I was catch­ing up on Val­ley­wag this morn­ing — they have SXSW too, and it’s even nerdier — when I came across this item that caught my eye. Maha­lo CEO Jason Cal­ca­n­is writes:

Don’t buy a phone sys­tem. No one will use it. No one at Maha­lo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Every­one else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Every­one has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of com­mu­ni­ca­tion is NOT on the phone. Sav­ings? At least $500 a year per per­son… 50 peo­ple over three years? $75–100k [Empha­sis mine.]

What I’ve found last week is that if you want some­thing to be done, whether it’s set up a meet­ing or an inter­view, it’s still hap­pen­ing on the phone. I can wave all sorts of things at pub­li­cists to get their atten­tion, but unless I call and let them know I’m seri­ous, noth­ing hap­pens. At all.