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The Pedestal Group

Putting our clients where they belong

No Sub-Folders? What next?

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David Johnson at BNet wrote today about his use of “metadata” and Windows Vista search to find his documents. They are all stored in ONE folder. I knew this was coming but I didn’t realize it was already here. And I’m just not ready to do it.

In the past, computer users were taught to file things in folders and sub-folders to keep everything organized, much like you would in a file cabinet. Organizational specialists told you to file things based on your first reaction to where it should go so you could easily find them again. Many people embrace this organizational structure but just as many file everything on their desktop (scary – I know).

Several years ago I implemented a content management system that used metadata to store and retrieve records. We struggled for a long time as to what would be assigned to each record until the vendor asked the magic question – what is the minimum information you would accept to find a document? Suddenly we had a context. If someone came to the counter and wanted a document, what was the bare minimum information they had to have to get what they wanted. Example – they couldn’t ask for “some student who was female and graduated in 1992” (this was a student records program on a campus) but they could ask for “Kathy Breitenbucher, graduated in 1992”. If the peson requesting had the student’s social security number that was enough, etc. And so began my discussions of metadata.

Shortly thereafter operating systems started talking about metadata. The idea is you create a document and then assign the metadata to it. Then, when you need the file, you just run a search and there’s your document. We’re all used to searching the Internet for stuff so what’s the difference? Well for me, it is changing everything about the way I work. I considered using the “find file” feature a failing of my organizational structure. I mean, if I put it somewhere, I should know where, right? So now I’m suppose to do away with all of that and always search. Hard to get used too.

I know David is right and this is the smart way to manage data. It is more efficient, leaves less room for error or misfiling and in the long run should save time. But giving up my folders? I’m just not there yet.

Filed Under: Brand, Candidates, Customer Service, Employment Branding, Interviews, Marketing, Online, References, Sales, State of the Market Tagged With: BNet, David Johnson, metadata, subfolders

Do You Trust Your Customers?

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Today on a whim, I took my daughter on a tour of a local candy factory. We were in the area and thought it would be fun.  After paying a couple dollars for the tour, a nice motherly woman stood in front of us with a tray of chocolates to give us as samples while she explained there were no pictures to be taken on the tour and by the way, you need to give your cameras and cell phones to the front desk person. We then toured the plant.  The R&D room, the carmel-making facility and the finishing was all enclosed and we couldn’t see it. What we did see were workers putting molds into the machine and at the other end taking them out, packaging them and shrink wrapping.  No big secrets, nothing you couldn’t do at home.  We did see the big […] Continue reading

Filed Under: Candidates, Customer Service Tagged With: Customer Service, trust

Searching for People Using Wink.Com

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There are many ways to find people out there, but the free ones are always my favorite. Recently, I tried http://wink.com/ and at first thought it was just another search engine. But when I started to look at it in more depth, I realized that this site lets you find people by not only their name and location, but by their personal interests, groups they belong to, school they attended, and their career! With all the social media sites out there, more and more data is available on people and what they like to do, what they specialize in and where they are located. Wink searches those profiles and let’s you pull them together all in one place. They claim to search over 200 million on line profiles. Wink also has an option for a person to claim their profile and fill it in. It […] Continue reading

Filed Under: Candidates, Online, Technology Tagged With: find people, wink.com

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Our managing partner

Our Managing Partner, Kathy Breitenbucher, has been in business for almost 20 years. The lessons learned throughout her career have brought her to a place to offer businesses her expertise and understanding of how people get the job done. Read More…

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