed the response he wanted, ("Say thank you...") and took steps to elicit it.

We should do the same with our emails: tell people what you want them to do (Reply by Thursday...) and if they don’t comply you can threaten them with a scaffolding pole. (Only joking with that last bit)

And talking of road safety, if you cherish the innocence of the Tufty Club, don’t look at this link. http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2008/tufty-the-squirrel-is-very-naughty-p1.php

Great reminiscences. Friday saw me out with an old school friend. Who'd have thought young David in his shorts would now be a university professor?

And Saturday brought together an eclectic mix of Keele graduates. According to Deidre (who's been in publishing for n years and should know) an emerging trend will be "publishing on demand."  Gone will be the days of out of print books. Soon we will be able to call (or probably email) the publisher  and ask them to print us off a copy.

I'm constantly delighted by developments like this - useful applications of technology. The computer we had back in the 70's at Keele had no screen (all output was printed) or indeed a keyboard (all input was via punched cards).

Given that was only 30 years ago, where are the next 30 going to take us?  (Please email Expert Messaging to let me know your thoughts). 

If you're having an affair (and this is not a recommendation, by the way) lay off the texting and blackberrying.

According to divorce lawyers Pannone, excessive texting and emailing is now the most frequently-quoted cause of suspicion that your "significant other" may be straying.

While the previous pole-position was held by too many nights working late at the office, this is now behind the sudden flurry of texts and emails that can be generated by a new affair.

We always knew that excessive emailing wasn't good for you - but we now have confirmation that it isn't good for your personal relationships either.

Oh, and 20% of young people claim to have dumped their partner by text message. 

Email Expert Messaging if you've dumped someone in this way - and we'll give you a free lesson on how to be more sensitive.

A big "thank you" to one of London's councillors (we won't mention her name to spare her blushes) who provides us with another fantastic illustration of the dangers of email.

She was accused of racism after she sent an email wishing that Indian people should be taught that throwing rubbish out of windows of a particular block "is not acceptable behaviour." Given there is no evidence of Indian people behaving like this, the leader of the Labour group said, "This shows her inherent prejudice."

We think this also shows her inherent lack of understanding of the dangers of email. A private email (or as the councillor called it, "an ill thought-out, stupid, personal email.") is not private. It can end up in the press all too easily. Or in someone's blog.

As we say in our email best practice sessions: if you don't want someone to fly-post your email all over the country, don't send it.  

Just reading a fascinating book called "Fooled by randomness" by Nassim Taleb. It looks to statistics and mathematics to explain what is happening in the world.

One topic he discusses is that for an idea, "age is beauty" - the longer a concept has been around, the more likely it is to be useful (a somewhat Darwinist approach to information). He takes the position that most "news," "breaking news" or "new news" is just sensational noise designed to sell newspapers rather than inform. (Does this sound like a lot of the emails arriving in your inbox?)

Taleb says he doesn't read papers any more as they are so full of this noise. He believes that if a story is big or important enough, he will get to hear about it through another channel.

This came home to me strongly last night with both of the free London evening papers writing of the fuel crisis. One proclamied, "Forecourts swamped in fuel fenzy." while the other soothed "Fuel crisis: 20% fall in pump sales."

Which one's "noise"? Email Expert Messaging to register your vote..

A delightful and apposite suggestion from a session delegate in Dublin.

When asked to think of ways to disseminate information throughout an organisation (other than sending an email), one chap suggested resurrecting the internal memo.

Excellent! For some types of non-urgent information, why not put it on one sheet of paper (low resource use) with a distribution list, ask people to read it then forward the memo to the next person on the list?

Another suggestion was to instal rolling LED message screens above the urinals. While admittedly creative, this idea would cost more to implement and probably miss out the half of the organisation who don't use urinals. 

So generally another splendid visit to Dublin - only slightly marred by the fact that all pubs now just seem to serve the "cold-flow" Guinness rather than the slow-pour, room-temperature pint that was such a treat (not that I visited all the pubs, you understand).

If you find yourself flying out of Stansted airport (sorry, "London Stansted") do try and sit on the right-hand side of the plane in the middle seat.

As the plane hurtles down the runway for take off, just when it hits the point of no return, engines are blasting, wings are straining and all bolts are shaking - take a look out of the window. You'll see the smoke-blackened shape of the aircraft evacuation simulator, looking like the plane that didn't make it.

If you've picked your seat and timing, you can point this out to your neighbour and say, "I bet they wished they'd flown from Gatwick."

And if you fly with Ryanair, do please write to me about the quality of your landing. It may be complete coincidence, but all the flights I and colleagues have taken recently have landed with an almighty thump - in contrast to gentler touch-downs with other airlines.

I know Ryanair pride themselves on a fast turn-around and good time-keeping, but I wonder how much time they save by slamming into the runway rather than floating in.

A lawyer colleague insists that the disclaimers some companies put at the end of their emails are not worth the paper they would be printed on. She would be delighted to hear (via BBC Radio 4's News Quiz) of this one from the Institute of Actuaries (reproduced verbatim)...

"Any opinions contained within are not necessarily those of nor a wholly owned subsidiary thereof nor authorised or regulated by the Financial Services Authority and are intended as general guidance only and do not constitute advice or a contract in law. Help! I'm being held prisoner by the Institute of Actuaries. They keep me in a windowless office and make me stuff envelopes all day. If I don't stuff enough they beat me. Please help."

I wonder how many people received it and didn't read it.

Northern Ireland is beautiful right now. The May blossom is out in full and Antrim is looking its idyllic best. Sitting around, chatting with some people - one chap asks an excellet question - "Do you remember your first email?"

OK, it's probably not as memorable as your first snog or your first whatever, but it's quite interesting hearing people reminisce about the "early days" and how "modern" it was to start emailing. I also find it interesting when working with groups to ask people if they have ever had a job without email. This really sorts the sheep from the goats, though I'm not saying if the older group members are sheep or goats.

As an emailing culture, we are in constant transition. Early emailers thought of email like a memo ("What's a memo, grandad?") and "fresh-out-of-schoolers" think of it more like text messaging. While neither position is right or wrong, it's probably good to realise the balance is shifting - and sooner or later the "memo-brigade" will be the minority.

And how does email best practice manage this transition? Don't be attached to a style of emailing - be flexible enough to write in the style that will produce the best response in your reader.

More on attachments later.

My sister writes from New Zealand - but on paper this time. She had "A very nice Russian chap" in to speed up her computer. Sadly he wiped her address book so she has had to write by snail mail to all her contacts to get their email addresses back.

This makes me think of two things:

1) If we’re backed-up automatically at work, it’s easy to forget that the home pc needs a back up too. Either that or you need the Zen Backup Policy (see below).

2) When you reply to an email here, it prefixes the subject line with "Re". On Russian systems the prefix is "Ha". So an extended email exhange on English-speaking systems produces "Re: Re: Re: Re;" - on Russian systems it’s the more entertaining "Ha: Ha: Ha: Ha:"

And the Zen Backup Policy is, "I’ve lost all my data. I don’t have a backup. Oh well." (Ha Ha Ha Ha)

A colleague sends this picture from Vienna which tickles me.

While I was there, I saw an advertising campaign for mobile phones  with the slogan "Sprich mit Bob" ("talk with Bob"). As a "Bob" myself I found this much more entertaining than a lot of the other "Bob" references sent my way. (I do not know how many more times I can hear small children singing "Bob the builder" to me without me fixing them.)

Anyway, the "Sprich mit Bob" campaign also had phrases in colloquial German which were impossible for me to translate. I`m guessing they’re the equivalent of phrases like "pay through the nose" which cease to have meaning as soon as you think about them.

So today’s thought is: when communicating with other cultures, watch out for colloquial english. A phrase like "it went over my head" might just go over theirs.

Just back from Vienna to the new blog going live, so this seems as good a place to start blogging as any.

If you have not been there, I do recommend Vienna. The people are friendly - and they allow you to practise rusty German on them. I find this refreshing when compared with, say, Germany itself. If you walk into a Berlin shop, almost before you finish saying, "Guten Tag," the other person says "This conversation will be much more efficient if I speak my excellent English instead of us both suffering your schoolboy German."

And as Vienna has an excellent cafe culture, the cafes compete with each other by offering free wifi. How much nicer than paying through the nose, firstly for CostaBucks coffee then for wifi access on top.

The net result is you can sit drinking good coffee on a pleasant European pavement checking your emails at your ease. (Though, obviously,  if you are on holiday you should not really be checking your work emails.)

So generally, a big thumbs up to Vienna, but just to give a balanced view of their otherwise tasteful culture, here is a picture of a siamese-cat toilet-brush holder.