How do you communicate at work?
“Thoughts on Twitter; evolves as real-time search engine (…) How do you foresee that as a potential threat to Google? (…) Poor man’s email systems. They have aspects of an email system but don’t have full offering. Do they fundamentally evolve as sort of a note phenomenon, or storage, identity, etc. Or do email systems evolve? In Google’s case, we have a very successful IM product.”
Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comments during a fireside chat with Mary Meeke at Morgan Stanley’s tech conference earlier this year. Read Dan Frommer’s article, which delivers the full transcript.
For the past few months, I’ve been mapping out how I use the various communication technologies at my disposal:
- I’m showing group communication tools in blue, one-on-one in orange and real time voice and video in purple. The horizontal axis shows the degree to which my communication involves simpler or more complex content. The vertical axis portrays whether the communication involves real time interaction or not.
- I’ve developed a preference to use microblogging tools such as WordPress’ Prologue and Yammer over IM, email and voice mail. I am very keen on Prologue.
- I’m not only sending out less emails, they are also becoming shorter. I now try to keep them brief, down to just bullet points dealing with need to know stuff. I then add a link to my blog where I provide the next level of detail and information as well as links to relevant presentation materials.
- When I get more emails on a given subject, I first update my blog post on that topic; then I reply with quick message, which includes the link to that post. This way, I save myself from either oversimplifying or writing long emails which many may not inclined to read.
- Interestingly enough, I get my emails in my Blackberry way before they show up on my desktop. Needless to say, that’s also the case when I get to my office and fire up my laptop, which now takes ages to boot. So, I’m getting into the habit of using mobile email even when I’m in the office.
- I am also working on minimizing meeting time by recording my presentations in advance. This allows me to forward a link to a media file that people can download and review prior to a meeting. The goal is to make the best use of meeting time and conference calls by focusing on Q&A and action items.
As usual, I count on your feedback to make updates to the above graph.
Other posts of interest:
- Twitter’s search for a business case
- Web strategies that cater to customers
- Mashup tools (user generated applications)
J. de Francisco blogging from Chicago on Aug 29
