Comments on: Musing about mail

By: Michael's Thoughts

Michael's Thoughts — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:14:18 +0000

Email vs. Collaboration Technology: The Big Match, Dec 12…

There has been a good debate in the blogspace during the previous 3-4 months regarding the good and bad of email as a collaboration tool, and I’ve stayed out of it until today. My intention in this post is to…

By: soulsoup » » e-mail is only good for forwarding jokes! e-learning blog, elearning blog, knowledge management, e-learning strategy, learning experience design, usability

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 06:41:25 +0000

[...] Musing about mail from Confused Of Calcutta Iâ€™ve been immensely frustrated with e-mail in enterprises over the years, for a variety of reasons: [...]

By: Library clips :: Email for collaboration? :: September :: 2006

Library clips :: Email for collaboration? :: September :: 2006 — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:13:07 +0000

[...] There is some blogversation at the moment about the effectiveness of collaborating with email, the conversation really took off with Anne Zelenka’s post. [...]

By: JP

JP — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:51:56 +0000

You said it, Karen. Just what is that about? That’s why I get confused when people tell me that e-mail is a collaborative medium.

By: Karyn Romeis

Karyn Romeis — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:00:53 +0000

And then there are those who send an email to the person at the next desk. What is that about?

By: sysrick.com » links for 2006-09-05

sysrick.com » links for 2006-09-05 — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 01:18:29 +0000

[...] Musing about mail (tags: IT) [...]

By: JP

JP — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 14:08:12 +0000

I’m still trying to work this bit out, John. How best to minimise dangling conversations, which can happen even in blogs.

Things like tags help. Things like CoComment help. But there is an interesting tension.

On the one hand, it is the freewheeling nature of the blog that makes a blog what it is, and induces the Snowball effect as Doc and George Lakoff suggested. This is rich and valuable. But new and uncomfortable, since it allows conversations to disperse.

On the other hand, a move that suggests, even via etiquette, that you only comment on the blog of a “kernel-creator” is one that will keep all the control freaks happy, create single-threaded conversations, and probably recreate the bulletin board for all concerned.

That is a retrograde step in my opinion.

So we live with the tension. Allow people to take stories and make them their own. Allow links and “hat tips” and “heads ups” to happen almost serendipitously, in the belief that there will be an emergence effect and the wisdom of crowds will show.

That’s what I’m going with. So I think of blog conversations as multiplying rather than fragmenting, with emergent wisdom-of-crowds effects moving the multiplied conversations around the blogosphere.

That way we retain the rich freedom of blogs rather than the straitjacketedness of bulletin boards. I am sure there are people who will seek to convince me that a blog is a bulletin board, but so far I have not been convinced.

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 13:47:32 +0000

It seems to me that blogs have thepotential to eliminate dangling conversations via the comment sections – I have certainly enhanced my learning this way and perhaps added to that of others on occasion.

By: JP

JP — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:13:28 +0000

Anne, you make my point more eloquently than I could have. Your four criteria are from the viewpoint of the individual rather than the team; they do not make collaboration easier, they make the individual choice of participating in collaboration easier.

Which is why I attacked enterprise e-mail, not e-mail. Building individual silos in enterprises is probably worse than the norm of building departmental or regional silos. E-mail, while sold as a productivity tool, may well improve the productivity of individuals. A moot point but one I am prepared to concede. But e-mail definitely does not improve the productivity of teams, for all the reasons I cited and many many more.

In an enterprise I cannot choose what mail client I have; believe me, I have tried, and the problems I found were non-trivial. Interoperability of e-mail in an enterprise translates to “either you use the mail system we have or you get no mail”. Happy to explain this in more detail to you if you wish. Personalised organisation is also not that simple in enterprises, archival and vault-like policies are enterprisewide. The access control point you make is fine, but has no effect on bad replying and bad forwarding and mail-list breakups and all that jazz. And as far as the single point of information access is concerned, I cannot but agree. For one person. But for a team? Everyone with her or his copy, different versions stored multiple times in multiple places under multiple names.

So you’re right. E-mail is a good enough collaboration tool. For individuals interacting with other individuals. Not for teams.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:05:54 +0000

I’m going to respond to Anne’s comment here in an attempt to keep all of the conversation in one place. Regarding this business of managing your own archives, I am reminded of an anecdote I heard about Igor Stravinsky when I was more serious about such things. Stravinsky once said that he always copied out his own scores and parts, because it was only during that act of copying that he would REALLY understand what he had composed. (Mind you, we have no reason to believe that Stravinsky really DID all of his own copy-work; but, in the tradition of MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, the legend makes for a better story than the truth!) I cannot say that I LIKE managing my own archives, but I prefer doing it myself to entrusting it to another agent, software or human. My reasoning is similar to Stravinsky’s: I am the one who most needs to keep track of what is in those archives; so it is important that I am the one who visits (and revisits) that content as I decide HOW it will be archived. I may even reorganize the archives on some of these occasions. After all, any organization is arbitrary; so, at best, it reflects my worldview of perceptual categories at the time I organize it. If I am in charge of that organization and my worldview changes, then I can take responsibility for aligning the archive with my new worldview.

Does this take time? Yes, but like copying out music it is time well spent. What is most important is that those archives remain of use to me. If this technique helps me keep the utility value up and fresh, then the investment in time is worth it!