Office Apps on the Move

Even if you bought an iPad with work in mind, there is a good chance you mostly ended up using it to watch movies, play games, or dawdle on the Internet. This article in the Wall Street Journal might kick start your work ethic, though: it’s Walter Mossberg’s review of some of the market’s best office software for tablets. Microsoft Office still isn’t optimized for tablet use, but get your hands on these substitutes and you may find yourself getting a lot more work done on your iPad. Here’s a quick summary of Mossberg’s impressions:

iWork

The office suite includes three facilities: Pages (word-processing), Numbers (spreadsheets), and Keynote (presentations), each $10. It generally works well with Office-formatted documents and is clear about when it won’t be compatible. A PowerPoint file imported perfectly, though there was a hiccup importing a Word document.

QuickOffice Pro HD

This app is cheaper– $20 for word-processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. Mossberg doesn’t seem to recommend it, though. Pulling up a PowerPoint file messed up the formatting, and he couldn’t put a photo in the imported Word document.

AstralPad

This free program has a lot of features, like video and audio calling, that the others don’t because it doesn’t “live on the iPad”; instead, it’s operating through an Office-like program running on a server. Unfortunately, it’s also not designed for a tablet, so it is difficult to use without a mouse. It doesn’t work offline, and when tested with a PowerPoint file, it failed to format the presentation properly.

CloudOn

This app works similarly to AstralPad, except the program running on the server is an actual copy of Office, and not a clone. It displayed a Word document and a PowerPoint presentation perfectly, but like AstralPad, it’s clumsy to use and won’t work offline.

Your choice depends on what you are looking for in the app, but any one of these should help you take your work on the go.

Good Advice from One+

One+ Magazine is a pretty reliable, monthly source of smart tips for meeting planning and other management scenarios. Here are a couple highlights from the latest issue, available online here.

On Managing Communities

Yvonne Nassa, head of marketing & innovation at Amsterdam RAI, writes about the role of meeting planners as community managers. What used to be about “facilitating two-dimensional physical meetings” has evolved into “providing a stage for meaningful dialogues,” both physically and virtually, before, during, and after the meeting. Thanks to advances like the Internet and mobile devices, the breadth and staying power of the meeting’s “community” has expanded enormously.

According to Nassa, it can be helpful to devote a team member to considering the community and actively engaging it with ongoing conversation. Two things to remember: always offer valuable content (that responds to the community’s interests), and never assume you can own a community. All you can do is exceed people’s expectations, and then they’ll want to come together and talk about what you’re doing. Don’t force it!

On Using Technology Wisely

Douglass Rushkoff, author of the upcoming book, “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, writes about the immense array of choices technology has provided us. Just because you can offer attendees a certain experience doesn’t mean you should—you don’t want to overwhelm them. A better option is the “multi-track event,” wherein planners use scheduling software and social networks to let attenees customize their experience without overdoing it or completely isolating them behind their screens.

Rushkoff isn’t sure  even that much is necessary, though. We spend all our time personalizing how we want to live through technology, but meetings are about coming together and sharing an experience. The planners could have a live feed documenting attendees’ comments and feedback—or they could trust themselves as professionals to offer a particular, shared event. It’s not the worst thing in the world to let your vision for the conference lead the way.

Want Airlines to Listen? Fill Out a Survey

Have you ever taken a customer satisfaction survey with an airline, only to feel like they aren’t really listening? Well, according to Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal, it turns out they are—and the flying experience can only get better because of it.

Says McCartney, “Airline surveys are influencing everything from menu choices to airport and airplane repairs, not to mention employee training and executive bonuses.” The fact is that airlines would much rather hear out your grievances on a survey than see you file complaints with the Department of Transportation, or worse: take your outrage online. Tweets and other social media postings have a tendency of snowballing beyond a company’s control.

That’s why Southwest gives customers the chance to rate their experiences, and JetBlue determines executive bonuses partially based on survey results. United Airlines is doing something cool: they employ software that searches the surveys and automatically triggers maintenance tickets for equipment that flyers said was faulty.

Examples of changes surveys have led to? Increased bonuses for employees, product decisions, the showing of “Girls” as in-flight entertainment.

Technology has made surveys much easier to administer, not to mention easier for people to respond to. Some airlines have reported response rates of up to 18 to 20%. But it can be possible to survey too much and annoy passengers on the flight. For airlines, customer feedback is about getting the data they need without berating the people they’re trying to please.

Something called the “Net Promoter Score,” or NPS, attempts to consolidate the data into something simpler to analyze. Airlines are known to make decisions on the basis of whether or not NPS results will improve. So the next time you find yourself complaining about a flight, take the time to fill out a survey—it just might help.

The Downside of Virtual Meetings

We have posted before about the advantages of virtual meetings. But in the interest of accuracy, we’d be remiss to ignore any disadvantages, as well. According to Sue Hatch of MeetingsNet, there’s a pretty glaring one: virtual meetings can stifle creativity, compared to face-to-face interaction.

At an exhibition in Germany, a research group called Meetology set up pairs of participants to work on creative tasks. The pairs were made to work in one of three settings: face-to-face, on the phone, or via videoconference. The researchers than judged the results based on “quantity, quality, and variety” of ideas. Participants also completed questionnaires.

The face-to-face pairs generated 30% more ideas than those working across technologies.  The face-to-face groups also seemed to come up with moderately more original and varied ideas, though not to a significant degree.

What is not clear, however, is why the face-to-face pairs performed better. In the questionnaire responses, there were no differences reflecting a better experience with the in-person contact. It seems that, while face-to-face is certainly more effective, it has nothing to do with how satisfied the participants were with the experience.

Regardless of the reason, these results are worth bearing in mind when planning future meetings. Virtual meetings are a great idea for drawing in broad audiences you wouldn’t otherwise reach, but they are not a replacement for meeting in person. Always understand your meeting goals and plan the method of meeting accordingly.

Watch Out for Hotel Fees

You know those annoying extra fees which most airlines try tack onto your (already costly) flight experience? Well, watch out: it turns out that hotels are following their lead, according to Christopher Elliott of the Washington Post. The good news is it hasn’t gotten nearly as ubiquitous as airline fees—yet.

Common fees to watch for include charges for “exercise equipment, wireless Internet access, printing your boarding pass and using the pool.” The hotel might never inform you about these costs, and worse still, you might be forced to pay them even if you never used the facilities or services. So you can’t always trust the room prices listed online; these fees are as mandatory as they are dishonest. If something looks too good to be true, be wary. And if ever you wonder whether you’re paying extra for something (does it seem suspicious that the hotel is bringing you the newspaper, free of charge?) it doesn’t hurt to ask.

The problem is that you can’t really complain that the hotel didn’t warn you. Chances are, they did—they slipped it into some fine print somewhere, or in some corner of their website, far away from the room listings. Fees are highly profitable for them, and they will do what they can to push them on their visitors. It’s up to you to do whatever you can to deny them the opportunity; for example, if you know you won’t use the minibar, don’t let them give you a key. Then you’ll have a half-decent chance at avoiding the charge.

This is an unfortunate trend that’s only going to get amplified with time. From now on, when you stay at a hotel, take nothing for granted.

How to Get Someone’s Attention When it Matters

Tim Sanders of One+ Magazine has coined an elegant term for the needs of a modern, up-and-coming businessman. Return On Attention (ROA), says Sanders, is absolutely crucial. These days, between e-mails, social media, and other channels, successful people receive so many requests for attention that many of them are filtered out altogether. But your business needs attention to thrive—you need that call returned, that meeting attended.

There is so much “noise” today that people need to ignore a lot of it, or else overwhelm themselves. If you want attention, you need to make yourself worth attending to. According to Sanders, the trick is putting respect and strategy behind every request.

First of all, says Sanders, “be judicious.” That means having a goal in mind every time you contact someone, one which will benefit the both of you. It means keeping your e-mails clean, clear, and concise. It means not planning meetings without a purpose or agenda. To that end, it helps to have an outline of your objectives and what you would like to talk about before the conversation. Don’t catch yourself rambling on.

During the conversation, stay focused and eliminate all distractions—why should they give you their attention if you can’t return yours? At the end, find a takeaway and make it known, so that the other person can feel more satisfied with the interaction.

Of course, the last step is to follow up, or else it will be a waste of time for everyone involved. Make sure you accomplish everything you agreed to accomplish at the meeting, and do so on a timely basis. It’s advisable to take notes during the talk so you won’t forget even the smallest detail.

Always respect the limits of another’s attention, and you’ll find that more of that attention is devoted towards you.

Saving Money with Connecting Flights

If you are willing to put up with a little potential inconvenience, Scott McCartney of the Wall Street Journal has worked out a way to save money on airfare: buy two tickets instead of one. The trick is to take advantages of special city discounts. Say you’re headed from D.C. to Hawaii. If you find out that your airline is offering a discount for D.C. to L.A., and another from L.A. to Honolulu, you could save hundreds of dollars by taking the connecting flight as opposed to flying direct.

The reason why most people miss these bargains is that you can’t get them if you buy both tickets in a single transaction. Instead, act as though you are flying separately from each city and purchase the tickets one-at-a-time to take advantage of the deals for both flights. McCartney demonstrates how, for distant enough destinations, this technique could save you up to 35% on fare. That’s not a small sum when prices are hitting the low thousands.

You can also string together trips with discount airlines. Cheaper companies like Hawaiian Airlines might not reach your home, but if you fly to the west coast first, you can still take advantage of their offerings.  If you put in the work looking for the best prices, you might surprise yourself with how thrifty you can be.

Be warned, though: traveling this way does have its downsides. McCartney notes that you will have to claim and recheck your baggage at the connecting airport, and even possibly pay two baggage fees. And, of course, there is always the chance you will be late for the second flight, so to be safe, give yourself plenty of time between the two trips. Don’t ruin these great savings by forcing yourself to rebook!