Earlier today I had the pleasure of finally getting to speak with Jeff Schultz from Parlano about their recently released MindAlign Mobile clients for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm devices. Today was the first time we’d talked by phone … all of our interactions to date have been over email. At least, MindAlign Mobile was the intent of the conversation, but we covered a huge range of ground and finally stopped talking after about 90 minutes. Jeff’s the head of marketing for Parlano, and also writes a blog on Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Endurance Sports and more.

What is MindAlign?
I think of MindAlign as the intersection of three things:

1. Real-Time Messaging … MindAlign creates a new channel for textual communication between two or more people. I’m hesitant to use the term “instant messaging”, because it carries with it the baggage that everyone needs to be online in order for it to work. MindAlign doesn’t require that … you send messages within a chat room / virtual chat channel and others that are invited to that chat channel can see the messages that have been sent in the past, and indeed, can contribute new thoughts and documents to the channel.
2. Persistence … Picking up that last point, the messaging channel persists / stays alive over time, and doesn’t go away unless it is intentionally deleted. Even if you close your MindAlign client, the channels and communications you’re involved with stay around. That’s very different from instant messaging, where chat is ephemeral.
3. Intelligence … Whilst conversation takes place in chat channels that stay around, often individuals are interested in monitoring certain topics or keywords regardless of the channel in which they take place. Hence a user in MindAlign can create a filter that looks across a collection of channels on an ongoing basis and highlights where certain keywords, people or other things are being discussed. Eg, if you’re interested in all discussions that mention a certain competitor, you set up a filter to report on all instances across the entire collection of chat channels you are able to see.

One of the ideas in MindAlign that I hadn’t seen before is that of a “story”. Not all electronic communication involves trading short lines of text back-and-forth … that’s great for negotiation and interactivity, but sometimes one has something more substantive and longer to say. “Stories” in MindAlign allow an individual to contribute a longer piece … be that a couple of paragraphs of text, or a document, or an image … and to have that displayed in the chat channel via a clickable title. So rather than the whole thing showing, only the title shows, and when it is clicked, the whole “story” pop-ups for reading. That’s a nice way of keeping channels looking uncluttered. Note, however, that you can choose to create a story for a longer contribution; you are not forced to do so.

What’s Coming in the Next Version?
MindAlign consists of two main pieces: the MindAlign Server, and the MindAlign Client. The 2007 editions of these are soon to be released, and contain some really cool things (which Jeff showed me today). These include:

• The ability to federate chat channels across MindAlign Servers through Microsoft’s federation technology for Live Communications Server 2007. Also, through Microsoft’s agreements with the public IM networks, people from AOL, Yahoo and MSN can be included in a MindAlign chat channel. This is great for extending real-time persistent and intelligent conversations to customers and partners.
• The user interface is cleaner, brighter and nicer to work with. MindAlign 2007 will support urgent messages and emoticons, things that have been lacking in previous versions. Also, users can drag-and-drop chat channels into a hierarchy that works for them, rather than being forced to see things in a certain way.

I can’t show you a screen shot, but the 2007 edition was nicer to work with. You’ll see when it’s released.

MindAlign Is Very Different to Email
The approach of automatically showing messages in specific chat channels may bring to mind the idea of automatically filtering email messages into specific email folders. At least it did for me, especially since I’m aware that various academic research projects have discovered that people really don’t like that approach. Jeff and I talked through the differences, and concluded the following:

• Automatically filtering email messages into specific folders requires that each individual become an expert at writing email rules to do the filtering. There’s no automatic way of filtering email messages into specific folders that works correctly. MindAlign is different, because the conversation takes place directly within a channel, and therefore will always show correctly within that channel.
• Senders of messages may unwittingly use certain phrases that trigger certain rules that the user has set up for filing messages into a specific folder. Thus what the user expects (or what they trust their email client to do) is going to be at odds with what actually happens. MindAlign is different, because only messages that are sent within the context of a specific chat channel are displayed there. You can’t get it wrong, unless of course the sender writes in the wrong chat channel.
• Although this has changed in products like Outlook 2003 (via Search Folders), most email clients can’t display a consolidated list of all new messages once they have been filed into specific email folders. The message is either in the Inbox or somewhere else, but not both simultaneously. MindAlign enables you to still get the overall view if you absolutely want it, by setting up an “all channels” filter. I say “if you absolutely want it”, because having seen what it looks like when you do, I think the power in MindAlign is in the contextualized information, not the overview.

Thus in combination, these three reasons lead to the situation of lingering anxiety that urgent email messages may be overlooked because the rules haven’t adequately captured what the user had in mind. With MindAlign, that doesn’t happen. Only stuff that’s supposed to happen in a channel does. That’s a major psychological difference and response from the academic literature on email.

What’s MindAlign Mobile?
MindAlign Mobile is a new client for installation on BlackBerry (see below), Windows Mobile and Palm Treo devices. It connects to the MindAlign Server, and by default, displays the filters that the user has set up on their desktop. Because of the limited screen real-estate on the device, Parlano made the decision to display these filtered channels by default, and give the user the power to see anything or everything else if they wanted to. You can write into a channel when you’re on one of these devices, thus being able to participate in ongoing conversations from anywhere.

I think that people using MindAlign Mobile are going to report a different psychological response to those using wireless email. Due to the way MindAlign Mobile works by displaying only the filters by default, you are less likely to be overwhelmed by extraneous messages when out and about. I know it’s theoretically possible to set up the BlackBerry stuff for wireless email so that only certain messages are sent out to the device, but once again that’s an issue of ensuring that your email filter rule is written correctly. And you only know that based on repeated observations of being out-and-about and missing certain things. And I don’t think you can change it when you’re out-and-about from the device (anyone know for sure?). With MindAlign Mobile, you still have access to everything, but only certain things are displayed by default.

For more information, see Parlano’s MindAlign Mobile PDF (2 pages). The MindAlign people have been using the Mobile edition internally since June 2006, and it’s just been released for public consumption.

Michael’s Thoughts
I really like this offering, as I’ve written before. The new mobile stuff is just plain cool, and will be very helpful for people that rely on MindAlign to keep them connected to their people, clients, colleagues and projects. And I’m fascinated by the way in which MindAlign results in different psychological outcomes and relaxed focus for people compared to email. That’s very cool.

Now if only they offered a hosted edition for people like me …