 another session of Hacks for Hybrid Working. My name is Lauren Hanks. I'm joined here with Marin Diepwell and we are super stoked for the second session of this flex course called Digital Tools in the Virtual Workplace. So thank you everyone for that has tuned in last week and is coming back today. And if you're just joining for the first time, that's also awesome. There's plenty of blog posts and links that we'll add in Discord to help you catch up and get started. And so with that, it might make sense to actually recap you know what we covered last week and where we're where we're headed. So Marin, do you want to take it away? Thanks Lauren and hello everyone. Really excited to start seeing those contributions come in. Last week we focused on unpacking hybrid working. And we particularly enjoyed seeing all your contributions to the Splot site. If you haven't discovered it yet, just head back to the welcome post or the week one post and do have a look. It's fantastic to see pets, coffee, commutes, desks and so on appearing there. The Splot will give us a look, a little insight throughout the entire course into how everybody's reality of hybrid working is shaping up. And we also discussed a lot of readings for week one and reflected on some of our kind of key high points, low points. So if you did miss week one, fear not as Lauren says, just head back to the blog post and you can find all the important things there. Now in a minute, I want to recap on the practical exercise that we focused on during our session and Q&A in week one, which was our hybrid working wheel and a reflective exercise to help share what's working and what's not working so well. So in a moment, we'll bring up the visual for the roadmap. And I wanted to start explaining how this is all going to fit together. So Lauren, if you're ready, should we go and jump in? So welcome to your hacks for hybrid working roadmap. This is going to be at your side for the duration of the course and also really important tool for you to achieve our course aims. It's kind of a bit a mixture between a signpost and a support tool and a kind of visual notebook where you can add reflections and pictures and other thoughts that you've had. The idea is that you can download this template and take it away either printed or digital and can complete it, you know, you can scribble with pen and paper, you can put post-it notes on it, you can download it and edit it digitally, you can add pages. This is your roadmap, your template. So please feel free to use that as you need to. Now, we're going to just have a quick look at the four different parts of the roadmap, one of which we already started on last week, which is the hybrid working impact. Before we go on and jump into weeks two topic, tools and platforms. And then in later weeks of the course, we're going to have them think about hacks for hybrid, which I'm very excited about. I'm looking forward to that. And also charting your course, which is our final week of the course. Now, Lauren, last week we looked at the hybrid working wheel. We explored this example of the map. So just to recap, everyone had a look at these different categories from work-life balance to commuting, physical and mental health and so forth. And it was also a space where you could add your own blank category to reflect on. And then we looked at the difference for us from one to 10 that you could all assign. And this week, we're going to take this particular exercise and start populating our roadmap with our reflections from that exercise. So there is a dedicated section of the roadmap, which you can now start to complete if you haven't already had a look at this in the email. And there are three reflective prompts. And Lauren, in a minute, I'm going to come over to you to see if you can share some of your own reflections. So we're going to talk about areas that you score high, which are positive, areas that you score low, which are challenging or require attention. And then also think about which one area you most want to focus on during the course. So, Lauren, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, thanks, Marin. I really love how these questions are laid out. I just have to say because I think it's really important that while, you know, the purpose of this course is to figure out kind of what's not working and how we can improve and make things better and what we can be focusing on going forward. I still think it's also really important that we are celebrating what is working. And so I love that the first question is really talking about, you know, areas where you've scored highly or, you know, that are positive, the positive parts of your working wheel. And so I think for me, you know, looking at my own hybrid working wheel right now, I have to say I think socializing with colleagues is something where I scored rather highly. You know, that's always a moving target in virtual settings, of course, but I think Reclaim Hosting does a really great job of making our Slack space very interactive. And I see all of my colleagues on a weekly, if not daily basis, it seems like with just our various team meetings, but also our water cooler channel and the different ways that we try to connect, you know, with work, but also outside of work with, you know, virtual working hours and Music Mondays and things like that. So we can talk more about, you know, those strategies maybe in a future conversation, but I feel really proud of how I'm able to socialize with my colleagues even in a virtual setting. I also think that my home working environment, I feel very lucky to have a dedicated office space where I can come to work and then be able to leave that space when work ends. And I have, you know, really kind of curated my desk space, which is on the spot, if you haven't seen it already. But I, you know, feel really proud of kind of the environment that I've set up physically for my work. So those are maybe two areas where I have scored highly. What about you? Oh, sorry. Oh, no, I was just going to ask how you felt about your, your working meal. Similar to you, I think I have a lot of positives. So again, home working environment, I think during the pandemic I really worked at that because I spent so much time in front of the computer. And also my physical and mental health, like I just did some sort of desk based exercises today. And that's a good example of the kind of strategies that I use to kind of break up the long hours. Commuting I love up the stairs down the stairs. And definitely, you know, home office pets, I'm scoring very highly in that one. One of the areas which I thought was challenging for me is collaboration. Because I think I've worked with folk who are for many different skill levels and confidence levels. And sometimes that can easily lead to this communication. So are there any areas that you identified which you think are challenging for you at the moment? Yeah, you know, and I can definitely relate to what you're saying just around collaboration and virtual spaces. I think, again, that sometimes can be challenging depending on the project at hand or the task at hand and making sure that you're not, you know, working on top of each other and that everyone's communicating in the best way possible. And that can sometimes be a challenge for sure. I think for me, and this is sort of what I mentioned last week too. It seems funny, but I do have commutes scored rather lowly for me. And that I think is because simply because I need to start waking up earlier. It's just a fact. And maybe others in discord can relate to that. But you know, when you don't have to get ready and get in the car and go somewhere and be at somewhere at a specific time or your commute is the 10 second walk to your desk, you know, you can really kind of wait to the last minute sometimes. And I think it's, I would be a much healthier individual if I had more time for myself before my working day started. So that's something I really want to prioritize in the coming weeks. And I think that will also, that is very related for my physical and mental health as well, you know, making sure that you, you know, my entire day, especially as it starts to get dark with the seasons changing, making sure that I'm seeing sunshine, you know, and getting outside, getting fresh air, I think is going to be really important. And I've started, you know, taking walks on my lunch break and things like that, but there's always, you know, I have to make a really intentional choice to do those things. And on a very busy work day, it's really easy to say, Oh, you know, no, it's fine. Like, I'm just going to work through lunch or I'm, you know, not going to stand up for four hours, you know, and so, you know, making sure that I am doing that is important. But you have a standing desk, don't you? Right? I do. Yeah, I'm standing right now. So I have a standing desk next to sitting one. I have a very small standing desk, but I really appreciate it. I had an injury last year that made it impossible for me to sit at my desk and I've become a firm convert to standing up for most of the time. Although it can be very tiring. And some days I'm like, Oh, I'm really tired. Why am I tired? And I'm like, Oh, I stood up for 10 hours. So it does seem like an obvious point, but it's surprisingly easy to miss. One of the things that I identified that I wanted to focus on for myself during this course, and want to explore with along with all of you guys is thinking about collaboration in a kind of hybrid world. And let me explain what I mean. I think I'm coming across a lot of the time now, a kind of impromptu mix of in person and online. So I get invited to an event and I'm like, okay, I'll come and collaborate for half a day. And then it turns out it's like an in person event. And I thought it was online. And similarly, I think I am starting to have to juggle some commitments in person with some commitments online. And I think there is a lot of nuance to making that work, like collaborative working with kind of seamless handover between online and in person. So I'm not sure if I'm the only one who feels that this is challenging. I suspect not. And I'm hoping that you guys will leave some comments and share you a discussion on Discord about what, you know, what area you want to focus on during the course. Lauren, what's yours? Or is it commuting, getting out of bed? No, I mean, I do mention the commuting, but no, I think it's, there's more that I can use this course for besides just setting a permanent alarm. So I'm going to hold myself more accountable than just that. I think definitely one of the areas that I want to work on that seems related in my head. So just go bear with me for a second. But for focusing on physical and mental health, if that's something that, you know, is a priority for me, just in terms of how I'm working in a virtual space. I think part of that is also making sure that, you know, things are decluttered. That's really helpful for me to feel like, okay, I can separate at the end of the day and know that I've got an organized path forward for the next day. You know, knowing that I'm being efficient with my time and that I'm organized and planned. And so part of that is really thinking about you know, my relationship to the digital tools that I have in place. And that's everything from how I'm working on, you know, my phone, my device, how I'm staying connected on Slack and how I'm pulling in notifications there. And also thinking about, you know, the sites that I have in my seat panel account and keeping those cleaned and up to code as well. And so I think a lot of those, you know, areas can have small, you know, to use a quote that my family uses all times. It's like, small holes can sink a big ship, right? And I think it's really important that if we, you know, are cleaning up our digital tools a little bit and thinking about how we can make them, you know, work for us in a different way, I think it will ultimately impact, you know, my mental health, because I'll be able to just sort of separate at the end of the day. So that's kind of my way of hopefully transitioning into what we want to chat about this week, which is really, you know, thinking about those digital tools and our relationships with them and, you know, kind of starting there. So if that sounds like a plan to you, then let's do it. Yeah, let's jump right in. I think everybody's ready for week two now. We've recap week one. And do please post any questions that you have, or if you missed a Q&A in week one, just post questions, get in touch with us. So yeah, let's jump in. I'm excited week two. Awesome. So in that case, I'm going to share my screen now. And again, just kind of thinking about where we are in this roadmap. So last week, we were laying the foundation, right, for what this course is, thinking about, you know, what's working, what's not working in terms of power, you know, just thinking about our virtual spaces. And week two is really focused on those tools and platforms. So I am going to jump right in. So a couple of the things that I like to think about when we talk about the digital detox, right? Or I think it's really important, you know, the same way that you have a, you know, a spring cleaning, right? So the same way that you think about cleaning out your office space or clearing out the clutter in your closets, I think it's just as important that we are doing that for our virtual spaces too. And so I am enacting a fall digital detox. And I think that this week, everyone should be focused on, you know, different elements for cleaning out their digital spaces too. So a couple of the areas that I want to focus on, the first one being a clean desktop. I think that if you've got a clean desktop, it makes all the difference. And I'm going to call out Meredith, if you are listening right now. There was one time we were working together in person and I looked over on her laptop and the entire desktop was full of files and it just, it hurt me physically to see that. And again, everyone has a different working style and a different, if that works for you Meredith or anyone, if you're that type of, you know, if that's how you do things, awesome, then you can skip this slide. But for me, it is really helpful to make sure that I've got a clean desktop and I know where to find things. I also have the application Hazel listed here and I'll make sure to include links in Discord and there will be other supplementary links in the blog post for this week as well. But Hazel is pretty cool because it will basically rename your files and automatically send them to different storage folders as you're downloading them. So I'm thinking of, you know, I have to download a lot of files for work at right now. And so having something like that where as soon as it's downloaded Hazel is just kind of pushing it out and renaming it and putting it in a beautiful place or, you know, having, having settings. So things are downloaded somewhere else, simple stuff, but it can make a world of a difference. I also really like using background, background images that have desktop or organizers on them. I think I've logged about this at one point, but having sections of my background image, so a personal box or, you know, to do box and then I can move files to those boxes on my desktop. And it just helps me sort of situate with what I've got going on at a given time. So I encourage you to think about your own desktop. It does make a difference. Next. Are we going to do a spot check like everybody put in the commons or on discord? How many files they currently have showing on their desktop? Yeah, take a screenshot right now. I dare you. I'm 17. Oh my gosh. The second one that I encourage you to think about as a larger concept is just minimizing the spaces that you have to check. Check for things. You know, if that's resources, you know, are you checking eight different areas for documentation? Are you having to message people behind the scenes and DMs? Are you, are you checking Slack archives and Google Drive and your email inbox? And like, is there a way to streamline some of that? Because I think that takes up a lot of time that we don't really think about when we have to go find an answer for something internal. If that's a process or if that's just simple, simply a file, you know, do you have that concept streamlined a little bit? And, you know, it might be 10 seconds here or 20 seconds here. But if, if you know where you're looking and you're going to one place or two places as opposed to nine places, I feel like that will also help declutter and help long term as well. And I know my team on is probably rolling their eyes internally, because I've become documentation lady, I think, where I'm like, oh, you know, we should get that documented because that's, that's cool, right? So I do have that on the list as part of this as well. So the other one that I want to discuss is just notifications in general. And, Mary, I'm sure you can relate to this just or anyone can just working in virtual settings, even not even if you are in an office every day, you still receive notifications on your phone. And I think when you're talking about your relationship to digital tools in general, working aside, notifications are a part of that. And how we are taking in content is so important. So, you know, I, for instance, we just had a hurricane come through Florida and I installed all of these new sources on my phone to get the latest and the hurricane has passed, the storm is gone, but I'm still getting these banners. And I mean, multiple times an hour of just, you know, big headlines for new stuff coming on my phone. And I'm realizing that every time I see something, I'm like, it's like a ping of anxiety, like what's wrong, what's going on, you know, and it kind of puts you on alert in a different way. And I think it's really important that we're kind of controlling how we're ingesting data and making sure that, again, you're creating a healthy work environment for yourself and setting boundaries, whether that means something as simple as turning off those banner notifications on your phone. Maybe it's thinking through finding a balance between, you know, positive and necessary notifications in Slack. You know, I was thinking about our Slack office space, or I have continued thinking about it for reclaim and realize one day that all of the notifications coming through were emergency level things, servers going down, escalated tickets, you know, things that require attention in a very serious way. And I think it's important, similar to how we're pulling in those notifications, we're also saying, you know, I'm awesome to myself, you know, or hearing something positive with daily affirmations or, you know, pulling in good customer satisfaction reviews or things like that. Maren, I'm not sure if that's something that you've grappled with at all recently. Oh, yeah, I would definitely do. And I think, you know, I think I want to mention that I'm a notification absentee. So like a few years ago, I took the decision, like I just couldn't cope with the amount of notifications I was getting at work. And so I've switched off everything. I don't get notified from social media, from work, from anything like the only thing that I get notified about is someone calls my mobile phone and my personal number. And I really like the amount, the volume of information that's coming at me, which I think most people have, is just so overwhelming that I really just have to set aside times, like, this is the time when I look at social media, this is the time when I look at my emails. Like if I just keep my attention on things that continuously roll over, I'm not productive. I never get anything done. Exactly. Yeah, actually, it is extremely difficult to become literate in notification management, because so many apps make it nearly impossible to, you know, switch things off completely and still retain functionality. So social media apps I'm looking at you, that is really tough to do. And so I, one of the tools, I don't want to jump too far ahead, but one of the tools we're discussing this week is the data detox kit. And I've learned a lot from this tool, like I think of myself as very digitally literate. And there were some really great tips on that in terms of, you know, just managing your personal information, managing your relationship with mobile devices or work devices, protecting yourself and just also taking a deeper dive into how invasive some of the technology that we use for hybrid working and personal communication has become. You know, and I do keep on track of those things, just like many people doing, but it is very difficult and they keep iterating. And so I love this kit. And I actually like you, I do that once a year, go on a big binge of deleting, clearing, unsubscribing, muting, sort of all of that, just to keep balance, really. Absolutely. And it's, and that's the other thing too, is like these tools are only as helpful as you make them. And so if they're cluttered with so many notifications that you, you don't read them, then what's, you know, what's the point of being there in the first place, right? Or, you know, and to your point about social media, it's strategic. You know, like, I think I was reading something around Instagram where they will withhold notifications, even if you're on the app, and they will wait till you leave the app for a certain period of time and then push you notifications coming back. So I think it's like, I completely agree, taking control and making it an intentional choice. Okay, this is my time where I'm checking in with friends and family on social media, you know, and then I'm exiting out of that. Same thing, you know, even with email where it's like, there are sometimes where it's like, you know, I will just avoid my inbox if I know it's all spam. And it's like, okay, well then why do I have the inbox in the first place, right? So, you know, we'll continue to talk in the coming weeks just around strategies for managing some of this. But I encourage you for right now, just to take a pulse of how your notifications are coming in and how you're taking in data right now. And if there's an imbalance there between positive and negative data. So that's just something to consider. Yeah, I agree completely, Lauren. And I just wanted to say one of the things I found helpful about the tool we're looking at as well this week is that it has sort of several steps you can follow like from starting with your smartphone data to thinking about your settings and then thinking about the defaults that you're being presented with by the technology to using. So if particularly if you're feeling overwhelmed, you don't know where to start or maybe you're just looking to tweak something very specific. I think this kit provides a lot of helpful options and it also dives into some of the more trickier dimensions including kind of ecological impact and sustainability as well as kind of kind of the ethical and privacy kind of implications. So I know this goes a little bit beyond the sort of hybrid working focus, but I think it's very much related to issues we all care about. Absolutely. And so on that topic then, I think there were two other points that I wanted to cover just as you're kind of thinking through your relationship with digital tools. One of them, and you kind of already pointed to this, Marin, a little bit is thinking through your installed applications. And Marin, I think you said that, you know, once a year, whenever you go through and you just delete stuff or uninstall stuff. And I think that that's so important, you know, especially now with the danger of having things buried down in folders on your iPhone, like you get, you don't even remember what you have on your phone, or at least that's me. So, you know, going through your phone or your device, even your cPanel account or your reclaimed cloud sandbox base and just calling through that stuff, you know, are there things that you installed at one point when you were playing around in cPanel that's now forgotten but could be maybe a security risk because it's never updated, you know, or so just be thinking about, again, what you have installed on your desktop and is it useful? Was it useful at one point and now you're no longer using it? Can it be removed and cleared out? Again, that spring cleaning idea. And to that point too, just while we're on the topic of cPanel, you know, thinking through your site and domain structures is also part of that, I think. Think about your domain real estate, you know, and if you have core sites, for instance, that you're running semester over semester, have you cloned those into separate installs and they're just becoming cluttered in your cPanel account? Could you be creating new pages each semester instead or even, I know some faculty will use a WordPress multi-site and then they have a sub-site of that for each course, you know, are there sites that maybe you used at one point but now could be flattened into static HTML to so you don't have to update them like things like that, you know, and we'll include links in this cord but I mean that can sometimes get away from you too where it's like, oh yeah, I'm going to create this whole site for a project or an event that I'm running and then the event passes and it's like, you know, sites go, you know, never to be touched again. And I think that digital footprint is something that we have to consider and talk about when we're thinking about our relationship with digital tools and Maren, I hear you, you, uh, chuckling over there. I really am, yeah, and I couldn't agree more and I think there's an interesting tension there to me between, you know, how we manage work as individuals and how, what that looks like if we're part of a larger institution and you just mentioned around, you know, how different faculty like to use different tools and like, oh, I have like dark deep skeleton secrets of, you know, all like WordPress installs and all web like project pages that no one remembered existed that need to be cleaned up and, you know, there's a whole kind of, there's so many different levels to that and I think it is, there is a tension to me between sort of being really experimental and being like, hey, I'm working on a new project. Let's just knock this up and we'll get really like somewhere exciting and it's all really creative. And then everybody kind of moves on to the next thing, but then you're stuck with the sandbox or a project page. Yeah, right. And there is, you know, sometimes there could be personal information on there that could be documents that need filing, you know, not everybody has a hazel. It is like a, you know, a never ending project. And I think one that sort of long term users of technology, you know, which many of us in this room are, you know, I think I've really stuck with there are very few tidy solutions for tidy things. And if you've ever tried to close a social media account like Facebook or Instagram, like, remember once I tried to quit Instagram, but it took me like three weeks to figure out how to do that. And after that, I still hadn't quit my account. And it was like, we still retain your data. I'm like, wait, no, I want to close it. It wasn't a struggle. I tried to delete my Facebook back in the day. And I mean, I kid you not, it was probably a six month or deal where they actually deleted my data because they were like, well, you might want to come back. And are you sure you don't want to come back? And then you need to tell us like three or four times why you want to delete. So it's definitely intentional for those decisions too. But I think you also raised a good point about the longevity of projects and then where they go afterwards because I, you know, and that's something that I think a lot of our community struggles with right now is just the concept of archiving in general and what that means. And, you know, every tool handles archival differently. You know, so there are times even where I look at my old blog posts and I'm realizing that I've linked out to project sites that are no longer around. And so thinking about just, you know, am I okay with these links, links breaking now? Is it worth it to keep this site up and running in case someone looks at a blog post that I wrote six years ago? You know, so those sorts of discussion, I don't think there's a simple answer for those. It's, you know, when you're dealing with those decisions at a university scale, you know, we have a lot of schools that are thinking about just archiving thousands of sites on a WordPress multi-site, for instance. And, you know, it's a struggle for sure. So I'd be curious to know how others are handling that in Discord currently. You know, and we can also continue to chat about that in this week's Q&A session as well. So definitely. Yeah. I would love to hear more about what folks in a room are thinking about that. Definitely. And the final one that I'm mentioning. And I literally wrote on the slide, this is a black box for me. And if we're talking about things that I truly need to focus on, maybe this should be on my hybrid working roadmap as well, but photo storage and in a digital space. I mean, I, here's a question for folks. I'm curious how many photos you have on your phone right now? I will, I will look. That's not pretty. If I pull up my, all right, you go first. Okay. It's still calculating. It might not be a good sign. No. I mean, I must admit, I was so pleased when I saw you put this on our topic for this week. Okay. So I have about 9,500 photos in one folder. And I use three different ways to store them and I hate every single one of them. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like, I've tried out Flickr. I've tried out Google photos. I've tried my storing on iPhoto on the Mac, which slows everything down, you know, I've tried drop up. Like I've just, I haven't found something that works for everything. And then I'm also scared to put all of my eggs in one basket. And then that basket goes away. And I've lost all of my history of photos, right? So yes, I, this is something that I, I struggle with still. I have, in case anyone's curious, in my recent photo album, I have 26,000 photos. Yeah, exactly. So I, and so that for me is a monumental project. So I also, I think this is a really great example of where private and professional lives in sort of join because, you know, like, I use Google Apps for Education a lot. And if you share photos with people, you know, like they've started to introduce workflows now where if you retire, a user kind of all gets unshared. But if you share it with like a different email address, you know, or private Google account or something else, then you have to manually unshare like folders and you have to check all of that. And, you know, people move on a lot, relationships change, like that is a very tricky subject. But I do have one thing that might sound an anachronistic comment to make in the week on digital tools and platforms, but I print photo albums. Like that's my ultimate backup. I actually have books. Yeah, or like a physical hard drive that stores everything or something. No, I completely agree. It's and I don't again, I don't think there's one answer that works for everyone. Jim, if you're listening, I think, you know, like he's very into Flickr. And, you know, I think at one point he went through all of his photos. But and then it's like, do you categorize them? Do you, you know, if I wanted to go find pictures of my mom, you know, is there a way that I could do that? And so it's just it's such a huge feat. And I'd be I know there are open source storage solutions out there. But it's just I know that once I commit to one, okay, now I've got to put all of my photos in it, you know, and it's that's that's probably where I need to do a lot of work. I also I love the, you know, I love thinking a little bit further about the sort of image recognition that this is a lot behind a lot of like Google storage, for example, for photos, they're like, okay, we're training our AI on this. And it's like, okay, I don't want that, you know, and then sometimes it finds pictures like I, it like went through a phase a few years ago where it suddenly made you automatic albums of people or things. And they were not necessarily correct. And so you thought you might be looking at pictures of like you and I saw an FU and suddenly there was like, you know, an ex boyfriend, and you were like, okay, that's not my niece, you know, this is how these things can go like weirdly wrong in a way that, you know, it's not as smart as it's says on the tin. Right. Yeah. And I think for the time being, you know, I have put most of my photos in iCloud, the photo storage just because it's integrated with the iPhone and it's all already there and backed up. But now I feel, you know, okay, I've got to pay Apple now for storage because I have so many photos and that's my own doing to be clear, you know, but I do need to even sift through and can I delete all those screenshots that I took when I was, you know, anyway, it's just, there's a lot to go through there. And obviously 26,000 is like, I don't need 26,000. But it's a fantastic segue into having a look at how you make sense out of all of this kind of, you know, complex evolving picture. So what do you say, should we take this discussion and have a look at the tool we're trying out this week? Let's do it. Okay, so for this week, we're going back to our roadmap and we've started making you a kind of blueprint to start thinking about your own tools and platforms. So in a minute, Lauren and I will kind of build on the discussion that we've had to start thinking about which tools we would put where on the spectrum. I just wanted to kick off the discussion and explain a bit how to reflect and how to use this with one of the example readings we included in this week's post. And that is a great blog post by Mahabali on students talk to me about webcams, which I really enjoyed reading. It's a great read. I mean, Maha's got a great blog. So if you haven't explored it before, do. But I think it's a great example of a tool that many of us use webcams and video conferencing and gives a student perspective and also a faculty perspective and thinks about the advice we give to faculty and advice we might follow ourselves when using that. And I think it's a really helpful reminder on, you know, how the best intentions can result in the opposite outcome that we want and how actually for someone, a tool might be on the green spectrum, the positive spectrum of this. And for someone else, using the same tool might be on the opposite end. And I think depending on how you use it and who you are in this relationship of the technology, whether you are just a user and admin, someone who's implementing something, your experience can shift radically. So Lauren, did you have any thoughts on this post and any other examples of technology that you'd want to put onto the spectrum for this week? Yeah, you know, so looking at this visual currently, I would definitely say that my experience with Slack is certainly in the green as it's showing here. But I like what you're saying about how, you know, again, tools are only as helpful as we make them. And I think something that's a positive experience for me and the work that I'm doing, you know, if someone's using it completely differently, they might have a completely different understanding of how that tool can be used. And so Slack is one of those very broad ideas even where it's a virtual office space. So you can pull in what you want, right? And so Chris, for instance, and on our infrastructure team, he pulls in a sauna notifications that come directly into Slack. I do not do that. I have that separation, but it works for him. And so, you know, and like I have organized my my channels and Slack to have to be categorized by the teams on my sidebar. But I know Jim does not do that his is in alphabetical order. And so people do have a different way of going things. So even when I go to document something for someone using a tool, I can make recommendations. You know, but it's important, I guess, to always be remembering that people do handle those tools differently. You know, I like to pull in my calendar notifications because I always have Slack open. So Slack will remind me when I've got a meeting coming up. So that works well for me. But I'm not sure if others use that, you know, so that's definitely something that I would encourage folks to think about. And I'll make sure to also, you know, at least link different ways that, you know, Slack can be integrated with some other popular tools like Google Calendar or, you know, a sauna is one that works for us and probably one that I would put on this list as well. At least for our team, a sauna has really changed through the years. And Jim just blogged about how our working modes have changed when we started the game versus, you know, where we are now. And a sauna used to be sort of our CRM for new colleges and universities. And it was our place to kind of keep track of the history of those relationships. And then we realized, you know, we need an actual CRM for that stuff. And we're going to use a sauna for what it's meant to do, which is a transparent to do list. But I think, again, it's if you're not, you know, using it for ways that make sense for you, it's hard to find a purpose for it and a place for it. You know, and I think, ultimately, we want these tools to help us be more efficient, not add another step in our workflow that, you know, takes more time out of our day. And that's our distinction sometimes. I couldn't agree more. And it might be folk in the room now who are thinking, oh, yeah, I have loads of ideas. I'm going to put this and this and this. And this is something I really hate that's definitely going into the red bit. This is something I really love. This is going all the way to the green bit. But if you're kind of looking at this and you're like, I'm not really sure where to start or what to include. Let us share some prompts with you. We can talk through just to get you started. So one way to choose where to start might be to ask yourself, which tool or platform do you use frequently? So Lauren just used a sauna as an example of a tool that she uses frequently. But think about something that you use all the time and think, how well does it work for you? And why is that? And then that will help you locate it somewhere on the spectrum. Or secondly, I think, which tool makes the biggest difference to your work? So for example, it might be a tool that you're not using very often, but it makes a huge difference to you. So I think I'm going to jump in there and mention Canva, which is a tool that I don't use that often. But when I do, it makes a huge difference to me. Like, it's really helped speed up certain types of document and content creation for me. But I think the killer function for me is that it resizes things into the right format and resolution. So when I recently had to take like a postcard and make it into a six foot banner, it was like literally resized six foot tool bang, and then printed it in real life. It looked beautiful and wasn't isolated or anything. And that previously would have been requiring more skill and software that I could easily handle between three emails and four meetings. So that has been a really great tool for me that I've started using more and more in the last few years. What about you, Lauren? Do you want to jump in here? Well, I just had to agree with everything you're saying about Canva. I love Canva. I love that you can save things with transparent backgrounds and all the templates there are really, really well done. It's a great sort of entry point into creating any sort of visual representation for whatever you need without feeling like you need a degree in Photoshop, which I took a class on Photoshop once, and I left the course feeling like I knew less about Photoshop. So, you know, I think there's that level of design, and then there's Canva, which is a really helpful entry point. I think one for me, just answering this question. And again, this is no surprise to my team, Spark, the email client. It integrates my calendar with my email inboxes. It has a beautiful smart inbox thing that separates newsletters from people emails, from, you know, other subscriptions or notifications, and it really helps me prioritize my work. I also really like that I can create public links to an email conversation, so I can share that with a colleague or even someone who wasn't a part of the conversation, but now needs to see it later down the road. And so there's just a lot of helpful features. And if you ever want to pull me aside and talk about Spark, I could go all day there. I feel there might be a Discord sub chat coming on here, which would be amazing. So I think we're coming up with lots of examples of tools that we love, and we hope that you can join in. But what about tools we like using the least and why? So I have a kind of mild example of this in that my organization isn't a native Microsoft user. And we do use Microsoft products, but not very widely. And so I'm not a native Microsoft Teams user. And instead, I join Microsoft Teams meetings for like 10 different institutions, every few within like a short timeframe. And it hates me because there isn't a native organization associated with it. Every time I log in, I'm an institution that doesn't recognize, I can't raise my hand. It's like people who are native users can't understand why I'm so annoying and I can't work it out. Why can't you use the chat? Why can't you raise your hand? And it's a real great example of enterprise level software that is not designed to be used with external people or at least not in a way that I'm experiencing it day and day out. And I would certainly say, you know, once it works, it's fine. But like getting it to work, like in my experience for me personally, in my hybrid working setup is not great. Yeah, that's a wonderful point because I was trying to think about what I how I would answer this question because I do think I've done a pretty good job of being able to say, okay, that tool serves no real purpose for us. It's clutter at this point. Let's get rid of it. And reclaim at one point did have sort of an HR file cabinet space that held a lot of the records for employee histories. And it was where we handled performance reviews and things like that. But I did feel like at one point, you know, it was just it was this extra place that no one went to unless you needed something from there and then was it updated, right? And so we just we cut it out and we pushed everything into gusto, which is where we handle all of our HR responsibilities now. So that's something that we definitely did change. But yeah, I would have to agree with you about the meeting softwares where every team that you're trying to connect with a different version. And it's the worst when you have to install an entire new app on your on your desktop in order to meet with them, right? So yeah, that's a good point. I think folk in a room might also get a lot of software packages dictated from the powers that be. So, you know, do feel free to share comments in Discord, share if you want to your week two of the road map. That's right, there can be support groups for damaged software users. But before we finish up and talk about our roundup and what's coming up next week, I just want to go back all the way to the start of this session today, when we talked about our hybrid working wheel, and we talked about reflections there. And hopefully you've picked at least one area of hybrid working that you want to focus on. And one thing that we want to encourage you to do to make the most of this road map is to spend a little bit of time to think about which digital tools or platforms relate to that particular aspect of hybrid working that you focused on. So for me, it was collaboration. And I just mentioned one of the ones that I have, which is like, for example, teams. But I think focus on those and how well they work or where in the spectrum would they be located? There might be a really positive or negative or mixture of all of that. But it might help you identify further what you want to be working on and what you want to find solutions for. So that is, I hope, what you all need to really do a deep dive. And yeah, Lauren, we've got a lot more coming up for the rest of this week with the Q&A. But I think hopefully focus everything they need to jump into this part. Absolutely. And yeah, Ditto Marin, I am super excited for the Q&A later this week, just to check in and see how others are thinking about their relationships with digital tools. Where are the challenges? Again, this week is all about just identifying that and building off the hacks for hybrid roadmap and continuing thinking through those things. And then next week, we will be jumping into more hacks for improving. Now that we've sort of diagnosed where we are in our virtual spaces, what's the plan for the future? How can we set up ourselves for success in that way? So I am also looking forward to next week and the coming weeks for this course as well. Absolutely. And so before we close this session, just a quick reminder for you, like a little checklist of what you should aim to complete this week. So we're really hoping folk can jump in to this roadmap template, do it either in paper or digitally, fill in week one. So that's where you include your wheel and your reflections. There's extra space there for extra reflection. Feel free to share some publicly in Discord, share with the group or keep them to yourself if they're more personal reflections. And then start to make a list of the tools and platform you use for hybrid working and just start adding them to your roadmap and where the spectrum they lie. So yeah, hopefully that should be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to seeing what folk come up with. I know. And someone please, you know, make me feel less embarrassed about the number of photos that I have in my phone, please. I cannot be the only one that has let things go that far. So anyway, thank you, Marin, as always for helping with this session. And thanks, everyone, for participating in Discord. We're looking forward to connecting over the rest of this week. And we look forward to seeing you at the Q&A later this week as well. Awesome. Thank you, Lauren. See you all. See you.