Social tools help improve business communications, increase collaboration and nurture innovation, but what do you do if people won't use them? And how do you grow from a pilot to company-wide use?
The Email Problem and How To Solve It
3 Sept 08
Email is becoming a problem, with people sending and receiving hundreds each day. 'No Email Days' don't help, nor do inbox size limits. So just how do you reduce email and improve people's relationship with their inbox?
Suw Charman-Anderson is a social software consultant and writer who specialises in the use of blogs and wikis behind the firewall. With a background in journalism, publishing and web design, Suw is now one of the UK's best known bloggers, frequently speaking at conferences and seminars.
She recently launched Kits and Mortar, a blog about planning a green, cat-friendly self-built home. Her personal blog is Chocolate and Vodka, and yes, she's married to Kevin.
Kevin Anderson has been an online journalist since 1996, designing, editing and writing websites for both broadcast and print media. In 1998, he joined the BBC and became their first online journalist based outside of the UK, covering the US for its award winning news website. After coming to the UK in 2005, he developed a blogging strategy for BBC news, helped launch a programme on the BBC's 5Live covering weblogs and podcasts and was on the team that launched the interactive radio programme World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service.
Kevin is now the Blogs Editor for The Guardian, where he is responsible for management, strategy and 'leading by doing' for Guardian Unlimited blogs.
XTech roundup, fostering discussion and Ian Forrester's thoughts
Posted by Kevin Anderson
On Thursday at XTech, I took matters into my own hands. Suw and I always travel with an Airport Express so that we can share hotel broadband. In this instance, we used her Airport Express to share the hotel's broadband with our fellow conference participants. I posted on the Guardian Technology blog about several of the talks.
That's all of the posting that I managed. Much, much more, well all of it is here at PlantXTech. I really wanted to blog the session about Quakr, " a project to build a 3-dimensional world from user contributed photos".
One thing that I really enjoyed was talking in between sessions about how the web really can be used to foster a rich, nuanced discussion about pressing issues. There is a lot of work to do with identity, community building and context. Rob McKinnon's talk about fostering democratic participation was really thought provoking. I also really enjoyed chatting with AOLs Edwin Aoki about fostering discussions, especially Trans-Atlantic discussion.
I have to admit to a little frustration with media in the US (mostly Fox) and in UK for amplifying the ill will between Americans and Brits. Is there any way to get past this surface noise and get people to talk to each other? How do you structure the online discussion and online spaces to make this happen? More on that later. Lots of thoughts forming along those lines. And I'll have to post some thoughts from my talk about a real revolution in news and community created content (full paper).
I had planned on doing some video blogging, but instead I stuck to a few text posts. Besides, most of the speakers and conference goers were a little camera shy. But I did manage to catch Ian Forrester with BBC Backstage for a quick question on what got him most excited at the conference:
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