Leading Virtual Meetings Internet for the Teaming Masses

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Leading Virtual Meetings Internet for the
Teaming Masses

• Daniel Mittleman
• DePaul CTI
• danny_at_cti.depaul.edu

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Let me start by telling you things you
already know
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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

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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

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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

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And, its 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 isnt the full list

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The Workforce is going Virtual
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.
Source Bureau of Labor Statistics (September
2006) and Gartner (October 2006)
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Products are being developed to support this

• Web 1.0
• Static (HTML)
• Single surfer
• BC ecommerce
• Informational sites

• Web 2.0
• Dynamic (Ajax)
• Collaborative
• PP community
• Social network sites

Web 1.0
Web 2.0
Web 3.0 ?
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Within the landscape of collaboration
technologies. New Web2.0 collaboration tools
are Falling out of the skies
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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?
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We notice

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

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They ask
I have to remotely staff a document. How do I do
it?
My team needs to collaborate virtually, what
should I do?
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They ask
I need a phone bridge, what is out there for me
to use?
I need a collaboration capability, what are my
choices?
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They ask
RSS?
Wiki?
Skype?
Blog?
What is this new product/ technology and why
might I want one?
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Four Entry Pointsto get to the Solution
ExecuteSolution
Select Product
Define Technology
Define the Collaboration Affordance
Define the Business Problem
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How do we make sense of this 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

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The Big Breakthrough

• Distinguishing
• Products
• Bundles of instances of technologies
• AIM, ICQ
• Technologies
• A way of doing something useful
• Instant Messaging

are things you can buy
From
provide affordances
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Affordance Matrix
Products
Technologies
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
?
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Caveat

• Simply adding technology alone never solves a
  significant problem

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Categorization of Technologies

• What factors best differentiate among
  collaboration technology in the marketplace today
  (and tomorrow)

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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 didnt 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

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Collaboration Technology Classes

• Streaming Tools
• Information Access
• Jointly Authored Pages
• Aggregated Systems

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Streaming Tools

• Audio Only
• Data Presentation Only
• Video plus Data Presentation and/or Video
• Application Sharing

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Information Access Tools

• File Transfer
• File Storage / Document Repository
• Search Engines
• Socialware Social Tagging
• Syndication (RSS) Tools

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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

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Bob Hi there!
Danny Hi back at you!
Bob Do you think weve said enough?
Danny Yes.
Chat Interface
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1. Groucho
2. Harpo
3. Chico
4. Zeppo
5. Gummo
List Interface
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Here is a text contribution.
And here is another contribution.
This contribution is the third sentence in this
document.
Editor Interface
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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

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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?