The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Beyond Email … Darren makes an argument for moving beyond email to collaboration tools, thus avoiding email attachment chaos. The Quickr Blog
• Kate on Wiki Collaboration … Kate writes about how her usage of wikis have increased since joining Atlassian (no surprise), and how she is finding it more effective for common tasks. “For whatever reason, it rocks. I love things being this easy. I love getting (almost) zero emails with attachments. I love not having a hard drive full of Word documents.” Atlassian
• 8 out of 10 Collaboration Vendor Go Email … From Susan: “I was intrigued by an article I read this week in KMWorld that talked about a recent study on the document collaboration segment of the enterprise content management market that covered 10 leading collaboration tools. It included EMC, IBM, Microsoft, Open Text and Oracle. Each vendor was asked to create and review the report using their own collaboration software. But, 8 of the 10 vendor participants gave up and resorted to using e-mail!!! If the software vendors of collaboration solutions can’t find successful ways to leverage their own technology to collaborate, what does that say for either their solution analysts or the ease of use of their products? Basically, it says that changing behavior is hard and that organizations that want to successfully deploy collaboration software need to ensure that their project plan includes a sufficient amount of time and energy devoted to addressing the issue of integrating the use of the software into the way people actually get work done, maybe even by defining procedures for when using e-mail to collaborate is, in fact, perfectly OK.” NetworkWorld

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• OCS Best Practices Analyzer … Microsoft released a Best Practices Analyzer for Office Communications Server 2007. “This is a diagnostic tool that gathers configuration information and determines whether your OCS 2007 configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices.” Microsoft
• WebEx MeetMeNow … WebEx released MeetMeNow, a version of its web conferencing service for individuals. “Priced at $49 per month, MeetMeNow is a cost-effective, easy-to-use solution for holding meetings on the Web. MeetMeNow integrates data, voice and video, allowing users to instantly launch highly interactive online meetings from the desktop, Microsoft Outlook and Office, and multiple instant messaging services. Delivered on the WebEx MediaTone Network, a global network specifically designed for the highly secure delivery of on-demand applications, MeetMeNow provides seamless video and desktop sharing without the net congestion or reliability problems frequently found in other Web meeting offerings.” Available immediately. 14-day free trial. CNNMoney
• Collaboration in Office 2.0 … Don argues that the in-built collaboration capabilities in Office 2.0 applications are leaving Microsoft behind. “When I look at Google Apps (which includes Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Notebook, and other apps) and watch how people are using these apps I can start to see where things are going. Sure these apps cannot compare to the capabilities and fidelity of Word, Excel or PowerPoint today. But they solve some critically important problems. One good example – the way you can share a Google Doc with someone else is very simple and effective. If I’m working on a document and want to share it with someone, I just type the e-mail addresses of people I want to share the document with in the sidebar, and that’s it. They get a link, and viola, we’re both editing the document in real-time. And if someone sends me an e-mail as an attachment, and I read it in GMail, it asks if I want to view – and edit it – right there in my browser. And I get a great experience on my iPhone too. ” Etelos

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Young People Can’t Handle Interruptions … “According to research commissioned by the Institute for Innovation & Information Productivity undertaken by Oxford university young people actually don’t handle interrupts very well. In fact older people cope better because of the benefits of a mature brain with many more synaptic connections. ” Steve Richards
• Juggling It All … As a manager, work on high payoff projects: (1) determine your top priorities, (2) spend the first 90 minutes of every day on strategic projects, (3) start early in the day, and (4) enjoy the feeling of greater accomplishment. ConnectIT
• Write More Productively … Five tips for writing more productively: (a) when you are writing, write, (2) lower your expectations, (3) separate writing from editing, (4) develop the writing discipline, and (5) consider the tools you use. “When I switched to a Mac in 2005, I became more productive and more creative. Your mileage may vary. 🙂 Writing on a Mac also made writing more fun for me. I’m not urging you to switch to a Mac, although it couldn’t hurt, but what I am asking you to do is to consider how your tools affect your writing.” Angela Booth

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Kindle will Fail … Jeremy concludes that the Kindle will fail. “The way I like to look at a new gadget is generally inspired by the language Pip Coburn uses in The Change Function. Is the market today “in crisis” when it comes to books? No. Next, is there a perceived pain in adopting electronic book readers? Absolutely. Now that’s not enough to completely rule out the category, but it certainly is a quick and dirty way to see why it’s not quite a slam dunk either.” Jeremy Toeman