Month: May 2009

Does your Corporate Culture Clash with your Social Side?

You’ve seen the Mac and PC commercials right? Apple products are hip, fun, and counter-cultural. iPods, iMacs, and iPhones generally exude a fun, simple, elegant design. Working at Apple must be a really progressive place just like the commercials right? Everybody blogs, lots of wikis and ad-hoc collaboration? Nope. Apple employees aren’t supposed to have personal blogs (something about speaking with “one voice”).

The United States Government typically brings to mind thoughts of red tape and process for anything and everything. Think up-tight, uniforms, and nobody shares information. Wikis and blogs would be squashed by regulators or the CIA Right? Nope. The government, particularly the Intelligence and Military, is all over social media tools and is a role model in many respects (one example).

We’ve come a long way. Wikis and other trendy collaboration tools popped up many years ago under the desks of IT folks who got tired of boring document management systems and static Intranet portals. Today every corporate leader is being yelled at, “Get a 2.0 Collaboration Strategy!”

Most companies go through an evolution of tools and platforms to get to a consolidated, supported, “everywhere” platform. As the tools evolve so do new policies to deal with this new media. Often younger segments of the workforce expect these tools, more seasoned employees question them.

How about your workplace? Do you have tools to find other employees based on their user profile? Is there a corporate “Encyclopedia” anyone can contribute to? Can you quickly create ad-hoc communities to share information without email lists? Do you have these tools but your corporate culture is holding back their adoption?

Airpot Brewing with the Technivorm

Don’t try this at home.  Wait, TRY this at home!

Often I get assigned “coffee duty“. This often happens when we have people coming over, we host a party, or bring coffee to an event. I often find myself getting out my two glass airpots and brewing coffee into the carafes. Then I carefully pour into the airpots.  While this solution works, I was interested in brewing a larger quantity directly into an airpot.  This would be less work and temperature loss (a lot).  Even my great home equipment isn’t made to do this, but I developed some workarounds to the problems I ran into.

1) Cone filter.  These are great for brewing smaller batches of coffee. With larger quantities you wind up over-extracting the grounds at the point of the filter (the bottom). This can give you a nasty bitter taste even if you use the correct amount of coffee. Workaround? Stir the basket grounds when brewing is 2/3 complete.

2) Water reservoir is too small.  In my Technivorm I can do 10+ cups (close to 1 liter) of filtered water.  Unfortunately, an airpot is typically 1.6-1.8 liters. Workaround? Before the 10 cups were gone I’d add 6 more cups of water.  Your application will vary, I did a “dry run” with just water.

3) Basket too small  for extra coffee.  Typically to brew an airpot of coffee you want about 3.25 ounces of beans, which is roughly a cup of dark roasted whole bean coffee. This may be too much coffee for the basket and cause an overflow. Workaround? I did a scant cup of coffee (7/8) as to not overload the basket.

4) Airpot is taller than the brewer!  Workaround? As you can see, I was able to put the brewer on a small box to accommodate the airpot perfectly under the brewer.

If your coffee maker doesn’t brew at the right temperature, or takes longer than six minutes to brew a normal pot don’t try this.  You need a quality brewer that will brew for the right amount of time at the right temp. The Technivorm MoccaMaster is a high-quality coffee maker that will last for many years and make coffee as good as your best local coffee shop.