Low Season? Forum Features? Clarity of Mind Unchanged?

mcogilvie said:
There's nothing unusual about exiting consumer space, either, even for big companies.

Was the official GTD blog ( gtdtimes.com ) a foray into the consumer space? Yes. But it is no more. The site ceased to exist and you are redirected to http://gettingthingsdone.com/gtd-times/ now.

Both http://www.intentsoft.com/solutions/gtd/ and http://holacracy.org/resources/gtd-holacracy initiatives and important partnerships are aimed at the coroprate market. So I fully agree with mcogilvie's diagnosis.

Long time ago Merlin Mann ( http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done ) tried to "convince" DAC to go on a trip outside the corporate world but it wasn't a good idea.
 
All this is very, very interesting.

At the one end of the spectrum we have all those individuals who, as expressed so well by mommoe436, want to be able to exchange ideas for finding the best personal system for themselves. This type of need can be satisfied by low-cost means such as forums (anybody's forum would do, as long as its focus suits the individual) or books (written by any guru you care to listen to) and perhaps the occasional seminar etc (more expensive).

At the other end of the spectrum we are talking about how consultancy firms can both make money and "help the world" by instilling sound management philosophies into entire organizations. There is no doubt in my mind that this is the more lucrative way to go for DAC. (From these organizations the thinking paradigms will eventually spread from the employees to their friends and family and professional contacts and "into the world" on a non-commercial basis, but this "leakage" is, I'd say, only positive.) GTD as such is not really designed for organizations, so it seems natural for DAC as a company to liaise with companies such as those mentioned my TesTeq - with Intentional software to influence and learn how facts and projects and goals etc can be most effectively represented in computer systems, and with Holacracy to both influence and learn how the governance of "circles" and "roles" and "domains" can be defined, and perhaps be able to bring back some of this wisdom into personal GTD.

There is no contradiction in catering both for individuals (with books, forums etc) and for organizations (management consulting and/or computer systems). Even if the corporate side is more lucrative, the individual side can at least be seen as a "paid marketing cost" for getting into organizations from their lower levels and up, i.e. an alternative/complement to advertizing or cold calling.

Although I find all of this extremely interesting generally, I think what really interests me most at the concrete personal level in the shorter time frame (1-2 years) is something in between these two extremes (i.e. between the enterprise and the individual marketing routes).

I think it might prove advantageous both to DAC and to "demanding individuals" like myself, if DAC were to engage (directly or indirectly) in developing a pre-packaged "solution" (books/teachings + software design franchises) that go beyond GTD and a little bit further into integration and longer term planning aspects (perhaps inspired by Intentional) and a little bit further also into role definition and "domain" paradigms (inspired by Holacracy). Although GTD and Holacracy are different things and for different people, they have some very important things in common. Both are "tension driven" (Holacracy's term, but essentially analogous to what DA is is talking about concerning what kinds of "stuff" you need to "collect"). Both are "opportunistic" and "dynamic" in the sense that rigid time planning does not form a fundamental part. Instead it is the natural awareness/tension, and the current situation, that drives projects and next actions on a "first things first" basis (an old expression; cannot be allowed to be monopolized by Covey.)

A clearly profiled mid-level solution along those lines might accomplish a few things. 1) There will obviously be some portion of the individual and small business market that will actually pay for this "solution" (if it is reasonably priced and featured; need not be as inexpensive as today's typical GTD apps, though). 2) Its very existence (and its clear description/definition) will also heighten the awareness of GTD's (DAC's) hallmarks (fact/"hard landscape" driven, momentaneous decisions rather than prematurely planned; dynamic in an orderly fashion) and may provide a clean-edge profile that has a stimulating effect both on individual-level and organization-level sales 3) The mid-level solution (text materials + apps) may also serve as a convincing sales demo of the fundamental principles for those large corporate clients who in the end really need a complete and totally customized package of management routines and extensive training (and/or perhaps even large computer systems integration services.)
 
TesTeq said:
Was the official GTD blog ( gtdtimes.com ) a foray into the consumer space? Yes. But it is no more. The site ceased to exist and you are redirected to http://gettingthingsdone.com/gtd-times/ now.

Both http://www.intentsoft.com/solutions/gtd/ and http://holacracy.org/resources/gtd-holacracy initiatives and important partnerships are aimed at the coroprate market. So I fully agree with mcogilvie's diagnosis.

Long time ago Merlin Mann ( http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-getting-things-done ) tried to "convince" DAC to go on a trip outside the corporate world but it wasn't a good idea.

Time will tell, I suppose. But I'm not surprised DAC doesn't continue to invest resources in non-revenue generating activities, like free blogs. Their efforts just appear to be focused elsewhere and in markets other than the U.S. But I have no inside knowledge, of course.
 
TesTeq said:
Report from Poland:

Yes, there's a Certified Franchisee of the David Allen Company in Poland (DOOR Group S.A.) and I attended their first public seminar. Or second because the first one was canceled due to a lack of participants. The quality was very good but only 10 people attended. Why? Because it was priced at the corporate level and there was no DAC or Door Group S.A. presence in places where productivity enthusiasts meet.

International expansion? Yes! Consumer? No way!
The same situation applies here in Australia. There is a franchisee (HPO International - Singapore office) who are scheduling one-day "Mastering Workflow" seminars in Sydney and Melbourne next week. Cost is USD $595 per person which equates to approx AUD $640 in the local currency. That's probably not going to attract many individuals.

To get my employer to pay I'd need to convince them of the benefit of this over other professional development options. So that may explain why DAC are beginning to target corporate customers. Get them on board and seminars like this would be well attended. It makes a lot of sense and should generate good revenue, and ultimately would improve the spread/reach of GTD much more than can be done with individual customers. That would make sense of the changes we're seeing here.
 
PeterW said:
The same situation applies here in Australia. There is a franchisee (HPO International - Singapore office) who are scheduling one-day "Mastering Workflow" seminars in Sydney and Melbourne next week. Cost is USD $595 per person which equates to approx AUD $640 in the local currency. That's probably not going to attract many individuals.

To get my employer to pay I'd need to convince them of the benefit of this over other professional development options. So that may explain why DAC are beginning to target corporate customers. Get them on board and seminars like this would be well attended. It makes a lot of sense and should generate good revenue, and ultimately would improve the spread/reach of GTD much more than can be done with individual customers. That would make sense of the changes we're seeing here.

Corporate money (or the money of very senior executives) is always going to be what pays the bills for the most successful "time-management" consulting firms (Let's not quibble over whether GTD is time management). The question is really what is the visibility of the firm's approach beyond the corporations they work with. Amazon tells me that Covey's Seven Habits is ranked at 643 on Amazon's best seller list, but #1 in general business and #1 in personal growth. The GTD book is at 246, but #3 in time management (after two books that are recent releases). It's the only real classic in the top 20 of that list. I'm a little surprised by the legs of the 7 habits book. I think the impact of the revised GTD book will be interesting to follow.
 
Summary

As for the main question, about why it is so quiet here now, it seems the most commonly given reason is the shortcomings of the new forum software. This should be simple enough a problem to fix.

Other possible reasons given are the departure of Kelly Forrister and the perception that the discussions on the forum are sometimes too argumentative. If there is any substance to those factors really playing a role for the activity level on the forum, I assume they are both much more difficult to fix than the forum software.

Sadly, in my view, although there seems to be quite some degree of general interest in what is happening with GTD (DAC) as a business, there seems to be no overwhelming interest in what is happening with GTD as a methodology and movement: "It is what it is, whatever that is; and we are happy to simply belong on that boat, regardless of where it is going or what we are actually doing with it. Knowing that we all listened to the same teacher is what counts."

I would personally have found it much more interesting to participate on a forum that saw itself as "DA's extended think tank", formulating crisper and crisper definitions of what tends to work best under what conditions, thereby influencing how people in general, and app developers in particular, look upon "time management" practices. But maybe that's just me (and other geeks).
 
Dunno anymore. Zendone and Nirvana (app forums) used to be active and have quite "high quality" GTD/methodology discussions, but those forums, especially Nirvana's, have slowed down considerably during the past year or two. GTDNext's forum was very active for a brief period this year, but was quick to slow down. Many other apps also have forums with reasonable activity, e.g. Toodledo and Appigo and Doit, but are not really centered around GTD. Regardless of which app forum you participate in you will find that the majority of threads tend to be about bugs and minor conveniences rather than methodology.

But maybe there are other forums, say at LinkedIn, Google Groups etc?
 
Is this forum officially "fixed"? I went away for a few months because it seemed to not be working. Just revisited today and seems to be lots of activity again. Was anything ever said? Or did it just start to work again?
 
JamesT said:
Is this forum officially "fixed"? I went away for a few months because it seemed to not be working. Just revisited today and seems to be lots of activity again. Was anything ever said? Or did it just start to work again?

I'm ready to call it fixed (knock on wood). We've been working on this Public: Discuss Getting Things Done section of the forum, finding intermittent issues that we could not reproduce, for a couple of months. It's been stable now for about two weeks. Some combination of our work and a patch from vBulletin have made the difference. Please go ahead and post, and let's see how it goes.
 
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