[CathyH]

We are just rolling out 20 new blackberries in our company, and we are to write a blackberry use policy/etiquette document. Does anyone know of a link, or have any ideas on what should be in this document? I have found a lot for cell phone etiquette, but not much for the blackberry.

Thanks,
CathyH, BTW this will be a wonderful site that I'm sure I will be visiting a lot now!

[dozment]

You mean like always keep one hand on the Blackberry, one hand on the cell phone, and one hand on the steering wheel??? Sorry! I just couldn't help myself.

[astcell]

We have no ettiquette guide, but we did get the car kits.

[BlackBerryGuide]

lol... I seem to remember seeing a BB user etitiquette guide out there somewhere... but we've never actually adopted one.

We have however made policies for certain things (i.e. cannot profit from use of corp BB, cannot send confidential messages as PIN, etc)...

It should be pretty straight-forward, here's some ideas for the etiquete part (partly in jest ofcourse)
- Thou shalt not BB while driving
- Thou shalt not talk on BB-phone while in a theater
- Thou shalt set thy ringer to vibrate when at performences, theaters, etc.
- Thou shalt not use thy BB in a meeting (unless it's really boring)
- Thou shalt not bombard your colleagues with useless PIN's or email
- Thou shalt not use thy BB for illegal purposes
- Thou shalt not use thy BB to visit unsavoury sites (unless during a really boring meeting)
- Thou shalt not TYPE MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT'S YELLING
- Thou shalt learn to use the autotext feature... unless though wants to claim disability when CTS / RS occurs
- Thou shalt be careful with thy BB, as water and dropping void the warranty
- Thou shalt not PIN mid-sentence
- Thou shalt finish a conversation before answering thy BB

... yeah, ok I think I'll stop there... been one of those days apparently.

[CathyH]

Thanks,
I just thought I would get some ideas out there, and wondering if any other companies had a use policy. We had 2 users testing these out before implementing, and we had A LOT of complaints on the how rude one of the users was...meetings, middle of conversations, you name it, he did it...
Cathy

[Mark Rejhon]

Originally Posted by BlackBerryGuide

- Thou shalt learn to use the autotext feature... unless though wants to claim disability when CTS / RS occurs

Well...this may help some, but I don't need this little bullet. I type faster without AutoText, anyway (I type 50-70 WPM and I don't need the overhead of recalling autotext -- see my BlackBerry Thumb Touch Typist Guide in my FAQ).

What's important is making sure I rest every few sentences or so (a good opportunity to proofread what I just typed, for example)

[BlackBerryGuide]

That's impressive Mark! My suggestion wasn't about speed though... nor was it meant to be taken seriously. It's about the amount of repetitive movements your fingers / thumbs need to make using the small keyboards.... It's a lot easier on your digits if you only need to hit "afaik" rather than type "as far as I know" on the keyboard...