Looking into the future of online collaboration technologies has now become a mainstream activity here at Kolabora Live!, and the second Competitive Edge event that went live online last Thursday, May the 27th, is a good proof of that.
Supported by a qualified audience strong of many VPs, sales and marketing directors from several industry companies, the two special guests Stuart Henshall and Eugene Eric Kim warmed up the atmosphere by providing some great insight and novel answers to some of the most challenging questions thrown at them.
I myself found all of their replies a total learning gift, as I myself greatly enjoyed listening back to the many fascinating new ideas brought in by these two truly visionary men. What these two guys did indeed extremely well was to anticipate, report and describe the shape of things to come with a comprehensive view and with an ability to weed the essential from the superfluous in a way that only few other people can match.
I spent several days going over the audio recording of their answers to my questions, and the learning derived from this has been truly rewarding for me.
Here is my full transcript of what all Stuart and Eugene said during our event with the awareness that having a written version is indeed, in many aspects even more valuable than the actual recording. By reading and pausing on some of their challenging ideas one can really appreciate the breath and insight contained in many of their statements.
Introductions
Stuart Henshall
Introduces Eugene Eric Kim
I first met Eugene via a Planetwork session about eighteen months ago.
He was making an introduction about his work with collaboratories, and at that time I was interested in Collective Intelligence.
Eugene was talking about the work of Doug Engelbart and all of sudden I said I better should go and learn more about this guy.
So, after the event, I sort of tracked his blog and watched his efforts all along.
I have been interested in playing with one of his tools as he has introduced me to the Purple Wiki along one of his partners.
As a matter of fact, I am very interested to see and hear what Eugene as to say here.
Eugene Eric Kim
Introduces Stuart Henshall
Its funny to find each other on the same platform today.
We kind accidentally sat next to each other in that Planetwork Forum some time ago, and yes, it was serendipity making us meet.
When I met Stuart I was very interested in what he was doing also as he has a strong marketing and strategy background.
And so following that meeting that evening I have been looking at Stuarts blog ever since.
Stuart knows a lot about many things and especially about collaboration issues and social networking. Also, everything you want to know about Skype I have learned from Stuart!
Cutting Edge Use Of Collaboration Tools
Stuart Henshall
Let me start with a little story to provide some context for this.
As you know I have spent a lot of time with Skype (a P2P telephony application
that works very much like a voice-centric IM system).
I was originally attracted to it because it allowed peer-to-peer file sharing and the collaborative concepts that that enabled.
Concurrently or a little bit later, when the likes of Michael Powell, the chairman of the FCC, discovered this technology, he said: The end of the traditional telecom industry is near (maybe not exact words).
But I think that the piece that has changed most of all is the implementation of being able to make quick opportunistic conference calls, of three to five people,
in rapid fashion.
We can come back to the details like audio, what happens there, what are the implications in terms of multimodal collaboration environment and more.
And I think that the experiment that I was talking to you about takes this to the next level. We said: Lets not have just a small conference call but lets actually find out what it takes to be able to start positioning people in a conference call
around a table. And at the same time lets think about how when we are running around the board table and at the same time put that virtual space into a larger room so that we can actually feel people Going in and out.
At that point we need to be able to listen in into multi conferences at the same time.
Collaboration Tools and Interoperability
Eugene Eric Kim
There are a lot of great tools out there right now.
And there is a certainly a lot of room for innovation.
One of the real keys for us to progress in terms of collaboration and in terms of improving our tools is for our tools to be able to talk each other.
Some of the ways in which our tools need to interoperate are obvious. For example the fact that only now we have some level of interoperability between different IM systems, though we are not even close to being where we should be, its a real problem.
The whole consequence of this state of things is that we are loosing the benefits of technologies we have ourselves created.
There are also a lot of other ways in which I would like to see our tools interoperate.
My goals and one of the initiatives I am working on right now is how do we educate the developers, the vendors, and the end users on what sorts of interoperability should be out there, and on why we need interoperability.
What Are The Obstacles That Make Such Interoperability So Hard To Come?
Eugene Eric Kim
I think there are two factors:
The first one is a little more obscure:
1) Its hard.
Interoperability is a difficult thing to do.
It is difficult when you are sitting and working with your tools, and interacting with your customers to really devote time to actually figure out who you are suppose to be interoperating with and how are your tools going to interoperate
with this or that other system.
2) The other problem is: this notion that we have in the business world that
we have to own everything. And if we dont we are not going to have leverage as a business.
The problem with that thinking is that everyone is going to have his tool preference and there is never going to be a universe where one tools rules all.
That view of the market is not realistic. Its to the vendors benefit, from a business point of view, that the more tools that I can work with the more potential clients have access to it.
What Is Needed For Conferencing And Collaboration Tools Vendors To Maintain a Competitive Edge?
Stuart Henshall
Let me come at it from a people-centric point of view.
Conversations can help organizations learn faster.
These conversations are the key elements to retaining and growing their competitive edge.
As a former scenario guy, I can say that anything that is done that enhances the flow of conversations, increases the velocity of conversations and helps us better to manage these events, especially online, and helps to broker these type of status, is going to be critical in getting us close to this type of vision.
Stuart Henshall
For Web Conferencing, if it is going to survive it needs to:
Step up to a higher quality of voice and sound.
The ability to take audio and audio processing into new realms, where we dont talk over each other, where we actually have 3d positioning within a conference
are important so that we understand where people are spatially like in a real room.
I think that there is a lot of things that can be done in relation to making things more immediate and from the enterprise point of view, which is always working towards structured conferences and times, it means that we are really not using the medium in the most effective manner.
The best example of what I mean, is to notice that when it is a good time to conference. And that is when those people are online, and you can see they are available, their presence being noted on an equivalent of an IM system.
Then I or you can create a spontaneous conference, and then you can broker someone in.
Or there is the ultimate type of conference where you set a topic and when people are available you create an opportunistic one, where it automatically you mix/invite people as soon as people are available depending on where they are.
That sort of thing will certainly accelerate the velocity of conversations.
The barrier to this getting people over the fact that with traditional phones we actually had to schedule these things, and dial numbers.
Get rid of the phones,
Put on a headset,
Click to connect,
And that will simplify things an awful lot!
What is the difference between collaboration and conferencing?
Eugene Eric Kim
I think a lot of this tools are about communication, not necessarily about collaboration.
The whole term collaboration tool is sort of a misnomer.
If you think about it, practically any tool can be used for collaboration.
For example, take a piece of paper. Is a piece of paper a collaboration tool?
Certainly it can be used collaboratively like a napkin on which two people are scribbling onto and talking about.
Here is another example: Microsoft Word. Is Microsoft Word a collaborative tool? Well, in and of itself maybe not, but if I have it connected to a screen sharing technology then it could be a collaborative tool.
Even without the screen sharing technology, if I have a set of people around
the same computer display and we are all interacting around the same document in MS Word, then that in essence is a collaborative tool.
So I think that the term collaborative tool is a misnomer.
What really makes a tool collaborative is how we use it.
Certainly tools like what we are using right now, like this Communicast tool facilitates collaboration.
The fact that we can talk to each other and we can look at each other is pretty incredible, and I am still in awe everytime I see things like this (live event).
But if we really want to go to the next level, we need to understand what the patterns of collaboration are and how these tools are used. We need to understand what the best practices are and evolve tools accordingly.
I also think that there is been a lot of good research in this area but it is not well known and people dont focus on it that much. This is certainly one of the areas I am interested in and one that I hope other people will explore as well.
Adoption of collaborative tools what practices need to change?
Stuart Henshall
The thing that makes a difference in a company today is when people start to think how to change their work practices.
The thing that has changed my work practice the most, recently, is something that many finance stock brokers, money market traders, many software developers use.
And that is multi screens on my desk.
I have simply moved to having a collaboration screen going and my work screen. My collaboration screen sits on the left. By moving to multiple screens on my desktop I have also created a new talking point for others, in terms of trying to tell the story of what I am trying to do, which makes it easy to share,
and makes more conversations more likely, more quickly, easily.
OK, that is maybe an hardware thing, to put an extra screen on your desktop.
But having that extra real estate really does create a new environment.
What conferencing and collaboration should do to improve their tools?
Stuart Henshall
Make it more mobile.
Put in my handset.
Put in my telephone.
I need that always on conferencing capability.
Anywhere I am at anytime I not only want to listen this conference, but if I have an emergency I need to hear multiple things at the same time.
Therefore lets talk about:
a) Mobility
b) Always on
c) Making systems more communication-centric, particularly with voice rather than solely with text
d) Sharing mechanisms
e) Integration of presence in them
Without those things we are not going to change the platform in terms of moving forward.
Where should vendors focus their energies in the development of future tools?
Eugene Eric Kim
I would focus on converting artifacts of conversations into memory.
And this is really the key point that is missing from most of these conferencing and collaboration tools.
Yes I know it is great for you to be able to talk to someone live, or to see someone else on your computer screen.
One of the things that is being emphasized the most in terms of shared screens is the showing of a Powerpoint presentation. But showing a PowerPoint presentation on screen is not a very collaborative kind of activity. That is what we call a one-to-many type of conversation.
When we talk about shared whiteboarding, those kind of tools like shared conceptual mapping, shared mindmapping and other similar tools, those tools are far more powerful than anything else in really making live collaboration take off.
But then the critical issue is always the same:
The artifacts of those conversations, the whiteboard, the display that you put together, the concept map itself need to be in your memory.
Each one of them sas to be in the collective memory of your organization. So once you have those conversations, those artifacts have to be available to other people. I should be able to point to them later, to comment about those artifacts.
If there is a diagram that came out of a conversation I would like to point to it later in an email and say: Oh this was really interesting, but I thought more about it more and here is what I think about it.
That allows the conversation and the collaboration to progress.
If you dont have this focus on saving these artifacts, you are stuck in the same kind of situation as you are in many face-to-face meetings, which is that you sit there and you talk to each other, and then each one goes away, and then you come back, and you have to rehash the same issues over and over again.
So what I would really like to see a greater emphasis on knowledge sharing and information sharing and going beyond just basic communication capabilities.
Answers to the audience
What are the downsides of always on
Stuart Henshall
I dont see downsides in terms of always on.
I think you have to imagine this as being in a large open plan office
and sitting there and evaluating what the value is then what you can actually have multiple conversations at the same time.
The funny thing is I am sitting here with a headset on, and I am completely focused on the conversation in front of me, and yet if I was in in an open plan office I would have peripheral hearing, if you will, just like peripheral vision.
And that periphearl hearing is what we really need to think about.
The telephone in particular has been very much about one-to-one sort of communication and we even have expressions about "I am only hearing it with one year" type of thing. But our ears are still out there listening for something else, and we individually are all interested in our own self preservation, you may say, and so listening to that broader set of conversations can only be enabled when I can focus on this conversation 98% while being able to be called in with other little things at the same time.
And that this a multi-conference multi-modal type of world.
Eugene Eric Kim
Serendipity is an important part of discovery.
That peripheral vision extends beyond the face to face every day kind of work.
Here is my community of people, who I generally interact with.
How much of that information do I make available to other people so that I can potentially discover someone else that is very useful to me? Someone that can help me learn something or achieve more easily my goals?
Relating to social patterns involved when people utilize these technologies, my favourite feature on cell phone is the "off" button. I think that what is really important to do is to understand how people interact and how people want to interact.
I think there is potential for saying:
I want to be interrupted.
I want people to discover me to some extent.
But I don't want to be interrupted too much.
As I tool designer what can I do to facilitate that?
So I think this is a very important problem.
Managing Our Accessibility Online
Stuart Henshall
We are all scared to the number of interruptions we can receive when we become visible online and our buddy lists start to be come too visible.
But let me answer with an example:
Years ago Xerox began using a receiver-based sort of communications approach to continuosly improve the work of entrepairment, and so each worker had a walk-talkie that was on all the time. And it carried messages just like those people use to call out for a taxi. But here is the interesting part: When the repair worker actually hears something relevant to the problem that they are interested in or they are working on, then they pay close attention.
So if people are talking through on how they are fixing something and then come to a dilemma then all of a sudden the solution is somebody intercoms it into the system.
The same happens when software developers are using IRC channels. So it maybe useful to think what audio IRC look like.
How would handling multiple channels at the same time like this work?
Presence and Multi-Tasking
Stuart Henshall
I think that the system at the moment is far too simplistic perhaps: Available, Not available, Do Not Disturb, Do Not Approach Me.
And of course also we dont necessarily want the same form or the same levels of availability for different people.
We also perhaps need a second or third degree of availability too, at certain times.
Those things are being demonstrated by programs like LinkedIn or Spoke which are tools facilitating the social networking side of things.
Eugene Eric Kim
Yes, presence awareness is not yet that sophisticated.
People are better at multitasking and adapting to tools than we think. And there is a certain amount of resistance to that. But again if you look at IRC channels people are able to work very effectively in that environment.
IRC is a good example of presencing and how people adapt.
If you watch an IRC channel, there may be ten people in the room. Anyone who is actually familiar with the tool, realizes that out of those ten people maybe only two people are paying attention to what is going. And that is a mode that is accepted.
So on one hand we can say that people can easily adapt to these kind of presencing issues but at the same time we need to explore more these issues better ways to prevent these things from being annoying.
Another thing to keep in mind is that what annoys us today it may not annoy the next generation of workers tomorrow .
Kids are growing up and they are used to instant messaging on their phones and constantly being interrupted everywhere. So you have then the reverse problem and you just hope that when the time comes our kids will be able focus on problems and the things they need to focus on.
So I think that we do need to do something about it but I also think that we need aware that, people adapt, and cultural things adapt, and we should pay attention to that also.
Changes in the workplace reflecting the adoption of these new collaboration tools?
Stuart Henshall
Is there anyone one workplace?
Many of us are very much more virtual than we were before.
That virtual nature or that global nature, at least in terms of the connectivity, significantly changes how you work and who you work with.
A little bit of story about myself:
As someone that worked with GBN, the Global Business Network, which is a very remarkable group of people around the world, what I have found out with my blogging is that it has created a far more diverse and much closer network of people around the world for me than any other thing I did before.
As calling costs in effect have dropped to zero, and I can spend one hour, two hours, four hours with somebody online and not be thinking about it...or be working concurrently on the same project, to the point that issues of distance disappear as well.
And I actually think that the corporation will want a solution which will enable the secure mobile handset, to go home with that individual so that it still rings
as they are part of their Corporate global network.
I think we need a dispersed sort of flow to still accelerate these conversations.
Personal wish and message to conferencing vendors
Eugene Eric Kim
We can do better.
It sounds simplistic, it sounds cliché, but we really need to have this attitude:
How do these tools make my life better, how does collaboration improve the way you do things and what can we do to improve all of this.
All of the things we have desrcibed here today can happen. We are just touching on the potential of these technologies right now.
If we think a little bit bigger, we can accomplish a lot more.
Personal wish and message to conferencing vendors
Stuart Henshall
Id like to see many more people participating in online events.
As we know there is a growing use and combination around Web conferencing tools, especially where voice and sharing are more integrated, but I see that for the most part we tend to structure these events.
What I would like to see is more people going out and looking at opportunistic or spontaneous conferencing situations and mechanisms.
In other words: Getting used to the tools more quickly.
Recording of Competitive Edge Report by Robin Good
Recording of final presentation report by Robin Good (39' Flash streaming format) is immediately accessible here.
Next Competitive Edge event
June 29th 2004 - 12 noon EDT
with
Ray Ozzie
of Groove Networks
and
Howard Rheingold
of
SmartMobs
Sign-up here:
http://tinyurl.com/25bgb
This event was sponsored by:
http://www.Communicast.com/
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