Within the past week, two commentaries on email popped up on my screen. The Dilbert strip set the stage …

 

… Drummond Reed offered the solution:  “Please Send Wicked Simple Email.”

After a wickedly clear setup …

After 20 years of averaging a third of every working day doing email, I realized I could save hundreds of hours a year—and collectively we could save hundreds of millions of hours a year—by just writing wicked simple email.

… Drummond offered five wickedly practical recommendations

1. Treat the Subject Line as a Tweet
2. No Sigs
3. Reply Inline Whenever Possible
4. Hold Deeply Threaded Conversations Elsewhere
5. One Screen Max

Reading the details is well worth your time. Thanks, Drummond, for excellent suggestions. 

CNET reported today on a congressional committee wants to know whether Huawei, a telecommunications powerhouse is a national security threat.

Huawei is much larger than I realized:

Huawei is the second largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world, behind only Sweden’s Ericsson. It generated $32 billion in revenue last year, selling its networking technology to such global giants as Vodafone, Bell Canada and Telekom Malaysia, though only smaller U.S. carriers Leap and Clearwire use the company’s gear. Huawei’s heft has allowed it to pour resources into adjacent markets, such as mobile handset development and data center technology that’s already paying off with new customers and billions more in revenue. …

And Huawei is a patent machine, with about 50,000 patents filed worldwide. Though accused years ago of pilfering the innovations of Cisco and others, Huawei gets credit these days for breakthroughs in complex technologies such as radio access networking that lets mobile carriers support multiple communications standards on a single network. It also pioneered the dongles that consumers slip into laptops to wirelessly connect to the Web.

Because of their size, power and national origin, some are very worried:

The broader concern, though, is of a dangerous marriage of Huawei’s capability — it wants to build a massive swath of the telecommunications network, from routers and switches to the phones consumers use — with the Chinese government’s motive and intent. A report last year from the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive found that the Chinese are the “world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.” The committee wants to thwart the possibility Chinese cyberattacks in the United States over Huawei’s technology before the company, which has only a modest U.S. presence, grows into a powerhouse here. …

Hawks in the federal government remain unconvinced that his company is merely a financial success story. They worry that Huawei, whose technology provides infrastructure to communications networks, is a tool of the Chinese government, potentially enabling it to snoop on critical corporate and government data through digital backdoors that Huawei has the ability to install.

I don’t know the answers here, but this is certainly food for thought.

Thanks to Bonkers World for capturing in a nutshell the social dynamics I experienced with my colleagues in a week-long training event in Santa Clara, CA:

Thanks to infosecurity.us for passing this along!

A bit of wry humor from Ben and Patty …

… but is it too far from the truth?

Just think! Reading this blog post may be helping you to plunge into deep depression! Dr. Bizarro might just have something here.

Poor Dilbert. His social skills just don’t measure up to the smartphone!

On a more serious note, is this so far removed from reality? Is the entertainment value of smartphones and related apps getting in the way of real human relationships?

Several years ago, before Facebook and LinkedIn became household names, a partner and I formed a company named “Network Handshake LLC” and proceeded to develop a bit of social networking software called “ConnectArizona.com,” in an attempt to bring together like-minded individuals in the Arizona business community.  It was a really interesting project, but without adequate capital and marketing support, ConnectArizona.com and Network Handshake really never got off the ground (although I still own the domain names).

Time has shown that the concept of “shaking hands across the network” really has legs.  How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?  How many friends on Facebook?  What other social networks do you use?

However, this week, the power of the “real handshake,” not just the network kind, was reaffirmed.  After not attending an industry conference in well over a year, I am attending the Gartner IAM Summit in San Diego this week.  It has been delightful to engage with customers, partners and friends on a “real handshake” basis – to look individuals in the eye, firmly grasp their hands and speak directly, person to person.  While much can be said for the connecting power of teleconferences, webex sessions, email and social networks,  I believe there is no real substitute to direct, face-to-face, interpersonal communications. 

Viva la “real” handshake!