Workstreaming in 140 Characters with Backpack

Nowadays, status update boxes are everywhere: LinkedIn, Twitter, Friendfeed, Yammer, AIM, GTalk, Facebook and more. The stream is becoming a de facto way that we communicate with others. However, thinking in 140 characters is also changing how I work. I am now using status updates to workstream.

I have dusted off using Backpack as a tool for managing my life. It's improved a lot since I last used it a few years ago. One of their recent additions is the Backpack Journal, which I love. I can update it throughout the day to capture a running log of what I worked on, when. Right now this is just for my own use but Backpack works great in teams as well. Above is a screenshot from my Journal this am. I also update it from my iPhone using an app called Satchel and on the desktop use text expansion software to enter items more quickly. I use codes and phrases to track my time which I refer to when I enter my time reports.

Several of my colleagues are workstreaming with Yammer. This is something I need to explore more, since it's certainly easy to do. Are any of you workstreaming - and if so, how - in private or public forums?

16 comments

Jul 21, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

Isnt it easier to just create another posterous site for your private/shared use. Email the updates to that site alone and have a running log obviously not up to the minute.. so that's the only drawback.

Jul 21, 2009

Kevin Gamble said...

Good post, and glad to see the discussion of workstreaming.

Where the microblogging posts are really important, we must not forget the automatic posting of things like check-ins of code, edits, etc. to workstreaming. Feeds of all sorts must come into play, and then your 140 character posts become a method of annotation.

Feeds (from logs), aggregation, filtering, microblogging... they're all essential components.

Jul 21, 2009

Steve Rubel said...

Jose that's not a bad idea. Can do more too like photos as needed.

Jul 21, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

Although I like 140 limitation - to put you into creativity for annotations - it isnt always practical. I'm currently using a separate posterous site (avcion.info) for research information that I regularly update. It would be too much for my subscribers, so I leave this as seperate site that readers can opt into.

Jul 21, 2009

Justin Levy said...

I too played with Backpack and haven't checked it out in a while. Looks like they've made some interesting changes.

The way I've been workstreaming (along with the rest of our team at New Marketing Labs) is using Socialcast. It's similar to Yammer and you can import other profiles like FriendFeed, among a ton of other features. Besides that, we just like the look/feel of it.

What we're enjoying from using a tool like this is that it allows us to have some standardize tags like #where, #status, etc that we can provide status updates as we need. But, the real gold comes from wanting to pull the info back out. If I'm out-of-pocket for a couple days I could just pull on one of the tags to get a quick overview of everything that our team has worked on in the past couple days; how a particular client is doing or where everyone is (given travel schedules, working remotely and whatnot).

Similar to what Jose said, I know that Chris Brogan has been experimenting with a Tumblr blog as a status update/workstream for himself.

Jul 21, 2009

Tom Parish said...

Very helpful post Steve and the comments were equally as insightful. Thanks Jose Martin for your thoughts on a private Posterous. I used Backpack quite a while back but never ended up using it on an ongoing basis. Fascinating comments about workstreaming with Socialtext. Wish I worked with a group that used a tool like that together.

Jul 21, 2009

Jose Paul Martin said...

Justin, just to add onto your point. I use tags as well... in twitter, unfortunately the #tags take up characters (of which ur limited to 140). However, in posterous... the #tags are outside the content (hope I'm clear here) - and that to me is more useful.

Jul 21, 2009

Kahlil Lechelt said...

Love Backpack, it's great for collaboration aswell when you share pages for example

Jul 21, 2009

Benjamin Karam said...

Backpack looks like an interesting service. Thanks for the tip, I will have to check that out.

As a software consultant, I have been using Evernote to track my work and time each day because I use a lot of screenshots and find the evernote client application useful. The team workstream introduced with Yammer, SocialText, Backpack (etc) seems very useful to me though and I would eventually like to incorporate that into my larger projects.

Jul 21, 2009

Jason said...

Man, I could not work like that. It's like you're middle-managing *yourself*!

Jul 21, 2009

Kawika Holbrook said...

I miss Swurl's lifestream calendar. Handy way of looking back for something you "workstreamed" earlier. Another feature I don't see a lot of is cross-referencing. Perhaps Google's Wave or Zenbe's ShareFlow will also help integrate "digital footprints" into the more common tools of email and chat. Whatever gets the job done.

Jul 21, 2009

Don Mann said...

BackPack is a nice application except for the Journal module which is worse than useless!!! It deletes entries without warning after a certain number (100 I believe) It also does not allow you to enter, edit or delete entries after the subject day. It does not allow you to archive older entries to your hard drive either. All-in-all, a useless Backpack module with great potential. Too bad . . . . it could have made a good program great!

Jul 21, 2009

Angela Booth said...

What a great idea; I've never used the Backpack journal for anything. Will use it for daily word counts :-)

Jul 21, 2009

Carissa Thorp said...

You could set up something like this with Google Calendar and use Google Calendar Quick Add Extension for Firefox to update it (keystroke ctrl + ;). The Agenda view would give you a listing of all your updates and you can use the rss feed of the calendar in various ways. Only problem is that it uses your default Calendar;no ability to assign the updates to another calendar.

Jul 21, 2009

Tim Cohn said...

I hadn't called it workstreaming, but I have begun to measure through time and date stamping my daily output publicly via Twitter and Wordpress blogs.

Jul 22, 2009

Happy said...

Also check out http://www.coopapp.com/