Creative Mind Consulting

Incredibly Useful Free Tools to Maximize Your Training Mission

My presentation last week to the American Society for Training and Development, Twin Cities chapter (ASTD-TCC) is uploaded for your viewing pleasure (SlideShare made it extremely easy to post):

Two Exciting Presentations Upcoming....

Just finished preparing presentations for two upcoming conferences -

"Lessons from History: Ethical Leadership" for the

American Institute of Architects 2009 Minnesota Convention

and

"Using Incredibly Useful Free Web Tools to Maximize Your Training Mission" for the

the American Society for Training and Development 2009 Regional Conference

Really looking forward to both. Here's the text of the workshop bulletin for the architect's conference:

Just as ancient structures or historical buildings inspire current design trends and architectural constructions, historical characters have much to tell us about modern leadership and ethical behavior under difficult circumstances. By looking at several key Revolutionary War leaders and the challenges they faced, we take away insights that inform our relationships with colleagues, building partners and clients. This program will emphasize four key concepts underlying ethical leadership development: casting a vision, character formation, overcoming adversity, and continuous learning.

The intersection of leadership, history, technology, social media and democracy is a fascinating, and I hope to do more exploring in this area.

Fabulous Web Freebies - Evernote

Have you ever wanted a portable file cabinet for the Internet? A spot where you could gather together great articles, inspiring quotes, yummy recipes, to-do lists, etc?

I have a Fabulous Web Freebie recommendation for you to consider - Evernote. Evernote is a free online application that allows you to capture a wide range of information, store and sort it, and then retrieve it when you need it later.

You can grab web pages, snippets from emails, videos, photos, etc., and file them away for future reference. Tags and notes can be attached as well for easy retrieval. You can even take a picture with your cell phone and send it to Evernote - and it has a text recognition feature that I'm just starting to explore....

Lots of web applications do that, right? What makes Evernote innovative and different? 

I love the fact you can access Evernote via the web, from your desktop (Windows or Mac), or through your cell phone/PDA/Balckberry. Your notes are accessible, sync'd from one platform to another...easily accessible at any time. 

Currently, I use it is as a note clipper tool, to augment my set of bookmarks. I'm slowly migrating more and more of my ideas into Evernote, and am considering using it as a to-do tool.

Fabulous Web Freebies - UpMo

UpMo is an innovative career management tool with a twist - they have created "portfolios" of successful professionals, and the site encourages you to pick a role model and use his/her career trajectory to help chart your own job path. 

This is a good site for tracking your career progress, seeing possible next steps, and setting up an action plan to move toward your objectives. You can develop a plan of attach for your job search, rather than randomly grabbing whatever job opens up. However, in this economy many people are going to have to "grab" what comes along, so it will be interesting to see if those are considered "detours" along the way.    

UpMo sees itself, in part, as a personal brand management tool, and there aren't many of those available yet. It's also on hunt for successful professionals in a wide range of career fields, so even if you don't think you could make use of their tool features...you might consider contacting them as possible role model.

UpMo is a fabulous web freebie for at least a little while yet...it's free to sign up for now, but after they leave beta they will have a range of fees to use the service.

Fabulous Web Freebies - Picnik

Ever wanted to upload a photo to the web, but you needed to make some tweaks...and you don't own an expensive photo-editing software tool?

A fabulous web freebie to the rescue!

Nothing to download, no need to register. Go to Picnik.com and click the "get started" button. In a flash you can upload a photo, edit, add cool visual effects, or create a collage.    

Need to resize a photo to make a Facebook or LinkedIn mug shot? A couple of clicks and you're done? Remove red eye from a close up? One click. Change the color cast of your snapshot, change it to black and white...even make it look like it was taken with an infra-red camera (I don't know why you'd want to do that, but some people must!). Click, click, click and your photo is ready for the big time. Collages, scrapbook pages, greeting cards. Super fast and super easy.

Save the photo back to your hard drive and you're ready to go.

When I need to make quick some adjustments to photos, Picnik is the way to go. They have premium memberships available if you need more features, for about $25.00 per year.

Fabulous Web Freebies - FreshBooks

Time for another Fabulous Web Freebie, and this one is very cool.

FreshBooks is an online time tracking and invoice management tool, and it is very easy to use.You can set up a list of clients and with a couple of clicks, create and email an invoice. The invoice templates are professional and make a small business look like a larger organization.

The service also allows you to track your time, which for many consultants, freelancers, solo-preneurs or small business people is a very valuable feature. Accurate time tracking helps you charge appropriately for your time, while also helping you improve your level of customer service to clients. You can validate any question they might have about your billing, as well as improve the accuracy of your records.

They have a free version, which limits you to 3 clients. For a micro-business that might work, but if you are in the business of continually getting a new stream of clients you'll probably need to upgrade. The next level of service allows 1 person to support up to 25 clients, for $14.00 per month.        

Another nice feature is that you can support subcontractors with this service. They can track time on client projects and submit their time to you as the project manager. 

If you've been struggling with finding an appropriate invoicing and time tracking tool, give FreshBooks a look.

Fabulous Web Freebies - TokBox

One of the reasons I like bringing you "Fabulous Web Freebies" is to highlight the enormous range of wonderful web tools available to the small business owner, solo-preneur, self-employed professional, job seeker, student, or employee. There are free web tools available to meet so many needs, that it's impossible to know all of them. But, I like to highlight those that are particularly useful, interesting or that have that "wow" factor.

Today's fabulous freebie is TokBox.com.

TokBox, or "Talk Box", takes internet video conferencing a step further than Skype or other web conferencing tools. I tried Skype the other day, at the urging of a colleague...and loved it! It was so fun being able to see each other face to face. I hadn't really known what to do with the build-in web com on my new laptop...and now I know! I'll continue to use Skype since I have it loaded on my computer.

But - what if I wanted to talk to more than one person via video? I am starting to meet regularly with a virtual planning group, and we are looking for a teleconferencing/video solution. TokBox allows me. as the meeting host, to connect via video with any number of participants (the useful limit seems to be 20-25 participants).

So, the 4 of us could chat and see each other via video, or if one of the participants doesn't have a camera we can still hear her voice (as long as she has a microphone). You don't have to download anything...your call lives "in the cloud" as they say.

You can also send "video emails" or post those same video clips to Twitter...or video chat with your Facebook friends.

Only the person initiating the call needs a TokBox account, but if the other participants have one set up, it shortens the conection process.    

And, did I mention...it's free. Amazing. 

Fabulous Web Freebies - GatherGrid

So, I haven't tried this web tool yet...but I'm dying to give it a whirl. GatherGrid is brilliantly simple.

One of the endless frustrations of living in the Internet age is that we're all so busy...all of the time. 11:30 on the 23rd works for me, but you have a meeting. 8:00 a.m. on the 4th works for you, but I have a conference call.

Try to set up a meeting for the end of this week with 10 people? Can't be done - you'll spend more time fielding emails and voice mails than you will actually meeting.

Enter GatherGrid. You cruise over to this site, enter you meeting title and click in the grid for the meeting times you are available. Send a link to all of your attendees and ask them to fill in their open times.

Voila - you can see what are the best times for everyone, and set up the meeting. Best of all...it's free.

Definitely qualifies as a Fabulous Freebie.

Fabulous Web Freebies - Website Grader by HubSpot

With all the time and effort that goes into web site development, blogging, key word placement, search engine optimization, etc...wouldn't it be nice to know if your efforts are paying off?

I've found a wonderful web freebie that will help you figure out the answer to that question - Website Grader by HubSpot.

Cruise on over to their site, input the web address of your site (you can include competitor sites for comparison), and click the button.

Within seconds Website Grader has analyzed your website/blog and gives you some great feedback on what you can do to improve your rankings.    

I plan to use it regularly to help improve this site.

Fabulous Web Freebies - Dial2Do

Are you organizationally challenged?

Looking for a way to integrate all of your various "to do" lists?

Wondering how to capture those great ideas you have while zipping along at 60 miles an hour?

Do you think it would be efficient (or at least pretty cool) to send emails via voice?

If any of these statements apply to you - or you're just looking for a more efficient way to manage your life, check out Dial2Do. Dial2Do is a hands-free way to capture your to-do's, memos, reminders, and it lets you view them on multiple devices - in your email, on your hand held, via their web site, etc.    

So, if you're driving along and all of a sudden you realize you need milk, you can call Dial2Do from your cell phone, speak at the prompt, and tell the system "buy milk." This reminder can be sent via text back to your cell phone, sent to your email, or remain just on your Dial2Do web page for your viewing.

You can send voice memos (reminders, to do's), send text messages or emails via voice, listen to your Google or 30Boxes calendar (hopefully more services are coming), post to Twitter,etc. They appear to keep adding services, so if you have a suggestion drop them a line.

They are in beta form now, and have said they will try to keep their services free for the foreseeable future.

I find it an incredibly powerful tool, but it's hard to break old habits! I have their number on my cell phone, but just have to remember to make that call.