A few days ago, I had to put up with Winfried Felser calling me a "fake." It was meant
as a joke because I had told Winfried that
some of my tweets are automatically generated from a blog and our public microblog. In a way, he is right. I really did up my Twitter game in October or November last year – first via Buffer and now Hootsuite. It’s been working really well so far. And I’ve always answered and responded personally and will continue to do so.

This year, I decided to set aside much more time to create online content like blog posts, videos, tweets and other organic content. With our Confluence-based intranet solution Linchpin, we really did attend almost every event offered last year. I was somewhat sobered by all of them. All the traveling and conferences...it just isn't my thing. Furthermore, our spectacular results can be attributed more to other things and less so to these events. It isn’t enough for me to overcome my personal preferences and get excited for conferences and such things.

This is why I will start writing more again. And I will adapt a Google principle and make it work for us: "Mobile First." Basically, this means developing for smartphones first and then desktop devices. The first mobile-first product I tried was Google Inbox. If you send and receive e-mails via Google, Gmail is the standard. Google Inbox has been available for several months.

For me, this product completely changed the way I use e-mail. In the past, I looked at my cell phone to see what came in and responded to only the most important messages. The real tool for writing e-mails was my desktop computer. At the time, I believed I would always need a client software program on my computer for e-mails. Quite a few of you probably think that now. Google Inbox fundamentally changed things.

Today, I work with e-mails in a browser and no longer need a desktop application. Unimaginable?

It started on smartphones. In this case, "Mobile First" means Google developed Inbox for mobile devices. Although there still also a web interface for desktop computers, it was not the main goal. And there is no installable software anymore. There likely won’t be. Gone for good.

I am overjoyed with the situation. I now zip through my e-mails in 10-20 minutes (often faster), completely on my iPhone. More time-consuming issues are postponed until I’m back at my desktop computer. Replies have become shorter. I glance at notifications from Confluence and JIRA and finish a bunch of them with a swipe. Try it out. Anyone can sign up for a Gmail address for free. But you can only use it once you have installed the app on your smartphone.

By focusing on smartphones, Google has made it possible for me to handle 85% of my e-mails on my phone. Wow! Can you imagine that for your e-mails?

But back to blogging. I will blog "English First." This means that in the future, I will create my blog articles in English and publish them in our English blog.

Auf Deutsch lesen.