Understanding It Picking It and Making It Work in the Workplace

Obligatory Commercial

Who is this "Charles Roth" guy? Author of "Caucus" collaboration/conferencing system Implementor of the BuzzPhraser Unix 1979, Linux 1994 Wrote GE R&D Email system 1978 English Country Dancer & Caller Nepotist, taught Cap't Neil to program 1972   (NB: Caucus is half Open: UI files are fully open source, underlying engine is "View Source" licensed -- all source code is published but requires buying a license to use)

 
Joke 1:

Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.       (this is plain old HTML)

 
Joke 2:

VAST, COSMIC, PHENOMENAL TALK OF UNIVERSAL IMPORTANCE ...itty-bitty presentation time...   (This was a half day talk.  Now it's an hour talk.) (Warm up your engines, I'm going to race through this.)

Section I. OLC: Understanding  It  

TLA's (3 letter acronymns) FTF = face-to-face (live meetings) OLC = on-line collaboration (all kinds) Assumptions: We all know what collaboration is. OLC covers many different kinds of collaboration: technical education decision making process & work flow

We've all had some experience with doing it online, even if only via email.

The Three Key Words  

CONTEXT CONVERSATION CONFLICT It exists. Will it kill the collaboration? Will it improve it? Does your workplace need to keep conflict hidden?

 
Joke 3:

"Teamwork means everyone doing what I say."

What's so special about OLC?

It's worse than real-life collaboration.

• (real life = same people, mostly same space, mostly same time)

• OLC either takes forever (typing is slow!),

• or has all the problems of FTF meetings made worse (phone conference calls, PC audio conf calls, etc.)

But it's also better:

• memory (code, looking at old emails)
• context (why the *#*&% are we here? Original problem, purpose, goals, implicit and explicit)
• context (bring someone new up to speed)

• can do kinds of groups we could never do before:
  • asynchronous, aspatial
  • bring outside people in (and out again)
  • multiple personalities

Some things are faster!

Even in same place/same time, supplants traditional (FTF) meetings if used well.

• people read faster than a speaker can talk
• status tracking/reporting, before & after "live" meetings
• history/memory/context
• fewer/shorter live meetings
• conversation (with links to documents or vice versa) easier to follow than simple piles of documents

Models 1: Small Groups

Tight 2-10 (e.g. Apache core)

• single goal, known implicitly
• well known to each other
• shared passion
• could use any tool (email, smoke signals...)

Medium 10-40 (e.g. an IS Department)

• many group goals, not always overlapping!
• personal goals vary all over the map
• need to be herded to use *any* tool
• task leaders vs social/process leaders
• exponential growth of cost of communication (email go boom)

Models 2: Big Groups

company 40-500+

• partially overlapping sets of medium groups
• some commonality (emails from the CEO!)

 
amphitheatre 40-500+ (slashdot!)

• community defined by some external
  • all work for same company
  • all want to know how to use digital cameras
  • slashdot at its best & worst
• complete mish-mash of goals and interests

Actions: what we really do with OLC

1. collaboration (actually building something)
2. tracking (customers, events -- autoforming small groups)
3. information sharing (slashdot)
4. training/class
5. community building
   • to what end?
   • or just adds energy to other purposes
   • consensus (or not!), polling, delphi
6. subversion
   • going around chain of command
   • skunkworks
   • finding (un)natural allies outside departments

Section II: Making It Work

Technological: what tools and features make it work?

1. centralized discussion (gives us HISTORY and CONTEXT)
   1. linear vs branching
   2. who's seen what?
   3. tracking: new vs old, interesting vs not, categories
   4. management
   5. rearranging/moving
   6. moderation
   7. searching
   8. people! And their info
   9. notification ("drag 'em in")
   10. email participation, NNTP connection, RSS feeds, etc.
   11. anonymous/psuedonymous
   12. weblinks
   13. reviewing/filtering (info lens, peer review, meta-data commentary)

Making It Work (continued)

2. Email.  Absolutely required, but...
   1. exponential explosion
   2. history (not)
   3. context (not!!)
   4. feeling of powerlessness
      1. drowning in volume
      2. email threads lost
      3. don't know who is reading, not writing, "lurking"
      4. invisible conversations around you

3. polling/voting (straw votes are a tool; real votes are fake)
4. files
   1. files attached to discussions
   2. discussions attached to files
   3. shared documents & revisions

Making It Work (still continued)

5. real-time tools
   1. instant messaging
   2. who's on
   3. chat
   4. audio/video netmeeting
   5. whiteboard (does anyone really use it? Not 'till we can draw...)
   6. integration (archiving) back to centralized asynch discussions
6. scheduling/calendaring
7. work/to-do lists/commitments (!!)
8. web-able/searchable/static content (google it!)
9. data mining (does it really exist?)
10. plays well (integrates) with other tools
11. publishing/blogging (??)
12. online vs offline tools

Making It Work: with People

Psychological: it's still all in the mind...

People are crazy.

People are wonderful.

OLC amplifies both aspects.

People are crazy

Our internal process is mostly invisible.
Even we have a hard time knowing why we do what we do.

The stickiest part of collaboration is "the meeting".
We still don't know how to have them.

• We hate them
  1. we talk too much (because chaos needs controlling)
  2. we don't talk at all (already too much chaos = despair)

• We schedule them anyway.
  1. don't know what else to do
  2. Still stuck with primitive approaches: talking sticks, agenda items, side conversations
  3. Often no shared goals for meeting, yet real goals are never said! Everyone feels like everyone else is at a different meeting
  

  People are wonderful

  (Warning: sexist generalizations ahead)

  • Praise a woman, and she'll work with you.
    
  • Acknowledge her feelings, and she'll go through hell for you.

  • Praise something a man built, and he'll work harder.
    
  • Understand something a man built, and he'll build you three more, under cost.

  Niven's Law: Destruction is easier than creation. Therefore we must be doing something right.

  

  Technology is going to help this?

  ("Yeah, right. I've got this bridge...")

  No, really. It's about Power.

  We want power because we are creative. We want to GET SOMETHING DONE! Amazingly enough, considering how crazy companies can be.

  "Power-hungry" people are starving... for something else. Sometimes they need medication. Mostly they need to feel like they're making something useful happen. But they (we) act it out in funny ways...

  Collaboration yields a net increase in power... when it works. It looks like a net loss when it doesn't. There's a tipping point in the middle.

  

  Social Engineering 101

  What social tools are needed?

  1. Context, context, context
  2. Making it fun: what brings people back
     1. (Some people will come back too often, some will stay away in fear)
     2. actual fun/interesting info
     3. visibility & record of one's own work & contributions
     4. easily visited history
     5. actual progress
     6. something not (obviously) available anywhere else
  3. Task leaders, to keep people on track
  4. Social & process leaders, to keep people engaged
     1. (cf making it fun)
     2. set cultural tone
     3. redirect energy appropriately
     4. splitting off side conversations
  

  Social Engineering 102

  5. Get committments to write things down-- use energy that would go into FTF conversation, put it here! "Interview" people, if need be.
  6. Support (actual person to talk to if tools are confusing)
  7. Ease of access
  8. Give people ownership of pieces (and put 'em inside OLC space)
  9. Put other tools inside tool (portal). Don't split energy/effort.
  10. CONVERSATION. W/o, might as well be MS Project.
  11. Humor. Irony is joinable, sarcasm is not.  God is an Iron.
  12. Make power visible. Decisions must not be invisible -- and must link to OLC objects.  People w/o direct power must see the process of those with.  "Buying in".
  

  "Bringing it in the door"

  1. Nothing succeeds like success. Use pilot projects. Bottom-up.

  2. Some management must be willing to try it.

  3. But be wary of top-down management excitement. Rarely lasts.
  

  What to watch out for

  "Negative" emotions, flaming. Never works. Why? tone & body cues are missing, misinterpretable last word syndrome sense of power (but doesn't work) drives people away escalates others Instead use personal contact. FTF, or phone. Change frame completely. Either talk about feelings FTF, or agree not to act out feelings online

  

  What to watch out for (continued)

  2. Vague enthusiasm. If someone's got energy, tie it to something, quick!

  3. Nothing happening.
     1. Solution in search of problem
     2. Tech leaders not engaged/not willing to use tool
     3. No social leaders
     4. Management mixed message: do as they say, not as they do
  

  Section III: Picking It

  Many, many choices.  "Big(ger) Names" with very brief strengths:

  1. blackboard
     e-learning, content creation & management, some discussion

  2. caucus
     discussion, documents, chat, whiteboard, (management, customization)

  3. eroom
     discussion, documents, some realtime, polling, (process control)

  4. ibm lotus team workspace
     (can't tell what it does -- discussion, chat??, calendar... interface to lotus notes)

  5. sitescape enterprise forum
     discussions (incl filtered), documents, chat, calendars, tasks, im, (customization, oracle integration).  Also workflow, see webworkzone.com.

  6. groove
     high-end integrated realtime tools

  7. coldfusion forums
     (Once popular, then open-sourced, now apparently DOA)

  8. facilitate
     brainstorming/flip-charts, voting, surveys, chat

  9. firstclass
     integration of email with group folders, "conferences", calendar, chat

  10. motet
      historic tool fallen by the wayside, aka well-engaged, web version of well, coeval with Caucus

  11. webcrossing
      discussion, chat, calendar, (customization)

  12. webct
      elearning, course creation/management, primitive discussion tools

      

  13. webex
      realtime (video, audio, chat, whiteboard, with record/playback), polling, document sharing, app sharing (shared navigation)

In Closing...

Always ask these questions:

• CONTEXT
  What's the context? If we're collaborating, why are we here?
  Who ought to be here? Why?
  Do they think so?

• CONVERSATION
  What kinds of conversations should happen? What features would help those? The rest are irrelevant.

• CONFLICT
  Will OLC reduce conflict? Will it bring it out in the open? Is that bad or good?

Miscellaneous Links

• The starting place for comparing collaboration systems: David Woolley's www.thinkofit.com.

• Review (2001) of eRoom vs Lotus QuickPlace 2 vs Enterprise Forum vs Groove www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0108/tec-review-01-08-01.asp

• Caucus Consortium "white papers" on OLC, for the jargon-inclined.