About a month ago I was interviewed by a reporter named Eric Lai for an article about Microsoft’s Office 2007 launch, and Outlook 2007 specifically. The conversation lasted about a half an hour, and covered quite a broad range of topics, within the context of email management.

The article that the reporter was writing was posted today at Computerworld’s website; here’s an excerpt:

December 21, 2006 (Computerworld)
– His real desk may be a mess, but Jason Clarke’s virtual office is as neat as they come due to his assiduous answering, filing or deleting of the 400-plus e-mails he gets each day.

“My feeling is that if you have more than a screenful of e-mails in your in-box, you’re being rude,” said Clarke, a technical sales and marketing manager at Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd. in Richmond, British Columbia.

Clarke is an archetypal “filer,” spending hours a day managing his Microsoft Corp. Outlook e-mail program.

While the gist of the article is accurate, it seems a few liberties were taken with a couple of the details. I don’t know if this was for readability purposes (artistic license) or simply the result of having interviewed tons of people about the same topic, but I thought it would be worth clarifying a couple of points in the article.

The first is my current job title; although I am in technical sales and marketing these days, I’m not the manager of the department. The other point is the number of daily emails I receive; at one time in a previous position Project Manager (at a previous company) I was receiving well in excess of 400 emails per day. Mercifully, today that number is down around 100, and often dips to half of that. And although I’d like to say the comment about my desk being messy is untrue, that’s unfortunately completely accurate.

Those details aside, I think Eric has written a nicely put together overview of Outlook 2007 and what makes it interesting in contrast to earlier versions of the product. I also stand by the point that while Outlook 2007 is much better than previous versions, to really super-charge your email management you need the help of ClearContext’s IMS Outlook add-in. Considering how often I pimp that product, you’d think I’d be throwing an affiliate link around - and I probably should. But I’d simply rather that you understand how much ClearContext can positively impact your email management if you use Outlook.
One day I’ll get around to posting my recipe for ultimate Outlook email productivity, using Outlook 2007 (although it works with other versions), ClearContext, and a competing Outlook add-on called Nelson Email Organizer, which I consider to be the best of breed email desktop search client available. I’ve touched on them both before, but I feel I’ve really found the sweet spot with these applications now.

Thanks to Eric Lai for choosing to speak with me for his piece.

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