This morning, I took a deep breath, held it, and walked through security at work after three days (and a weekend) of vacation in toasty, toasty Texas.

I'm back. To the grind.

And I was bracing for it to be baaad. But much to my surprise, I sat down, listened to some voicemails, sifted through my inbox, made a to-do list, then headed off to a meeting relatively calmly and more or less collected.

Now this is not normally how I come back from vacation. It's usually more akin to a tornado-hurricane-tsunami with a shirt on inside-out and backwards and mismatching socks. But today, I think I pinpointed the difference: I didn't do any work on vacation. I actually -- gasp! -- took a vacation! And, what do you know, I'm feeling pretty refreshed.

The agency I work for is strict with telecommuting stuff, and my supervisor and I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to get me remote email or server access for a three-day vacation. So I sort of crossed my fingers that nothing would come up and hiked out of here on Thursday afternoon -- and honestly hardly thought about work at all because there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

I know that's not possible for many people in many positions, but boy, would I recommend it.

Do you really take vacations, or are you glued to your email/phone/'berry on the beach?

Thanks to Nils Geylen for the photo. Yeehaw!

Not to turn this into another never-ending social media analysis diatribe blog, but when this study popped up the other day, it turned some heads.

What did it say? Simply, that 77 percent of office workers in the study had Facebook accounts, and of those, two-thirds accessed Facebook for at least 15 minutes a day during working hours.

Has Facebook's foundation really been built during work? Has it become huge as the result of a zillion users jumping on it during work/school hours, and in work/school settings?

Equally provocative, the study found that Facebook is used as an alternative messaging and collaboration platform (instead of Outlook, Gmail and other tools). Which puts it outside the protection of traditional office tools, and their security software safeguards. So you have people on FB instead of working 1.5% of their work time, and using it without any protection (Safe Social-networking, anyone?) Whose worst nightmare is this, anyway?

If you constantly hear, as I do, that companies are scrambling to find ways to establish a presence on Facebook, and Twitter, and other SocNet sites -- then something's upside down here.

Should we all take care of our FB updates and Tweets during work, and assume that we're doing exactly what companies really, really want. I think so, don't you?

photo by Jacob Botter

Of thank-you cards, that is.

One day, I went to Target, bought a 50-pack of cute little cherry-blossomed letterpress thank-you cards intended for a budget wedding and promptly shoved it in the corner of my desk drawer, convinced it would probably remain there, unopened, until I pack everything up at the end of my summer internship and take it home again.

I was so wrong.

Those little buggers have been oh-so-handy in the past few weeks. Now I’m not a huge suck-up gushy person, and I’ve always felt weird about some of the super-traditional tips I’ve heard about job searching and networking. That being said, I’m also a nice person, and I do think people should be thanked for going above and beyond what they’re paid to do (and, of course, the sucking-up quality of it couldn’t hurt).

My summer internship is part of a real internship program—one that “strongly recommends” we take major advantage of the networking opportunities within a large state agency. At the beginning of the summer, each intern got a binder full of names and contact information and instructions to do at least 25 informational interviews with interesting people. Now last I checked, no one had even made it to ten, and I certainly don’t plan to hit the target.

But I’m in the midst of these meetings right now, and I have to say they’re fascinating, educational and definitely good for my career. Some have been within my own department, some in totally different areas of the agency and a few not within my agency at all (think other state agencies, counties, etc.). They’ve already produced some job and master’s thesis leads, which is fabulous. They’ve helped me understand what’s out there, what I might want to dabble in someday, what I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. And they’re helping me build my network—something that just seems more and more important every day.

And, really, how could I not thank a person for that? I have no idea whether anyone will remember my precious little cherry blossom thank-you card the next time they have a job opening in their department, but it couldn’t hurt—and is probably the right thing to do career-wise and person-wise.

Thanks to Fern R. for the thank-you card photo (I daresay they might be cuter than mine...)

I think we're back into the generational thing again, comparing the media coverage of the passings of two "celebrities" -- Michael Jackson and Walter Cronkite. We were talking about it in the office this morning.

Over the past weekend, you couldn't find a newscast (local or national) that didn't contain multiple tributes to Cronkite, and his lasting effect on news, on television, and even on the U.S. as a whole -- e.g., President Johnson's lament that if he'd "lost Cronkite('s support for the Vietnam War), then he'd lost the country. President Obama talking about all of us losing a great friend.

But I suspect that the eulogies will end pretty quickly -- now that the weekend is over, and the funeral will not be a televised marathon. Compare that to the frenzy over Jackson's death, running non-stop for days, with the "live" televised funeral services bumping regular TV programming.

Did Jackson have that much more of an impact than Cronkite? Or was it only a demographic thing, where Cronkite is remembered pretty much only by Baby Boomers (or pre-Boomers). In fact, considering those demographics, would there have even been as much to-do about Cronkite if Jackson's hoopla hadn't set the stage (sorry!) for it?

I think not, and I think that there's a definite reflection of values transitioning from one generation to the next. So if 1969 was a watershed year for the Boomers (moon landing, Woodstock), then this year might mark the closure of their era.

What do you think, are Baby Boomers officially a past-their-prime generation? Do they realize it yet?

Right now, the media loves two things: unemployment and social networking technology. Combine the two, and they really go nuts. LinkedIn will score you a job. If not, Twitter definitely will. No? Well, Facebook or YouTube will totally nail it.

[UPDATE: Check out this list of the top employers recruiting on Twitter. Very interesting. Thanks, Ken!]

I keep seeing these stories in the news, and sure, I think it’s cool that we have these new-ish tools at our disposable, especially in such a crappy time to try to find a job. But I’m a little skeptical. Are people really getting jobs through Facebook?

I thought I’d try it out. There’s a specific company that just might be the keeper of my dream job, so I sent a tweet out into cyberspace to see if anyone who follows me on Twitter might have a friend whose boyfriend has an uncle who has an ex-girlfriend who went to middle school with the CEO or anything. I just wanted a connection for an informational interview – not even a real job or interview – and I got nothing.

Social networking is cool. It’s trendy. And it seems like a great idea to apply it to the job search. But I don’t know anyone who’s gone from sad and jobless to ecstatic and employed because of a tweet or two.

Has anyone out there had job-search luck in the social media world?

You probably have your own idea for a favorite summer vacation, everybody does. One of those paradoxes of the workplace is that when you need a vacation, you have to work twice as hard as usual to get yourself ready to go. If you didn't need one before, you need it now. Here's why:

First, there's the whole thing about looking into the future. Let's just say that I'm planning to go on vacation (yes, I am, as a matter of fact, in a couple of weeks!) I have some things that need to be ready for production the week that I'm away. So before I can leave, I'll need to have those complete. Before I can complete those things, I may need some information from other people (warning -- I probably will!), and then they'll need to have it available for me as well. Sorry.

Directly related to that, I have to reach out to every person in my work universe who could possibly be affected by my absence, and insure that they understand that I will be out for a week. I may need to get some of them to sign a sworn affidavit acknowledging that they understand. I'll send out another reminder a couple of days in advance, for any last-minute questions.

A funny sidelight -- a couple of people misread my first note yesterday, and sent me some "urgent" things that needed to be dealt with before I go, not realizing I won't be going anywhere for another week. Fell right into my trap.

Which brings us up to the very last minute. Almost every time I've ever gone on vacation, despite warnings, I've been hit with a barrage of questions, problems and projects that need to be handled before I can leave.

Up to a point, you can count on pre-vacation adrenaline to see you through, but after that point, enough is really enough. So if it's really last minute, it may not happen for a couple of weeks. Consider yourself warned. You know who you are.

photo by epSos.de

It's a nice week for show-and-tell, don't you think?

Several of us will be doing a presentation this week at a conference -- always an interesting experience. Why? Because there are so many different styles and theories of presentations, and it's pretty amazing how people get set in their ways.

Maybe you recognize some of them. Maybe you are one of them.

Some of the folks infuse massive amounts of detail into a slideshow, with information substantiated by more data. Their mission is to make a presentation so complete that viewers could walk away with a copy of the presentation and feel confident they've seen and heard everything there is to know about a topic. It's the equivalent of an online, visual, and extremely thorough book.

A second school of thought is focused on workflows -- diagrams and charts detailing exactly how things work, and what needs to happen for the next thing to happen, and how the very first thing happened to begin with. It can be very technical -- but very practical and illuminating -- in outlining theories and next steps.

Third (and I'm sure there are many others) is a bit of a combination of tactics, and it's the one I use. Part of it I attribute to a presentation I saw four or five years ago, given by Guy Kawasaki. He suggested a couple of things -- first of all, the 10/20/30 rule.



What's that all about? If you haven't heard of it before, it says that in a one-hour presentation, you should have a maximum of 10 slides, the presentation itself should run for only 20 minutes, and all slides should have text that's at least 30 points in size.

Ten slides (which you can even announce in advance, if you want to show off) sets expectations for the audience, and even if they hate your presentation, they'll stick with you because they can count down to the end.

Twenty minutes is an attempt to bow to reality. To explain, in an hour presentation, you can expect to spend (waste) time getting set up, and getting everybody to settle down. Then, you should have time for questions, and then you start packing up, to make room for the next presenter.

Thirty-point type (minimum size) accomplishes two things -- it takes care of the problem of people squinting to read everything on the slide, and also forces you to be frugal with the amount of info placed on each one.

Now, what about the presentation itself? Heavy use of graphics and light use of text is another way to go. That forces the audience to listen to you, rather than focusing on reading the slide (i.e., reading along with you reading the slide). If you know your material well, this can be a really effective and dramatic way to go.

So my presentation? It'll follow the third pattern. It's only a half hour time slot, so I'm doing four slides and a link to a website. If I can get people to talk back to me, rather than my talking to them for the entire time, I'll be thrilled.

What's your favorite presentation style? And what's your favorite presentation story?

The summer I spent working at a major men’s health and lifestyle magazine which shall go unnamed was the summer I got over the fear of seeing my coworkers in spandex. (And, yes, vice versa.) At least I thought it was.

That’s not to say I particularly enjoyed jogging on a treadmill at the office gym next to a dripping, grunting, 11-miles-per-hour-sprinting editor who, an hour later, would hand me one of my stories covered in red pen.

But in an office where health is business, both personally and professionally, and where overhearing reporters on the phone with urologists discussing certain apparatuses that may or may not enlarge certain parts of one’s anatomy was "normal", I sort of got used to it. We worked health, and we lived health. And spandex = health.

Fast forward a few years. I now work at a large state government agency. We like healthy people, but it’s not our only focus. Most of my coworkers are my parents’ age. The ladies ooh and ahh over my “fabulous,” “adorable,” “those-can-NOT-be-comfortable” shoes as they look down at their those-are-definitely-comfortable soles.

When the ad for yoga classes popped up on our internal Web site, of course I jumped at the chance to take an hour-long relaxation/exercise (read: bliss) break once a week. It wasn’t until I signed on the dotted line that I started to get a little nervous.

Do I really want to stand behind someone bending over in yoga pants one minute and sit in a meeting with him/her the next? And, more importantly, does he/she want to have a front-row seat of my downward-facing dog…and then edit my press release?

Especially in an atmosphere where we don’t eat, sleep and breathe health and fitness (or, unfortunately, taste-test protein shakes, ride little bikes around the office and have Nerf machine gun fights), I’m getting a little nervous for Thursday yoga to begin.

My strategy will be this: Choose baggy pants, stare straight ahead and use it as a networking opportunity as I try to do with everything around here.

Question is whether anyone will want to hire me after they see my sad, sad chaturanga.

How do you feel about working out with coworkers? Good idea? Bad idea? There must be some good stories out there!

Thanks to Andrea Fregnani for the fab photo (which I hope was taken at work).

A co-worker had a birthday the other day (Happy birthday to-o-o-o you-u-u!) and was clearly a little off-balance as a result of the impact of aging (over-30, home, new baby). I tried to give comfort by telling him that "31 is the new 50", but that didn't appear to work.

Growing into new roles is a process that many people seem to struggle with. There's the mid-life crisis, the quarter-life crisis, the aging boomer crisis, the Gen Y crisis -- and of course, the Gen X / middle child crisis. The rolling effect of these crises is that roles in the workplace continue to be elusive. Mentors are as tough to come by as apprentices.

In the midst of all this personal turbulence, how do you find an appropriate path to teamwork? A lot of the old, gold standards for lines of authority and responsibility are getting fuzzy -- and yes, you can point to the economy for that one as well. If a thinned-out organization is going to function effectively without classic structure based on generational hierarchy, how will that all come together?

We're just guessing here, but our guess is that flexible, cross-functional teams will straddle departmental organizations. They'll tackle strategic objectives and attack tactical needs as well. And don't discount the intervention of outside contractors to bolster some of these.

The traditional departments will feel much of the pain, and there'll be a lot of juggling going on. And figuring out how and where those people fit best will be the biggest challenge of them all.

See what happens when just one person has a birthday?

When we last looked, the Blackberry was the "official" unofficial office tool. Everybody had one, everybody connected to work email, some work applications, and work pals, bosses and underlings.

This summer, that's changed. In my office area, there's only one holdout with a 'berry -- everybody else has gone iPhone on us. There's mail, there's Twitter, there's messaging, there's GPS built in. And we won't even talk about all the non-work stuff, ranging from pedometers to measuring devices.

Morning conversations have "evolved" from discussing the progress of specific strategic projects with expected outcomes to ... does it feel funny typing on an iPhone touch screen?

Now I know it's new and cool, and I know that just about everybody who doesn't already have one will be getting one for Christmas this year. But I'm not really seeing it as an investment in productivity for most people. Companies often bought many employees a Blackberry to extend the tether (the role that used to be filled by a beeper). Particularly in these economic times, I can't see most companies switching to iPhones instead. Anybody know any company -- outside of Apple -- that has done so? Please let us know.

So will it become as ubiquitous as an iPod, or even a 'berry? At that price, and without corporate support? And with no meaningful professional functions to boost productivity?

I guess I'd have to say "yes", it can't possibly miss. Am I wrong?

I kind of hate holidays, or at least love-hate holidays, for a bunch of reasons. Even the 4th of July.

In one previous life (I've had several), I worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and as a state employee had 10 holidays a year -- one almost every month -- and it provided a great break. Most private companies only have half that many holidays, and that often comes with an asterisk.

Speaking to someone on the way to work today, I heard that he's off for a long weekend, except that he's probably going to need to work almost a full day from home to catch up. Not the first time I've heard this story, especially with lean staffing in many companies these days.

If it were actually a vacation, he'd be off the hook -- not as many people are willing to give up their personal holidays and work, as opposed to the company/public holidays. But here is my point (at last!).

Some people are protective of their personal time, others less so. But if there's a corporate expectation that holidays are a gray area between personal time and company work-release time, then something's definitely wrong. And that's my holiday thing -- I only want to be thinking about whether it'll be too wet for the fireworks display, not about whether we can figure out which Drupal modules will work best (some of you will know).

What are you looking forward to this summer?