Jul
28
New Email Policy
Those of you who have known me since the beginning of GeekBrief.TV know that answering email is a top priority in my life. I love that new media is a two way conversation. I love that I get to know many of you on a personal level through email, Twitter and comments. When we have meetups, it’s like catching up with old friends even when we’ve never actually met in person.
For the past four years, it has always been my goal to answer every email I get, and I’ve been very public about the goal. For the past year, though, it’s been a real struggle. I get so much email every day that I cannot physically catch up. There aren’t enough hours in the day and it makes me feel like I’m constantly failing at my goal. In February 2008, I declared email bankruptcy thinking it would help me get a fresh start, but it didn’t really fix anything.
If something isn’t working, it means things need to change so after a lot of back and forth with myself, I’ve decided to come up with a new email policy.
Every email is important to me! My new goal is to read each one, but I just can’t respond to all of them. If you want to get a hold of me and it’ll fit in 140 characters, please reach me on Twitter. Make sure you’re following me so I can DM you, and then if a conversation requires more than 140 characters, we can move to email.
As of today, I’m changing my main email address. If you DO need to email me, please use cali (at) calilewis (dot) com, and format the subject line as follows:
URGENT: short, descriptive subject (use only if it IS urgent)
TIP: short descriptive subject (story tip for GeekBrief.TV or my blog)
BUSINESS: short descriptive subject (use if you have a business opportunity you want to discuss)
SPEAKING: short descriptive subject (use if you’re interested in booking me to speak)
ADVERTISE: short descriptive subject (use if you’d like to advertise on the show)
REVIEW REQUEST: short descriptive subject (use if you’re interested in us looking at your service or product)
FUN: short descriptive subject (use for fun links that don’t fit in the Tip category)
BACON: short descriptive subject (use for…what else? Bacon!)
I’ll add to this list as I set up new Gmail filters any hopefully this naming convention will help me respond to more than I currently can.
Thank you guys for understanding my inability to respond to each email. Many of you don’t expect a response in the first place, and most of the pressure comes from me, but I want to work the best way to get back to as many of you as I can as soon as possible!
