E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 34 to 36 (On Meaningfully Managing Streams of Content)

It looks like this is going to be one of those weeks where I sense I will be putting together more than one blog post on one of my favorite topics as of late; of course, living "A World Without Email". It has been a while since the last weekly progress report that I have shared over here, I guess it is a good time to talk a bit about what has happened since the last time that I blogged on this topic.

At the same time, I also thought I would post an entry about this subject due to the good number of articles that have emerged over the last couple weeks, and all around the recent release of the first beta from Google Wave, as it looks like plenty of people have been wondering, and questioning, whether Wave would be replacing our good old e-mail systems. Or not. So I thought I would share a few comments on that, too! Although perhaps that will be coming up in follow up articles…

Now, not to worry, I’m not going to overload you folks with a whole bunch of articles on these very same topic. In fact, I’m going to be asking you, towards the end of this blog post, or perhaps in another one, what would you think about a crazy idea that occurred to me just the other day. But let’s go one step at a time…

To get things going, here you have got the weekly progress reports for the last three weeks (Week 34, week 35 and week 36), of which I am just going to embed the one from last week. Week 36:

As you would be able to notice, things have gone rather well: week 34, well under the follow-up challenge I set up at the beginning of the year of 20 emails, or less, a week, and then the other two weeks, 35 and 36, with things pretty much steady on that very same count of 25 emails, which is not bad… Not bad at all!

Still looking good, more than anything else, because I have been comparing these numbers, per week, to last year’s, and the total number of emails is a lot less that what I was even getting last year. W00t! Hopefully, it will keep the same way from here till the beginning of 2010 and we will check what the final drop down of incoming emails has been compared to last year’s. Fingers crossed…

For now though, I think it is a good time to move into one of the articles that I would want to comment on, since it has caught plenty of attention when Dana Boyd (a.k.a. zephoria) first published it a few weeks back.

It is titled "Sometimes I Feel Like a Bitch" and you will be able to read it through if you click on this link. Dana makes some really good points as to why email seems to be the best way to reach out to her to communicate, collaborate or to share a piece of information, or knowledge, with her. She comes up with a good number of very valid reasons as to why most of the social software tools available out there don’t work out for her rather well. Quite the opposite!

She talks about information overload emerging from these social tools, a term that I’m sure we are all familiar with, and, perhaps, get to suffer from on a regular basis. However, we seem to may have forgotten the wise words from the always insightful Clay Shirky on this very same topic: it is not about information overload, but "Filter Failure". So, somehow, after reading through Dana’s article, I think that we may not have done good enough in providing relatively good filtering systems. Even better collaborative filtering systems. Somehow, judging from her thoughts, there is still plenty of room for improvement in that area, but, in my opinion, it’s the key towards making sense of all the information and knowledge that we get exposed to through social software on a daily basis, that Web of Flow (That Stowe Boyd has been talking about for a while now). Otherwise, we are going to continue suffering from information overload for a long while still… And not just from social software.

One of the other items that Dana mentioned, which I found rather interesting, was the fact that she feels she can control better the number of interactions by handling those emails versus the ones coming from social software tools. Well, I doubt it. What’s wrong with fragmentation? What’s wrong with handling fragmented interactions? Fragmentation is a healthy thing. It’s how our brain operates. In fact, we, as human beings, are capable of handling fragmented interactions much better to make sense of the information and knowledge that we’re exposed to a regular basis. I mean, if you are looking for pictures, or you want to upload your own, where would you go? Probably, Flickr or Picasa Web Albums. And what can you do in there? Yes, I know, find or share pictures!

The same thing happens with your favorite social bookmarks. If you are looking for a specific link, I’m sure you will be going to Delicious and try to find it there. You may as well have all of your bookmarks (Or a large chunk of them!) shared with everyone in that same Delicious. Yet, that’s the only thing that you would do there for. And these two are just doing some examples from the hundreds of them that are out there on the Web. The Web is fragmented. And that’s a good thing. We just need to get used to it and, as such, start treating it like a fragmented space where we go find the information and knowledge we need to be able to make an educated decision on the task(s) at hand that needs to be completed.

This is certainly a point that I would want to share with you folks and which touches base on some of the stuff that Dana mentions as well. She is stating, more or less, that people treat social software tools like another Inbox (With its private conversations, a la direct messages, for instance); in short, one that is going to replace what we had before. In a way, she’s right! We are still treating these social tools as if we just had another Inbox to work with, i.e. another space we need to go to check what has happened since the last time that I was there. And, since most people have not been taught how to effectively make use of these social tools, they go back to what they know, and what they have learned in the past by themselves, without anybody’s help: their email Inboxes! Just because they may think they know how to handle those interactions better. So, eventually, it all turns out to be just another mailbox, when in reality it could be something completely different… Alas it is not!

Which brings me to my next, final, point; one I would like to quote from her own blog post, as perhaps being the main overall problem: "[...] But I don’t know how to meaningfully manage streams of content". That is just spot on!! It is not about information overload; it is not about the fragmented Web; it is not about treating social software tools as just another Inbox,. It is just about the fact that we probably don’t know how to manage streams of content that just matter to us and the social networks we are part of. And since we don’t know, we just tend to go back to what we know, i.e. what we have been handling, relatively well, for the last few decades: email. Again!

So, perhaps, that’s our challenge for social software to make it into the enterprise world. To train and educate, through whatever the learning activities we can come up with, our knowledge workers about the shift that we all need to go through by moving away from a single focal point of interactions into multiple streams of relevant, and collaboratively filtered, content just for me. Perhaps, when we do that, we would start thinking that is not so difficult, after all, to make sense of something that has been intrinsic all along to all of us from the very beginning of time: our very own social interactions.

Tags: Google Wave, Wave, Weekly Progress Reports, Reports, Email Reports, Dana Boyd, zephoria, Clay Shirky, Information Overload, Bad Filtering, Filter Failure, Stowe Boyd, Fragmentation, Fragmented Web, Task Centric Computing, Inboxes, Inbox, Streams of Content, Managing Streams, Web of Flow, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email

The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections — Collaborating Effectively through Wikis

Earlier on today, and through various different sources, both inside and outside the firewall, I got alerted by several folks on the latest blog post put together by Andy McAfee on a very thought-provoking, insightful, and dear to my heart, topic, that I thought I would share over here a few more insights on it, since a bunch of the folks who told me about it indicated how Andy might have called me out for my endeavour on living "A World Without Email".

The title of the article is "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Email" and I can certainly tell you it’s a very worthwhile read. It will make you think twice about how you may have viewed email as a collaboration tool all along. It will also make you question, as a social computing evangelist / enthusiast (If you are one), what you have been advocating all along with regards to email and its (mis)use within the corporate world, to the point where perhaps it is not such evil after all. I tell you, a very worthy read.

Now, I am already preparing a much lengthier response to Andy’s thoughtful article (I will probably be sharing it over the weekend, in case you are wondering…), but I thought I would put together a blog post on something that can certainly introduce quite a bit the main core idea that you will see on that extended response.

Andy comes to question whether e-mail has got a place in the current collaboration landscape within the enterprise, as perhaps the one and only that works, the one that cannot die, the one that knowledge workers cannot do without as an essential tool to collaborate and share their knowledge with their peers. In short, he comes to propose that those folks who have been saying that e-mail is nowadays pretty much dead, as a collaboration tool (After all, "Email is where knowledge goes to die" — does that quote ring a bell?), should probably cut off some slack and stop attacking it in the first place.

Like I said, I’m already putting together a much more extended response than this one, but I thought I would get the conversation going questioning the validity of email as a collaboration tool altogether (which is not the same as communication either, by the way!). If you have been following my project on living "A World Without Email", you will know how all along, for the last 19 months, and going!, I have never mentioned that email is dead. Quite the opposite. I still see plenty of value in using email as a communication tool for one-on-one confidential / sensitive exchanges as well as to process calendaring and scheduling events altogether.

However, during that time that I have been doing this, I’m now more convinced than ever before that for the rest of the various different interactions email is as bad as it can get. So why don’t we see that with a story? With a hilarious one actually. One of those scenarios that I am sure everyone can relate to, because we may all have experienced it a couple of times already. Perhaps far too often even!

No, not to worry, I won’t try to kill e-mail right away (Like I said, I still see the value of it. Very much so!), I am way beyond that level. What I’m going to share with you is a story that will explain, very nicely, why its misuse keeps falling short of everyone’s expectations as a powerful collaborative and knowledge sharing tool.

Actually, it’s not one story, but three. All coming from the same source, my fellow IBM colleague Jean Francois Chenier, who over the last few weeks has put together a series of video clips under the heading "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections", demonstrating, very effectively, why email does not cut it any more in our current collaboration landscape.

If you remember, I have already blogged about episodes #1 (See "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections – On the Misuse of Email" for more information) and #2 (See "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections – On the Business Case for Corporate Blogging" for more details) and it is now the turn of episode #3: "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections — Collaborating Effectively through Wikis".

In this particular video clip put together by Jean Francois, and over the course of nearly 6 minutes, you will see that particular scenario where I was mentioning what group collaboration has been all along (Not a pleasant experience, as you’re about to watch. Quite the opposite!), and what it would be like by making use of something so relatively simple as a wiki. Yes, a wiki. That online web collaborative space where people can keep adding content top of each other’s content in a very open and transparent manner.

Not to worry, I’m not going to spoil the contents of the video for you. I would just ask you to sit back, relax, and watch through it. Not only will you be nodding, like crazy, all along agreeing with most of the various different points that are made throughout the video, but you will also have a really good laugh. Once again Jean Francois has done a terrific job in describing, very faithfully, some of the most fundamental flaws behind email as a collaboration tool, in my opinion. But I will let you go and watch the clip, so that you can have a look and judge for yourself:

So, after watching all the three different episodes I’m sure you will probably understand a little better why I still keep going further with this endeavour of living "A World Without Email"; not really because of email itself as a system to communicate effectively, but more because I don’t feel it is very good as a tool that will allow me to collaborate, share my knowledge across and innovate with all knowledge workers and my peers. More than anything else now, because we have been misusing it all along! And in cases pretty badly, too!

And that’s just what I keep fighting against. Not the tool itself, but how we keep on misusing it, left and right, to no avail. So, over 19 months ago, it was about time for me to say "STOP! Think before you fire a new memo. There may be a better way. Let’s find it! Together!" And after having said that, even more, after having lived through it all along till today, there is no way that I would go back! No way!

I saw the light. I saw how I stopped getting headaches, or getting stressed repeatedly for something that was always out of my control or having that strong sense of not being productive enough (Because my inbox was being used as a delegation machine by the rest of the world! Literally!) and so forth! Just like the man in the video I learned to stop worrying about email and eventually moved away to more proper collaboration and knowledge sharing tools: social software.

(Like I said, I will be responding to Andy’s blog post with a bit more detail later on this week… for now let’s go and enjoy "The Man Who Should Have Used Lotus Connections" — episode #3 and see how much you could relate to the story shared… Or not.)

Tags: Andy McAfee, YouTube, Videos, Jean Francois Chenier, IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Wikis, Group Collaboration, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Bill French

A World Without Email – Year 2, Weeks 30 to 33 (Study: Social-Media Junkies Use Email More)

It has been a little over a month ago since last time that I put together a blog post where I was talking about my ongoing initiative of living "A World Without Email". So given a couple of recent events, that I will talk about in a couple of minutes, and seeing also how it may well be about a good time now to share some further insights on how things are going with the various different progress reports from over the last few weeks, I thought I would spend a few minutes today with you folks telling you about what has happened since last time, where I blogged about week #29, which, to date, marks the week with the lowest incoming count of e-mails received (With just 10 of them!) for 2009.

Well, it looks like over the last four weeks the number of incoming emails has been rather steady going from a range of 18 to 34 emails received. A couple of times right on target for my follow-up challenge on getting 20, or less, a week, but then again in one of those weeks the number went all the way to 34 (being the "Reply To All" button the main culprit). If you’re interested in checking further the drop-down of those weeks here you have got the progress reports for weeks 30, 31, 32, and last one, 33, which I am just going to share over here:

As you will be able to see, week 33 has proved to be a little bit of a challenge having almost doubled the amount of e-mails than the week before. And as usual, I owe it to the "wonderful" email capability called "Reply To All". Two or three conversations, three or four replies (I know, that’s nothing!), but voilà!, my inbox going out of control! Geez. I tell you, if I could I would get rid of that button, with a snap of my fingers! (ZAS!) I would do it right away. No questions asked. No mercy. Just be done with it! For good! (sigh)

Anyway, at the beginning of this blog post I mentioned how a couple of recent events triggered the creation of this entry as well, specially since a bunch of people have been pointing them out to me in various micro-blogging Web sites. The events are actually a single study released by Nielsen that states how "social-media junkies" use email, and rather heavily, to keep on top of things and, especially, on top of their own social networking experiences.

Thus, a couple of the people who contacted me through those micro-sharing Web sites were asking me what my thoughts were since, obviously, I don’t use email at work any more; they were questioning whether we would ever be capable of getting rid of it altogether, since it looks like hard-core social software users seem to still rely pretty much on email.

If you would remember, all along I have been mentioning how I don’t think that the email is going away any time soon (Email is not dead!). I still see plenty of benefits for using it (one on one conversations of a sensitive nature or calendaring and scheduling events, to name a couple). However, when I was reading a couple of the articles that referenced this study I couldn’t help smiling at the fact of how simplistic the actual study is. Yes, we may be using email much more than before, I am sure we are!, but are they really emails that I need to process myself or more along the lines of BACN notifications that plenty of the social networks available out there trigger as recent updates that I may need to check (or not)?

In a follow-up article by CNet, we can actually find the answer to that question with this interesting and relevant quote:

"Although the study ended there, researchers said that correlation might be due to "social media sites like Facebook (that) send messages to your in-box every time someone comments on your posting or something you’ve participated in, and depending on your settings, can send updates on almost every activity." The researchers also believe that the connections people make through social networks cause them to "extend those connections to e-mail, a phone conversation, or even in-person meetings.""

You see? Yes, we’re getting plenty more emails, but there aren’t emails that I need to process myself. Instead, they are actually notifications that keep folks up to date with what is happening in the various social software tools that they use on a regular basis, because in most cases those notifications are generated as email ones. But are they really? I don’t think they are. That’s what BACN is all about. That’s not really email, is it?

So my reaction to those folks who were worried that we would never be able to get rid of email I will answer this: email is not going to go away any time soon; yet social networking tools are going to re-purpose how we use it so that instead of being that system "where knowledge goes to die" is actually that system that will tell us not only where our knowledge is but also how it has been (And will be even more!) enriched by our various social networking "friends".

Nothing wrong with that, right? No, I don’t think so. I actually think it is a good thing. Using your email system as your feed aggregator, versus an RSS feed reader, is just as valid. What matters is not the tool you use, but the form that allows you to keep on top of the content that gets shared., at the same time that you are capable of keeping up with your various social networks.

Because, after all, in this particular example, email is just as good as any of the others. What really matters is how you are going to keep up with all of that knowledge that gets shared across in multiple places. Thus, if anything, your inbox will turn itself, slowly but steadily, into that massive aggregator, that, if anything, is going to make your life much easier. Now, I bet you won’t be able to say the same thing about traditional email, would you?

(As a quick annotation from the beginning of the year I have received, in my email work address, over 3.350 BACN notifications, whereas I have received 813 "traditional" emails, most of them one-on-one conversations or calendaring and scheduling events. Not bad, eh? Yes, you could say that I love BACN! Don’t you?)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, email, Productivity, Re-purposing Email, No-Email, Challenge Your Inbox, Progress Reports, Thinking Outside the Inbox, Information Overload, A World Without Email, Reply to All, Nielsen, Research, Studies, CNET, BACN, Notifications, Aggregator, Bill French, Social Networks, Content