Michael Sampson

Messaging News for August 2008 is Out: "Identifying the Genuine Expert"

The August 2008 edition of Messaging News Magazine is out, and my article is Identifying the Genuine Expert: The Three Stages of Expertise Surfacing.

"There are three stages in the sharing of expertise information through collaboration software: declared expertise, deduced expertise and discerned expertise. I believe it is time for organizations to demand vendors to deliver the higher stages. Let’s review each in turn."

You can download the PDF (5.5 MB, 40 pages).

Messaging News for May-June 2008 is Out: "The Changing Locus of Collaboration"

The May-June 2008 edition of Messaging News Magazine is out, with my article entitled The Changing Locus of Collaboration (starting on page 22):

"There is a change underway in the world of collaboration within organizations, and it opens a whole new arena of collaborative possibilities. Rather than only supporting explicit collaboration, there is a whole new set of vendors and products that enable implicit collaboration within organizations. This means the work of an individual can count toward the benefit of others and the organization, without the person being explicitly aware that they are doing so."

You can download the PDF (2.8 MB, 40 pages) or read the digital version online.

Collaboration Newswire (May 22): When is Face-Time Too Expensive?

I missed it for some reason -- it didn't arrive in my Inbox on May 22 -- but the latest edition of Collaboration Newswire is out. I wrote the editorial on "When is Face-Time Too Expensive?" and my favourite piece is this part:

"So how do we get to the point of being willing to give up face-time as a daily wish, and agree to accept something less? Do we have to wait for gas prices to be so exorbitant that we have no choice? Or can we start now? Perhaps we all need to plunk down $30K on a personal Cisco TelePresence unit? (Hey, if you really are a virtual worker, you won't need to buy that car for getting to the office.) This could be the new face of the leasing business, and a new line of business for Cisco: monthly lease payments on a Cisco TelePresence unit from Cisco Finance."

Read the entire editorial.

Collaboration Newswire (May 8): IBM Lotus Quickr Content Integrator

The May 8 edition of Collaboration Newswire crossed the wire a few hours ago:

"IBM's Lotus Quickr is a team collaboration product that continues and enhances the Lotus Quickplace offering, as well as embraces design ideas from the Web 2.0 world. It is also multiplatform, running on Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Last week IBM announced the availability of a migration and coexistence tool for Quickr, so that organizations can shift content from team sites in SharePoint, Public Folders in Microsoft Exchange Server, document libraries in IBM Lotus Document Manager (previously Domino.Doc) and teamroom applications from IBM Domino Server into Quickr places. Note that the technology underpinning Content Integrator is from CASAHL Technology."

It should be up on the back issues page in a couple of days.

Collaboration Newswire (April 25): Conversations About Collaboration

Last weeks edition of Collaboration Newswire has been distributed. It focuses on the numerous Conversations About Collaboration I have been involved in recently.

"My life has been especially full of conversations about collaboration in the past two weeks, with visits to three Australian cities and two New Zealand ones. This has led to slipped deadlines for writing Collaboration Newswire, much to my chagrin (not to mention that of my long-suffering editor Stephanie!). In stark contrast to the previous editions of Collaboration Newswire, I want to reflect on these recent conversations about collaboration and share the highlights."

If you don't already, subscribe for email delivery, or read it up on the Messaging News site.

Collaboration Newswire (April 8): Extending Single User Applications for Collaboration

The latest edition of the Collaboration Newswire crossed the wire just over an hour ago. The focus in this one is on Extending Single User Applications for Collaboration, and I wrote about eXpresso Corp, which starts:

"The core applications that most information workers use on a daily basis are designed for individual use, not group use. Individuals would work in Word, Excel or PowerPoint until they were contented with the state of their work. Then collaboration was undertaken in one of two ways: hollering for an in-the-office colleague to come and look over the shoulder, or emailing the document or spreadsheet to an out-of-the-office colleague for review at an opportune moment. One provided synchronous interaction ("Sally, how about we word that paragraph a slightly different way?" or "John, let's change the forecasted market growth to 20 percent and see what happens"), the other asynchronous ("Sally, I have looked at your document and made some changes; please see the new version attached" or "John, thanks for the market forecast. I have made some changes and attach a new edition for your review"). When just one other person was involved, the ping-pong effect by email worked fine, but when multiple people were asked to review and comment, the original author faced a tremendously difficult job of incorporating all the suggestions into a new master document or spreadsheet. For such group situations with Excel, eXpresso is trying to change the paradigm for collaboration by going back to the underlying application and adding capabilities to make it more group-friendly."

The entire issue will be available soon on the Collaboration Newswire Recent Issues page.

If you want to receive Collaboration Newswire twice a month, sign up here.

Messaging News for March-April 2008 is Out: "Secure Document Collaboration Approaches"

The March-April 2008 edition of Messaging News is out, and my article for this edition is entitled Secure Document Collaboration Approaches.

"When we need to share documents with other people, our default approach is to open email, start a new message, attach the document and hit send. We expect that it will be received, and we wait to hear back. For many of the document sharing situations we are involved with, this approach is good enough. But there are other situations, however, when much greater security, access control, auditability, and reliability are required. In these situations, email for document sharing is absolutely the wrong answer."

Download your free copy (PDF, 48 pages, 3.5 MB)

Messaging News for February 2008 is Out: "Investing in Collaboration Tools"

The February 2008 edition of Messaging News is out, and my article for this edition is entitled Investing in Collaboration Tools.

"It is a huge responsibility to be charged with articulating and implementing a collaboration strategy for an organization. Fundamentally, it requires structuring the way that people interact with others. It comes with great power for good or bad. Therefore, before taking action consider these four key points ..."

Download your free copy (PDF, 32 pages, 2.3 MB)

Messaging News for November/December 2007 is out ...

The November/December 2007 edition of Messaging News is on the Web. My article in this edition is entitled The Four Habits of an Effective Collaborative Individual:

"Collaboration" denotes a group of people working together towards a mutually desired outcome. It is an accepted concept to describe organizational reality—people must work together to achieve things that stick and must be embraced by either an internal culture or a set of customers. "No man is an island," wrote John Donne in the early 17th century. This truth remains unchanged 400 years later, even though we increasingly work on different islands, geopolitical soil, and even continents. Collaboration is more than an abstract need of organizations; it's the daily practice of many an individual. As such, we must contemplate what it means for us to be effective as collaborative individuals. In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey argues that effective people share common life habits. If true, it makes sense to conclude that people, who are effective at collaboration, likewise have mastered and practice similar habits.

You can download the PDF (48 pages, 2.8MB), or read the article online.

Announcing ... Collaboration Newswire

A dream came true today ... the first edition of the new Collaboration Newswire turned up in my inbox (yay!). I have been working with Jeff Victor, the publisher of Messaging News and the Messaging Newswire, for a number of months on expanding into this new content market. So I'm jazzed to see this finally begin.

Okay, now for the next part of the dream. We need some collaboration vendors to advertise in the newsletter ... if you fit the bill, let me know and I'll see that you get the advertisers kit. Just to be clear, I am responsible for the content side of the newswire; Jeff handles the advertising side.