Custom Publishing Solutions (CPS), launching this month, will provide new solutions to help the Australian Publishing Industry overcome the technological and operational challenges it is currently facing, by using the tools of the next industrial revolution.

In an age of ever-changing technological advancements, the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is no longer the subject of sci-fi movies. Globally, business is taking advantage of AI and Automation to such an extent that experts are calling it the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The publishing sector is no exception and with the launch of CPS, the industry will be able to experience the full force of AI Automation technology and its operational application.

It is a timely arrival for the publishing industry, which is under increasing pressure to reduce costs in the face of the current copyright review, increased international competition and the increasing diversity of formats and business models.

Media and technology expert Spiros Kotsialos, Founder of CPS, is a respected publishing operations and technology guru with more than 20 years experience in systems management and digital innovation for publishers such as Random House, HarperCollins, News Limited and Allen and Unwin.

The 2015 McKinsey Quarterly report (Four Fundamentals of Workplace Automation) suggests that Automation and AI will ‘redefine jobs and business processes’, providing vast opportunities for professional growth of the current workforce. According to the January 2016 World Economic Forum (WEF) (Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution) report, automation technology and AI are key contributors to the fourth industrial revolution.

Based on this and other research, Kotsialos believes that “CPS will assist publishing businesses that may be struggling to free up resource to take advantage of technological advancements” Kotsialos said “As a mature industry, publishing has endured many changes and is challenged by significant movement in its customer base and an increased cost of doing business. AI can really help, if you know what you are doing. By directly taking on a publisher’s existing challenges and costs, CPS will help businesses move forward with new confidence and security, whilst reducing the cost of book production and distribution.”

About Custom Publishing Solutions:
Custom Publishing Solutions is an AI led technology company providing solutions to the technological and operational challenges of book publishers.

For more information on what Custom Publishing Solutions is doing to move into the fourth industrial revolution contact;

Spiros Kotsialos
www.custompublishingsolutions.com

Finally a blog post from me instead of Kirsten on how I am progressing. Going into this operation I thought after a few days I would be fine to be browsing the internet, watching tv, have visitors etc… unfortunately the operation took it out of me as I worked hard to deal with what it threw at me day-to-day and work through the challenges.

Right now I am in a really good place having just come through the last 24 hours with only 5 hours of real pain which is great. Arguably I am now in the best shape of my life as I am now 76 kilo’s which is the lightest I have been since I was about 13 J

Over the next few days they will be removing a tube they put down me last Monday to see if I can start to really eat and drink something without suffering from an overload of phlegm, pain from swallow or swelling that will stop me from swallowing. It will be an apprehensive couple of days as if I don’t get that right the tube will be going back in, and, believe me, that is not fun. If everything goes well from that, then I will be on my way to being out of the hospital by the end of the week!

On the off chance anyone going into this surgery every reads this blog these are the things I have learnt that might help someone else going through the same thing in the future.

• It’s not just the pain – The pain although significant is not the hard thing after an operation like this. It is dealing with the basics like clearing enough Phlegm to breath, careful movements to stop yourself from being sick, working through treatments that may or may not work 100% of the time and managing sleep as you are lucky to get more than a couple of hours a day.
• 2 steps forward 1 step back – I presumed that as I recovered it would be a gradual improvement. I got really frustrated that after a good 24 hours I would then have a really bad 48hrs.
• Relax don’t fight – You know the rhetoric “You are strong, you can fight this” in reality when going through it I should have been more like “Just relax, accept what is happening and let it happen”. Not to get all new age but if I were to do this operation again, I would work out some relaxation techniques that helped when you needed them to. i.e. when you thought you were drowning or a doctor was putting a tube down your stomach.
• Nurses are great, but you need to know what you need and how you need it – I can’t talk highly enough about how great the nurses and the people around them are. However, you need to know what medication you are being given, why you need it and how it needs to be given to you i.e. together, apart, only if you are suffering from a problem. Nurses only have a list of what they need to give you in a shift unless they have nursed you in the past they don’t really have a background as to your specific circumstances and requirements.
  BTW: The crap they do on a day-to-day basis is amazing. As as a poor nurse had to do stick something where you don’t want it to be stuck I thought she does this every day with no complaint and yet where I have worked people throw a mental about having to put paper into a photocopier!
• There are many more, but I think they are the main ones for now.

Last first note after surgery, Thank God for the amazing people around me. I can’t believe one how great a wife I have who has tirelessly helped me while dealing with a multitude of issues on the home front, communicating with people everywhere while always being here when I needed her to be. My Sisters and mother sending me happy notes daily. My Dad coming to spend time with me every day. My great friends either visiting or wanting to visit on a daily basis. And Allen and Unwin who have been amazing group of people (buy a book from them http://www.allenandunwin.com !!!)

That’s all the enegy I have for now, Until the next time.

BTW: Excuse the bad grammer, pubishing friends if it is too bad edit it and I will update it J

Been using the Boxer email client on the iPad for a week now and recommend it as a replacement to using the standard email client that comes with iOS.

These are what I think you will like.
– Works well with both Outlook and Gmail
– can create folders that connect across you different accounts
– you can make the swipe to the left and right work for you
– you can make it default to using Chrome as the default browser
– seamless integration with Evernote
– it remembers where you are filing emails so you don’t need to spend time saving emails into folder is quick.
– it looks great

Things that could make it great
– At the moment you can’t view a message full screen without clicking reply, this is annoying.
– if you set it up on other devices all your preferences and account setting could come along with them
– Being able to file messages from one email account into another accounts folders
– opening attachments can be problematic at times.

UPDATE:  I had to delete the program from my ipad as the Syncing with Outlook was just too unreliable so was unable to use as my daily client.

A few simple tips for using Google AdWords

1. Be specific and don’t use broad matches
2. Set your own bids
3. Review everyday and stop keywords that are not converting
4. Conversion is what’s important, bounce rate is 2nd, click through rate is third.
4. It is better to appear on second page and be able to afford two clicks than to have it on the first page and only be able to afford one
5. Work out what a conversion is and how valuable it is to you before you start
6. Always always set an end date for the campaign

Feel free to share with’re sponge of yours.

Some would say that creativity is not a problem for me, but after reading this article 15 Common Places That Can Inspire Your Creativity it got me thinking what places bought out my creativity.

Although I didn’t share too many things in common with the person who wrote the article,  there were some that we did agree on but most we did not so I though I would list mine.

Here are my top 5

A completely different setting

To name a few; New York, Bowral, Blue Mountains and Kastania (a small village in Greece). I find when I change my environment completely so does my thought process, so often solutions to problems appear in my thoughts when I find myself in a completely new environment.  For me this only happens when I am in a new environment for days not hours and have enough to get comfortable with your surrounding and relax into it.

Bookstores (only the good ones)

There is nothing like going through a bookstore where the owner has spent the time making sure that a variety of thought invoking books are on display.  If your every wondering what I mean go to Readings in Melbourne or Ariel Books in Sydney

Sitting on the bus

I don’t know why but for some reason when I am sitting on the bus watching the world go by things come to me,  I think it is the combination of having time to focus on things that you are seeing as well as the downtime.

Bars by myself

Not that I spend much time at bars by myself, but on occasion if I am travelling in a new country or a friend is just late to turn-up I find my mind wandering off, and more often or not sending myself a reminder of an idea to follow-up later

Art Museums

I think this is a creative place because your surrounded by creativity and it rubs off, I love just walking through looking at art or preferably photographs and thinking about the circumstances of the art as opposed to the art itself.

I think we all procrastinate from time-to-time, but there is nothing like one of those info graphics to make it crystal clear.

I came across this info graphic on LifeHack this week and thought it worth sharing.

How many of these boxes can you click?

Productivity tricks are something I am passionate about, but sometimes I think the endless pursuit to be productive does not lead to happiness it only leads to frustration.   That is until I read this article on Lifehack, “How Happy People Work Their To-Do List”  and found out I must be happy.

The article lists 13 things that happy people do when dealing with their tasklist.

The list is:

1. Start Early
2. Reward Yourself Often
3. Tackle The Hardest Thing First
4. Factor In Procrastination Time
5. Add Some Basic Things To The To-Do List
6. Add Some Silly Things Too
7. Look To The Weather
8. Break It Down Into Categories
9. Make Sure You Have Time For Replenishment
10. Do It To Music
11. Don’t Add Everything
12. Go With The Flow

I agree with all of them and follow most of them (the early start being a struggle on occastions). The most important things in my view are: factor in procrastination time, add basic things to the to-do list, don’t add everything and tackle the hardest thing first.

Who else does these things I wonder and what is the list that makes unhappy people?  (I think it will have something to-do with people who manage their to-do list through email)

9-5

Did you know that back in 1946. The United States government implemented the 40 hour work week for all federal employees.  Lots of companies thought this was a good idea and adopted it and before you knew it we have the 40 hour work week .

I came across this when I was reading this Life Hack article by Mark Panay called Why 9 to 5 is a Joke

It really got me thinking, the 40 hour week has never really worked for me so why has this not changed given everything that is going on and the improvements in technology. The answer seems to be that there is no easy alternative at the moment for companies to ensure collaboration and control/supervise what is going on.

In this day in age I think the technology is there to overcome this, but suspicion by employers and employees alike stops technologies and practices that could change the way we work from being implemented.

These are some of the attitudes that could enable a change in the work week.

• The 10am – 12pm collaboration zone – Make it so there is always an agreed time where everyone is available to collaborate
• Occupation Health and Safety – stop making companies legally responsible for peoples at home office environment
• Bring your own device – people choose the technology that suits their work and personal life
• Job descriptions by expectation not task – if you judge performance by expectation as opposed to tasks then the need to supervise is reduced dramatically
• Stop hiding behind email – companies often need to bring people physically together to overcome what is being avoided by hidding behind email
• Video Conferencing – people change their perception around video conferencing and be as comfortable siting in front of a camera as sitting in an office
• Adoption of subscription software – One of the benefits of subscription software is that it creates an environment where businesses are always up-to-date with the latest advancements with the software they are subscribed to.  This allows people to remove this issue of having old versions stopping people from using new versions when not in the office
• Remote security – IT departments deal with security and stop believing that security within an office location is so much better than everywhere else
• Cloud – IT departments get real about using the cloud to stop being dependent on location for software performance
• Automatic Answer- automatic answer of video calls when a person is available.

Your thoughts?

Ref:
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/why-9-5-joke-and-how-deal.html

After reading many books, countless training and coaching sessions and 16 years of experimentation and management I have established these tips for enabling better productivity when dealing with email.

TIP 1 – Process your inbox

I suggest “processing” your email before going through email one by one and completing all actions before moving or deleting an item from your inbox.

To-do this I follow these simple steps when looking at my email

Step 1. Can I answer the email within 90 seconds?

• If “Yes” do it
• If “No” step 2.

Step 2. With this email do I need to “Read it”, “File it” or “Action it”?

• Read it – then put into Read Folder (read tip 6)
• File it – File it into relevant folder (read tip 4)
• Action – Go to Step 3

Step 3. Does it need to happen NOW, in the next 3 days or 7 days?

• Now – file into NOW folder
• 3 days – file into 3 days folder
• 7 days+ – file into 7 days folder

NOTE: if any folder gets over 30 items in it, I may create a 2 days and/or a 5 days folder, this happens rarely

Step 4. Process email through the folders according to their priority

Step 5. Every couple of hours I note the totals of both so I have a record on progress

TIP 2 – The 10 folder limit

Many people create lots and lots of folders to file everything into. This means increased time to create folders, find items and a lot longer time spent filing than is necessary.

With all new email programs out there search has become so good that you can now change this practice and rely on search rather than folders to find your email. The reality is the mind works better on remembering who a message was from or when it was sent than what folder you filed it into.

So my advice is not to have more than 10 folders. The reason for this is it will allow you to quickly file directly from within the email window.

The folders I currently have are; Inbox, Knowledge, Personal, Soon NOW, Soon 3 days, Soon 7 Days, Read, FYI and General.

When filing this way you will need to rely more on search. To make this quicker you can put the following phrases at the beginning of your search to get more accurate results:

• from:    to find on who sent you the message
  
• hasattachment:yes    to find Items that have attachments
  
• subject:        to find items by subject
  
• received: yesterday, today, tomorrow, yesterday, last week, 10/1/06 AND received:<=10/5/06    to find messages within a time period
  

TIP 3 – The FYI Folder

Create an automatic rule for all emails where your name is not in the “to” box. Have this rule file automatically into a folder called “FYI”. Now periodically through the day just browse the contents of the folder and follow these simple rules.

• DO NOT try and read all messages in this folder, just rely on the message preview
• DO NOT file messages from the FYI folder unless you are 100% sure you will need to refer to them in the future as it will always be in the FYI folder to search for if you need to
• If there is a message you need to action move it to your inbox or your read folder
• DO tell people that you do this

It constantly amazes me how quickly people change their behavior when they know that you do this.

It is also a very useful technique for managers as once your staff understand you do this the following becomes true:

• If they cc you that means they have it under control and are just letting you know or using your authority by proxy
• When they put you in the to: box they are actively asking you to get involved and action

TIP 4 – The General Folder

Create an automatic rule for the big distribution lists in your organisation, e.g. “All Staff”, “internal memo” and file into a folder called “GENERAL”.

Once you have done this apply the same rules as you do for the FYI folder in TIP 3.

TIP 5 – The Read Folder

Whenever you have email that you don’t need to action, i.e. a policy document or an interesting article that someone has sent you then file it into a folder called “READ”.

Once you have this folder you will start to clear email from it in ways that suit you. For example you will clear items when on the bus, when you need to take a break or as you wait for the late person to turn up to a meeting.

TIP 6 – Daily tracking and reduction

Sometimes the biggest reward you will get for clearing you email is the satisfaction of achieving exactly that. Also I find if I keep track of how email numbers expand or decrease it helps me better manage my email and gives me a better sense of achievement. It is also useful in establishing daily goals.

This is how I do it:

1. Create a sticky note that has my email folder counts in InBox, Now, 3 days, 7 Days and Read
   
2. During the day I add in-progress and at the end of the day I keep a record
   

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me at spiros@kotsialos.com

I prided myself on being able to multitask, but this gave me food for thought?  You also may need to take a closer look at how you tackle your to-do list.

Despite the numerous gadgets and apps that help us get through our days, research suggests that only 2% of people can multitask effectively. As for the remaining 98%? They’re actually lessening their productivity without even realizing it.

Read on in this Mashable article

Multitask