Collaborative Thinking

Open-Source Spying - New York Times

Here's a test. First, read this article (it is fascinating) and just appreciate the situation that analysts find themselves in while working within intelligence agencies. After you read the article. Pause. Take a deep breath. And read it again - only this time, insert your company, your peers and yourself into the story. Pretend that it's not about intelligence agencies but your own organization. After you read the article - how close is your enterprise to the basic problems identified here regarding inefficient and ineffective communication, information sharing, collaboration and organizational networking? Now, before you run out and throw a blog or wiki silver-bullet at the problem - consider the organizational and human capital dynamics that need to be overcome. Culture and change management barriers trump technology thrown at these types of problems virtually all the time.

The job of an analyst used to be much more stable — even sedate. In the ’70s and ’80s, during the cold war, an intelligence analyst would show up for work at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va., or at the National Security Agency compound in Fort Meade, Md., and face a mess of paper. All day long, tips, memos and reports from field agents would arrive: cables from a covert-ops spy in Moscow describing a secret Soviet meeting, or perhaps fresh pictures of a missile silo. An analyst’s job was to take these raw pieces of intelligence and find patterns in the noise. In a crisis, his superiors might need a quick explanation of current events to pass on to their agency heads or to Congress. But mostly he was expected to perform long-term “strategic analysis” — to detect entirely new threats that were still forming.

Source: Open-Source Spying - New York Times

Communication Technologies, A Decision Tree For Users

Dave Pollard's "How To Save The World" blog is one of my favorites because it forces me to think and reconsider my assumptions around certain trends and positions I take as an analyst. The diagram he has recently posted is worth your time reviewing.

Part of my task in my current consulting assignment is to develop the client's strategy for the use of e-learning and other communication tools. So I thought I'd update the decision tree I developed about three years ago. The result is shown above, and reflects the decision from the perspective of employees of larger organizations with a broad range of communication technologies at their disposal (or, in some cases, technologies that should be at their disposal). This assumes the organization has sufficient budget to invest in some commercial solutions, or to build their own.

Source: How to Save the World

It certainly would be useful if "senders" of messages were able to go through such a decision tree instinctively. Some of the challenges I find when I talk to clients:

• Senders have imperfect information; they honestly may not know whether or not a message is going to result in a back-and-forth exchange.
• Senders may think that the question is very straightforward ("yes/no") however the receiver may have an entirely different perspective due to a lack of context, a conflicting set of background information, etc.
• Senders may not think that they are collaborating - the sender may be thinking communication, the receiver may be thinking that they are collaborating around an activity and the message is part of that joint work.
• Sender and receiver may not know how many people will end up being involved in any conversation or joint activity. They may not have any idea of the elapsed time required to conclude such conversations or activity as well.
• Whether or not rich media is or should be involved is also often impossible to predict. I may not know whether my partner has rich media capabilities or not. He or she might have such technology at their desk, or in a conference room, but they might be mobile at the moment. There are many situational variables to consider.
• Against all of these framing items for the decision tree, the sender and receiver have other messages and activities that require similar decision trees. They can only afford so much time to optimize the best channel for communication. Often this ends up in e-mail, the least common denominator.

So, in concept, the diagram is a valiant effort to help orientate users and try to change behaviors. The reality however that I find within large enterprises is that users typically lack perfect information and perfect knowledge about the future series of interactions and activities a message will create. They can make best-guess assumptions and they can use some common sense to put "things" (documents, etc) into workspaces or wikis and keep channels for communication (alerts, notifications, commentary) with links back to the artifacts being discussed/referenced. Receivers can use XML syndication tools (RSS, Atom) to monitor workspaces and other broadcast communication tools (blogs, tags, bookmarks) to discover topics of interest.

Another very intriguing post on a similar topic (communication) was one not too long ago by Lilia Efimova ("Mathemagenic"), on "Weblog-mediated relationship: a co-constructed narrative". Her blog is another collection of writings that influence my thinking on "the bigger picture". Her post and diagram is a fascinating look at how communication channels and associated tools are merely movements in the complex choreography that occurs as people interact.

We're still very early in the process of observing, learning and understanding the models and patterns associated with effective communication and collaboration across people, groups and networks without burdening users with complex rules, decision trees and such. Diagrams, like the ones depicted in Mr. Pollard's and Ms. Efimova's posts, are important stepping stones since they help visualize our thoughts and provide scaffolding for subsequent discussion.

Presence: Thinking Way Beyond The Buddy List

Just some short-hand notes (not complete thinking) to capture thoughts-in-progress:

Presence & identity: At the core, presence is "you" but how many "you"'s are there? I have many personas: Principal Analyst at Burton Group, a technology geek to my circle of friends, father/husband to my family, a customer to some companies I deal with, etc. In some cases, I'm a made-up person (screen names on AOL or a member of some social networking site). It's important to not go too far down the road in terms of solving presence without due diligence regarding how it relates to identity and how identity is managed and secured.

Presence & location: Presence also touches upon where I am - my home office, on the road at a Starbucks, at a hotel, at a conference, etc. Location information is also important to consider when devising a strategy around presence.

Presence & environment: Somewhat related to location, presence could include insight to the environment around you - the capabilities and/or constraints of your computing environment (connectivity not good enough for video) as well as the form factor(s) you have at the moment (mobile device vs. a PC).

Presence & activity: Presence is influenced/impacted by the activity you are involved in as well as the activities of others. Certain activities preclude me from being available. Other activities might make me freely available. And there are all sorts of combinations in-between.

Presence & role: People wear many hats. There are default roles that might show up in a presence profile but perhaps not all possible permutations. There might be roles that are viewable through certain filters. For instance, someone might be considered a first responder in case of an emergency on their floor in a corporate office. Loading the filter for a "first responder role" into a presence system could display that view of presence information. Roles might also be tacit, my activities might grant me a role for some duration, or my expertise (know-how) or network strength (know-who) might make me "present" on-the-fly.

Presence & meta data: Presence can be assigned to artifacts. I might tag an artifact with meta-data that is resolved in real-time (e.g., author for a document, subject-matter expert) that might only display in a list of search results. Presence is attachable to any application element. Presence as "live" meta data (presence-enabled systems) is a good discussion to have with developers (workflow, etc).

Presence & availability: Availability is a subjective thing - always, sometimes, never, to everyone, to someone, to no one. If I say no one do I not mean my wife or boss. Can I delegate availability? How does availability relate intelligently to all the above (when I am in a certain activity I am unavailable)?

Presence & Social Relatedness: Presence conveys a type of peripheral vision and social nearness (cognitively) that it is important to consider the "connectedness" implications of presence in terms of social networks and community.

Presence & attention: Both inward attention (managing access, interruptions) as well as outward attention (am I trying to get noticed, or to let someone know something, by setting my presence status to a certain state).

Presence & federation: Not just across various organizational boundaries but also across identity boundaries. Security (confidentiality, privacy) comes into play more prominently.

Presence of objects: presence of "things" as well as people so RFID is a type of presence. My presence can be inferred from objects near me or that I handle or wear (nTag).

Presence & agents/avatars: As technology progresses and we automate tasks via bots of various sorts, what type of presence do these "instances of me" have as they act as my proxy? Am I present in real-life when I am in Second Life?

I'll end with that one ... food for thought and for consideration as to how some of these items relate to assumptions currently made around presence systems. How many assumptions based on instant messaging, IP telephony and so on will get in the way of a more expansive view of presence? How do we deal with the discovering, aggregating, brokering, filtering, de-duping, syndicating and other issues? Are we wrong to assume only SIP-based presence systems need apply? Will we have a flat presence server model (federation, clearinghouses) or will we also need a server-of-server model? There's a lot to consider, from many angles - socially, organizationally (including business process and application aspects) as well as technically.

I've covered real-time collaboration since 1996 and for the past few years (at Meta and at Burton) have argued that presence needs to be considered as its own architectural topic.

The Business Innovation Insider: The Nokia 888 communicator changes shape on demand

Concept designs are important, they disrupt linear thinking. And with this particular design, the idea of "phone as playdough" is actually interesting.

"A personal mobile communication device which lets you be free and fun. It is light, simple and carefree. You can change its form according to your needs during the day. You don't have to carry it in your pocket or on your wrist. You can carry it anywhere, in any form. You can roll it, bend it, put on your clothes like a clip. It also makes some form changes that makes it more ergonomical, i.e. when you want to talk on the phone, the body form turns into the form of the good old telephone. You can personalize these forms and record them. So it fits you the best in the way that you have chosen. Also e-motions let you send forms to other 888 users: i.e. you can send a heart shape to your girlfriend or a dancing figure to your friends to call them to the party tonight. This way you can talk without words."

Source: The Business Innovation Insider: The Nokia 888 communicator changes shape on demand

Faster Than A Speeding Digg?

Could Clark Kent get the Daily Planet to publish a story faster than Digg? The Digg coverage of the Rumsfeld story - 4 minute timeline from submission to frontpage - is a powerful example of what's possible with social software and (most importantly) a passionate community. 

Kevin Rose is on stage talking about what Digg knows. He says they have 600k editors that digg stories. Yesterday they set a record for fastest story to hit digg frontpage - the Rumsfeld resignation story took just 4 minutes to hit the homepage after it was submitted! He said netscape and reddit also got the story on their frontpages before mainstream media. 33% of diggs for popular stories typically come via Swarm or Stack.

Source: Kevin Rose at Web 2.0 Summit

Single Ajax Interface For Yahoo Mail & IM Coming

A timely beta from Yahoo! given my earlier post on e-mail, IM and changing workforce demographics. Today, this type of channel switching makes perfect sense for many users but not so much for digital natives is my guess. It would be interesting to see if Yahoo! could provide some data over time on adoption and usage. My daughters for instance live in IM, LiveJournal or Facebook, not e-mail (as do their circle of friends). It would be interesting to see a more IM-centric interface with IM channels rather than e-mail folders, etc. But this is a pretty good start. I use Yahoo! for my primary personal e-mail and since I "live in my e-mail inbox" this will be helpful. (BTW: I also have accounts with Windows Live, AOL and GMail). Parlano has an interesting approach to "living in IM" called persistent group chat. 

Users will quickly get used to flipping quickly between email and IM depending on “presence” - whether or not the person they are communicating with is online. IM conversations will eventually be archived and stored in the same manner as emails, allowing users to drag old conversations into folders in the sidebar.

An additional notation is also being made in the sidebar to let email users know which of their stored contacts are online currently. Multiple current IM conversations are organized by horizontal tabs.

Source: Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Single Ajax Interface For Yahoo Mail & IM Coming

The Decline & Fall Of e-Mail: A Generational Journey

Sean had a good comment on my earlier post regarding e-mail and changing demographics. First, I agree that not much changes over the next few years. The shift I imagine will not begin until the current set of digital natives (those that have grown up using computers) have reached some critical mass in the workforce. If you look at current usage patterns (check out Pew for instance), younger categories of users rely more on instant messaging, SMS, and blogging as forms of computer communication versus e-mail. e-Mail is still used (as Danah's article referenced in my earlier post covers), but it is not the primary place where people "live" so to speak. Today, many information workers live in their inbox. Asynchronous messaging has been the most common means of electronic communication for the past decade. And it is not likely to go away anytime soon. But work styles and user behaviors are changing.

In several years, I expect a significant amount of "digital native" information workers will not live in Outlook or Notes. They will live in Communicator and Sametime. Or some other unified communications client on a mobile device. e-Mail will live on as one of the places these workers go to, but it will be a secondary user experience. These future information workers will also collaborate more using virtual workspace solutions for asynchronous collaboration. Virtual workspace tools (from IBM and Microsoft) as well as wikis will continue to gain traction. Blogs will continue to grow in adoption and take on many of the attributes we associate with virtual workspaces as well. The shift from e-mail to other types of communication and collaboration environments that are more social and real-time centric will be influenced by workers that have completely different views on computing.

Regarding social networks, I actually have to disagree strongly with Sean here. Social networks have been around for many years within business organizations. Within a work context, we are not talking so much about the "news, weather and sports" type of social interaction. Social networks within business organizations are about teaming, community and relationships (mentoring, subject matter expertise, exchange of know-how and best practices, and so on). For those interested, I would recommend the book by Robert Cross, The Hidden Power of Social Networks. It provides a good overview with practical business examples of how work is also a social environment. I would also glance at this story that categories some areas where social network tools can provide business value. I would also look more closely at what Microsoft is doing with Knowledge Network (an extension to SharePoint) and what IBM is doing with dogear and Fringe. The folks at Visible Path are also doing interesting things as well (an example is the recent deal with Hoovers).

And why does this matter in the "bigger picture"? Companies are anxious to figure out new ways of work to improve productivity, growth and innovation. Many are not happy with the current situation (see "50% of companies unhappy with their innovation efforts"). Having tools that compliment the natural work and lifestyle patterns of digital natives is one way to lower technology barriers that might inhibit their participation. Social software (under many memes such as Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0) can help in this regard (with the obvious disclaimer that technology alone is no silver bullet).

The Utility Belt: Interview: Slideshare working on privacy features for PowerPoint-sharing service

Some insight into a service that is pretty helpful to people somewhat addicted to Powerpoint. This might possibly include industry analysts. But the audience for this site is quite diverse, including people from across the spectrum. If they follow the path of web conferencing vendors (security, customization, branding) this could turn into an interesting solution for organizations of all types. 

I did an extended interview this morning with Jon Boutelle, co-founder and chief technology officer at Slideshare, a Silicon Valley startup that has taken the YouTube idea of video sharing and brought it to PowerPoint presentations.

He shared a little news, shedding light on the business opportunity he sees, whether Slideshare is seeking VC funding, and the team's plans to develop social networking features and stoke participation among Slideshare's motley community of users. Below is an edited IM transcript:

Source: The Utility Belt: Interview: Slideshare working on privacy features for PowerPoint-sharing service

pasta and vinegar "wii play history"

I found this article interesting even though the focus is on the game industry. The collaboration space already has examples of capturing interaction history on a per tool basis (logs of various types for e-mail and instant messaging as well as playback files for web conferencing sessions). But the history is fragmented with no clear interaction history across channels around a particular activity (or "game" as the article elaborates on). IBM has been investigating this concept through its research and development efforts around activity patterns, activity management and activity-centric collaboration. Articles can be found in a recent System Journal, Volume 45, Number 4, 2006.

In this interview of Nintendo execs, there is this interesting mention about the “interaction storing” capabilities of the wii (Timo described this to us during the last NFC workshop but I wanted to go deeper into this issue):

Source: pasta and vinegar » wii play history

The article closes with the idea that interaction history is a permanent record, which makes such research by IBM and any business application a possible records management concern as well.

apophenia: what i mean when i say "email is dead"

Concerning enterprise environments, at some point a few years down the road, shifting demographics as Danah Boyd points out in this post, will have an interesting impact on the future of e-mail clients. Once "digital natives" become a large part of the workforce, it's likely that we'll see a tipping point where users will prefer real-time communication front-ends to async front-ends. Yes, e-mail clients will support unified messaging and will morph to provide a real-time communication (RTC) user experience but younger workers may prefer to live in more natively-designed RTC clients (such as Microsoft Office Communicator and IBM Sametime), especially as those clients support both social and work-related capabilities. If so, then Microsoft and IBM will have an interesting challenge since they have a vested interest in preserving the role/value/influence aspects of e-mail clients within their respective install bases yet customers prefer to see them shift investments towards other tools. 

Academics have been noting that young people's social and emotional energies have been moving from email to IM. Consider for example Steven Thorne's 2003 article "Artifacts and Cultures-of-Use in Intercultural Communication." This article shows a cross-language penpal experiment. Those who used email (as assigned) got very little out of the relationship but a segment of participants switched to IM with their penpal, resulting in a much better connection. In examining this, he finds that this is because IM is the primary site of sociable communication for young people. It is where teens prefer to go to socialize.

Source: apophenia: what i mean when i say "email is dead" in reference to teens