Collaberation @ Work
I come across as hugely un-collaborative at work. It isn’t my intent and it is one of the reasons why I am open about my blindness. I can’t pretend anymore about my abilities or in some people’s opinion bizarre behavior. It takes too much energy to attempt to appear sighted.
I am convinced of a culture of the blind as I experience being open and “out” with blindness it surprises me that I have so much trouble communicating. I really shouldn’t be too surprise as a huge percentage of human communication is body language and since I can’t see it. I interpret what I can by listening feeling and smelling. Surprisingly bull shit smells bad even if you can see the originator.
I have no privacy at all at work. Since I use a 45” screen people can see what I’m doing read what I’m typing from across the room.
Laptops are not my friend. I do have a tablet I use as a PDA but I can’t do real work on it. Laptop screens are so small yes even the 17” and 20” varieties and I’ve tried both you can position them to deal with the screen. Then there are the wimpy batteries and the lame performance of the screens in bright light or worse sunshine.
People are very hard to work with. Collaboration is very hard. I have worked in file and print environments and oh my god they still exist and web enabled collaboration environments namely Microsoft Share Point server. Share Point is so much easier as the documents are grouped by project or team. File structures never meet anyones needs and are constantly changing. I like many other can’t remember where I put things and they end up on the “share” fifty times or you can never find them again. I have to continually ask in the file and print hell where stuff is.
In work cultures and teams with immature or non existent policies, processes and procedures. In formal work cultures who think they are family which makes it near impossible for new people to join in and play with the other children. Makes it near impossible to implement any process or procedure as it is continually undermined by the informal process. Sucks.
As with furniture if you move it its gone. When people move files or move work artifacts they are in my world gone. I have to rediscover them or because of the way I think recreate them or remember I created them already and again find them.
I work so hard just to work. I can’t level the playing field but there are so many physical and cultural issues of connecting with a group and just getting the job done. Where is the fun in that!!!
I have no privacy at all at work. Since I use a 45” screen people can see what I’m doing read what I’m typing from across the room.
Laptops are not my friend. I do have a tablet I use as a PDA but I can’t do real work on it. Laptop screens are so small yes even the 17” and 20” varieties and I’ve tried both you can position them to deal with the screen. Then there are the wimpy batteries and the lame performance of the screens in bright light or worse sunshine.
People are very hard to work with. Collaboration is very hard. I have worked in file and print environments and oh my god they still exist and web enabled collaboration environments namely Microsoft Share Point server. Share Point is so much easier as the documents are grouped by project or team. File structures never meet anyones needs and are constantly changing. I like many other can’t remember where I put things and they end up on the “share” fifty times or you can never find them again. I have to continually ask in the file and print hell where stuff is.
In work cultures and teams with immature or non existent policies, processes and procedures. In formal work cultures who think they are family which makes it near impossible for new people to join in and play with the other children. Makes it near impossible to implement any process or procedure as it is continually undermined by the informal process. Sucks.
As with furniture if you move it its gone. When people move files or move work artifacts they are in my world gone. I have to rediscover them or because of the way I think recreate them or remember I created them already and again find them.
I work so hard just to work. I can’t level the playing field but there are so many physical and cultural issues of connecting with a group and just getting the job done. Where is the fun in that!!!
About the Author: kyle
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
