Document and File Management in the Cloud

Confession: I still use external harddrives. I am not a geek, but an average tech user, just like you and most of my clients. No Apple for me, just one of-the-shelve laptop with windows, a commonly used tablet and a regular phone both running on android.

I do not understand how firefox, apple or ubuntu experts can understand the tru needs of the avarage windows and chrome users. Not that I am not curious, I try to get the most out of regular devices that are accesible to the broad public.

Back to my harddrives. These can and do crash, get stolen or burned, thus not a good file storage solution. I think that nowadays it needs little explenation on why cloud storage is better; geographic spread, synchronization, no maintanance or replacement of old disks and pay for what you need. The downsides are the security and privacy risk and perhaps costs.

So why do I still have important files not backup up at all or on a harddisk in the same building? This can be explained with a concept called technical debt (I got this concept from a podcast with the owner of leadpages, inserting the link on a later moment is an example of technical dept). This is when only the most urgent things get done and overhead tasks are postponed every day, this is how technical debt builds up. Updates and backups are typical overhead tasks of high importance, but low urgency.

Deviding activities into Urgent and Important (1), Important but Not Urgent (2), Urgent but Not Important (3), and Not Urgent, Not Important (4). Helped me a lot prioritizing work and shifting from a focus on the first tasks, to planned activities in the second category. In a future blog I will share the desktop wallpaper I made to help with this and the reference to the concept, because this also is not just my idea.

Anyway, finally I made some time to get my onedrive setup that I have for my studies at CATIE. During one year of courses I did not bother to use it, because I was used to dropbox. The upcoming experiraton of my 48gb extra dropbox space that came with my samsung tablet two years ago, was the trigger that made me organise my files all high up in the cloud. Still uploading though… takes some time with a regular connection. A problem that a client will face as well.

Another little thing I have to share is the large pause button in onedrive that is NOT CLICKABLE. How did that feature pass the test? The usability of all the cloud services, the navigation trough files, there seems so much space for improvement. I am exited and motivated to be work on a management system were I can determine the workflow. It can be soo much better isn it?