As entrepreneurs in the digital age, all of us are constantly looking to new technologies to help us do more with less. But becoming a technology-savvy entrepreneur requires learning about the technologies, developing practices around them and constantly fine-tuning those practices.

To help women business owners, I'm going to interview tech-savvy entrepreneurs from time to time about the technologies they use and, more important, how they use them. The intent is to create a virtual apprenticeship that will make it easier and faster for you to effectively incorporate these technologies into your practices.

My inspiration for this interview series came from a lecture by John Seely Brown (aka JSB) on Learning in the Digital Age. Brown is a former director of Palo Alto Research Center at Xerox, where I had the pleasure of working with him. Today he's a visiting scholar at USC and the independent co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge.

In his lecture on learning, presented at Indiana University in April 2009, he suggests reversing the flow of learning. Traditionally, we spend a lot of time learning about something (e.g., years of college) and then put it into practice (e.g., applying the knowledge to our job). The journey generally progresses from "learning-about" to "learning-to-be."

In the digital age, it may make more sense to reverse the initial flow and create a virtuous cycle of the two types of learning. You could practice something (learning-to-be). When you get stuck, you'd learn more about it (learning-about). With that new learning, you go back to improve the practice. And the cycle repeats.

Without creating technology practices that work for us, we may learn about a technology, think it can help our productivity, maybe even play with it for a while. But we won't be able to deploy it effectively, and we will drop it sooner than later.

Creating new effective technology practices can be done faster and more easily by studying how others are successfully putting them to use. This would be like an apprenticeship. In the digital age, the notion can get expanded online, to what Brown would call a "distributed virtual cognitive apprenticeship."

Our first interview of the series is with Kerrie Paige, Ph.D., president and owner of NovaSim LLC. NovSim is a small technology firm based in Bellingham, Wash. The company develops mathematical models that help its clients make the most of limited resources.

Entrepreneur Battlefield
Paige is a business owner, a road warrior, a wife and a mother of three boys.

Her company, NovaSim, has limited resources that have to be delicately extended to handle international clients. So she's had to deploy various technologies to make herself and her people more productive.

Since Paige travels frequently, she wants to be as functional in London as she is in her office in Bellingham.

In addition, she needs to take care of her three boys and run a family. So technologies have to apply to her personal and professional lives equally well.

Entrepreneur's Technology Compass
Paige's approach to deploying new technologies is based on a few guidelines:

1. Stop compartmentalizing. She uses the same productivity tools for personal and work needs.
2. Keep it in the cloud. She has moved all of her data into web-based applications. This allows access to all of her data from a browser anywhere in the world. She also can share the data easily with her colleagues and family members.
3. Choose applications that talk to each other well. This can automate some of the routine work of transferring the data.
4. Keep it simple. Productivity tools have to be easy to use for her, her colleagues and her family.
5. Tools must be able to scale. As the company grows, the tools need to scale up easily.

Entrepreneur's Technology Toolkit and Practices
Here are some of her favorite tools and the practices she has developed around them:

• Firefox: Since she uses a lot of web-based applications, the browser has become a key platform. Paige customizes the Firefox toolbar and bookmarks on her various devices (PC, laptop, smartphone) to have direct access to her favorite applications.
• Zoho Mail: Similar to Gmail, Zoho Mail is a web-based e-mail service. In addition, Paige uses Zoho for its customer relationship management capability. Unlike Gmail, Zoho Mail does not serve ads.
• Google Calendar: She uses Google calendar to manage both her personal and work appointments. Her assistant has read/write access to the work items on the calendar. However, the personal items show up as busy times, with no other details. Paige's family can update her personal calendar but can't change her work appointments.
• Remember The Milk: This is a task-management system she uses to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done method. Currently, the website does not integrate directly with Zoho e-mail. So Paige matches Remember The Milk list names with the e-mail folder names in Zoho. She had to spend a few days setting up the lists. Remember the Milk works well with iPhones, Blackberrys and Android phones.
• Google Apps: Instead of using Microsoft Office programs, Paige uses Google Apps. This way, she can access her files from any computer or smartphone anywhere in the world. She can also share the data with her colleagues or family members.
• OhDontForget.com: Paige uses this tool to schedule text messages as reminders for herself and her boys. The text message gets delivered automatically at the right time and point of performance, such as, "Don't forget to turn in your permission slip."
• Google Voice: Paige uses Google voice to manage her phone numbers and filter her calls. She gives out her Google voice number as her personal number. She also uses it as her mobile number on her business card. Her work number has an extension, which Google voice doesn't handle. For more about Google voice, read "Simplify Your Phone Life." 
• Basecamp: This is a web-based project management and collaboration tool. Paige uses Basecamp constantly. She sets up various projects that her employees and clients can collaborate on. Basecamp gives her a dashboard of all projects and their latest developments.
• eWallet: Using different web applications means logging in using an array of user names and passwords. Paige uses eWallet to keep all of her passwords in one digital wallet. There are other, similar tools on the market that accomplish the same thing.

Entrepreneur's Technology Trials
Paige learns about new technologies by monitoring various tech blogs. She also has a couple of tech-savvy friends who show her new tools.

She usually tries something for a while to make sure it works for her. If all goes well, she introduces it to her employees and asks them to use it. If it works for everyone, it's a keeper. If not, it will be dropped. Of course, she owns the company and has the authority to enforce technology policies. She constantly refines her tools and her practices to fine-tune and increase her productivity.

Gotcha's
Most web-based applications, like Google apps, don't have tech support staff ready to answer your questions. That leaves you with online help, support forums or blogs. I asked Paige about support and training for these new technologies, especially the cloud applications. She admits that being on the edge of the technology means she spends a lot of her own time on discovery, training and support.

Training in her company means gathering up her troops and telling them about the new technology. Support means that if they have any questions, they go to her for answers. Rarely, she delegates training and support to other folks.

Cloud applications require a connection to the internet. So if you get stuck somewhere with no internet connection, you won't have access to the latest data.

How do you measure improvement in productivity using these technologies? Paige doesn't have a quantitative measure for it. She relies primarily on her gut to determine whether something is improving productivity.

Bottom line
New technologies can offer attractive productivity enhancers for entrepreneurs. Adopting new technologies requires creating new practices. Since things don't happen in a vacuum, new practices have to fit into your existing work systems. Customized technology practices require interest, drive, time and patience to develop and fine-tune them.

Studying how other technology-savvy entrepreneurs have created practices around new technologies can offer great insights. This virtual apprenticeship is intended to make it easier and faster for you to take advantage of new technologies.