Tuesday
Apr252000
A Special Essay: The Road to "Natural" Digital Collaboration
April 25, 2000
A Special Essay for TechLearn Readers: April 25, 2000
The Road to "Natural" Digital Collaboration
By Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center
If I told you that we were going to have a conference call, the steps would
be natural. You would want to know the number to call, perhaps with a
password or ID. And, in a few seconds or a couple of minutes, you would be
n a telephone conference, focusing on the content rather than the
technology.
It wasn't always like that. A decade ago, telephone conference calls were
preceded by days or hours of anxiety, testing of phone lines and a learning
curve that scared off many users. I remember leading a conference call in
1985 that required that I have two telephones to my ear, using one to
communicate with the "control center" and the other to talk to fellow
participants on-line.
We walked a road to get to the "Natural" state of telephone conferences as
digital collaboration. Multiple positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a price point that made the decision to
use a conference call model "a no-brainer".
What is the road to the natural use of a wider set of digital collaboration tools?
Video-conference technology is awesome, yet the logistics can be daunting.
Almost every time that I schedule a keynote speech or meeting via
videoconference from my office setup, there is a flurry of testing and
free-floating anxiety. Will it work? Do our systems like each other?
Even though we are both using standards based systems, the process is far
from natural. And, for many folks in vid-con sessions, they are distracted by the
technology. Will it evolve to natural? Sure, but it will take the same elements as
the telephone conference call: loads of positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a friendly price point. Vid-con technology
is one of the great inventions of the 20th century but is often found gathering dust
in the conference room of the CEO.
In the next 36 months, digital collaboration technology will explode on the
scene. Accelerated by the popularity of the Internet, we will have the
opportunity to have 1-to-1 and larger group Experiences of collaboration
and community. Watch for systems and services that will allow individuals
and organizations to use Digital Collaboration for these core functions:
Learning, Knowledge Transfer, Planning, Meetings, Selling, Supporting,
Coaching, Customer Contact, Relationship Development, Family Gatherings,
Family Rituals, Interviewing, Shopping, Litigating, Researching, Managing
and many, many more.
The technology will come to us in both generic packages that allow a broad
category of collaboration as well as function specific services that allow
us to launch an event with a single click.
The challenge is to make these technologies work so well that they
disappear from our radar screens and allow us to focus on just the
relationships and content. We have to work hard to rapidly get to
"natural" collaborations.
Vendors of Digital Collaboration tools must work together to extend their
standards compliance and provide simple checking and setup procedures. I
should not have to call a call center prior to attending a virtual meeting
or classroom. We should be "collaboration ready" and have the ability to
dive into a meeting or on-line relationship without a "techie" moment
first.
Organizations implementing Digital Collaboration will need to address the
process issues of people working together with technology. There is a
skill set to using a shared white board. There is a skill to delivering a
speech over a video-conference system. There are wonderful and awful
examples of a distance learning experience. We can't expect our colleagues
to automatically adapt to new models of collaboration. There will be
learning, coaching and modeling processes that must happen before we get to
"natural collaboration".
Just as there is a process of Instructional Design for developing
instructional experiences, we believe that there is a parallel process of
Collaborative Design to create the best uses of digital collaboration
technology. We need to learn how to assess the needs of the groups
involved and select media that is appropriate to the outcome objectives.
And, we envision the development of collaboration templates that will
embody a design for ideal use of tools in a given situation (e.g. A
template that walks the group through a highly interactive video conference
for an employment interview, including application sharing of resume and
job description documents.)
Finally, there are new roles that we must invent and perfect to make
Digital Collaboration really soar. Facilitators, community builders,
virtual coaches and other roles will evolve that will make Digital
Collaboration work effectively and naturally.
This is a great time to start the experimentation process. We should find
teams within our organizations to lead pilots for leveraging existing and
new technologies for effective collaboration. It would be great if the
"owners" of collaboration technology were not techies but rather
process-oriented folks in the HR, Training or Business areas.
The MASIE Center and ASTD will be addressing these key issues at our
upcoming Digital Collaboration Conference to be held at the ASTD National
Conference in Dallas, Texas on May 22 to 24, 2000. Information is
available at http://www.masie.com/digital/
The Road to "Natural" Digital Collaboration
By Elliott Masie, The MASIE Center
If I told you that we were going to have a conference call, the steps would
be natural. You would want to know the number to call, perhaps with a
password or ID. And, in a few seconds or a couple of minutes, you would be
n a telephone conference, focusing on the content rather than the
technology.
It wasn't always like that. A decade ago, telephone conference calls were
preceded by days or hours of anxiety, testing of phone lines and a learning
curve that scared off many users. I remember leading a conference call in
1985 that required that I have two telephones to my ear, using one to
communicate with the "control center" and the other to talk to fellow
participants on-line.
We walked a road to get to the "Natural" state of telephone conferences as
digital collaboration. Multiple positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a price point that made the decision to
use a conference call model "a no-brainer".
What is the road to the natural use of a wider set of digital collaboration tools?
Video-conference technology is awesome, yet the logistics can be daunting.
Almost every time that I schedule a keynote speech or meeting via
videoconference from my office setup, there is a flurry of testing and
free-floating anxiety. Will it work? Do our systems like each other?
Even though we are both using standards based systems, the process is far
from natural. And, for many folks in vid-con sessions, they are distracted by the
technology. Will it evolve to natural? Sure, but it will take the same elements as
the telephone conference call: loads of positive experiences, maturing technology,
full compliance with standards and a friendly price point. Vid-con technology
is one of the great inventions of the 20th century but is often found gathering dust
in the conference room of the CEO.
In the next 36 months, digital collaboration technology will explode on the
scene. Accelerated by the popularity of the Internet, we will have the
opportunity to have 1-to-1 and larger group Experiences of collaboration
and community. Watch for systems and services that will allow individuals
and organizations to use Digital Collaboration for these core functions:
Learning, Knowledge Transfer, Planning, Meetings, Selling, Supporting,
Coaching, Customer Contact, Relationship Development, Family Gatherings,
Family Rituals, Interviewing, Shopping, Litigating, Researching, Managing
and many, many more.
The technology will come to us in both generic packages that allow a broad
category of collaboration as well as function specific services that allow
us to launch an event with a single click.
The challenge is to make these technologies work so well that they
disappear from our radar screens and allow us to focus on just the
relationships and content. We have to work hard to rapidly get to
"natural" collaborations.
Vendors of Digital Collaboration tools must work together to extend their
standards compliance and provide simple checking and setup procedures. I
should not have to call a call center prior to attending a virtual meeting
or classroom. We should be "collaboration ready" and have the ability to
dive into a meeting or on-line relationship without a "techie" moment
first.
Organizations implementing Digital Collaboration will need to address the
process issues of people working together with technology. There is a
skill set to using a shared white board. There is a skill to delivering a
speech over a video-conference system. There are wonderful and awful
examples of a distance learning experience. We can't expect our colleagues
to automatically adapt to new models of collaboration. There will be
learning, coaching and modeling processes that must happen before we get to
"natural collaboration".
Just as there is a process of Instructional Design for developing
instructional experiences, we believe that there is a parallel process of
Collaborative Design to create the best uses of digital collaboration
technology. We need to learn how to assess the needs of the groups
involved and select media that is appropriate to the outcome objectives.
And, we envision the development of collaboration templates that will
embody a design for ideal use of tools in a given situation (e.g. A
template that walks the group through a highly interactive video conference
for an employment interview, including application sharing of resume and
job description documents.)
Finally, there are new roles that we must invent and perfect to make
Digital Collaboration really soar. Facilitators, community builders,
virtual coaches and other roles will evolve that will make Digital
Collaboration work effectively and naturally.
This is a great time to start the experimentation process. We should find
teams within our organizations to lead pilots for leveraging existing and
new technologies for effective collaboration. It would be great if the
"owners" of collaboration technology were not techies but rather
process-oriented folks in the HR, Training or Business areas.
The MASIE Center and ASTD will be addressing these key issues at our
upcoming Digital Collaboration Conference to be held at the ASTD National
Conference in Dallas, Texas on May 22 to 24, 2000. Information is
available at http://www.masie.com/digital/
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