How to Simplify Billable Time Tracking

Do you have projects or clients you bill by the hour? Or maybe you want to get a better handle on how you’re spending your time in the office? Here are four programs to help you get the job done:

TraxTime is a little PC program that opens a small window on your screen. You can designate a project, punch yourself in and out of time on that project, and run quick reports that summarize the time spent in a day, week, month, quarter, year or since the start. You can try it out for free and purchase for $39 US. [Read more]

Create PDFs as Easily as Printing Your Document

So you’ve created a document for an ADR client and you’re ready to send it through cyberspace as an email attachment. Maybe you used a well-known program like MS Word or WordPerfect. Or perhaps you used software the receiver may not have on their own computer…iWork, MS Publisher, Excel…whatever.

After your care in making the document look professional and pretty, you probably want it to look exactly the same on the receiving end. The trouble is, even if the receiver has the same software, your document may look slightly different…or like a complete mess.

Portable document formatting, or PDF, to the rescue. PDF documents ensure that [Read more]

The Mediation Marketing and Management Vault, April 2007

The Mediation and Marketing Vault is a monthly feature that dips into the archives and shares still-relevant articles from one year ago. If you’re new to Mediator Tech, I hope you find these helpful!

7 Questions to Guide Your Website Content offers a short list of big-picture questions to help create website content that differentiates you and wows prospective clients.

Tech Tools for Mediators rounds up some of my favorite tools for marketing and managing my own ADR practice. I looked it over before posting here and it’s still a relevant list, though [Read more]

A Day of Silence in the Blogosphere: April 30

Silence can say more than a thousand words.

On April 30, 2007, the blogosphere will hold a day of silence to honor those lives lost and forever changed by the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

Help spread the word and post the graphic on your blog on April 30. No words and no comments. Just respect and compassion. To spread the word about this event, visit OneDayBlogSilence.com.

Jott Yourself a Message on the Run

Do you have some of your best ideas when you’re away from your computer, perhaps when you’re out for your daily jog or running errands and your brain’s been freed to wander creatively? Wouldn’t it be nice to have an easy way to capture those ideas and reminders without carrying pen and paper along?

The creators of Jott thought so. They started with the premise that for many, the cell phone was the item most often available in such moments, and they built a free service around it.

Jott allows you to record a brief message via cell phone, then transcribes and emails the message to you in text form within a few minutes. You can also listen to your original audio of the message, and you can Jott messages that go out to others. In fact, you can import your address book to make that easier. The voice transcription isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn good.

At first, I didn’t get Jott. Why should I use Jott to record a note to myself, when my cell phone has a built-in voice recorder? And if I’m running late unexpectedly, why wouldn’t I just call a point person to let them know? [Read more]

ADR Resources Roundup, April 2007

My monthly roundup is a short list of links to free or low-cost services, ideas, and articles that help make the job of building and managing a thriving ADR practice a little bit easier:

If you use Outlook 2007 and want to prevent a message you send from easily being forwarded to someone else, check out Outlook 2007: Prevent Forwarding of a Message.

Want to be able to create PDFs without purchasing expensive Adobe software? [Read more]

Mediation Client and Case Management Software

A Mediator Tech reader wrote to ask about good software to manage mediation cases and clients. I thought I’d share an expanded version of my reply to him.

Customer relationship management software, which may also be called contact management software and shares some similarities with case management software, is designed to help you efficiently and effectively track clients and sometimes cases from start to finish. It helps you organize and easily locate prospective, current and past clients, including contact information; track conversations, projects, and follow-up tasks; notify you when a follow-up is due or it’s time to send a thank you; and keep telephone, email, and all digital files associated with a case or client in one easy-to-find place.

It’s really essential software for any ADR practitioner to have in place, both for serving your clients well and for keeping your sanity. [Read more]

How Blogs Help You Build Relationships Online

Imagine that you’re enjoying a conversation at work when in swoops someone you’ve never met and joins the conversation without an invitation. You’d probably be a bit surprised, maybe even put off.

Now imagine you’re the person who the conversants have never met. How do you join in? And how, praytell, do you do it online?

Dave Olson imagined just these scenarios and has written a terrific article about the ways blogs help build relationships without some of the same social taboos of in-person conversations. [Read more]

The Secret of Successful Business Card Exchanges

Conventional “guerilla marketing” wisdom holds that you should print on both sides of your business card to maximize your use of the white space available. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest the guerrillas should rethink this idea.

A few weeks ago, while I waited in the lobby of a secure building where I’d be meeting the point person for a workshop I was teaching there, a nice gentleman stopped to offer help. He noticed I’d been sitting there for a while (it was too early for the lobby security desk to be open) and offered to help locate my contact wherever she was in the secure portion of the building. When he learned I was there to teach a workshop for a conflict resolution association, he told me he’d been thinking about a conflict management workshop for his own department. We exchanged business cards and agreed to have a conversation about it. Wow, I always love a little serendipity in my day!

But I didn’t just hand him my card and take his in return. I took a moment for one more key action first. [Read more]

Do You Know How to Make Mediation a Sticky Idea?

“You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

If my mom were still around today, she’d probably note that we mediators have a special honey and vinegar challenge: “Conflict” and “dispute” are vinegar-like words to most people.

So is there a way to convey what mediators do with a honey-like stickiness?

Last week I reviewed Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick. When you’re done with that excellent read, turn next to [Read more]

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