The Technology Trends of Working with People You Can’t Be With

• Alex wonders whether email is in danger (hat tip, Gavin), and explains the rise of various new tools to support electronic communication. “Since email was the first killer app for the web, it’s used for everything. We’re now observing a fragmentation cycle where we’re discovering better ways of passing around information and getting things done. Email is fundamentally great at substantial person-to-person communication. The following diagram illustrates why email is facing competition. It cannot effectively support broadcast (except for spam) and it’s still poor at helping with tasks and projects.” “Danger” makes for a captivating title, but perhaps a better spin on would be about people embracing additional tools that do certain tasks better. Zoli weighs in with another perspective: “Most of teenagers’ interaction is social, immediate, and SMS works perfectly well in those situations. However, we all enter business, get a job..etc sooner or later, like it or not… Our communication style changes along with that – often requiring a build-up of logical structure, sequence, or simply a written record of facts, and email is vital for this type of communication. As much fun Twitter may be, I rarely have (or see) serious ongoing discussions there – in other words Tweets are in addition, instead of email.“
• Vimukti Technologies took the wraps of Collaber, a new team collaboration service that supports Windows, Linux and Mac systems. “Collaber brings a Virtual Office Environment for your team to share files, events, tasks, manage projects and get the work done as if they are all located in the same location, no matter where the members are physically located. It keeps your data safe and secure.” They are making a direct attempt to make a “better Groove”. I will examine Collaber later in the year, but at the moment, it looks like it holds a well-rounded set of capabilities.



• Scott shares his notes from a recent conversation with the CEO of eXpresso, about future directions for the collaboration vendor. Main idea: expanding beyond collaborative spreadsheets to become the glue that ties disparate inhouse and hosted systems together. “When last I looked at it, eXpresso seemed very much a one-trick pony; spreadsheet collaboration, where can’t you do that? But Langan doesn’t see Zoho, Google Apps, or Microsoft Live as competition… instead, they are just more disparate standards which eXpresso can translate between. With the coming expansion into other document types, eXpresso may indeed become an ally to the IT department, if only to help retrieve users from other data silos they may have locked their data within.” Sounds like a big vision … will be interesting to watch.
• JustSystems is championing the idea of ‘dynamic documents’ which are more like applications than static things that get out of data. “Dynamic documents provide a portable, persistent and contextual user experience, but the information is always up-to-date …. [It provides] the portability, context, and persistence of the document-centric user experience together with the dynamic and interactive information that you typically find within business applications. The document itself becomes the application.“Great idea … the world needs this, as long as it supports roll-back to a point in time view — “what was true then?”. Of course, one could say that a Lotus Notes view is a ‘dynamic document’.
• Hommes & Process released GrooveIT for My Calendars, which provides a single consolidated view of multiple Groove calendars. The user’s Outlook calendar can also be added to the mix. This is the dream of Pillar 4. See the GrooveIT for My Calendars PDF.

Insights on Being Productive and Effective

• Raj writes about eliminating time-wasting activities that result from poor work habits, such as distractions from too many communication options. He has some ideas on improvement: (1) using two computers, one without email, (3) turn off the computer with email and Twitter, (6) outsource some of your overwork, (7) respect yourself and your limitations, and (8) getting rid of distractions. All good ideas. I have been doing the two computer dance this week, and it has worked great for early morning work.
• Clay argues that productivity is a notion that should not be applied to people, and is probably outlived its usefulness. In its place, he outlines the Alternative Productivity Manifesto, with 25 main tenets. Eg, “(4) If you’re consistently having trouble focusing, it’s often because you’re focusing on the wrong things (i.e. things you’re not passionate about or things that aren’t best suited to your skillset), (5) Increased productivity should equal less time on the job. If you’re getting more done, you should get more vacation time, (6) Most best-selling productivity gurus are working in the interests of large corporations and often advocate values and approaches that are not in the best interests of individuals, (7) Increased productivity should result in greater carefree time, more vacations, and more time away from work. Most of the time, however, it does not, and (25) Productivity should be designed around lives, not the other way around“, among others. He suggests that the real game now is personal development. This insight, however, has to take the cake: “(22) Massive value creation often happens during times when no work is ostensibly being accomplished and productivity levels are ostensibly nil.” So what’s your productivity strategy / approach / profile? Are these ideas for you?
• Practice does NOT make perfect, says Jason, it makes habits. “I believe there are habits we all have, consistent behaviors and anything that we do that is repeated over and over again that actually creates our day-to-day reality. And, over time we actually “go numb to,” that is we don’t even notice, our habits anymore.” Perhaps the way to resolve the dilemma is to say that “intentional” practice makes perfect, where you are noticing what you are doing and striving for improvement.

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Dale shares his research on why CIOs are upgrading to Windows Vista, and says the two main reasons are security risk management (eg, built-in encryption) and operational cost control (eg, lower power consumption). “When asked about the element that was clearly missing from these business cases, namely improved user productivity, the general consensus was that this was a red herring. The most positive view was that there is likely to be some impact in this area, but it is impossible to measure in any tangible way, so why would you dilute an otherwise solid business case with something that could easily discredit it? Best to stick the list of intangibles in your bottom drawer and run with what you can defend with confidence.“