Soapbox Engage Blog

I get a ton of email. I truly believe that there are small gremlins in my laptop, building hundreds of emails a day for me to try to keep up with. Everyday, I lose the battle against email, and find myself flagging many of them for follow-up. This isn't too helpful though, because:

1. they're not actionable (there's no task associated with them)
2. it increases my blood pressure to see my follow-up email count rise to the current 424 level

In the rest of my Outlook life (that's right, I use Outlook 2003) I have created a task management system that allows me to create actionable items in my Task manager by categorizing everything I do into Musts, Needs, and Wants. This has actually worked pretty well, and has kept our Post-It note supply noticeably higher. Flagged emails, however, just make me look at the mess that is my inbox and realize this is a losing battle.

Until now.

Tomorrow through Wednesday I'll be joining quite an esteemed list of non-profit technologists at the Salesforce.com Nonprofit Roadmap Summit, June 4-6, in San Mateo, CA. I'm eager to see how successful this crew can be at helping shape the roadmap for the non-profit template, and even more eager to see if this model can be replicated for our Non-Profit Soapbox. This is truly a unique opportunity to shape the future of a major application for our sector.

I just had a great online discussion with PICnetter Tim, who rightfully thinks I'm crazy for the hours I put into my work. Luckily, Tim and I were able to see eye-to-eye on a leadership development method called servant leadership. During the conversation, I thought about my CEO title, and how it seemed to connote and over-emphasize a top-down hierarchical structure at PICnet.

While I enjoy the title and the perks, like the CEO parking space (my bike in the office) and the CEO airline upgrades (every seat on jetBlue is first class), I believe a better term to associate with my position is "custodian" or possibly "steward".

I mean, look at this photo here. That's me, Ryan the Builder, with PICnet's good friend Susan Finkelpearl of Free Range Studios. What word comes to mind there, "CEO" or "custodian"?