From Bob Giles:

Using that precious, scarce resource, time, is one of the manager's most difficult tasks. Economics has been defined as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. There is no one way to save large amounts of time. Some activities simply require large investments. A composite set of activities, such as in the list below, used with synergism, might improve managerial control over time and thus the outcomes and costs of business.

• Plan and use a quiet time.
• Work in blocks of topics and of time.
• Make phone calls only in the morning.
• Allow no casual "visits."
• Avoid all possible meetings.
• Shorten meetings.
• Shorten time away from work.
• Throw things away.
• Don't clutter; file things for rapid, sure recovery.
• Don't procrastinate.
• Stay informed on critical issues only.
• Say no.
• Use and work with available staff and give them credit.
• Hire assistants at wages (salary-equivalents) lower than yours to improve on the output per hour per dollar-equivalent spent. (For example, are you typing letters when a secretary at lower wages than yours can do the same work?)
• Set deadlines.
• Allow for crises. They are known, common, and expected.
• Consolidate.
• Save time while traveling ... both length, time, ability to work after the trip (efficiency due to tiredness), and activities during the trip.
• Discuss with others whom you observe to be time-conscious how they save time.
• Try to expand this unit and pass it on to others.
• The increases will be in the permutations of practices you employ from among this list, even very small changes in a few categories.

***

Robert H. Giles, Jr. writes High Five for Handshake 2.0, a technology business news and Web 2.0 services enterprise of Handshake Media, Incorporated, a member company of business acceleration center VT KnowledgeWorks.  The opinions Robert Giles expresses are solely his own and are not necessarily shared by Handshake 2.0 or its clients, sponsors or advertisers. 

You can follow Robert H. Giles, Jr. on Twitter @Bob_Giles

Robert H. Giles, Jr. is a Virginia Tech Professor Emeritus with a vision for a rural land management system.  He writes two blogs, The Survivalists and Faunal Force. 

From Z. Kelly Queijo:

What began as project for a small town resulted in big results for many people.

Among those people in the small town that ended up the Most Wired Town in America was David Poteet, founder and president of New City Media. 

New City Media (NCM), a successful web design firm, got its start in Blacksburg due solely to the fact that in 1995, Foxridge Apartment Complex offered affordable broadband Internet access. At that time, the availability of Internet access would not have existed community-wide were it not for the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV).

New City Media in 1997.  Pictured from left to right, Marilyn Myers (still with New City Media as Controller), Bronwyn Bebee (Designer, now back in her home country of Australia), David Poteet, and Amber Thorneburg (Project Director, now a VP at Bank of America).

For Poteet, Blacksburg was the right place at the right time. “We moved into Foxridge in the summer of 1995 specifically because it had high-speed Internet. I couldn't have started NCM without access to low-cost broadband. We ran NCM out of our second bedroom until November 1996 when we moved into the CRC [Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center], after landing the contract to develop Roanoke.com for the Roanoke Times.”

What began as a two-person web design company with one client has grown into an award-winning international design firm with high-profile clients that include National Geographic Magazine and the Imperial College London.

New City Media is just one of the 100+ companies which, over the years, chose to build and grow here in the Most Wired Town in America , a.k.a. Blacksburg, Virginia.

*** 

Z. Kelly Queijo writes about business and technology, people and their passions.  She is a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0.

Connecting you through wine

Don't let the name fool you:  Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin, 2006 is far from rough.

This robust red is smooth and smoky, with rich berry flavors and a spicy finish.  Make this your Pizza Wine for a casual Friday evening.  Treat yourself this week to a taste of the old country.  Available at Kroger and other local grocery stores.

***

Today's Eclipse, the wine recommendation for Handshake 2.0, is written by Rik and Melissa Obiso, co-owners of Eclipse Winery, LLC, a new winery located in the New River Valley of Virginia.  Eclipse Winery, LLC plans to open to the public as early as 2012.  The Eclipse Winery story, Couple hope grapes will yield dream business was featured in The Roanoke Times.  You can read all the Today's Eclipse columns and more about Eclipse Winery on Handshake 2.0.

You can follow Eclipse Winery on Twitter @eclipsewinery.

From Z. Kelly Queijo:

“OH, WOW!” does not even begin to describe how I felt when the caller id screen on my telephone displayed the words "Google Inc."

The call was in follow-up to a story I'm working on about Google Apps.  Google spokesperson, Leon Kotlyar, mentioned the word “Cloud” so I had to ask, “What is a 'Cloud' anyway?” 

Leon Kotlyar responded: “The ability to access your data anytime, anywhere. Cloud computing makes communications and collaboration easy for people.”

Simple and beautiful and uplifting, like a...well, you know.

***

Z. Kelly Queijo writes about business and technology, people and their passions.  She is a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0.

From Allan Tsang, 88owls.com:

In this economy, how do you pick a consultant you can trust?  Here is how business experts pick business consultants when they've got problems to solve: 

Maturity.  Maturity may not be counted in years, but it can help.  Time is a great teacher.  Why?  Because you want to benefit from their mistakes so you can avoid them. 

Wisdom comes from experience, experience comes from mistakes…that means the more mistakes they have made, the better.  It usually means their advice is more than theoretical.  They have been tempered in the fires of success and failure.

Questions...questions...questions.  Do they ask more questions than give answers?  Their job is to ask great questions to help draw forth the right questions for you and for your company.

I do not count on consultants to hand me the solutions on a silver platter.  My business is unique and so will be the solutions.  By answering their tough questions, I will inevitably come up with great solutions because I know my business better than they do.

Accountability.  They establish this with you when they say what they do and do what they say.  I realized very quickly people are better talkers than they are doers.  Calling you when they say they are going to, being on time for meetings, getting the information they said they were going to get...those are all signs of accountability.

Do you like them?  Yes…like!  Can you have a conversation with this guy or gal?  Is he or she your equal? I do not want a parent figure to advise me.  Can I share my problems, issues and concerns comfortably?  This is a gut thing.  Call it trust or whatever you like.  But once the other above three criteria are in place, what else is there?  I want someone who cares for me and my business; just not so much.  After all, we're not family.

Industry knowledge.  Do they have it?  This is a plus but not always necessary with a consultant.  If they have a lot of industry knowledge but it's NOT broad, forget it.  They would be much better as a subject matter expert or consultant. If they have a lot of experience across the board AND also in your industry, that is better.  Avoid the consultant with with only a hammer.  All your issues start looking like nails.

Allan Tsang is the founder of 88owls.com, a community of business consultants with more than 10 years of industry experience. We match our members with businesses seeking consulting services.

Handshake 2.0 experienced a record spike in traffic on February 23, 2009 in response to our blog post Clicking Back Over the Years:  Most Wired Town in America.

We attribute that traffic to a timely topic of national, even international interest, fine writing by the blog post’s author, Z. Kelly Queijo, a carefully pre-planned and then executed Web 2.0 / social media / PR 2.0 / public relations campaign, a benevolent online network that voluntarily spread the word about the story, and the mystery of Web 2.0.

We used Google Analytics to study the sources of our traffic spike.

We offer to you our conclusions about our Web 2.0 / social media / PR 2.0 / public relations campaign:

• It’s about the blog post.  While the spike in traffic brought more visits to more of our posts and pages, it was our blog post, not our blog as a whole, that attracted traffic.

• "It's still who you know.”  Top source of traffic?  People who know about Handshake 2.0 and accessed the site directly with its URL.

• Content matters.  Keywords matter.  Second highest source of traffic?  Google.  Google "likes" the words we use, to whom we link, and who links to us.

• Tweets matter.  Third highest source of traffic?  Twitter.  Either every URL thrown out there gets clicked on or, ideally, the words we use in our 140 characters entice “clickation.”

From Z. Kelly Queijo:

The Blacksburg Electronic Village project, launched in 1993, began with two goals in mind: 1) to build the physical infrastructure necessary to connect homes and businesses in the town of Blacksburg to the Internet and 2) to create a connected online community.

Andrew Cohill, former director of the BEV and now president and CEO of Design Nine, refers to the telecommunications infrastructure available today as mature, but notes that the social aspects of a connected community are still evolving.

“It's a paradox: We are simultaneously more and less connected.”

Of present day online communities, Cohill says, “Social media brings people together while at the same time creates isolation. Facebook and MySpace are the realization of what we wanted to do 15 years ago.”

The early years of the BEV predate search engines and Internet advertising. Yahoo came online in 1996, followed by Google in 1997. The staff involved in training “villagers” to use online tools focused primarily on how to log on and use email to connect with others online.

Andrea Kavanaugh, Associate Director, Center for Human/Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech, and former Director of Research of the BEV, refers to email as the ultimate “killer app.”

Pat Matthews, president of Mailtrust, concurs. “Email is certainly the killer cloud app.  It is the most important, widely used communication tool in the world, especially for businesses.  Billions of emails are sent and received every day.  Social media has certainly emerged and is thriving, but it serves a different purpose than email and in many cases is a compliment.  For example, social media is typically used for one-to-many communications (think Twitter) as opposed to one-to-one or one-to-a-few like email.”

According to Kavanaugh, social networks are essential to being aware of what's going on about what you think is important.  Web 2.0 is the reason: “We've come full circle from the early days of the Bulletin Board System (BBS) to online chats. People are getting online to talk with each other. With Web 1.0, you had to be motivated to go to the BEV, login, and access Usenet groups to post your comment. It took heroic measures to interact compared with today.”

The members of the BEV project I spoke with, both past and present, share a keen interest in how people connect and the role that online tools play in making that happen. The paradox continues.

Andrew Cohill asserts that “texting [and] hanging out on Facebook is not a substitution for hanging out at Starbucks or Mill Mountain.”

Maybe it all comes together when the text reads “Meet me for coffee.”

***

To Handshake 2.0's Clicking Back Over the Years - Most Wired Town in America revisiting the 13th anniversary of Blacksburg, Virginia being dubbed "Most Wired Town in America," Andrew Cohill wrote a fascinating expansion and follow-up piece on his Design Nine Technology Futures blog entitled Blacksburg Electronic Village - "Most Wired Town."

And, interestingly enough, two of the Internet and World Wide Web pioneers mentioned in Clicking Back Over the Years - Most Wired Town in America have founded VT KnowledgeWorks member companies.

***

Z. Kelly Queijo writes about business and technology, people and their passions.  She is a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0.

From Z. Kelly Queijo:

Journey back in time with me, exactly thirteen years ago today, to February 23, 1996, when the headline of USA Weekend magazine posed the question: "This Town is Wired – In Blacksburg, Va., you can buy groceries, hear local bands, chat with neighbors - all online. Is this future what you want?"

We are that future and, thanks to the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) project which officially launched in 1993, our local citizens, businesses, schools, and government were the among the first in the world to buy, hear, and chat.

What began as a public-private partnership involving Virginia Tech, the Town of Blacksburg and Bell Atlantic (formerly C&P Telephone, now Verizon) to wire the town with the necessary telecommunications infrastructure to connect the residents of Blacksburg to the Internet, led the way to many aspects of the World Wide Web that we take for granted today.

Got Online Shopping?
Today, over 75% of Blacksburg businesses advertise online. Andrew Cohill, former director of the BEV and now president and CEO of Design Nine, attributes the launch of e-commerce to Doug Mauer, founder of Biz Net Technologies and Brush Mountain Data Center.

According to Cohill, locally-owned Wade's Flowers and Gifts was very likely the first e-commerce shop in the world and Wade's Foods supermarket was the first online grocer.

Bill Ellenbogen, founder of Bogen's Steakhouse and Bar, laid claim to having the first "cyberbar."

Montgomery County was the first school system in the nation to wire every public school with Internet access. Today, every classroom in every school has high-speed access.

And though Cohill reports that real estate agents swore up and down they would never allow buyers to browse houses online, Raines Real Estate became the first agency in the country to showcase houses for sale on the Web. 

It Took A Team
The list of people who made the BEV happen is extensive and includes not just the staff of the teams that managed the day-to-day activities of the project over the years (and those who continue to do so), but also includes government officials, technology leaders, educators, librarians, and even average citizens, young and old, who were willing to embrace new ideas and technology and run with them.

Today, whether wired or wireless, when we access the Internet, shop online, listen to music, or send text or email, we do so because we just happen to live in a small town filled with people who happen to think big.

***

Z. Kelly Queijo writes about business and technology, people and their passions.  She is a frequent contributor to Handshake 2.0.

Handshake 2.0 learned of Compete.com from competitive intelligence software AttaainCI.

With a "Track your rivals.  Then eat their lunch," welcome, Compete.com offers the ability to compare your site's traffic to two other sites for free.

Type in your URL, two of those of your competitors, and you've got some very interesting information.

Here's the Compete.com graph of Handshake 2.0's site traffic from launch in July 2009, through January 2009.

860 University City Boulevard
Blacksburg, Virginia
(540) 951-8102

Bonomo's features informal modeling of women's fashion clothing on Tuesdays at 12:30 PM at Zeppoli's Italian Restaurant and Wine Shop in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Bonomo's, a women's clothier since 1973, commissions students from Virginia Tech to create its signature fashion illustrations.  The "Lady in Black" is by fashion illustrator Jessica German.