Collaboration in the Enterprise from the perspective of Anthony Holmes, an IBM Accelerated Value Program Leader (Premium Support Program).

Working Collaboration Blog

Thoughts from Lifehacker’s Future of Email event

Anthony Holmes  12 August 2010 01:22:48 PM
I watched a Techline event on the topic "The future of email" today. The video replay can be found here.

It was hosted by James O'Loghlin and had a panel of Alistair Rennie (General Manager, IBM Lotus), Genevieve Bell (Intel) and Adele Beachley (RIM) and Mark Pesce (futurist), .

There was a wide ranging discussion. Here are a couple of things that struck a cord with me:

Dealing with information overload

Mark Pesce quoted Clay Shirky who said "It's not information overload. It's Filter Failure." That comment strikes a cord with one of the stated aims of IBM's Project Vulcan: In the future you will have a river of information coming in, through your inbox, instant messages, activities, defined workflow applications, tweets... and instead of having an overloaded inbox, you will filter that flow into small streams that are focused on the tasks you need to complete. Filter it to look at information related to a project. Then filter it to only see information related to a customer. Then filter it to look at work processes you need to complete.

Email is a Pavlovian Addiction

This was another comment by Mark Pesce. The "New mail" message is like a bell to one of Pavlov's dogs. It signals the possibility of a reward. Even though you are disappointed most of the time (there's no food or the latest email isn't valuable), the psychology draws you back again and again because sometimes there is something good. The first step to controlling that addiction is to recognise that it exists. (So I've set myself the goal of completing this blog posting without flicking to my email..... arghh.. it's killing me!)

Documents vs Ephemera

One of the audience made the comment that whether something arrived via email, instant messaging or twitter, some things are like "documents": they contain pieces of information. Others are transitory ("Yes I'd love to come to lunch".) You deal with these things differently.

Alistair Rennie extended on this, and said that they key then becomes to ensure that Documents have their full value. I see this added value already through IBM's use of Connections. Previously documents sat on hard drives or in emails. Finding them by file name was difficult. Finding the right version of a document was even harder. When I search for a document on the IBM Intranet, I'm always much happier when I find possible matches in IBM Lotus Connections' Files because it gives me context to any document I might be interested in:
  • What tags does the document have? (Chosen by the author and others)
  • Who wrote the document? (Profile information about them)
  • Who else has read the document (and how many people)?
  • What comments have people made about it?
  • Which version am I looking at? (Is this definitely the newest version? If I want, can I get a previous version?)
  • If I take a copy, can I be notified if it gets updated?

The value of Lotus Connections is often not fully apparent if you simple watch a presentation (or if all you know about it is that someone has said "It's like Facebook for the enterprise.") Using it makes a difference. The Files feature quite simple, yet really cool.

Alistair Rennie also made the comment that we should stop thinking about the Transport Mechanism (Email, Instant Messaging, Facebook) and start thinking about the outcomes that you need to achieve.

Rollason's Falls, Mount Buffalo, Australia

A photo I took of Rollason's Falls at Mount Buffalo, Victoria, Australia. (Symbolising the 'river' of new messages that reach us from email, instant messaging, twitter, etc..)