The original, and still the best: YourTime

It was nice to see a few comments in response to my last post about RSS and information overload:

• RSS addict ;-) Luis Suarez provided us with tips for working effectively with RSS, including a recommendation to "Walk away, whenever you can, from e-mail."
• Angus McDonald makes a nice distinction between "nice to have" (RSS) and "must read" (email).
• And finally, Intel blogger Nathan Zeldes, notes that with RSS you "can skip posts or feeds and no one will know, no sender will be mad at you."

However, I actually want to focus on and make a special mention of Nathan Zeldes - after browsing his personal Web site and joining a few dots, I realised that he was behind what I feel has to be described as one of the leading practice initiatives to tackle email information overload in organisations. The program, called YourTime, that he helped to develop was profiled in Fast Company back in 2001 and I'm pleased to say to you can still find the materials available for download (while you are there, take the time to browse around the other material available from the ITshareNet site, which is another one of Zeldes' current projects).

To quote from the ITshareNet site, what YourTime is all about is this:

"It addresses behavior patterns, interpersonal interactions and technical skills in one complete drive, by working from the top down and implementing three steps at each hierarchical level in the target organization:
1. Awareness Training on predefined, organization-wide Management Expectations.
2. Group Discussions geared toward identifying bad e-mail habits and their solutions.
3. Skill Coaching, either through a human trainer or a Web-based training tool, in order to enhance users' proficiency in using e-mail clients."

This is a great example of really trying to help people in organisations to get on, not get by, with information technology - which is what this blog is ultimately all about (I hope).

Thanks, Nathan, for dropping by and sharing your ideas.

Technorati tags: Nathan Zeldes, YourTime, Email Overload, Information Overload, RSS, Enterprise RSS, Technology in the Workplace, iSociety