The Party Invitation Guest Limit

The guest limit for a party should be made crystal clear. Most of the time you will be inviting a couple to a party so you need to make it clear on your invitation that only two people are invited. Get creative on the invitation and create two checkboxes with 1 - attending or 2 - attending. Do not let your guests control the number of people attending. The party budget and seating limitations will dictate how many guests per invitation will be allowed. 

Lack of common sense happens all the time with the people you invite to parties. Avoid misunderstandings by being upfront that there is a guest limit. Remember to indicate that no children are allowed if it's an adult only type of party. 

Bike lanes gone wild

Bike lanes are accidents waiting to happen when the moment is just right. Who is at risk? The biker, car, and pedestrians.

Bike lanes have rules. Bikes ONLY!!! Hahaha, it's the wild wild west in the bike lane. If it has wheels it will be in the bike lane. No speed limit is set in in the bike lanes so watch out. Bikes and anything on wheels are blazing by in the bike lane.

Street parking for cars next to a bike lane requires the occupants of the parked car to cross the bike lane with extreme caution to get to the sidewalk safely without getting run over by anything on wheels. You also need to cross that bike lane again to get to your car. The bike lane is bidirectional so you better look both ways or you will end up in the emergency room. They just come out of nowhere so you need to be very alert by a bike lane. Drive ways in the bike lane requires everyone to watch out for each other.

Night time is when everyone is at a higher risk. The visibility in the bike lane is poor. Most bikers do not use safety lights like rear red blinking lights and handlebar lights. The anything on wheels does not help the situation by using the bike lane at night. Everyone is at risk of getting hit.

King Street - Honolulu (Oahu)

My Project Management Zen Moment

The view from Magic Island on the island of Oahu.

Project Managers need to get out of the office and find a place to refresh and have their zen moment to find the elusive pieces of the puzzle that their project is missing. The Pacific Ocean is my favorite place to have my zen moments when I need to find a solution for a project. 

Find your favorite zen moment place where you live. Just clear your mind and relax.

My Kanban Board

Sample Kanban Board

The Daily Kanban Board

Capture daily project activities of all your projects on a spreadsheet. Use the Kanban Board spreadsheet to make important project notes. The Kanban Board notes will be used to update your MS Project plans or other project tracking software. Keep it very simple with three columns consisting of To Do, In Progress, and Done. Create a daily tab on the spreadsheet carrying forward outstanding activities on the new Kanban Board spreadsheet tab. The tabs come in real handy as a source of historical activities on the projects.

Kanban Board at a Glance

Having a visual view of all your projects on a spreadsheet Kanban Board style is very useful to help keep you on top of everything.

Updating Project Plans

Review the daily Kanban Board at the end of the day. Update your projects plans with the final project activity notes for the day. Updating your project plans throughout day to keep it fresh is good, but there are days that it's better left untouched till the dust settles at the end of the day.

Sample Kanban Board Spreadsheet

This is an actual snapshot of my Kanban Board spreadsheet that I use. You need to enlarge it to see it better. 

(Note - this article was originally written by Drake Settsu and published on projectmanagement.com/blogs/419316/Project-Management-in-Real-Life in May 2018)

Let's get together gang

Coordinating a get together using technology

It should be a piece of cake with the neat technology at our disposal on our smartphones and digital devices to round up the gang. Well that's what I thought. Reality check time what year is it? It's 2016! I assumed everyone knew how to use their smartphones and the apps. Wait, what is an app? Just joking. The technology is not being embraced on our smart devices. That's the problem. The games are what these devices are used for the most. Smartphones and apps keep getting better and better, but the users are not even tapping 30% of their capabilities. The mainstream users are just not ready yet for all this technology. 

Schedule an event on Facebook

Facebook for scheduling events

Facebook let's you create an event to invite people to attend. It's easy creating events on Facebook. The invited people will be notified and all they need to do is read about the event and respond to the event by selecting one of the three choices (Going, Maybe and Can't Go). Simple and to the point end of story. They can post comments on the event to ask questions or make suggestions. Very simple and efficient way to coordinate events. Sending text messages back and forth is not the way to go. 

Good to see all of you

Group text messaging tips

We all love to text each other to communicate instead of calling each other because texting is just a faster way of communicating. The native text app on your smartphone is not efficient to handle group texting. It's fine for one on one texting.

When you are group texting to communicate among friends the text messages can flood in left and right that will require a sexy user interface on your chat app to make it easier to read and communicate. I recommend the Viber app that is available for download on your smartphone. Go to the Apple - App Store or Android - Google Play store to get it. It's free.

Viber is a simple app to use. Tell your friends to install it. Grant Viber access to your contacts so it can discover all your contacts that are using Viber. You will be able to message anyone with a Viber app installed on their smartphone. Upload a selfie to your profile so when you start your group texting your picture and name will be on the message to make it easier to identify the texter.

Give Viber a try and have fun using it. Viber is a powerful app with many more features that you can explore. I have feeling you will like it.

My home network is slow on Wi-Fi

I'm keeping it as simple as possible to explain slow Wi-Fi on your home network. If your paying for high-speed Internet service and it's slow that's not good. Test out your Desktop PC or your Laptop that is connected to an Ethernet cable and look at the connection speed to see if your Internet provider is delivering the speed you are paying for. If your wired connection is working fine your Internet provider is not the problem. They are not responsible for your Wi-Fi that's your problem. 

Before you make any router setting changes check the location of your router. The location could be the problem in your home. Try to place the router in the center of the home if possible to see if you get a stronger Wi-Fi signal. The material in the construction of your home could also be causing signal loss. Solution get a (Wi-Fi range extender) to expand the Wi-Fi broadcast to dead spots in your home.

Router channel selection is important too. You should be on the best channel to ensure good Wi-Fi performance. You need to know how to log into your router with your admin login to view and make changes to the settings. There are only three non overlaping channels that deliver better network performance than the other available overlaping channels. The three best channels that do not overlap are 1, 6 & 11. Network performance will improve using one of these channels that do not overlap, but a channel will slowly degrade when it gets overcrowded by other routers genetrating a lot of traffic on the channel. You can experiment by trying out the three channels to find the best one that works for you. In the USA we are not allowed to use channels 12-14.

The view of the 11 available channels that you share with other routers.

The graphical view of the Wi-Fi traffic across the 11 channel spectrum from a Wi-Fi Analyzer app. Note that the Wi-Fi Analyzer app is available only on android devices. The app shows all the network traffic your neighborhood is generating that is near the location you are in. Powerful routers are broadcasting beyond their owners properties causing Wi-Fi congestion across the 11 channels. If you don't have an android device to run the Wi-Fi Analyzer find a friend that has one to help you.

The Wi-Fi Analyzer has many tools to analyze your home network. This is just a sample screen of what it can do.

Handling Rejection

We all encounter rejection at some point in our life. Rejection can be a painful and insulting experience. Don't let rejection change your course in life. Being rejected should make you a stronger person. It gives you an opportunity to do a self assessment to address your weakness to avoid any future rejection. 

Sometimes when you experience rejection it's not you that has the problem it's the other person's inability to see your worth. That's not your problem just move on it's their loss not yours. 

Staying positive is a must if you want to overcome rejection. Always pick yourself up when you hit any wall in life. Tenacity is a quality that you need to reach your goals in life.

The Art and Science of Blogging with Twitter

Blogging is an art to express thoughts, recommendations and to share experiences. The blogger needs to be able to reach the readers with interesting content that will capture their attention to explore and stay on the blog. The goal of bloggers is for their readers to get a value out of their blog.

The science of blogging is analyzing how to get people to read your posts. Social Media is your assistant to spread a blog post. Post to all the social media platforms that you are on. Join social media platforms that you are not on yet. Twitter is a very powerful social media platform to tweet your posts. It's all about using good #HashTags that will be searched on by potential readers. Tweets need to go out at strategic times to reach potential readers that you are trying to reach.

Recyle old blog posts on your social media platforms. This will ensure that any new connections see your posts. It also gives you a chance to reach existing connections that might have missed your posts.  

Blogs requires constant attention or it will fail. You need to invest time in it by continually creating interesting content that brings value to readers. Keep on posting.

Lei greeters that prey on tourist in Waikiki

Be on guard for lei greeters on the sidewalk or beach near the Hilton Hawaiian Village and Hale Koa Hotel. They are attempting to give an impression that they are giving out free leis. That is not the case after they place the lei on the happy visitor. What happens next is a fund raising story to get you to dish out some serious donation cash. They are ripping you off if you buy the lei.

This picture ilistrates a brother and sister that tought they were getting a free lei from the young girls. What they got was disappointment as they walked away not paying the rip off price for the lei. These poor kids will take home a tarnished vacation memory of Hawaii.

My Twitter Word Cloud

My twitter timeline translated into a cloud.

Get your word cloud by tweeting: @wordnuvola #wordcloud

It's the 11th Hour the Curtain is Going Up

The day has arrived after months of hard work building and testing the new system. You are in the go-live phase of the project. You should have an implementation timeline tasks in your project plan. The timeline will summarize all the required steps to implement the new system.

The timeline should contain:

• The timeline is like the program for a play that lists the cast and acts. The audience wants to know ahead of time what to expect. Your stakeholders want to know the estimated time of completing the go-live.
• List all key contacts with cell number so you can confer with them should issues arise.
• Give a brief summary of all the steps in the implementation and list who is performing the step.
• Estimate the time in each step and include some padding in it. Estimate time in quarter hour, half hour and one hour increments. 
• Make sure you have a back out plan should a situation occur that impedes a successful implementation. You need to give a good estimate on how long you will need to back out the implementation at the designated point of no return.
• Highlight a key step in the implementation that means you are at the point of no return. You can only go forward now at this point. Any issues encountered will have to be addressed on the fly and resolved to keep moving along in the implementation. Evaluate with your team at this point that you all are confident that you can continue the implementation. If you are not comfortable contact your key decision maker to ask for extended time to address the areas of concern or back out the implementation.
• Send an update that the system is up and ready to use.
• Take a bow the curtain is coming down now after your successful implementation.

Breakfast for Dinner at Waikiki Beach Eggspress

Sometimes you want to have breakfast for lunch or dinner. Waikiki Beach Eggspress is my favorite place to have corned beef hash and eggs. The food is great there. You need to check this place out because they have more delicious Items on their menu. The staff are very friendly and will make you feel at home.

Convenient Waikiki location in the lobby of the Aston Waikiki Circle Hotel:

2464 Kalakaua Avenue Honolulu Hawaii 96815

Phone＆Fax: (808) 926-EGGS (3447)

Hours: Open Daily ／6:00am to  2:00pm

                                  4:00pm to 10:00pm

Website: https://www.eggsnthings.com

　　　　　　　　　　

Corned Beef Hash and Eggs with potatoes.

Educators using web based Project Management Software

Educators can benefit from using project management software by outlining their curriculum for the semester. Stay on track to meet the goals of the semester. You wil be able to tune your curriculum by tracking and making adjustments on where you need to spend more or less time on subjects.  

The software has more features that will make you a well organized educator.

Free trial to test it out: https://www.wrike.com/?r=HkkJ7vgL

Project Management Key Performance Indicators (KPI's)

It's a good idea to complement your project by defining KPI's to present to your stakeholders. KPI's will demonstrate that the project is on track by meeting it's goals. Assemble your team to come up with ideas on what to measure and how you will achieve the measurement.

Project milestones are important, but they just mean that you reached a given point in the project. Stage your KPI's at milestones to get a thorough health check on the condition of the project then celebrate the milestone.

It's all about ensuring that you deliver the right results when you get to the finish line.

Project Manager v2.0

The key areas of Project Manager v2.0 

Deadlines, resources, and small budgets. I need it next month. Leverage technology to run your projects. Web based Project Management is here so use it. So many products for you to try out for free to see if it works for your organization.

The modern day project manager has a full plate of responsibilities:

- Cloud access to the project. 

- Staying on top of project management methodologies.

- A politician to negotiate tactfully. Charisma to lead. Social skills to be respected by the team.

- Social Media savvy. Communicate your project on social media. Get approval with your Public Relation Department on what you can post.

- Working out of your comfort zone by taking on projects that are not in your line of expertise. You will learn and grow to be a valuable project manager.

- Being a Subject Matter Expert in many areas. It's good to have some subjects under your belt, but in reality you are not going to know everything. Rely on your experience and skills to become a SME in a new subject. Over time as you assemble teams and work with SME's you will become a SME in many areas.

The sticky notes Project Management tool

One of the most high tech tools at your disposal is the sticky notes. When you are brainstorming and laying out your project you need to start labeling all your high level and detailed tasks on sticky notes. 

When you are all done creating your labeled sticky notes the fun starts. Look for a wall or window in your office to start arranging the notes. You are going to assemble a puzzle called your next project. You can keep shifting the notes around to ponder different approaches until you feel you have tasks in the right sequence. 

This is actually the high tech part of laying out your project. Enter your masterpiece puzzle of tasks into a web based project management software or Microsoft Project.

Mr. Hacker said let's go Phishing

Don't be a phishing scam victim.

I'm using a real email that I received from a scammer to illustrate how creative and desperate these bottom feeders are getting. The email went to my spam folder so that made it suspicious. Sometimes legitimate email gets caught in the spam folder. In this case if was a dangerous form of a phishing scam. The email account that was used is not on record with the credit union, and I don't have an account with the credit union so that tipped me off.

Look at the grammar on the email. WAS and CAN. No email signature. What is really dangerous and sneaky about this email is the www,navyfederal,org/support link. It's a legitimate link if periods were used instead of commas hidden in the hyperlink underline. Very clever if you don't look at it real closely.

A person worrying about identity theft might click on the link thinking someone opened an account in their name or made some change to the account. Be careful with all suspicious emails. Call the institution in question if you want to make sure your not an identity theft victim.

The double edge Email

Why do we always need to send an email when a simple call can get the answer. This is one of the reasons why a person would send an email out. The person is calling you out and they want an audience by carbon copying others on the email to have a front row seat of the action.

When you receive an email that boils your blood take a deep breath and resist launching a torpedo at the coward to not be baited into playing that type of game. Instead blow off steam by gathering supporting information to defend yourself and respond back by replying all so everyone will see your response. 

Always respond back in a professional manner to teach the sender some class. Everyone on the email is reading your your response so you need to maintain your composure and professionalism.

It's so funny when you get attacked in an email with an invited audience and you vindicate yourself in front of everyone. Most times you never get a reply back from the sender. One time I only got an instant message from a person admitting their mistake. No guts to let everyone else know. That really shows the character in that person.   

Let's do a One on One

Staff vs Manager it's all good. I'm talking about a manager scheduling one on one meetings with their team members once a month to make sure everyone is on the same page. Bring up issues and concerns and make recommendations. This type of practice will help managers keep staff on track to get any needed feedback to them to improve their annual evaluations. Staff can make adjustments along the way not waiting for an annual review to receive a critique of their performance because that is too late.

I recommend a minimum of 15 minute meetings to start out with and you can vary the meeting length on staff that needs more time or less to just lay it out on the table no holds barred. This is a valuable time for managers and staff to get to know each other better.