Library clips

This is a follow-up to my post Enterprise microblogging needs a facelift to rival email.

In that post I talked about adding an item in the stream to your Watchlist

• This way you can keep in the loop about a conversation without you having to be a poster or a commenter

I also talked about communally grouping items via contributors tagging them with a hashtag

• This way you can keep in the loop about the greater task that is generating all these items

Differences

• You are not being cc:ed, rather you "pull" the content to you (filtering your own information)
  • you can be @mentioned which is like the to: or cc: field
    • but this won’t happen in every post and comment, so it’s up to people to add it to their Watchlist
• The sender has an understanding of who needs to be involved in a conversation, but this is not always apparent at the start of a task, and there are plenty of people on the edges who need to be consulted that emerge
  • Now anyone can find a conversation, add it to their Watchlist, get involved

Deeper than In-the-flow and Above-the-flow

A while back a defining post was made on the difference between working Above-the-Flow (volunteering to share information and experiences based on engagement, trust, audience, reciprocity), and In-the-Flow (communicating and asking questions about tasks using social tools rather than email…doing what you are already doing in new tools).

Well what I want to describe here is going deeper than In-the-Flow…to the artifacts of the activity itself.

Example

We have a web conference about a task that involves people across teams.

We set up a group space.

We use this group space to ask the task team questions.

We use this group space to communicate our individual progress to the task members.

Why do I have to go to a blog to describe to other task members about my progress?

Let me explain…

An action item that came up in the initial meeting was for a member of the task to contact someone in IT to find out where we can host our database.

Once he found this out, he communicated back to the task members by fowarding his email conversation with the IT guy

OR

By blogging about this email conversation he had.

But you kind of feel silly blogging about something when you can just easily fwd it…it’s just easier.

Yes blogging it stores it for all to see, and keeps the conversation centralised…but it needs to feel natural. One positive step is to forward your email to the blogs email address, this way further comments about this is centralised around the blog post.

Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

There is a better way…

Why report your progress by updating task members about it (whether in email or a blog)…

when instead they can see your conversation as it happens.

MICROBLOGGING AND HASHTAGS

Watch what happens when all task members follow the hashtag for this task:

Notice here how Task Member A does not have to write a blog post or forward an email to Task Member B or any of the other task members.

Why? Because all the task members are following the hashtag.

Task Member A is no longer the middleman to report the conversations he/she is having at the edges when doing their part of the task. They don’t have to forward an email or report progress as everyone can already know "as it happens."

ie. when on a task we don’t just converse with task members, we need to speak to random others in the organisation to get information from, authorise, or simply consult with as part of a task member doing their bit of the task

All task members (and anyone else) can now see the conversations each member is having with both task members and with indirect task members they need to consult with.

Indirect task members such as @ITguy can get involved at anytime without having to go through a task member; as long as they use the hashtag all task members will be in the loop.

What I’m getting to is you don’t need to report status or progress, as everyone can already see the conversations you are having.

Traditionally, if I were to report back to the group the progress of my task I would examine all my email conversations and write an email or a blog post on my progress…kind of like a real informal reporting. Or I would upload my emails which no-one will read.

But now people can have access to the artifacts without me having to forward them, or without me having to report about them.

This is a major difference between a closed system like email and an open microblogging system with the use of hashtags.

To reiterate the two main theme’s here:

1. People can now see the raw conversation as it happens, you no-longer have to report back to base…as people at base are privy to your conversation as it unfolds.

2. As a task member I am no longer a middleman in interpreting and communicating the progress of my part of the task, as you can see what I’m doing. Plus other task members can interact with the people on the edges (indirect task members) on the details of my part of the task.

Where it doesn’t apply

I’ve made clear that this works as a replacement to email, but when doing your part of a task you may have phone and face-to-face conversations with 3rd parties…in that case you do have to write a status update reporting your progress

Work products Deep In-the-Flow (Embedded In-the-Activity)

Aside from open conversations with both members of the task and people on the edges that are consulted about various parts of the task; we also have output documents eg. deliverables and supporting materials.

We no longer have to communicate (email or write a blog post) to people that we have just added a document related to our task. We simply do this at the time of adding the document.

The Activity stream of the microblogging app will suck in items added to the Document Management System (DMS) via an API

If we take another look at the hashtag stream we will see that the act of adding this document and a description has resulted in posting a new item into the stream (see the 5th post down)

Summary

This post focuses on a sweet spot in performing tasks.

Why?

It’s as easy as email.

You don’t have to set up a group space.

All you need to do is use microblogging (utlising Watchlists and Hashtags)

But the real focus of this post is about what happens on the edges.

All people on a task go off and do their bit and either report back on progress via email or a blog. They are the middleman between the task members and people on the edges who they are consulting with in doing the task.

Now we don’t have to report back, as task members (and anyone for that matter) can see the the raw conversations with people on the edges as it happens. Both other task members and people on the edges can interact without having to go through a particular task member.

Related

This is taking my ambient awareness post to proper task use, and brings back into fashion Jim McGee’s post on the loss of observable work.

Paula Thornton talks about artifacts of work, and this is exactly what I’m tackling:

This post is not so much the difference between conversations and the end product (deliverable), but more so how the conversations happen, and how we don’t have to report progress on our daily work on achieving our task.

Well let me clear that up, sure if I’m doing my own brainwork I will report my results, but if I’m having conversations with people that I need to consult with to achieve my task, well then I don’t have to report that this took place, as other task members already know, due to me using the task channel (defined by assigning a hashtag) to converse with people on the edges…all without them having to be part of an official group space.