What’s on My Desk?
What do you use to get stuff done?
We take a look at some of our fellow govy’s desks, gadgets and apps to see what they use to help them serve day to day.
Who are you, and what do you do?
I’m Shahrzad Rizvi, aka @shazooer. I’m a Budget Analyst for Dallas County, Texas. I’m a jack of all trades and have way too many hobbies the newest ones being marriage (not a hobby!), makerspacing and motorcycles. I live, work and play in downtown Dallas.
What hardware do you use?
In the public sector we don’t always have a choice of what hardware we get assigned and it can’t always be the latest tech. At work I primarily work on Dell Optiplex but have plugged in a CM Storm Quick Fire Pro so my colleagues can hear me type from afar. I like to think it helps me type faster. I hack together a standing desk using fileboxes and books from grad school. Many cubicle systems can be setup to be standing, sitting or both. I’ve inspired some of the Commissioner’s assistants to convert their cubes to standing.
I use a County issued Apple iPad 4th Gen with Apple Bluetooth keyboard mostly for reading Commissioners Court Agendas, take notes and as 2nd screen to read my twitter feed using Tweetcaster. To listen to webinars and music at work I use Sony MDR7506 headphones which I was introduced to during my college radio days. For capturing the quick moments in my life I use Google Glass (still a believer!) with a Samsung Galaxy S4 paired with an Otterbox Defender to protect it from my butterfingers. All that is stored in a Dakine Campus backpack with a backup charger and cables. I’m a Pentax camera lover because I can use lenses from the ’70’s with modern camera bodies. A Roku 3 and a Chromecast using Plex helps me consume content on my TVs. #cablecutter
Dallas County Road and Bridge District 4 training during the offseason captured on Google Glass
Software?
Evernote is my second brain. I capture, store and retrieve all types of information from the iPad, my Android phone, work and home PC’s so that I can focus on forward momentum on tasks rather than storing and indexing stuff in my mind. It eats up anything I throw at it including post it notes and the ‘govy favorite format’ PDFs and organizes them for me. When I receive paper I scan them in using a Fujistu Scansnap. I also save interesting web articles and emails through with the Web Clipper and Outlook Extensions.
I like the new direction that Microsoft is going with their subscription based model. I subscribe to Office 365 and using 1 out of 5 licenses at work. I’m testing Office 2016 and am excited about the unlimited storage on OneDrive. I like being able to use the latest Microsoft Office Suite and wish more colleagues leveraged all the features that the MS Suite affords. At home I use a desktop built from parts and am testing Windows 10 Live Technical Preview displaying on a Asus VS278Q 27″ Monitor mounted to the wall. I use a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 for Google Hangouts with friends and family.
I like to use content technology where stuff comes to me, rather than having to reach out to look for it. I use Feedly to keep up to date to local area news, civic and new tech, and misc blogs (bikes, design, making etc) and subscribe to Google Alerts to be aware of the latest posts on “Commissioners Court” or “City of …”. Hypemachine keeps me hip onto the latest indie tunes/concerts. I like the Chrome browser for it’s simplicity.
My favorite mobile apps include Waze, Google Now, Google Hangouts. My wife distracts me with Imgur posts. When I drive (rarely) I use an iBolt xProDock for charging and audio into the ‘aux’ input of my car radio. #carfreeweek
What would be your dream setup?
Microsoft Hololens looks promising. My dream is that government workspaces fully implement collaboration technologies such as (teleprescence, enterprise wide video conferencing, co-authoring, etc) and smartboards across the entity while hedging for public/open information concerns. Also, enterprise systems based on open source software would be my dream for the public sector workplace. Finally a robust personal assistant from the film “Her” would be great!
Dog Tax! Raja the Husky!