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Why?Why "collaboration"? Many years ago, in the mid 70's at University of Illinois, I was fortunate enough to have been touched by something called PLATO - an acronym for Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations. At the time, PLATO was a mainframe-based time sharing system with about a thousand custom multimedia terminals - that is, 512x512 graphics, touch screen pointing device, synchronized microfiche and audio, and "always on" connectivity - quite an achievement for the time, particularly given that I was still using coding sheets and Hollerith cards to do classwork. Although primarily intended as a computer-assisted teaching system, PLATO evolved into the first large scale "online community", with eMail, online discussions, instant messaging, chat rooms, remote screen sharing, and massive multiplayer gaming. We established long-distance relationships for work and for love; we balanced the duality of our real and virtual lives. In short, the tens or hundreds of thousands of us who had a chance to experience PLATO in those days were afforded a preview of what was to come in the Internet era - an era of global ubiquitous communications and interaction. As many of us who had spent years immersed in the PLATO environment left and entered the "real world", we were shocked and dismayed to find a world lacking electronic connection. And as I entered the business world, it simply made no sense to me that computers were being used solely for computing and "data processing"; the collaborative online work environment that I'd taken for granted, that I'd used day in and day out, was simply missing in action. Our work lives are all about interpersonal connections, our businesses processes are structured into connections amongst people and systems that must be coordinated. What better use of technology than to help people to connect? And so, for most of my life since that time, it has been my goal to explore what lies at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology. To attempt to utilize technology - to mold it, to shape it into a form such that it can help organizations to achieve a greater "return on connection" from employee, customer, and partner relationships, and to help individuals to strengthen the bonds between themselves and those with whom they interact - online. Because - empirically - collaborative technology has substantive value, in reducing the cost of coordination, in providing shared awareness across differences in space and time. The way that I explore is to build products, and to see how they are used. To see what works, and what doesn't. To listen, to interact, to refine. Because cooperative work exists at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology, collaborative systems are truly fascinating: in order to serve people effectively, technologists must, for example, understand social dynamics, social networks, human factors. In order to serve people in the context of organizations effectively, technologists must, for example, understand organizational dynamics, modularity and transaction cost economics. The bottom line to "why?" To create real value in a dimension that I passionately believe in. Why the blog? Because there are many dimensions to human interaction, and people pick and choose from their palette of tools in order to accomplish a specific communications goal. When someone wants to communicate something such as a sense urgency, panic, or love, the phone is a far more effective tool than a Web Form. Real-time audio communications is the tool of choice. When instead I want to communicate something in a way that I want to compose my own thoughts, and want the thought to "sink in" with the other person before they reply, I'll choose an asynchronous mechanism - maybe email, or maybe I'll intentionally call their voice mail. When I need to communicate something complex, such as the sensitivity of an outcome (e.g. Profitability) to certain control parameters (e.g. Investment), I need a communications vehicle with rich context, such as a spreadsheet, communicated through Groove. Or maybe in other cases, I just need a napkin or the back of an envelope. With regard to electronic communications, I currently have a rich palette of tools available to me: eMail, Groove, SharePoint, Messenger, the phone, etc. And I have many different overlapping sets of people with whom I need and want to communicate, both inside and across our firewall, and I pick the mechanisms as needed and as appropriate. In that I have a need and desire to understand communication and collaboration technologies, I started experimenting inside the firewall with Manila in early 2000, and to this day we utilize a blog to keep employees up-to-date with happenings on the Web. In watching other blogs on a daily basis, however, it's clear that there's a dramatic difference between how they're being used on the Internet and our own intranet: links. That is, Groove's internal blog is largely outward-facing in terms of links, whereas community blogs are more like "cross-linked discussions". (Interesting in and of itself, because it is the first effective solution that I've seen to the signal:noise degeneration of public forums.) Why the lack of internal cross-linking? Well, some of this is because our employees eat their own cooking, and are extremely effective at using Groove Workspace to manage their own tasks, projects, document reviews, meetings, and so on, and thus their work is hidden from public view because Groove is "private" and ultra-secure by default. This is no accident: over the years in watching human behavior in work environments, I came to the specific conclusion that in order to create a comfortable environment that naturally entices people to do real work with others online, it simply won't work if they feel as though they're working in a fishbowl. (Mental exercise: how would you use eMail if your inbox was published on the Intranet?) And empirically this is being proven out: people are drawn to Groove for their interactions because it "just works" and they don't have to think about issues of confidentiality or random observers. But if everything is private, then there's little opportunity for others to cross-link - that is, link "into" Groove - or to otherwise learn from what's going on "inside". Thus, customers use our Bot Server to selectively publish information to products such as SharePoint Portal Server, where it's made available to others within the organization. Of course, blogs are (and the theory behind klogs is, I believe) at the complete opposite end of the spectrum - being "make public by default". By choosing to work "in the open", others surely can benefit from work that "should" be published. And let there be no doubt: if you can get people to work in the open, it can be quite valuable to others so long as people broadly understand what should be shared and what shouldn't. But therein lies the rub: getting people to do it. We spent years and years at Lotus trying to convince people of the "higher order" value of collaborative processes, sharing, and KM. And I learned the hard way that fighting what appear to be natural organizational and social dynamics is very tough. Which is why eMail is the most popular collaboration tool on the planet: it works the way that people naturally want to work. And which is why Groove is built upon a client-side, personally empowering "email model" than an "app server" model. Mobile, instant, ad hoc, private. Effective collaboration tools strike a balance between personal need/behavior and collective/organizational need. And so here I sit, typing into Radio. The personally-empowering client-side. online/offline UI of Radio, in my view, like Groove, offers us a glimpse at a new model of interaction that may indeed make it more natural to post into a public space. Or maybe post into "semi-public" spaces, more naturally. Which is why I've been fascinated by what lies at the juncture between the eMail model, the Groove model, and the blog model. First, what kind of technology can be used to achieve a balance between "working in a virtual fishbowl" and "working in a virtual SCIF"? (Secured Compartmentalized Information Facility, for those not familiar with government lingo.) What are the useful points on the gradient between authentication and trust, and pseudonymity? What are the human interface mechanisms that might be employed in trust-centric environments such as Groove that might adequately communicate - not just to the individual, but to the group - that a certain set of shared information or activity is being shared outward? And how can this be done while still maintaining the OHIO principle? (Only Handle Information Once) - that is, if information must be entered in two places, it won't be. Second, personally, what does it feel like to be juggling my own personal communications on a regular basis such that I intuitively "feel" what is public, and what is private, and for what groups, the way that I "feel" when I work in eMail and Groove today. Transparency can be good, but what and where are the tradeoffs? I am the CEO of a company; what will happen if/when Groove is a public company, and how will it impact how I can and do communicate? What can I learn from other corporate officers who run external blogs? In short - again - lots to learn. And through this medium, perhaps we'll all learn something in the process.
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