Work Only

Another week flew by, and I've realized that since last Sunday, I've accomplished nothing outside of work. I've gone from going to the gym 3 times a week to not having gone to the gym once in 3 weeks. And to make matters worse, my unread blog posts count is at 666 (no joke), there's an unread stack of magazines on my coffee table, and who knows how much email is waiting to be answered.

This is a bummer.

Not sure what to do. I really don't want to work less, but I think I may need to start managing my time at work better. One strategy I've employed recently is to block off 2 days of every week on my calendar, and decline to attend any meeting scheduled on those days. I already try to keep meetings to 30 minutes and have brief phone discussions when in-person meeting wouldn't be beneficial, but this additional strategy has allowed me longer periods of time to focus on producing work product without regularly being interrupted.

On Monday, I'll be heading down to San Diego for the week for the Microsoft Management Summit. We'll be announcing some very cool stuff at MMS - stuff near and dear to my heart that I've been working on for quite some time. It'll also be a great opportunity for me to meet and bond with some of my division's most valuable customers and partners, and I'm really looking forward to it!

I'm only bringing one laptop down to MMS, and it's running the latest daily build of Windows Vista. If the build works, I'll try to blog from the conference (and Vista will get points). Otherwise, I might be forced into a little blogging vacation until next weekend, when I'll be making a quick stop in LA to visit family on the way home to Seattle.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was that I noticed the Where 2.0 conference is coming up in June. I'm soo passionate about location aware software, and yet this conference looks really really lame. So I'm not gonna go, even though it's only 2 days and wouldn't be too difficult to swing.

I think it looks lame because it's too focused on mapping and mash-ups. I think maps are boring, and mash-ups are played out. For all the talk about delivering location platforms, very few have delivered much of anything. And the "promise" of location based services has been around for about a decade, and is still very little more than a promise with some neat proof of concept apps with insignificant adoption rates.

So, having tried a gazillion mapping apps and mash-ups, having read a ton of really great research papers, and having played around with quite a few proof of concept apps and most of the location-oriented "platforms" out there, more talk about what's out there already and more promises about what the future holds just aren't worth my time this year. Maybe next year though.

Off to hang at the park with my friend Mike and eat dinner. Hope everyone's having a great weekend!