I’m reading my shiny new copy of Everything Is Miscellaneous, by David Weinberger (just met him at Supernova- nice guy!), and finding that things land on me all at once when I come on to something new. The other day, in a fit of frustration, I asked people what they used instead of Finder (the file manager for Macs). Most people answered Spotlight or Quicksilver. (**For non Apple users: these apps both let you just type a few characters of a file or application’s name, and the computer finds it for you.) That means: who cares where you put it? Throw it in a big pile, and just remember what you called it.
Everything is miscellaneous.
Well, when you write on paper, like in a Moleskine notebook or something, you can’t just randomly search. In fact, Moleskines SUCK as a place to “organize” data. They’re too linear, too manual.
I’m in the same boat with databases. I need to build a database to hit with emails. The easy stuff is giving the database first names, last names, titles, companies, email addresses, etc. Then, it gets tricky. Because what if I want one slice to be “people who want to know about PodCamp,” and then I want another slice (some of the same names, and a whole list of different names) to be “people who want to know about Video on the Net?” Then, I want to know “people who’d likely travel to Boston for an event.”
On top of that? I want to know, “These people responded positively to your last emails, and these people told you to go F yourself.”
Contact software does this. Sure. But what if I want to use that software to start keeping detailed notes about the person? Oh.. then we’re talking about a Customer Relationship Management software solution, right? Oh, but maybe not, because maybe those don’t let you slice and dice the mail lists.
Further, what if I want to keep lists like “cool conferences I hope to attend in the future?” What if I want a list for “great speakers I saw and hope to have at my events?” I might not load them into a contact management system. I might not have a clue where to put them.
What if I want a catch-all for ALL my thoughts that I can then use for a variety of these things? What if I want to be able to use it to remember where I’ve flown over the last little while?
Data can be tricky, eh?
Or remembering can be tricky. Or thinking can be tricky. Or thinking and making use of the data can be tricky. Wow.
Tricky.
What are your systems? How are YOU thinking? What’s moving you along?
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