a post (and experiment) on the underuse of online collaboration & conversation tools by dave pollard.

dave also has a fantastic decision tree to help you decide what technology you should use to communicate.

in the underuse article, dave asks the following questions, puts them on writely & asks for people to go there to edit/answer. he said he granted permission to 31 people but only 12 participated.

1. Why are conversation and collaboration tools so underused? Is my list of 7 reasons missing anything? Are any of the reasons predominant?
2. Is the answer making the tools better? If so, how? If not, what is the answer?
3. Given time, do you think people will eventually learn to use these tools, despite their shortcomings? Which tools, current or envisioned, will be the winners, the killer apps for online-enabled conversation and collaboration, and why?
4. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better conversationalists, and how would we do this?
5. What one simple thing should we do/learn to most effectively enable people to become better collaborators, and how would we do this?

. personally i think tools are underused because people don’t know about them or are afraid of them or just don’t understand what the benefit could be. i think a lot of the tools could be better (and they will get better). i recently experimented with a wiki during a project at work. there were definite benefits to using it, there was resistance to using the technology, and even though i think the technology was pretty damned good, i saw definite places it could have been more user friendly .

i think several of the contributors to that post make very valid points re: generational differences. the usage of collaboration type items makes the newer generation not only more computer savvy but also willing to share (instead of the ‘i produced this’ mindset of other generations).