[Toadling]

The exact time and location of the OmniFocus user meeting has been settled. I updated my original post above.

OmniFocus Meetup & Overview
Tuesday, June 10th 2008
6:30 - 8:00 pm
W Hotel, San Francisco
3rd Floor, Workroom 2

The user meeting sounds like a great idea, is it still possible to RSVP? Thanks, looking forward to it.

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by ecpolley

The user meeting sounds like a great idea, is it still possible to RSVP?

Absolutely! An RSVP is not required but will give us a better idea of roughly how many to expect. Please join us if you're interested!

-Dennis

[Toadling]

Originally Posted by Toadling

Absolutely! An RSVP is not required but will give us a better idea of roughly how many to expect. Please join us if you're interested!

Actually, it looks like the Omni Group would like you to RSVP after all. You can find details on their blog:

http://blog.omnigroup.com/2008/06/03...n-sf-on-61008/

[bezerkeleygal]

I'll be there.. and i AM bringing my son, age 11, who is quickly becoming the tech guru of our household. Looking forward, Susan

[sbell22]

Ken I may come to that, just shot in an RSVP. Should be pretty interesting, given the WWDC crowd's in town.

steve bell | bell consulting group inc. | los gatos, ca

[robert@objectdata.com]

So, I got licensed, joined the forum and discover that I have missed the WWDC gathering by 4 days. Bummed.

I would be interested if a Bay Area group gathers again or even a few. The recent video was a great addition. Thanks.

[Toadling]

Hi Robert. Sorry you missed the recent OmniFocus Meetup during WWDC. We had a good turnout and it was very educational and a lot of fun.

I suppose the Omni Group is on their way back to Seattle now, but the Bay Area user group is certainly going to meet again in the coming weeks/months. If there's interest, maybe we can even set up some remote training with the Omni Group (possibly using iChat Theater with a local machine connected to a projector).

Anyway, be sure to keep an eye on the forums for group announcements.

-Dennis

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Toadling

We had a good turnout and it was very educational and a lot of fun.

How about an brief writeup of the salient points?

[MeowGal]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

How about an brief writeup of the salient points?

I'll throw in a few comments. I enjoyed the event completely. Merlin is a pillar of confidence, humor and information -- and did a fabulous job presenting... and Ken was great as the sort of the go-to fella for in-depth tech questions. They both kept the event informative and entertaining -- and I'm sure that most folks must have gotten their money's worth. (ha -- YES, it was free...) Ken worked at the computer lectern up front, typing in the (often humorous) things that Merlin requested, and Merlin stood beside him, giving the whole hour-and-a-half presentation without notes. Clearly just a guy who appreciates and understands the program, and enjoys sharing it with others!

They reviewed the basics of the program... Merlin first giving an overview of David Allen and GTD, and then describing OmniFocus... and how the program worked within that structure.

I'm just going to wing-it here on what I remember from the presentation -- I'm sure I'll forget to include a lot. But maybe for anybody interested, this is at least a rough outline of how things went:

Merlin described how projects were items that needed multiple tasks to finish them, and then showed how to set up projects and tasks... how to view with perspectives... how to add items using a keyboard shortcut to bring up the quick-entry box from within other apps and then quickly get items into OmniFocus for organizing later. They also talked about the concept of working with Mail, to have a script that took certain mail messages and automatically converted them to new OF tasks.

They talked about how whole projects could be sub-projects of other projects, and then gave some more complex examples showing how you could achieve different results by giving projects and sub-projects contrasting parallel/sequential settings.

One tip I wrote down that Merlin had was to write all of your tasks as if you giving them to somebody else to read/execute. That if you wrote them in a complete/concise sentence structure, it was more likely to be a complete little actionable item that made sense. (ie: "bank" is rather vague and harder to follow-through on, where "deposit paycheck at wells fargo" is a more specific actionable task.)

Merlin also suggested that we not put things on our lists that we were not ever going to do. To not clutter things up with unrealistic expectations. (His example, I think, was "visualize world peace" -- and while that's a bit of an extreme example, his point makes sense.)

A couple of keyboard shortcuts I wrote down:
Command-apostrophe adds a note to task items...
In the detail view on a date field, typing "now" puts in today's date...

They showed how you could create project-wide preferences... so for instance, you could set your Home project, so that any new tasks that were entered under it would automatically come up with a context of Chore, and was parallel. (Or whatever you wanted.)

They answered some specific questions/situations that some audience members had. One in particular that they were working on a bit got kind of complex for me, as a new user, but the solution involved making the project repeat and not the tasks... as far as a way to get a series of tasks to show up on a regular timed basis.

So after the intro to the program, the examples and general workflow ideas, and the audience questions... Ken then talked a bit about the much-anticipated iPhone version... but couldn't show pictures and couldn't give too much detail... since evidently there were constraints relating to disclosure agreements. However from what they said, it appears it will have everything the end-user would want, for entering data in various locations and syncing them up... which will mean that we won't need to print out our shopping list to go to the store. We can just pull it up on our iPhone. (SWEET!)

And I think that's about all I can remember now. There was an informal go-up-front and gab with them at the end -- but I had a dinner party to go to, and couldn't hang out and be a Merlin-groupie, as I might have otherwise. :)

Both Merlin and Ken did a great job -- and personally, I was appreciative that they made the effort to share so much OmniFocus wisdom with those of us who could make it.

- Zoe