The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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Collaboration - Think Before You Jump For The Computer

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Flickr: Whiteboard at GoogleIt's funny but all the chatter about "collaboration" one tends to hear now-a-days (and boy, isn't there a lot) all centres around "on-line collaboration" ... the use of the computer as the ultimate collaboration tool.

What a load of plop.

I sat with a fellow "on-line collaboration / community wrangler" a while ago and we both used pen and paper as our collaboration tools of choice.

And when I talk with organisations about collaboration I always ask if they use whiteboards, meeting spaces or Scrum-type meetings to collaborate as they can be the most cost effective, most efficient and, let's be honest, the easiest way to collaborate.

So, when you next have a software vendor touting their latest and greatest collaboration software (which they may even sell as their "knowledge solution", *shudder*) think about yellow stick it notes, white boards in prominent places and getting people to talk to each other.

Even though the "NASA Space Pen / Russian pencil" story is urban legend it's good for reminding us that we should think of the easiest, simplest solutions first - why pay for a pen when a pencil will do!

Comments

  1. Anonymous15 July 2008 at 05:51

    Bang on target Mike. A man after my own heart. You'd enjoy reading "Lean Thinking" (if you haven't already done so)- especially the bits about Toyota's manual progress tracking - white boards, marker pens and magnetic buttons, not complex computerised systems.

    I feel a post coming on! Thanks.

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  2. Anonymous16 July 2008 at 16:41

    Nice work Mike!
    That is one of the things I REALLY liked about BarCamp on the weekend - we all came up with stuff (we'll call it information) and let others know (sharing) i.e. " we collaborated". It wasn't hard, we didn't have technical issues, if we had a question we could just ask and best of all - IT WORKED. People: Face to face is usually best!!

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