The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Chuck Hollis is driving the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies at EMC, with an internal deployment of Jive Clearspace. This was done because the latter is better at supporting communication as compared to products that provide document repositories. James has a right-on conclusion however:”Thinking about this I also have a sneaky suspicion that, as with eRoom and other similar collaboration tools, past and present, that have spiraled out of control, we will also find that adopters of social media tools are going to experience the same disappointments if they don’t follow patterns like this and those identified in the Wikipatterns book.” See also Infovark.

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• TimeBridge added two new features to its scheduling service: (a) public sharing of your calendar, and (b) a free conference calling service. Available immediately. Also, TimeBridge is a full member of the Google Enterprise Professional Program, meaning that Google Apps users can use TimeBridge for meeting scheduling.
• Rod on Microsoft Office: “For me the incremental updates to desktop productivity tools isn’t as exciting as it used to be. Word and Excel are great products but they haven’t fundamentally changed in many years. In the words of the Spice Girls, what I really, really, want is collaborative editing tools. For me documents have 5 mins to maybe 24 hours of intensive activity – then they seldom change. In that intensive period of activity you are working over someones shoulder, emailing versions, revise, tweak, revise, tracking changes, waiting for another edit, revise etc, etc.” Apparently this is the direction that Microsoft is going.
• Yahoo announced oneConnect, a new mobile communications service. Key features: a socially-connected address book, integrated mobile messaging, status, and more.
• The Collaboration University 2008 is being held in Chicago in September 2008, with a focus on Lotus Quickr and Sametime. “In just a few short years, Collaboration University has become one of the premier events in our industry by focusing each event on a selection of collaboration technologies, covering both administration and development with industry experts, and introducing the concept of rapid, progressive immersion to maximize your training value.“
• Sony Ericsson announced the Xperia X1, a touchscreen smartphone that runs Microsoft Windows Mobile and is designed to compete with the iPhone. “The Xperia features a three-inch touch-screen display that slides horizontally to reveal a full Qwerty keyboard. It has broad radio capabilities, with quad-band GSM and four bands of HSDPA and HSUPA, which means it will run on both T-Mobile and AT&T in the United States. It’s also Wi-Fi enabled.“

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• There’s a new document scanning / filing option on the block: the Xambox. “The Xambox is the 1st integrated solution managing hard-copy documents. Spending hours clearing up cluttered spaces with paper is now over. The Xambox appliance arranges, files, stores and locates any of your documents even if you haven’t already sorted them!“For more information, see the Xambox PDF and WebWorkerDaily.
• If you have to do it all yourself, then you need to learn how to scale up. Chris says: (a) cut relentlessly, (b) so no with kindness much more often, (c) learn triage and loop closing, (d) be more decisive in the moment, and (e) use shortcuts and templates.

Other Noteworthy Insights

• How to live like a writer and how to pretend to be one.
• Lenovo has a new slim line notebook, the X300.