Week #578
This whole month has been full of survey work. This week was no different, we continue to send out emails and SMSes on two different projects. One of the surveys is to the guardians of children. We randomly select one guardian and offer them to take the survey. At the half-way mark, which was this week, if they still have not started, we swap the contact information to the second guardian, reset their access code, and start the process over contacting them to participate.
This week we published an article about Link rot. It turns out about 22% of our old bookmarked links no longer exist.
Week #579
This week, we sent out our 3rd ⪮ Good Morning newsletter. The response has been fantastic and the list slowly continues to grow. This plan is to stick with season 1 for 12 episodes, if at the end of the year, we’re still enjoying it, we’ll revamp and start a season 2.
It was Robocalling time for two different surveys. All-in-all, we probably contacted around 5,000 people via automated calling. As we watched the calls roll-out, we could also see the surveys beginning and the response rate increasing. One thing we added before doing the calling this week was to shuffle or randomize the order of the people we were calling. What this helps mitigate is people being in a meeting and everyone’s phone going off one-by-one with the same message. Over that many calls to make, with 1 second delay between each, there could be roughly 2hs between two coworkers being called.
We also got pulled into some last minute meetings planned for week #580. This will be the first time in 3 years we’ll be back on an airplane!
Material Conference
March 20th, 02020 was suppose to be the 3rd installment of Material. Sadly, due to the spread of COVID-19, we had to cancel the event. Two years later, it still isn’t clear when we’ll return, but we really want to get back to attending small, fun, interesting events and chatting with other attendees again.
Invoices
The stack is clear and just about balanced. Besides the regular monthly invoices all the special projects are sent off and paid for, except one. We only sent that out in week #579 so they still have time to pay it.
That wraps-up all the non-reoccuring projects (for now). We’ll probably look again after Easter about our workload and see if it makes sense to pull in more small projects right now.
Fluxcapcitor
Three great articles from the past were published durning this week.
In 02014, we republished In Rainbows since the original link from 02007 went offline. This simple function has been a go-to for us on many an occasion.
Also in 02014, we published Semi-Spimed Bananas. We were deep into some IoT ideas and projects and when we stopped thinking so much about the hardware, you see simpler methods around you all the time.
In 02015, Shelling Points was published. These are places, times or locations that would logically make for different parties if something had not been prearranged. It is a bit like the opposite of bluffing or a Nash Equilibrium. You are guess what the other person would do and they are doing the same and after a few mental iterations, you arrive on the most obvious choice.