Leading Virtual Meetings Internet for the Teaming Masses

Daniel MittlemanDePaul CTI

danny@cti.depaul.edu

Let me start by telling you

things you already know…

We generate a lot of paper

• 15 trillion pieces of paper were processed by US businesses in 2000

• 1.37 billion copies were made each day in 2000

• and 37 % of those copies (481 million) were considered unnecessary

• Per capita consumption of paper in the US is currently over 748lbs. [about 217 billion lbs. total]

Managers & Executives spend most of their time communicating

• Managers spend about 85% of their day communicating

• Executives spend 75% of their time communicating orally

• Managers spend almost half their day in meetings

• The average worker has 36 hours of work stacked up to do

Most meetings are bad

• Someone dominates

• Others are afraid to speak

• Poor [or no!] agenda

• Hidden agendas

• Key person missing

• No ability to close

• Or close to soon

• Bad meeting room

And, it’s harder to meet over a distance

• Technology is a pain to set up and get synchronized

• You lose non-verbal cues

• Feedback loops take longer

• Free riding increases

• [And, this isn’t the full list]

US Workforce144.9 million

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (September 2006) and Gartner (October 2006)

The Workforce is going Virtual

Mobile Workers

69.2 million

Gartner predicts by 2009, 70% of knowledge work

will occur in locations where workers will depend on a wireless and remote-access infrastructure that is outside the enterprise's

direct control.

Products are being developed to support this

• Web 1.0– Static (HTML)– Single surfer– B:C ecommerce– Informational sites

• Web 2.0– Dynamic (Ajax)– Collaborative– P:P community– Social network sites

Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Web 3.0 ?

So, my research looksat what we can

do to make sense of this

How do we improve the

process of meetings as

organizations go virtual?

We notice…

• People who want to collaborate come at it by asking one of three questions…

They ask

“My team needs to collaborate virtually, what should I do?”

I have to remotely staff a document.

How do I do it?

They ask

“I need a collaboration

capability, what are my

choices?”

I need a phone bridge, what is out

there for me to use?

They ask

“What is this new product/

technology and why might I want one?”

Skype?

RSS? Wiki?

Blog?

ExecuteSolution

ExecuteSolution

SelectProductSelect

Product

Four Entry Pointsto get to the Solution

DefineTechnology

DefineTechnology

Definethe

CollaborationAffordance

Definethe

CollaborationAffordance

Definethe

BusinessProblem

Definethe

BusinessProblem

How do we make sense of this How do we make sense of this mass of web 2.0 virtual products?mass of web 2.0 virtual products?

First Problem

• Figuring out the right point of entry to the solution cycle

Second Problem

• Massive overlap of among classes of products

The Big Breakthrough

Distinguishing

• Products • Bundles of instances of technologies

– AIM, ICQAIM, ICQ

• Technologies • A way of doing something useful

– Instant MessagingInstant Messaging

From

are things you can buy

provide affordances

Affordance Matrix

AIM ICQ IRC gTalk

Text chat

Audio chat

Video chat

Chat room

Persistent Chat

TechnologiesTechnologiesTechnologiesTechnologiesProductsProducts

Caveat

Simply adding technology alone never solves a significant problem

Categorization of Technologies

What factors best differentiate among collaboration technology in the

marketplace today (and tomorrow)

How did we figure this out?

• We collected up all the groupware products we could find

• We started categorizing them into buckets as best we saw fit

• Then we looked at the buckets we had, tried to label them, and got into discussion about what made each bucket unique

• Then we organized the buckets into a classification• Then we tried to break our classification AND WE DID• So we went back to figure out why it didn’t work, and

kept rearranging until we found a classification scheme we could not break

Something to notice here…• This was a virtual collaborative effort.• We used the tools of which we speak• We had a goal• We had a process• Our process had stages to it • We had interim deliverable• But it all existed to lead us to our goal

Something to notice here…• This was a virtual collaborative effort.• We used the tools of which we speak• We had a goal• We had a process• Our process had stages to it • We had interim deliverable• But it all existed to lead us to our goal

Collaboration Technology Classes

• Streaming Tools

• Information Access

• Jointly Authored Pages

• Aggregated Systems

Streaming Tools

– Audio Only

– Data Presentation Only

– Video plus Data Presentation and/or Video

– Application Sharing

Information Access Tools

–File Transfer

–File Storage / Document Repository

–Search Engines

–Socialware – Social Tagging

–Syndication (RSS) Tools

Jointly Authored Page Tools–Different Time Communication–Same Time Communication–Shared Document Authoring

• List, Outline• Document, Wiki• Presentation• Spreadsheet• Whiteboard• Shape-and-line diagrams• Calendaring

Aggregated Systems

– Social Environments– Recommender Systems– Enterprise Virtual Workplaces– Work Process Systems

• Group Support Systems• Workflow Management Systems • Document Management Systems• Project Management Systems• Content Management System • Customer Relationship Management

Characteristics and Features

• Affordances: What capabilities does the tools have?• Media Channels: How do people communicate when

using the tool?• Interrupts: How do people signal they wish to take

control of conversation or product?• Synchronicity & Feedback: How quickly (and how richly)

do you receive feedback from teammates? Do you know what work others have done?

• Access Control: At what level of granularity can you block out portions of the document to work in? Can you manage ACL by person, by section, by role? How does the software handle contention and conflict?

• Archival: How are version histories maintained? How does undo work?