i’ve noticed archives aren’t entirely working (you can read the summary but you can’t click thru to whole posts). will work on fixing this over easter.

here’s a posting about using email for collaboration. or rather why is there such resistance to using collaborative software tools instead of email which lots of us would agree isn’t the most productive tool. and why do people revert back to email even after using software?

fyi, this posting is from a collaboration software company blog. they decided to look for what’s good with email and found:

- it’s easy to use (we all know how it works, we’re used to it)
- it’s universal (we all know how it works & it works for everyone. it’s not platform or software dependant)
- it’s accessible anywhere
- it can be personalised (personalised in terms of who you cc or bcc or what priority u put on the email)
- it’s managable & configurable (it’s easy to set up filters and manage ur email)
- it’s searchable
- it’s in your face (u can’t get away from it)
- it just works (this was more of a summary… easy to learn, get started quickly, etc)

i was reading case studies at basecamp the other day and one of the questions asked was how using basecamp has effected their email usage. i think every study i read said they previously used email as their primary mode of communication and now that they use basecamp, that usage has dropped significantly.

email was used by 100% of the companies that participated in my thesis research. i don’t think anyone would find that surprising with a virtual team. email usage ranged between 12% and 75% across the teams. this also didn’t surprise me.

what did surprise me was the slowness to incorporate newer technologies (especially as 50% of teams were in the IT industry). none of the teams used blogs (either reading a team members or writing their own). none used application sharing. none used shared whiteboards. none incorporated member profiles. none used videophones.

that’s not to say it was ALL email usage. two teams used a wiki (30% usage for one team and 5% for the other). collaborative software was used by one team 55% of the time. yahoo groups (or other group software like google groups) was used by two teams (60% and 10% of each team’s usage).

i did not ask what sort of planning went into technology decisions. with the top 3 communication methods being email (email and email with attachments), IM and phone (individual and conference phone calls but not VOIP calls), i suggest there isn’t much or any planning on technologies and our mindset doesn’t expand much beyond those 3. or perhaps we just don’t have time to plan. whatever the reason, this isn’t very good news for software vendors.

there is enough research and experience out there for us to know email has its faults – everyone has experienced being misunderstood in an email. so why do we cling to it so tightly? the list above answers that question to some degree but i don’t think delves deep enough. and btw, none of the items above are hard to work thru in a collaboration software IMO.

there’s a few things that come to mind but i’m starting to feel exhausted and feeling like a ramble may be coming so i’ll just concentrate on one other reason: privacy. community moderators are familiar with the idea of the ‘back channel’ which is when you talk outside the normal community way (using IM person to person instead of posting in the group). back channel communication is all about privacy. sometimes we don’t want to say something to the entire group. sometimes we’re shy about putting forth an issue to the entire group and want to float it to one person first. sometimes we’re just not sure what the protocol is with discussing something. i think this is one of the reasons email is good. the question is how do you maintain that privacy but not lose the ideas if they are needed later? that’s a question for vendors to incorporate!!

what are the other ways email is good or bad in how we use it to collaborate?

it would seem myspace.com has hired a security expert. they will also start running an ad campaign to make kids more aware of the situation of ‘trusting strangers’. the ny times article suggests these actions maybe due to increased pressure from police, parents & schools. my gut feeling is the media attention the site is receiving due to stories brought forward from police, parents & schools is the reason.

i’m all for educating kids and parents (and everyone breathing) about the dangers (and joys) of putting personal information online and telling strangers things about you. i think what’s needed is more than 1 ad campaign that ‘will caution young people to be more skeptical of strangers who approach them online’.

it will be interesting to see how the media attention, the security issue and the hiring of a chief security officier will (if at all) change the site, its popularity or user experience. i do not know how myspace manages the community but security & safety are issues community managers do deal with. particularily those with younger members.

in the uk, there is a home office task force working on best practices (btw, the 2nd link makes it easier to find things).

one of the things the task force did was develop best practices for community moderation (pdf here). disclaimer: while i did not work on this document/process, several members of e-mint did and i am one of the co-founders of e-mint.

in feb there was the european safer internet day conference which focused on young people on the net (internet safety zone uk) but i don’t see a follow up on what came out of the conference (and technorati search doesn’t show anything).

This call for chapters is for a forthcoming book by Chris Kimble and
Paul Hildreth, “Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments
for Educators” which is to be published in 2007 by Information Age
Publishing Inc. Details of the book and a full version of the call for
chapters can be found at:

http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/mis/CLEE/Call_for_Chapters.html

The aim of the book is to bring together the expertise of people who
have worked with Communities of Practice (CoPs) in authentic educational
settings across the world in a convenient, internationally based,
workbook for people in the field of training and education. It is
anticipated that this book will act as a resource for practitioners and
academics that work in the field of CoPs and education.
Prospective authors are invited to send a 500-word outline of their
chapter, by e-mail (Word document or plain text), to Chris Kimble
by May 26, 2006. The outline should clearly
explain the content of the proposed chapter and suggest a theme and
section under which it might appear in the final book.

This being the case, the time has come for detailed and insightful inquiry
in to the role, nature, uses and consequences of IM use in professional
communication. We invite thoughtful essays, empirical studies, and
experimental research on the nature of IM use in the workplace as part of
a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication focused
on Instant Messaging.

Topic coverage can include, but is certainly not limited to:
User motivations for workplace IM use
*Effects of IM use in the workplace
*Problems with IM use in the workplace
*Issues of workplace IM implementation
*IM facilitation of business processes

IEEE Special Issue Guest Editor:
Tom Stafford
University of Memphis
+1 901-678-4628, voice
tstaffor@memphis.edu

Important dates:
January 1, 2007: All submissions due to guest editor.
June 1, 2008: Special issue is published.

Submission guidelines:
All submissions must be in English, and should represent the original work
of the authors. Improved versions of papers previously published in
conference proceedings are welcome, provided that no copyright limitations
exist. Submissions must be made electronically via e-mail to Tom Stafford,
Guest Editor. The manuscript should be included as an attachment in MS
Word or RTF format.
Information for authors is available at

http://www.ieeepcs.org/activities_publications_transactions_authors.php