PEOPLE NETWORKING

Much of the consulting and projects that Yindi Systems are involved with take advantage of the concept of people networking. This is about building and managing a vast list of people, their contact details, and the useful skills or experience they may have, which could be relevant to a future project.

I started building a simple database of contacts back in October 1984 when I returned to Australia for a new job with the same company I had been working for in UK for the past 2 years. Version Alpha was just collecting business cards of any prospects, exisiting customers of suppliers that I interacted with.

Version Beta saw me entering these contacts into a UNIX based simple filing system, using their company name as the key field, or their surname, first name for an individual. This was fine for a few years when I needed to get people invited to marketing events such as the launch of a new model of software or a UNIX workstation.

Version Gamma came after I no longer had access to UNIX based computers in my next job. By this time email and Internet access was getting common in Australia. So I used the address book system of whatever email tool I happened to be using.

Some years later I settled on Google Mail (gmail) as my default email tool. So I also used the Google Mail address address book as my first rapidly growing contacts database, that was also operating system and hardware independent. Google expanded its browser and email system into a huge system which is now called Google Workspace, The open systems architecture of Workspace means information can now be moved really easily from email address book to document creation with modules for word processor,ing spreadsheets, presentations, calendaring, task management, etc, etc.


Yindi Project Management

Using all these open, hardware and operating system independent software tools I have developed a set of tools for documenting and managing a huge variety of projects that are now part of my work activity.

I dont have a name for this system yet, but tend to refer to it as the Objective, Strategy, Tactics (OST) system. I use it nor for building design and construction, pro bono community projects, campaigning and advocacy work.