My Favourite Tipples from a freelance digital workplace consultant
Jinfo Blog

By Steve Bynghall

Abstract

My Favourite Tipples are shared by Steve Bynghall, a consultant specialising in intranets, KM and collaboration. He details his go-to resources for keeping up with research and trends in the digital workplace and the internet, as well as sharing resources he uses on-the-go to organise his work.

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When you move from a corporate environment to working for yourself, suddenly a lot of the things you take for granted, such as IT support and workplace tools, go out of the window. Here's a couple of things I've used that make life a little easier as a freelancer, as well as information sources I regularly cite.

• IA Writer: I do a lot of writing and this is an excellent app for iOS, Android and Mac which just focuses on the text you write. It's very simple and elegant, which really helps me focus on the writing. Most of my Jinfo contributions have been written or partly written on the app while on the go. I can then export the text into Word, a .TXT file or even HTML.

• Toggl: Time-tracking is key for managing your schedule if you work for multiple clients, but I can see how it would have been useful to record time spent on different activities when I was working for a company. Toggl is one of the best time-tracking apps around. I usually use it on desktop and the freemium version is very useful in its own right.

• Mary Meeker's Internet Trends: Each year Mary Meeker, an analyst at Kleiner Perkins, presents a (very lengthy) series of slides which detail internet trends, all backed up by very useful statistics. It's all available online and an excellent source of authoritative information on the internet and other digital trends.

• Jane McConnell's "Organization in the Digital Age": Jane McConnell's annual survey on the digital workplace is probably the most authoritative annual survey of the state of the digital workplace inside organisations. The report is free if you participate in the survey. Well worth doing. P.S. if you want to see more of my "Tipples" like this, I've collated a list of resources I often refer to.

For fun:

• The Second Disc: I'm a bit of a music junkie and a lot of my listening focuses on reissues and archival recordings from groups like the Beach Boys. The Second Disc is a great source of reissues news and a site I visit far too often during the working day.

An article in Jinfo which I found particularly interesting: 

• "Jinfo survey - data analytics needs and concerns 2017": Data analytics is such a relevant area right now where organisations are lacking in skills. It will be increasingly important across the digital workplace and information professionals have something to bring to the table. I found it interesting to get more information on where organisations are right now with analytics.

Contribute your "My Favourite Tipples"

Would you like to share your "My Favourite Tipples" with the Jinfo audience? For contributor guidelines email catherine.dhanjal@jinfo.com or visit the Publish with Jinfo page.

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