Adobe Connect 8

For this week, I would like to review the product Adobe Connect 8 for webmeetings. This because I just had an awsome webmeeting using it! And it what is more, it´s groupware in action!

The principle of Adobe Connect is quite simple: a system to support online meetings with a "real" meeting experience. The meeting has a moderator (or several of them), and invited guests that can log in to the meeting with a link. On the real-time meeting, you can watch and hear several colleges at once, share documents and written messages with them, and many other features that can be found on the Adobe website: http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect/web-meetings.html

In my opinion, what is more awsome of the system, is that opens an online space for groups to be formed. In my case, I had the first meeting with a new team with people located in Mexico and Spain. After two hours of meeting, we already had a group dynamic and strong agreements! even we were unfamiliar between each other, and located miles away!!

I think the features of this system are ideal for promoting the communication and the collaboration between teams in remote areas. In restrospective, I guess my feeling of groupal success after using the system, is due the sense of "sharing" the moment and space with my teammates, which was simply impossible to achieve by the "old-fashioned" emails and social media.

Swarm Intelligence

Last time I wrote about the “almighty critical mass”. This time, I’d like to dedicate my blog entry to the “almighty mass”.

In „The Virtual Community“ Howard Rheingold writes about his experiences with “the WELL”, one of the first online communities. He recalls one incident where his daughter had picked up a tick. Rheingold’s wife called the pediatrician, but she couldn’t reach him because it was already eleven p.m. Meanwhile, Rheingold searched for help by logging into the WELL - he found an answer almost immediately. (1)

This was in 1986, when online communities and groupware technologies were still in their beginnings. However, by asking the community for help, Rheingold did something that 20 years later became known as “crowdsourcing”. The journalist Jeff Howe first coined the term when writing an article for Wired magazine in May 2006, called “The Rise of Crowd Sourcing”. (2) In his web blog Howe defines “crowdsourcing” as follows:

„Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.” (3)

The potential for crowdsourcing has existed for many years, but only the increase of web applications’ capability has enabled mass collaboration to such a large extend. In his article, Jeff Howe states that technological advances “are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateurs from professionals.” (3)

An early example of web-based crowdsourcing is social bookmarking. However, the probably most well known example of this phenomenon is the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Today, companies use crowdsourcing in order to achieve business goals, too. A company makes an open call for solutions to a community and the community reviews the results and picks the best one. Those solutions are then owned by the company, which has brought up the problem in the first place.

The advantages are clear: The problems are solved quickly and the crowd finds solutions that are beyond the company’s employee’s capacity. On top of that, the companies are able to identify the customer’s desires through a first-hand insight. However, the most important advantage is the low costs, as the winners of the crowd are often not rewarded.

But why is crowdsourcing so successful? And why do people participate, even if they are not rewarded monetarily or with prizes?

I would like to answer those questions next week.

(1) http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/1.html

(2) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

(3) http://www.crowdsourcing.com/

Lack of Critical Mass: Case Google Buzz

Elise wrote about the almighty Critical Mass and after reading I was just thinking Google Buzz, which had all of the potential to become a hit. One prediction was written by CNNTech with fancy headline "Why Google Buzz will be a hit" ~1year ago. Now one year after article it is easy to say that Buzz was not a big hit. Article's points why Buzz would be a hit are still valid. Google Buzz is integrated to GMail and Smartphones Google Maps-app, so there should be enough potential users to use Buzz. Buzz is implemented well and it has nice features, but like VHS vs Beta-battle Buzz lost game against Twitter & Facebook.

I started personally to use Google Buzz immediately after it was published to wider user group. At starting point there were quite many Buzzes and it was easy to find useful information like good MTB-trails at the Alps. Many of my friends used Buzz like a Facebook/Twitter to tell their "current status" to others. After couple of months there were only few new Buzzes on my network and on the map. On my network explanation for lack of new Buzzes was easy. Everyone was using IRQ/Twitter/Facebook and Google Buzz didn't offer big improvements to those. It was just a service among others.
After 6months it was clear to me that Buzz was not a huge success and there were only minimal change to gain that critical mass to drag more users. Currently I am pretty sure that it is only matter of time when Google announces shutdown of Buzz. I would guess that Google will use Buzz -engine & architecture in some Maps-addon, where people can share for example experiences of restaurants, which are showed in Google Maps.

Why email is already old-fashioned way to keep in touch?

Many teenagers have stopped using email altogether, they think that email is for old folks. This is true old folks use email more than teenagers. Many older people have to use email in work life or for example in University because email is easy use, everybody having it and they can use it. “The teens will eventually need to learn to use email more as they graduate from school and enter the workforce”, estimates John Barrett, director of research for Parks Associates[2]. I think when teenagers start their work life or their careers we will see more of a mix and email use decreasing and maybe someday nobody use email.

My mind email is only one way keep in touch but not the best way. For example I don’t like use email a tool when I working in groups because everyone don’t check it daily and if the group is a big, you get email all the time. Social networking services such as blogs and digital communities are better way keep touch when group is big.

Why email is old-fashioned? A typical email is read within 24 hours and responded to within 48 hours. A typical SMS is read within a minute and responded to within five. The privacy aspect of SMS versus email is also important. Email is very open: you might have others walking by the computer screen at an open office or in an internet cafe. The PC you use may be shared, such as those at a university or at the office, or the home family PC. And the email service itself is often monitored at work, for example. In contrast, text messages are totally private. Kids don't let parents snoop around their phones and two-thirds of married adults do not share their phones with their spouses. [1] John Barrett thinks: “The younger generation is just adapting to this environment where they're doing 10 things at once” [2]. My mind this is one very good explain why email is so old- fashioned. Simple person-to-person communications, the traffic and messaging is shifting clearly away from email to SMS, instant messaging and social networking services such as blogs and digital communities.

References:

[1] Fitzpatrick, Michael 2007. [TECHNOLOGY] E-mail passes its prime. Update 8.12.2007.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2007/12/08/2003391752/1 ate 8.12.2007

[2] Pc Magazines 2006.Teens: Email is just so old-fashioned. Update 3.11.2006.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C2817%2C2050939%2C00.asp.

How to handle role accounts in an effective way?

Nowadays it is more common to change our jobs many times. This is the reason why personal email adresses become more and more a problem. After an employee leaves the firm questions, how to deal with the remaining account, raises up. For example questions like: “Should the emails be redirected?”, “When should the account be deactivated?”, “Should there be an automatic reply to inform the sender about the drop out?” and “What is the most customer friendly way to make clear that the employee does not work anymore for the firm?” occur.

One solution to fix this problem could be to use so called role accounts (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2142). Role accounts are functional e-mail adresses and not personal. Using these accounts as central mail accounts for the same field of duty brings some benefits. One benefit of these role accounts is that the email adress does not change whether an employee is on holiday, sick or left the company. Another benefit is that the emails are in one and the same account which is accessible for all employees who need to access.

As nice as it sound but one problem remains. The management within the mailbox. With email clients nowadays it is possible to manage different mail accounts, to share mail accounts, to manage shared calendars and to administer a task list. But it seems impossible to make an effective ressource management as well.

I will try to point my thoughts out with the following scenario. We assume the role account is used to conversate with customers and suppliers in the same time. Responsible for this account are 4 people. There is the head of the department, employee A, which manages the ressources and instructs the employees B, C and D which emails they have to carry out. For example employee B has to answer the customer requests, employee C has to type the bookings into the system and has to send an invoice to the customers via email and employee D has to deal with the suppliers. In the normal email account you have the possibility to transform an email to a Job. But then I cannot use the email as such anymore. Here it would be really helpful to mark the Email with the name of the person who should deal with it. Probably to have a team function, where I can create a team and add the members, would be helpful. On the other hand the performing person should have the possiblity to mark the email as done so that the supervisor gets a feedback. Of course other ressource management features can be taken into account.

Checking out the three most common mail systems in the European business world, IBM Lotus Notes (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/uk/lotus/), Novell GroupWise (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/) and Microsoft Outlook (http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/), I did not find a feature like described above.

Figure 1: IBM Lotus Notes

 

Figure 2: Novell GroupWise

 

Figure 3: Microsoft Outlook

 

I think the time would be right now to make a change and take an effective ressource managemt within an email client into account. I am sure that role accounts will more and more replace personal email adresses in the future.

Introduction of Google Apps and Groupware

Google Apps is a suite of applications designed to give employees powerful communication and collaboration tools. I am going to explain different feature of Google Apps which can improve groupware.

As google says: "Google Apps offers simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools for any size business – all hosted by Google to streamline setup, minimize maintenance, and reduce IT costs. " 

It contains different Apps, These applications support 3 major factor:

1. Communication – Enhance your community's dialogue with hosted email, shared calendars and integrated video chat.
2. Collaboration – Google Docs and Google Sites enable students and teachers to share documents online, at any time and from any location.
3. Customization – Easily integrate your existing IT systems with Google Apps while keeping your school's domain safe and secure.

Google has different solutions:

1. Google Apps for free : Individuals, groups can use it for free.
2. Google Apps for Business : Businesses can get the added controls and features that companies need at $50 per user per year.
3. Google Appsfor Education: Schools can also get many of the capabilities offered to businesses, but at no charge.

I will focus more on characteristics of Google Apps and I will try to find groupware principles in Google App.

The Critical Mass

When reading Jonathan Grudin’s paper “Groupware and social dynamics: eight challenges for developers” I found challenge #2 to be the most interesting one. It deals with the critical mass and Prisoner’s dilemma problems. Grudin states that “Achieving a “critical mass” of users is essential for communication systems”, otherwise it is useless. Consequently, it is in every developer’s interest to find as many user as possible, or at least, to reach the critical mass. But how can one do that?

According to Grudin the best and easiest way is that the top management of a company obliges his employees to use a certain communication system. This way he creates the necessary critical mass of use. If this is not possible the author suggests that the work required for all users should be reduced. Furthermore incentives for use should be built and the process of use should emphasize on the individual and collective benefits.

When reading this, I felt that this solution was too superficial, because those incentives and collective benefits still need to be perceived by potential users. So how can a developer achieve this?

In his paper Grudin mentions the early adaptors - and in my opinion they play an important role when it comes to answering this question. When trying to find out more about early adaptors I stumbled across an interesting survey by Ryan and Gross from the year 1943. In the 1930s a new corn seed was introduced to Iowa. It was more fruitful than any other seed before, but it required a few organizational changes from the farmer. With their survey the two scientists wanted to find out why some farmer adopted this innovation earlier than others did. At first sight you might think that this has nothing to do with groupware or the challenge of the critical mass. However, I think that their results can be useful when it comes to creating a critical mass with the help of the early adaptors.

Ryan and Gross discovered, that early adaptors play an important role because they effect other people remarkably. From the media and the vendors you learn that a certain innovation exists. However, the final decision weather to use/buy the innovation or not is influenced by people who have already had experiences with it – the early adaptors.

Ryan and Gross also found out, that the farmer, who used the new corn seed first, had bigger farms, a higher income and they came from a higher educational background. On top of that they were more cosmopolitan than the average farmer. This tells us, that the have indeed certain characteristics in common.

In order to reach the critical mass, a developer should find out the characteristics of those people that have used groupware earlier than others. By convincing early adaptors his development will be much more successful and he will reach the critical mass earlier.

Challenges of groupware

Mikko wrote power of groupware yesterday so I have a good start here with to subject challenges of groupware. Today I wrote some ideas challenges of group work and challenges what groupware developers face their work.

Group work is a pedagogical strategy that promotes participation and interaction. It also fosters a deeper and more active learning process. When we work in the group, it is never unambiguous and easy because we are all different individuals. Groups are never individuals. We have to accept the fact that all group members have own way to do things and members have their own schedules. Some group members are more active than other and they have more time to work in the group. We must able to modify our own behavior to fit group. In the lecture slides also mentioned that second challenge is that groups are not organizations. I guess this is to say that you can leave the group more easily than from the organization. When you join some organization it is voluntary and you are interested in the organization main goal / tasks.

Teacher lectured about eight challenges for groupware developers. Groupware developers need to be conscious of the potential effects of technology on people, their work and interactions (Ellis, Gibbs and Rein, 1991). These eight challenges are disparity of work and benefit, the adoption process, failure of intuition, difficulty of evaluation, exception handling, critical mass and prisoner’s dilemma problems, disruption of social processes and unobtrusive accessibility.

A work vs. benefit disparity: Groupware systems often require work people who don´t benefit directly from them. Critical mass and prisoner dilemma problems: Groupware cannot succeed unless a larger number of people use it at the same time and this creates a collective action problem. Social, political and motivational issues: Groupware violate social and organization taboos or threaten political structures that existing in an organization. Failure of intuition: Intuitions in current software development environments are often poorly suited (or run against) the best actions in a groupware setting Unobtrusive accessibility: Often the features that support group processes are not used frequently but must still be accessible enough to be used. Difficult of evaluation: Group context introduces social, motivational, economic and political dynamics that hard to understand and measure. Exception handled issues: Groupware has to enable improvisation and error handling. The adaption process: Introduction can require more care, planning, and effort that most software developers consider. (Grudin, 1994)

Sorry numerous spelling mistakes! =)

Power of Groupware

There are many ways to define power of groupware. Power could be measured for example by economical factors or just by goodwill-value for certain group. With economical factors we would look after commercial groupware software like IBM Lotus Notes (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/Lotus_Notes.html). With economical factors Lotus Notes could be quite powerful, but if we use goodwill aspect I would guess that Lotus Notes is not so powerful. Git (http://git-scm.com/) could get good scores from economical factors and from goodwill-value measuring because git is used for Linux-kernel development. Newsgroups and several different discussion boards in the Internet are good example of software platforms which can fit in to definition of groupware. Usually newsgroups and discussions boards are not so powerful with economical factor measurements, but they offer good goodwill-value for their users.

In the world of wonderful Internet there is one thing what has demonstrated its power. That thing is 4chan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan) , which is pretty simple image board where users can share their images and discuss of them. Images can be posted to this board anonymously and somehow that came a starting point for Anonymous -group (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29) which is responsible for many campaigns on internet and in real world. As a groupware 4chan is very very powerful. Currently 4chan has tools to mobilize large group of Anonymous group members to achieve some goal and usually goal is reached. This is possible because influence power of 4chan is simply amazing. 4chan is able to make people with different backgrounds to work for the same goal. Backgrounds of the Anonymous group members can vary from hightech professionals and lawyers to 12yo manga drawing kid. IMHO The best definition for Anonymous is Chris Landers writing in Baltimore City Paper April 2, 2008:
"Anonymous is the first internet-based super consciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're traveling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely"

For me this Anonymous -phenomenon is the greatest example how groupware can be utilized to make people work for the same goal.

Can a wiki be a groupware?

In many firms a lack of information flow creates problems between the departments and within the departments. The company I am working for, a travel agency, is not an exception. Last year we introduced a wiki to my colleagues in our intranet.

The definition of a wiki in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) contains the words “collaborative works”, so I was asking myself: “Can a wiki be a groupware?”.

To find that out I checked the lecture slides for a definition of groupware. According to the slides groupware supports group activity, that is communication, collaboration, coordination.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication) communication requires a sender, a message and a recipient. These terms could be also used in the case of the wiki. A person, the sender, publish an information, the message, in the wiki. Persons from other departments or within the same department, the recipients, are reading this information.

Collaboration can be created by sharing knowledge, learning and building consens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration). With the possibility to place information centrally knowledge can be shared. The departments can learn from each other and documents are provided on a central place so everyone can use it and a consens can be build up.

Coordination means to make different people work together to reach the same goal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination). With a wiki a first possibility can be created for working together.

A second definition mentioned in the slides was that groupware is a computer-based system that supports groups of people engaged in a common task (or goal) and that provide an interface to a shared environment.

Also these requirements are fulfilled by a wiki. It is a computer-based system which supports people to communicate, collaborate and coordinate. Access through the companies intranet makes it also a shared environment.

Taking a closer look to the definitions of groupware and finding out that wiki fulfills the mentioned terms leads me to the conclusion that a wiki can be used as a groupware.

--Simone Strasser

Group-ware?

The best way to start our Groupware blog is, well, with some ideas about Groupware.

My first idea about Groupware, was that it kind of sounded like a mash of the words software and group. And I wasn´t quite far. Groupware can be defined as "Computer-based systems that support groups of people engaged in a common task (or goal) and that provide an interface to a shared environment" (Ellis, Gibbs, Rein, 1991).

Groupware is software for groups, and includes the whole process that surrounds groups when it comes to interacting with technology. Think not only on Facebook, but in groups interacting with large displays on a classroom, by e-mails, or with collaborative software.

We humans are by nature social creatures, and sounds just natural to find ways to support our “socialness” with technology. This is, we can certainly assume that - in one way or another - the interaction between people will naturally flow. Our job here, is to find out the most suitable way to make this happen through technology.