Outliners and Money

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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 7, 2012 at 09:06 PM

Some years ago, I was organising events for a public environmental body. The events were open, and we usually got 60-70 attendees, from quite specific segments. Once we got around 150, the limit of our small amphitheatre, and from a much broader spectrum. The title of the event was along the lines of “the environment and the economy”. We then realised that if we wanted to bring in more people, all we had to do was to add something related to money in our titles (we refrained from making a habit of it, fortunately).

So, here is a thread I hope will inspire some good discussions, spurred from Reverendmartian’s quote “I rely on that software to do business—-to make money.”

Me too. I can’t say for certain whether I’ve made more money thanks to outliners than if I had spent my time and funds on other tools and activities, but there are quite a lot of things in my job I would have trouble doing without outliners and other PIMs (and they certainly would be much less enjoyable).

I intend to write about a few of these later on, but for the moment if anyone wants to _briefly_ provide their own examples, please be my guest.

Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 7, 2012 at 09:26 PM

As an aspiring sociologist, I can’t help but put a slightly different spin on this. I’d have called this topic “Outliners and Values” because most software like outliners and PIM can help one to produce other types of value than monetary value. Though of course money is often an important one.

Enjoyment in fact alone can be a type of value that one derives from using some software tools and it may not add up to much else in monetary terms in some cases.

But anyway, for me outliners and PIM are part of my academic work, mostly as research tools. If they help me analyse my research data, write a better dissertation, write and publish higher quality research articles (faster and with a more sophisticated output than without them) then they would contribute to creating some values (e.g. a contribution to general knowledge), one of which would be financial value, as I would eventually be able to get a higher paying job as a result.

E.g. the discovery of ConnectedText this year was a game-changer for me because I was stuck with my PhD, lost in my mountains of data, and CT allowed me to introduce some order into the chaos (which is why I can’t stop talking about it :)

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 9, 2012 at 05:21 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>the discovery of ConnectedText this year was a game-changer
>for me because I was stuck with my PhD, lost in my mountains of data, and CT allowed me to
>introduce some order into the chaos (which is why I can’t stop talking about it :)

I’m sure Eduardo can use this quote :-)

My experience has been similar. Software like Brainstorm offered me new and convenient ways of manipulating my information and I could suddenly focus more on the content itself and less on where I should put it.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Sep 9, 2012 at 05:24 PM

(Sorry, hit Post too soon)

I am again in a similar quest, but this time for software that includes team collaboration features, as more and more of my work is related to others’.

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