Thu, Jun 21, 2007
Networked Tools and the Email Bottleneck #
My friend and colleague, TonyChristopher, recently wrote a wonderful paper entitled, "Tools for Teams: Beyond the Email Bottleneck." There are two things I really like about the paper, and there's one thing I want to nitpick here. (MDS)
First, the good stuff. Tony introduces a new term, "networked tools," to connote tools that are on the network. These include shared calendars, file repositories, and so forth. Why is this useful? For starters, most people have no idea what a collaborative tool is, and that includes many folks who are ostensibly in the business. (MDT)
What is a collaborative tool? It's a tool that facilitates collaboration. Certainly, a shared authoring tool like a Wiki has affordances that facilitate collaboration. But a plain old text editor is just as legitimately a collaboration tool, because it can also be used to facilitate collaboration (for example, when used on a SharedDisplay). (MDU)
When most people talk about collaborative tools, what they're really talking about are networked tools, which is why I think Tony's term is much more apt. (MDV)
The main point of Tony's paper is not to invent a new term, but to shift the focus away from the tool and onto an organization's needs and processes. His specific advice is a bit oriented towards larger organizations, but the essence of his argument is true for everyone. (MDW)
My only nitpick with Tony's paper is that he chooses to pick on email, a favorite practice of another person I like to nitpick on this point, RossMayfield. (In fairness to Ross, he's clearly being a troublemaker -- or a good CEO -- when he declares email dead, as he's also written clearly about using email effectively in the context of collaboration. And he's spot on about occupational spam.) Tony writes: (MDX)
Email undermines the centralized accumulation of knowledge that could benefit the organization both during the project and long after it's over. Organizations that have not evolved from email to a broader set of networked tools face lost oportunities and hidden costs. (MDY)
It's a bit of a red herring to blame email, because email is a Swiss Army knife. You can do a bunch of things with it, but you've got to figure out how to take advantage of this flexibility. This is even more difficult with groups, because if some folks are using their email differently from others, its effectiveness as a collaboration tool drops. (MDZ)
I suspect that most organizations would see orders of magnitude improvements in how they collaborated if they went through the steps that Tony suggested, then reexamined how they could use email more effectively. (ME0)
A very simple example of what I mean came out of a conversation with TaraHunt earlier this week. I was talking to Tara and ChrisMessina about their work to move the FreeCycle community to something more appropriate to their needs. I observed that while FreeCycle could definitely use a better support tool, it's a great example of how you can leverage a simple mailing list to do amazing collaborative work. (ME1)
Tara noted that there are 3.5 million people currently on FreeCycle, which is amazing. She also observed, "Imagine how many people they would have if the tool were better." A fair point indeed. When you've thought carefully about your patterns and you've reached the limit of your tools, the next step for coevolution is to improve your tools. FreeCycle -- currently serving 3.5 million people effectively -- is definitely at that point. Most organizations are not. (ME2)
/collaboration/tools | Posted at 3:44pm
Bad Guys and Underwear #
My friends FenLabalme and ElaineLabalme send out an email twice a year celebrating the summer and winter solstices. This year, they related this great exchange between Elaine and their adorable son, Steven: (MDJ)
Steven: "Why do we wear underwear?" (MDK)
Elaine: "Because it makes Mr. and Mrs. Happy feel better." (MDL)
Steven: "Do bad guys wear underwear?" (MDM)
Elaine: "Probably." (MDN)
Steven: "I bet Darth Vader doesn't wear underwear." (MDO)
My money's with you, Steven. And thanks, Fen and Elaine, for enlightening all of us about Mr. and Mrs. Happy. Happy Summer Solstice, everybody! (MDP)
/personal | Posted at 1:54pm
Chabon on Pigeonholing and Discipline #
MichaelChabon wrote a wonderful homage to ArthurConanDoyle a few years ago called, The Final Solution. It's a SherlockHolmes mystery set in 1944, and Holmes is an 89-year old beekeeper, long retired from detection work. The book never mentions Holmes by name, but it's clear from the start who the "old man" is. The plot is middling compared to Doyle's body of work, but the prose is far superior. It feels like a really well written, authentic Holmes mystery. (MCV)
In the paperback edition, there's some supplementary material at the end, including a transcribed 2004 NPR interview with SteveInskeep. Inskeep asks Chabon about a "serious literary writer" writing a mystery. Chabon responds: (MCW)
I'm really annoyed by pigeonholes and categories and labels. I view them as iniquitous to the spirit of play and of experimentation and of storytelling. The fact at a bookstore, the fiction is divided into fiction and mystery and science fiction, I don't understand why it has to be that way. To me it's all fiction, and I think the best science fiction, the best mystery fiction, the best horror fiction ought to be put on a par with the best quote-unquote "literary fiction." You know, there's this famous thing, SturgeonsLaw, named after the science fiction writer TheodoreSturgeon, who said that 90 percent of everything is crap. Maybe he said crud, actually. I think that's true, and it's just as true of the so-called literary fiction as it is of the science fiction and mysteries. So, you know, if I owned my own bookstore, I would just have the best 10 percent of everything and I would stick it all together in one section and call it fiction and have done with it. (MCX)
Chabon is also quoted in his bio on his views of success, which he says requires three things: talent, luck, and discipline: (MCY)
Discipline is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two. (MCZ)
Baseball coaches and pitchers talk all the time about pitchers "trusting their stuff." They're describing what happens when pitchers reach the big leagues and start spending all their time trying to paint corners and make the perfect pitch, rather than rearing back and trusting their talent. Yes, you want to try and hit the outside corner, but in the end, you have to remember that your fastball goes 95 miles per hour and dances like a monkey. (MD0)
I go through this same anxiety all the time when I write and when I speak. It's easy to get caught up with writing the perfect essay or giving the perfect talk, but in the end, you can't control whether or not you can write like Chabon or tell stories like GarrisonKeillor. All you can do is work hard at your craft, trust whatever talent you have, and hope for the best. (MD1)
/books | Posted at 9:17am
Mon, Jun 18, 2007
HyperScope Sprint, June 30 in Sebastopol #
Last month, we held a HyperScope sprint at JonathanCheyer's house in SanJose. (MCC)
It was so productive and fun, we've planned another one at the end of this month, Saturday, June 30, from 10am until we drop. This time, we'll be meeting at ChristinaEngelbart's house in beautiful Sebastopol. (MCE)
Please join us! This will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about the HyperScope and to hang out with some very interesting and cool people. RSVP at Upcoming or contact me if you'd like to attend, and I'll forward more details. (MCF)
/tech/hyperscope | Posted at 1:07am
The Case for Distributed Social Networks #
Courtesy of bLaugh. Spotted by Barnraiser. (MCB)
/collaboration/idcommons | Posted at 12:49am
Sat, Jun 16, 2007
35 Year Anniversary of Open Space Preservation #
This coming election day (November 6, 2007) will mark the 35th anniversary of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District's formation (Measure R). I'm not talking about the group process, I'm talking about the preservation of natural OpenSpace, one of the reasons the BayArea is so beautiful. The latest district newsletter cited a beautiful passage from the campaign materials back then: (MBZ)
Open space is our green backdrop of hills. It is rolling grasslands -- cool forests in the Coast Range -- orchards and vineyards in the sun. It is the patch of grass between communities where children can run. It is uncluttered baylands where water birds wheel and soar, where blowing cordgrass yields its blessings of oxygen, where the din of urban life gives way to the soft sounds of nature. It is the serene, unbuilt, unspoiled earth that awakens all our senses and makes us whole again... it is room to breathe. (MC0)
/outdoors | Posted at 3:25pm
Tue, Jun 05, 2007
Wiki Developer Meeting Today; WikiWednesday Tomorrow #
Two important events are happening in Wiki-land today and tomorrow. First, this afternoon at 2pm PDT (21:00 GMT), there will be a worldwide IRC meeting for Wiki developers on #wikiohana at irc.freenode.net. The main agenda item: WikiCreole. This was one of the outcomes from RecentChangesCamp last month. The cool thing is that folks have been hanging out regularly on the channel, and that AndreasGohr whipped up an IRC logger for us. If you do any Wiki development, please join us! (MBM)
Tomorrow night, WikiWednesday will be moving to CitizenSpace in SanFrancisco, and I'll be the inaugural speaker at the first non-PaloAlto event. I'll be talking about my recent work on WikiInteroperability: (MBN)
Market growth is healthy for everyone in the Wiki world. More Wiki companies and technology means greater market awareness and innovation. But Wikis are also about community and collaboration. Are we as a community collaborating as much as we could? Are there opportunities we're missing by not collaborating more? EugeneEricKim will preview his upcoming paper on Wiki interoperability, where he describes real-world end-user pain, concrete opportunities (especially ways Wiki developers can help the entire space by improving their own tools), and a practical strategy (WikiOhana) for achieving interoperability. (MBO)
Hope to see many of you there! (MBP)
/events | Posted at 9:57am
