DISQUS

entmike · 11 months ago

Not to poop on your idea, which is a great one, but some tools still remain tethered to the local runtime environment. An example is your suggestion of Google Docs. Good for organizing a weekend BBQ, bad for a design document or resume. I am still a proponent of rallying workplace collaboration past using E-Mail and attachments, however sometimes you have to ease the 40 and 50-somethings into the idea. Cloud computing and collaboration is still years from gaining corporate adoption and momentum, even though it works in peripheral cases such as group organization and social networking. It's a clash of the 20 and 30-somethings vs the aforementioned 40 and 50-somethings, coupled with non-agile workplaces (ours).

Daniel J. Pritchett · 11 months ago

You're right that Google Docs isn't sufficient for a lot of use cases. In those cases, I'd still want to do all of the web-based collaboration you can and then put the final result up on a SharePoint-style web-enabled file share. Even SharePoints' file shares should be able to generate an RSS item saying "Mike just posted a revision to this Visio flowchart".

I can and should be getting that RSS item streamed to me so that I can see your work as it happens rather than when (if) you remember to show it to me.

As for the culture change required to make this stuff happen, I don't mean to discount that at all. I know we aren't going to dump our Lotus Notes mailboxes and wake up in the clouds tomorrow. I'm still doing my best to find the best way forward. By writing all of this out I'm distilling my ideas into a form that will serve me (us) well the next time this comes up in conversation with my supervisor... or yours... or a company vice president.

EDIT: A book I enjoyed very much insists that the only real way to drive this kind of culture change is with the full support and energy of the CEO.

entmike · 11 months ago

I'll continue down the line of thought as Devil's Advocate, if anything, to help you be prepared for the retorts you would get from those who are in charge:

1) What do RSS feeds give you that mailing groups do not?
2) Why do I have to collaborate on the web and then put it all in Powerpoint? Why can't I just use what I've been using?
3) I don't want anybody changing anything I'm working on.

Reason 3 is probably the most frustrating of them all. People need to get over the idea that "I'm" working on something and shift gears and understand that "we" are working on something.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 11 months ago

1) Standardized news feeds are portable and can be repurposed and redistributed to a constellation of unforeseen new applications and communities. E-mails - a 40 year old format that predates the internet - are not suitable for contemporary information sharing purposes.

2) You are free to continue doing what you have been doing, but the continued drumbeat of economic downturn and globalization means that each month you continue operate under an obsolete workflow is a month where your organization draws closer to bankruptcy.

3) The only systems that don't change are dead systems. No one is employed to maintain those. If you want to participate in a living business, you must accept the fact that you have to run at a certain pace just to *maintain* your current position. Any hope of advancement will require even more hard work and optimization.

entmike · 11 months ago

1) [Citation Needed]

2) I fail to see the correlation of economics and workplace collaboration, apart from a potential gain in efficiency.

3) The AS400 gurus want to have a word with you. :)

Daniel J. Pritchett · 11 months ago

1) You can make email do anything you want if you rewrite the system to publicize mailboxes and export messages into a portable format, but the basic email system has none of that baked in. RSS is just a standard built on top of XML to facilitate data exchange. I'd like to focus on transparency and data portability rather than E-mail versus RSS.

2) I'm obviously not an economist nor a CEO, but I was trying to suggest that yearly gains in efficiency will be necessary to stay competitive in business. RSS feeds aren't the silver bullet to solve all workplace woes, but they'll definitely streamline operations and open up new horizons when it comes to knowledge work.

3) Got me there! I imagine that an AS400 doesn't need a huge staff to keep it running. I'm more thinking about the headcount required to build and extend new projects. I like to think that a good IT person/department automates things so well that they are no longer needed full time and can move on to someone who needs them more. I doubt many people are comfortable with that perspective though - it's hard to contemplate the end of a job.

entmike · 11 months ago

I also have to say that I'm playing Devil's/Workplace's Advocate. I'm not personally disagreeing with you.

Daniel J. Pritchett · 11 months ago

Whoops! I was having fun with the back and forth here, but my wife tells me I might have come off as shrill. Thanks a ton for participating here - the ideas put forth in this blog aren't worth nearly as much without people like you to help polish them.

GrowMap · 1 month ago

Great discussion and I totally agree with you Daniel with some refinements to your idea. First a few specific comments:

1) @entmike: There are a great many 50-somethings more versed in using the Internet and collaborating than the 20-somethings. Check the demographics on Social Media sites used by early adopters if you doubt me. We've left careers at places like IBM behind, used Lotus Notes years ago, and maintained not only AS400s but also multi-CPU mainframes with International distributed networks so we're not all obsolete. ;-) Lotus Notes was intended to be a tool for collaborating - not a mailbox. It was very slow but you could sync docs.

2) @Daniel Your wife may be correct that some will misinterpret your comments; however, from my perspective you stated your points professionally and concisely. The only way to be sure you do not offend anyone is to do nothing.

The bottom line is the tools are still being built and they simply are not really there yet. RSS feeds do make far more sense than email although both can deluge us with more than we can handle.

One thing about collaborating - letting others change what you're working on - is that you may not have realized that most people are not contributors. They do what they're told and do not create original work. When you collaborate with others you respect who bring unique specialized skills to the table that changes everything.

We must work together to create solutions that allow us to collaborate. The advanced tasks I am working on require systems that do not exist yet and when I explain them at donationcoder I usually get no responses, possibly because they are too complex.

I would love to collaborate with both of you and anyone else who "gets it". Drop by my GrowMap blog or find GrowMap on Social Networks including Twitter, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, cliKball, Ning - most major sites. Entmike is welcome to play Devil's advocate any time and I really want to hear more of your ideas, Daniel.