Leading Virtual Meetings Internet for the Teaming Masses

1. Leading Virtual Meetings Internet for the Teaming Masses Daniel Mittleman DePaul CTI danny@cti.depaul.edu

2. Let me start by telling you things you already know…

3. We generate a lot of paper • 15 trillion pieces of paper were processed by US businesses in 2000 • 1.37 billioncopies 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]

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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]

7. US Workforce 144.9 million 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. Mobile Workers 69.2 million Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (September 2006) and Gartner (October 2006)

8. Web 1.0 Static (HTML) Single surfer B:C ecommerce Informational sites Web 2.0 Dynamic (Ajax) Collaborative P:P community Social network sites Products are being developed to support this Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Web 3.0 ?

9. Within the landscape of collaboration technologies…. New Web2.0 collaboration tools are… Falling out of the skies

10. 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?

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

12. They ask I have to remotely staff a document. How do I do it? “My team needs to collaborate virtually, what should I do?”

13. They ask I need a phone bridge, what is out there for me to use? “I need a collaboration capability, what are my choices?”

14. They ask RSS? Wiki? Skype? Blog? “What is this new product/ technology and why might I want one?”

15. Four Entry Pointsto get to the Solution Define the Business Problem Define the Collaboration Affordance Define Technology Select Product ExecuteSolution

16. 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

17. 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

18. Affordance Matrix Products Technologies          

19. Caveat Simply adding technology alone never solves a significant problem

20. Categorization of Technologies What factors best differentiate among collaboration technology in the marketplace today (and tomorrow)

21. 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

22. Collaboration Technology Classes • Streaming Tools • Information Access • Jointly Authored Pages • Aggregated Systems

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

24. Information Access Tools • File Transfer • File Storage / Document Repository • Search Engines • Socialware – Social Tagging • Syndication (RSS) Tools

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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?