Conversationware

With young children you sometimes worry about education. 

Well, beyond just the paying for it, you also wonder if ‘the powers that be’ can possibly keep up.

For instance I heard on the radio the other day that the establishment is worried about plagiarism by students from the internet. It reminds me of how worried they were when calculators came out (in my time), but eventually they worked out that machines weren’t going away and stopped worrying about basic math being practiced by older children with calculators.

Older children moved on to more advanced subjects.

I think we’re going to have to stop worrying about information - facts? - available on the internet, when discovered by older students. Why bother learning things by heart when the facts are available on wikipedia.

….arguable perhaps?

Meantime, I hope there are classes being planned on blogs, wiki’s, RSS feeds, linking, tagging.

Scott Karp talks here about why he, historically a very literate person, doesn’t read books anymore. He finds Networked thought much more powerful.

Me too.

Blogging and linking are a kind of thoughtful shorthand for ideas. If I don’t understand the squiggle - I click through, read the linked material - and then click back to continue the reading. Multiple people’s thoughts are then combined and blended and leveraged.

It’s just like you, as the single pupil in the class, having dozens of lecturers in front of you all building on each other’s ideas. No wonder that’s more powerful than a single linear, non-interactive ’broadcast’ by a single professor to 150 students. 

This video is worth another airing - it’s been watched 1.5 Million times so far.

Could society could be stupid enough to label completely different disciplines with the same moniker?

I used to wonder.

Communications meant both “telephone technology” and a “job title within some PR function”

Back in the day though, telephones seemed completely different to the ‘other sort’ of communications, which seemed to be about getting your message published in a newspaper.

Well, doesn’t this single word make more sense this year? (Happy 2008)

Today, you can draw a theoretical line between real time voice communications, through other one to one technologies, to messaging, and on to other asynchronous group based communications like blogs, wikis and social software.

So my theme is that;

• Marketing is talking - originally to a very wide audience, but now steadily being segmented (segmented, segmented) into smaller and smaller targeted audiences.
• Real time communications is talking - originally one to one, but now steadily being increased from one to one conversation into larger and larger targeted audiences.
• Communications has finally lived up to it’s original promise.
• Cisco bought a Web Conference company last year. That tells you the same thing - communications is communications, and wherever the technology falls between the two endpoints, it is all interelated.

So: communications were unified enough already. Therefore, doesn’t the phrase ’Unified Communications’ lack definition, ambition and a sense of purpose?

Get a telephone, and surround it with lots of other technology like IM, everyone seems to say. Perhaps the better approach is to define a business process, and then telephone enable if needs be.

Voice is used to persuade, to seal the deal. But the fact is, written communications are just as useful as voice communications and sometimes a great deal more.

I suppose I could have just rung you all to tell you, but this seemed like a better way.

PBX based companies had better think this through.

I didn’t know that

The BBC pointed it out in this article.

Apparently there are 1.5M posts on blogs per day.

I wonder what the next ten years will bring, as things tend to speed up don’t they?

As yet another social network buzz is starting to die down…..

A recap on ‘what’s happened so far’

Various forms of electronic communication have been invented.

The key aspect to all of them. Asynchronous.

We only have one piece of attention to give at any one moment, and so, asynchronous technology gives us massive productivity benefits - conversations can be carried out over a period, whilst doing other things.

This is true of

• Email,
• IM,
• Blogs,
• Wikis,
• Social networks 

Electronic conversations are also much more powerful because they’re written down, - searchable, discoverable, interactive whilst being less sensitive to time, (timefree)

BUT - the crucial piece is that none of this software truly yet delivers a full conversation electronically.

For all of the marketing sector telling us that they are having conversations with their audience with their blogs - the reality feels more like they are making a ‘presentation’.

A blog is like a presentation in that someone makes their point, and the audience can comment or ask questions afterwards and then leave the building.

This isn’t exactly an example of a roundtable asynchronous timefree conversation is it? I make a comment and then have to remember to come back to see the response, or other people’s questions?

It’s just not intuitive - where is the user interface for our conversations? All over the place on other people’s blogs, that’s where.

Conversations shouldn’t be kept by just one of the contributing parties, and marketers would probably like to continue the conversation with people even after they’ve left the building.

Solve that one and then we’ll enable it with unified communications.

Similar themes

There is a useful ‘zeitgeist’ post by hugh macleod over on his blog, gapingvoid. Echo’s are here at Stowe Boyd’s blog, and I have to agree with both Stowe and Hugh, running a blog is a powerful learning and communicative experience, not to be undersold.

However, it is clear from the comments on the gapingvoid that other people are also still looking for other tools to keep the conversation going, and I think I’m agreeing that there is still some stuff missing (as well as being all over the place).

It feels like it wouldn’t take much to link blogs, comments and conversations, and I’m wondering whether this linked article here at gigaom is alluding to something. Although it talks about identity and Wordpress, the phrases “inside out social network”, and “the social graph” do resonate.

So many fads, so little time

There used to be this thing called facebook, back in the day.

It was useful, in as much as it showed what was possible, but it left people clamouring for more.

More control, more interaction, more privacy.

I often think about the development of technology -for example  where wizards stay up late  was an enjoyable read for me (the birth of the internet).

So, when Chris of Particls - an interesting product by the way - asks people to think about what they’re in favour of, rather than what they’re against, then that’s just like I heard a starter’s pistol.

Ok, so here’s my go at the next way of interacting with my Network - I think this application should be called Conversationware (why not).

It should include;

A. Contact management - CRM but something that lives and breathes

B. Conversation management

b1. Invite function - ie. “I would like a conversation ‘about’ ” - this would be in some sort blend of wiki/blog mechanism,

b2. The invitee can accept, or not

b3. Priority can be set by the inviter, and invitee….separately

b4. Presence should be conditional upon acceptance, priority and current condition/mode

b5. If accepted, Priority should include, important and urgent, important not urgent, not important urgent, not important not urgent.

C. Condition/Mode setting - automatically updating the resulting ‘availability’, according to priorities in my network contacts client software - via machine based RSS or some such. Let me explain. If another conversation participant is available at high priority, I should have that conversation before ‘becoming available’ for a low priority conversation. Ideal worlds I know…but hey, this is my dream, and I dream of productivity.

D. Feed management and attention settings

E. Tagging

F. A remarkable interface for continuing and extending the conversation (for conversation read ‘task, project, etc etc’) - this should be very very open for additions or change, like mind manager software, but updated in each participants client. Click, type, press enter, update every participants client as soon as online……not client server, machine RSS….it has to cross boundaries and firewalls.

G. Conversations will be contextual and relative. Six people will be contributing to a customer generated conversation, but only the lead will be interacting directly with the customer on the issue.

G. Conversation exposure settings - internal and or external, public or partner,  - who can search in other words, and what search engines are given access. What conversations are listed for public access/contribution - you saw Parlano before Microsoft bought them?

H. Unified Communications. That way, the agenda comes first, and then the conversation, spoken or electronic follows. All potential conversations are therefore listed as you interact, and thus, all audit trails, including call recordings,  are automatically indexed.

There’s loads more, but I’ve run out of steam.

The future is more electronic, not less and we need more tools. Tools to speed up the contact are not enough on their own. We need this stuff to get things done.

Make it viral people. Microsoft DOS software was effectively free until they sorted the licencing later on, by which time they had a user base.

I’ll await my free trial….thanks.

Although Unified Communications is great, you do know where this is going don’t you? 

Yes, we now have convenient and quick ways to get in touch, and to get our stuff done.

But it’s only going to mean even more conversations (work), in probably less time than we have now!!

So - whilst we still have only one set of ears and one mouth, we’re going to have to bite this bullet properly and ’go asynchronous’. Electronically.

If we don’t, then Presence, or Availability as I prefer it,…… they won’t mean much because we’ll be neither present nor available any time soon. We’ll be in more meetings.

Just in the nick of time, with chest stuck out and pants outside it’s trousers, this new Social Software has been showing us a bit of what’s possible. So do wiki’s, so do blogs, so do readers.

A real taste of that, and it’s “No more email thanks”, if its all the same to you.

Please don’t CC me on everything, I’ll just search through your multimedia conversations if I think I need to.

You know, we could really do with a way to keep a track of all these conversations.

–

The reason I go on about this (again) is that I saw just a glimpse of all this in a demo with Traction Software.

The Traction (and Newsgator) case study with the NHS in Orkney intruiged me, being a new media software solution being first adopted by a traditionally IT follower organisation.

But, after having all too short a demo with Jordan Frank, I can tell you this isn’t your normal Web 2.0 stuff - it has ‘Enterprise’ written all over it.

The best description of how and why being an Enterprise solution matters is in one of traction’s latest blog posts.  Delivered by their own technology, naturally.

So, whatever ends up giving us this ability to more perfectly replicate group conversations - I’ve joined the seemingly general gut feeling that it will transport us all ‘rocket like’ through the stratosphere of group productivity.

There’s a cusp around here someplace.

Possibly I got it from the ability for everyone to contribute, even down to a paragraph level, and ‘build’ a definitive conversation around any subject, in fact spanning several subjects if necessary. Big steps indeed.

This technology could be so devastingly different to the systems that we use today.

–

However, I’m reminded of a great line from a film - “I’m drowning here, and you’re describing the water”. A Jack Nicholson special class line delivery.

What’s the betting that the people who discover this new great technology are SO clever,  they find it hard not to desribe it in an incredibly intellectual way.

It could just mean the secret stays in the bag just that little bit longer.

Lets face it people, calling new technology blogs or wikis is probably something that overly clever people would do. 

The last time, in 1985, that we were transported through the productivity stratosphere was when someone coined the phrase ‘desktop publishing’. Descriptive genius.

Perhaps when we find new technology a new name, we can get to do it again.

–

Only one problem for me. That is that if we work for different people and we want a conversation, then who’s place shall we have it in? Yours or mine?

I caught sight of a post by chip griffin, arguing that the stuff he saw at the defrag conference - which seems to be a collaboration technology show - wasn’t compelling enough to replace email.

Email is simple and ubiquitous, so why replace it. I think that’s a contentious point - and probably purposefully so. These bloggers eh, always stirring the pot. As if I didn’t come across his missive through RSS.

But Chip looks from the point of view of a user - and I happen to agree with that point. Complicated isn’t good.

My own view is that email is great when it’s one to one, and when the extent of the interaction is easily defined. Question - Answer - Done.

But Email can go horribly wrong where there are multiple parties, or where an ongoing conversation is required.

So - what problems are there with email? Here’s a few I can think of, feel free to suggest more.

1. Where can I look to see progress around a topic that involves a few of us - where can anyone look to see progress? I know….lets send another email and ask.
2. Email is fraught with the following problem: If I email you with a  question about the project and you haven’t responded - who’s responsibility is it that the action didn’t get done? It’s mine of course….but email blurs the lines and makes it difficult. “He didn’t get back to me” is something you hear over and over
3. Email hides what is important, and gives you what is urgent (your newest emails) instead.
4. If someone joins the conversation late, where can they look to get up to speed

Have I missed anything?

In short, I don’t think the email problem is actually a myth, but just what we do about it isn’t exactly clear. I thought it was going to be SharePoint - but from what I read, the jury is still out there too.

There are no shortage of new innovative companies looking at the issue. Anything topic based catches the eye. From that acquisition of Parlano, perhaps Microsoft still think there is more work to be done around collaboration too.

It has been on my mind for a while that communications professionals aren’t communicating very well. How many Communications people and companies in the UK are using RSS, and may heaven forbid Blogs - or am I not looking hard enough?

Appropriate notification is a serious communications issue, as is information overload. RSS is relevant to people and companies. So, can you be interested, and work in, communications without considering new technology? Are your clients wondering how committed you are to keeping their business at the forefront.

I picked up on this, being reminded by the linked post, that communications technology companies aren’t using communications technology. It’s not just me then.

Times are changing, and it looks like its a variable as to how quickly people and companies are trying to keep up.

I suppose it is a question of critical mass adoption, as when Text Messaging only really took off in the UK once networks linked to each other. It meant that you could be confident that whoever you sent the message to would receive it.

Presumably when RSS readers outnumber non-readers we’ll see the adoption speeding up. Is there a tipping point, and when might that be?

Most technologists know the Rogers adoption curve, but it doesn’t show the pace vs overall penetration of technology. I’d expect the adoption to creep along a horizontal time path very low, and then a steep increase towards the right.

Where are we on the adoption curve I wonder, still in the early adopters stage?