Google Doc News for our 2008 Brex Initiatives in Digital Learning

Preface for anyone just joining us:

Brex is my nickname for our 2008 initiative with Digital Learning.
Get your intro by reading all about it here:

Who is the Digital Learning Coach in your company?  We kick off our Braver Experiments [with] Digital Learning initiative for Managing with Aloha Coaching (MWAC) in 2008.

I am becoming such a huge fan of all things Google.

Last wrote about my Saasy, Googly immersion on Joyful Jubilant Learning:

In 2008 I'm losing it... Be nice... no, not my sanity, or my sense of all reason. My stuff.

Something I'll be keeping packed in my bags for [my learning in 2008] is my steady migration to a 'trusted system' (in GTD-speak) of completely web-based tools and archiving. To some people it may sound like a contradiction - a trusted system that I place in the web's hands and not my own hard drive or some good old fashioned filing cabinets? Exactly.

...A biggie for me in this leap of faith has been learning that I can lose Microsoft Outlook for a romp in the jungle with Gorilla King Google and their entire tribe of monkeys in a barrel. Monkey GMail, monkey GCalendar, monkey GDocs, monkey GGroups, and the newest monkey I've had loads of fun with, Picasa.

It may sound risky to many, but the degree of riskiness is a subjective thing, and personally I have become very, very comfortable with what others may perceive to be a high degree of risk, both in regard to server crashing (two words: back up!), and with the protection of my intellectual property... in short, there is no way for anyone to get into the working of my brain in the same manner I use it --- in the spirit of what we are learning this month, think of this as part of my Ho‘ohanohano confidence!

My primary reasons for loving Google as much as I do are these:

1. Google is web-based, which means I can access it anywhere I have an internet connection. If I don't have that internet connection, well frankly, I spend too much time online anyway and can use the forced break of unconnectedness until I get it back again. (As I have already alluded to, I have learned to be pretty cavalier about this.)
2. Google is continually tweaked and reinvented by some of the smartest pushing-the-edges people on the planet, something I benefit from big-time. Will get back to this in a moment.
3. I don't want to handle my own web-hosting if I can possibly avoid it, and am happy to let the gorilla Google servers take care of that for me on the Google dime and time.
   The poor service I have gotten over the years from other web-hosting providers messing with my domain stuff has really pushed me into this avoidance behavior; I really, really hate dealing with all the back-story stuff I go through for www.sayleadershipcoaching.com and my other domains. Hating this has become seethingly despise it, and that is way too much negativity for me to bear. Instead, I will take the risk of someone else's web-hosting going down instead of mine, and I figure Google can and will handle this way more quickly than I will if their servers go down.
   
4. With the way I get into writer's flow, I LOVE the way that GMail and Google Docs and Spreadsheets keep saving automatically as I work. When I write I zone frequently... hours can go by, and I sincerely feel like they have been mere minutes.
5. As if the rest of this isn't just peachy keen as it is, Google is free.

Let's go back to number 2. above: The reason I started writing this posting was because I got so excited when I clicked into one of my Google Spreadsheets today and saw one of those red New Features links at the top of the page. What's new?

• Most of Google Docs is now in 40 languages.
• We can add Forms in our Spreadsheet editing.
  You can create a form and invite people to fill it out. They won't need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Answers will be automatically added to your spreadsheet.
• Then, you can keep track of forms and responses on your iGoogle page.
  Add the Google Docs Forms Gadget to your iGoogle page to keep an eye on form responses. This gadget lists your most recently active forms, with new responses highlighted. Jump directly to the form results from your iGoogle homepage.
• We can chart labels, clearly.
  A picture is worth a thousand words, but only when the words on the picture look right. With improved chart labels, you'll be able to more easily describe your data with axis labels which are automatically formatted and rotated to fit.
• We can freeze columns now.
  Yay!!! I have been waiting for this one for a while now...
• We can include photos, logos, icons, or any other images in our spreadsheets.

Google has become a sort of online tutor that is always there for me... so much to learn and play with whenever I am ready for some self-paced, digital learning.

“Ready” for me means that I can learn and immediately apply what I am learning in one of my processes, having the mental bandwith for deliberately doing so. Without the application —the doing of it— I don’t get to that point where “the rubber meets the road” —I didn’t retain my new knowledge or awareness as true learning.

Those New Features links which show up in my existing Google Apps are like a teacher asking me,  “Are you ready? Is this a good time?” And when my answer is yes, that is very, very sweet indeed... very anxious to check out how that new forms tracking works!

So how is your digital learning going? What is new in Brex-land with you?

Comments

[Leah Maclean]

Forms in Google Spreadsheets?? Yay!!! Now you have taught me something this morning Rosa ;-)

There is also no real need to have to explain yourself about your choice of Google. One of the biggest lessons we all need to learn when it comes to technology is to use the stuff that works for us and our situation, not feel that we must use what others do.

Keep up your sassiness.

[Rosa Say]

Woo hoo! This is a red-letter day if I teach the Queen of Tech something digital! You are so kind to me Leah when we both know I'm just playing eager messenger here :) I too was most excited about the news on forms!

My goal with explaining is to invite and encourage Leah: My Brex initiative has given me some new goals for our Ho‘ohana Community, and I firmly believe that the more we are all on board with the communication options now open to us, the farther we will get in our MWA-inspired workplace reconstruction (and quicker).

Reading over my post again, I now see I totally forgot one of the biggest advantages to Google Docs and Spreadsheets - we can share them and cyber-collaborate. It's a beautiful Kākou thing!

[William Parker]

Hi:

My name is William and I am CEO of the blog, www.Joboja.Blogspot.com . I found out about your blog through the Careerist.com. I look at your website regularly and I think it is good. In fact I have bookmarked it. I would like to partner and trade links with you. I am based in Chicago and I receive traffic locally as well as from all over the world. I hope to hear back from you soon and if you have any questions please let me know. If you decide to trade links with us please send back your web address and how you would like your site's name to be listed. Until then have a great day.

Best Regards,
William Parker
CEO, Joboja
jobojablogspot@gmail.com
(773) 835-0188

[Rosa Say]

Aloha William, welcome to Managing with Aloha Coaching. I am happy to know that you have enjoyed what you have read here, and I didn’t know I had any links on Careerist.com; it was very nice of them to point you my way.

If you take another look at the top of the page, you will see that I write this blog for the core purpose of giving the readers of Managing with Aloha complimentary coaching directly connected to my book and the MWA workplace reinvention movement. You are warmly welcomed to join our community here by purchasing the book, subscribing and doing the exercises I suggest, then discussing them with us in our comment conversation, thus getting to be well known by everyone else - achieving your goal in that manner. This is not a site where you will find an index of links to other sites, though I will offer links which I feel are relevant contextual to our coaching discussions. To learn more, take this link to “The How-To of Managing with Aloha Coaching” (you can always find it again under that list of “Helpful Links” too):
http://www.sayleadershipcoaching.com/mwacoaching/The-How-To-of-MWACoaching.html

Get started with us by purchasing Managing with Aloha here:
http://astore.amazon.com/sayleadership-20/detail/0976019000/