ChangeForge's shared items

A few weeks ago we posted about our new way of working. Small teams of three, two-week iterations, and two-month resets.

First iteration

For the first two-week iteration, Team Bravo took on a revamp of our customer forums. For a couple of years we’d been using forum software called Beast. It served its purpose well, but it was time for something better.

The forums were structured in the traditional way: They were separated by product and grouped into categories. There were forums for feature requests, troubleshooting, how-tos, etc. It worked well enough, but it really wasn’t a good match for the primary use of the forums: asking and answering questions.

We also didn’t have any formal spam protection on the forums so every day we had to go in manually and clean out spam. Plus, the anonymity of the forums led to the common devolution of discussion seen across anonymous forums across the net. We had to do better.

So Team Bravo pitched a total re-do. We accepted.

A change of direction

The early mockups for the revamped forum followed the structure of the old forum. Products and categories. We fell into the trap of redoing something by using the old as the guide for the new.

But a few days in we shifted directions and decided to structure the forums in more of a Q&A format and less of a “subject” and “body” format with the usual categories. 37signals Answers was born.

How it works

When you visit 37signals Answers you are shown a list of the products supported by Answers.

More...

As 2009 loomed, near the end of 2008, I took a look back at how I was utilizing the Web and set for myself some direct goals, not necessarily number-oriented, but measurable nonetheless. As I illustrated in 10 Things I Wish I Would Do Better On the Web Come 2009, I wanted to make a concerted effort to interact with readers on the site (and on other blogs), and be more active away from home, participating in events, panels, podcasts, and the like. (Note Steven Hodson's reaction to this list as well)

With the goal of keeping myself accountable, here's the year's goals revisited, and summarily rated with a success or failure.

1) Make More Comments on Original Blog Posts

Success: Although a great number of comments continue to remain on FriendFeed and Facebook, or Google Reader, I made a concerted effort to leave comments in reaction to posts for blogs big and small this year, be it the individual Posterous or Tumblr account, or a large blog network, such as TechCrunch or GigaOM. I don't think I will ever fully do as good a job here as I would like, but I was certainly aware of my activity in 2009.

2) Respond to More Comments on louisgray.com

Success: Disqus makes this process extremely easy, letting me respond to comments that come to the blog via e-mail, or in rapid fire with their simple user interface. On "hot" blog topics, I made sure to respond to a good number of thought-provoking readers, and "walk down the line" to add my views. As with the above, this too could be improved, but I believe I was better at this in 2009 than in 2008.

3) Be More Interactive On Twitter

Success: I am still not as huge a Twitter fan as many people. I continue to use Twitter more for links than conversation. But I also wanted to use the service to help promote the #BlameDrewsCancer phenomenon, and have been very active in responding to @Replies. I try not to use the site as a status update service all too often, but this became more than just a repository for "New Blog Post" in 2009.

4) Spend Less Time on a Few Sites, and More Time on Many Sites

Failure: I believe I merely exchanged some sites for others here. I continue to spend a lot of time on Google Reader and FriendFeed (no surprise to most of you). While in 2008 I spent a bit of time on Socialmedian and Strands, I removed myself from those sites for the most part in 2009, and replaced them with more use of Facebook, plus the addition of Ecademy and Simler. (which have some FriendFeed-like elements)

The leverage of RSS continues to keep me on Reader more than in visiting many different downstream sites, and I still am visiting non-tech at a bare minimum.

5) Have More Time for In-Depth Reviews

Success: In addition to a great number of in depth reviews of new iPhone applications, I also started using YouTube to help describe some services, including Lazyfeed and my6sense. In terms of other Web services, I have tried to make sure when covering a site that I have walked through it and included a good number of screenshots or explanatory items to provide more background, even if it means I am not first to publish.

6) Follow Up On Sites and Services After Their Launch

Partial Success: Following up on all sites and giving equal time is practically impossible. But for every site I discussed only once, there were many more, such as Brizzly, Lazyfeed, Simler and others that saw multiple pieces of coverage that included updates on the product and company.

7) Attend More Industry Conferences and Panels

Success: 2009 saw me attend BlogWorld Expo for the second straight year. In addition, I attended SXSW in Austin, LeWeb, multiple TechCrunch CrunchUps, and had other speaking opportunities.

8) Participate More Visiblity on Conferences and Panels

Success: Adding on to the above, I gained the opportunity in 2009 to branch out a bit, leading a panel on Twitter applications at LeWeb, speaking on content aggregation at SXSW, speaking on realtime at BlogWorld, on information overload at the Inbound Marketing Summit, the death of advertising with the SFAMA, and other opportunities. I aimed to say yes to as many as I could, travel and expenses willing. 2010 should continue the trend.

9) Be More Active on Podcasts, Videoconferencing

Partial Success: 2009 did not feature the regular podcasts that were attempted in 2008 with the ReadBurner Weekly and Elite Tech News podcasts being shuttered. I did participate in FFundercats a few times, joined Leo Laporte for a holiday This Week In Tech, and Steven Hodson for another, but this was less than I had anticipated.

However, in addition to the group podcasts, I started using Cinch a lot, letting me send off single person podcasts from the iPhone, or 1-1 interviews, as were done at LeWeb.

10) Highlight More Bloggers and Entrepreneurs

Failure: As in 2008, I continued the highlighting of five new bloggers and ten new Friendfeeders each month through the first half of the year. But the purchasing of FriendFeed by Facebook in August pushed this plan askew, making me openly wonder if it made sense to continue that practice. I continue to seek out new content and highlight it through Google Reader shared items and other places, but could improve.

By setting these goals at the end of last year, they were somewhat in the back of my head as I made plans and actions through 2009. I tried not to set an arbitrary number-based goal that would make things seem like a chore, but did want to do the right thing. As you can see, many of these goals, especially in regards to events, were much stronger in 2009 than 2008. I just thought it made sense to report back to you.

Document and content management involves the transformation of paper files into a digital format. A document management system can cover areas such as security, disaster recovery, collaboration, and printer management.

If an organization develops and maintains its content and documents effectively, the information that is in your system can save your company time and money. If not handled properly, however, content and documents can decrease your company’s productivity.

The migration from paper to pixels has changed more than a few companies. The task can involve major changes to workflow and transform your company into the best it can be. Digging through old documents and records can be a long and exhausting process. With a document management system, all of these troubles can be taken care of and your business can become much more organized.

If you are the subject of the news, people will judge your actions and how you react to being in the spotlight. If you are the distributor of the news, how you message that news, and how accurately you report that news, will also be dissected. On the Web, especially in our sliver of Silicon Valley, where real time is becoming the standard, analysis of said news is itself happening in real time. From many corners, often from the more technically-oriented folks on the Web, I am seeing discussion around the tech news industry's alleged failings, inaccuracies, and usefulness (or lack thereof). While some of the feedback no doubt has merit, it too comes in simplified form, without offering potential solutions, taking into account how the creators and publishers of this tech news blogosphere are incentivized and rewarded.

On Sunday, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, as he often does, started a discussion around what he termed "fast food content", saying that "hand crafted content is dead", summarizing a piece that lamented sites which steal content without attribution, and more darkly, sites that employ people to rewrite others' content, without adding anything new or doing "real reporting", the kind one learns in journalism class, or is required to do when working for a "dead tree" newspaper or magazine.

Given Mike's focus, running one of the more widely read tech news sites on the Web, his concerns lie around those who borrow much of his and his writers' content and publish it as their own. But I have also given a lot of thought, especially of late, to the vast number of tech news sites and blogs that are out there covering the same stories, and are jostling amongst each other to beat their competition by a few minutes - opting not to win on quality, but instead, on time. In this case, it's often not another tech blog's news that is being borrowed, but official announcements from companies.

One of the easiest things for tech blogs to do is repeat updates from the official blogs of interesting companies, add a few internal links to previous coverage they have done on that topic, add a paragraph or two of analysis, and hit the post button. I've no doubt done it myself over the last few years, even with this self-awareness, but you can see the process unfold practically every day. Watch for phrases like "According to a post on the official Twitter blog..." or "In an update on Google's blog this morning"... as many of the better-known sites all post their own interpretations of the news that came from the top.

This, in my opinion, is the very definition of the "fast food news" Mike is talking about, and time spent both producing it and consuming it could be put to better use - as in these cases, links could serve just as well as full articles.

I am by no means an ombudsman for tech media and the tech news consumer. I am but one person who takes in a lot of content, and produces a little on my own. But I see a few other areas where the tech news engine is falling short for news consumers, news makers and the news authors themselves.

I believe "fast food news" also can refer to the mass hysteria over making sure every site posts the news that a major browser or a major operating system has issued a point release, or when a popular site has an outage, that the incident becomes front page news for every blog. At some point, given the vast multitude of interesting tech stories, individuals and companies out there, one must take a deep breath and realize that being the 10th site to report that Twitter got hacked last night didn't really add a lot of value to readers.

In fact, when Twitter did get hacked Thursday night, Mike (again) had a solid post that added information, and, as he gained more knowledge of the incident, he updated the same post multiple times throughout the night. Because he was the first to the scene, with real data, his post had meat, while many, many others that followed were just echoes of the obvious.

So why is this happening? There are a few reasons:

First, the advertising model that forces many sites to drive page views and social interactions, through Digg, StumbleUpon, and Twitter retweets, is turning many tech news sites into post mills, staffed largely by inexpensive writers and freelancers. Instead of deep analysis posts that require interviews, backgrounds, and research, these sites are instead home to excerpts from YouTube, polls, user surveys, and whatever happens to be trending on Twitter that day. Quality is exchanged for quantity.

Second, many of these sites operate under the guise that they are the only site their readers see. Just because one major tech site covered a story 30 minutes before doesn't mean they should assume their readers already know. That is why if you do subscribe to many technology blogs, as I do, you can expect the vast majority of them to report the same story around the same time - instead of choosing a specific focus that can set them apart from the competition.

Third, thanks to competition and personal interactions, not every site likes the others. Years of infighting and annoyances, thanks to individual posts, personalities, or business priorities means that some sites really dislike each other. They won't link to one another. They will ban the competition from their user conferences, and when they aren't taking potshots, they will act like the other doesn't exist. Thus, if the competition "breaks" a story, the other will post it anyway, or try to find a wrinkle that makes their own version of events "improved" or invalidating the other.

Fourth, the rise of aggregation sites makes piling on to the news something that is rewarded. If all competitive blogs have covered a major story, many others will follow suit, be it to get into "discussion" on Techmeme, to see TrackBacks on the originating posts, or to come up when the popular terms are searched for on Twitter, Google and other engines.

In essence, the incentives, for the most part, do not tilt in favor of writing unique stories or doing the required research necessary to get a full story, to get quotes from a source, or find data points that back up analysis.

That's why you see people like Alex Payne (of Twitter) complain, saying "Rarely does technology journalism produce informed, correct, relevant, and readable content. This is a sorry and damaging state of affairs." in his rant from March (Towards Better Technology Journalism), and why Marco Ament, the lead developer of Tumblr and Instapaper creator, this week, wrote: "Over the last few years, I have unsubscribed from nearly every tech-news feed. I have never regretted the decision afterward, and I haven’t missed anything important. Tech news needs help. Badly. It’s truly terrible."

Keep in mind that it's not unexpected for the more technical among us to dislike the way their works are interpreted. Engineering distrusting marketing is practically a requirement and a religion. But we know they are somewhat right. As much as we can complain about the public relations industry as a whole, many flaks often find that their offers for reporters to speak with the CEO or an official representative of the company go without interest, either due to time issues or a lacking skill set. It's always a lot easier just to ask for the press release ahead of time, and an embargo date.

In an ideal world, those who are acting as our news filters would take the extra time necessary to ferret out news before its time, would ask those making the news the questions they didn't want to answer, would understand competitive landscapes, and wouldn't worry about getting a post up in a few minutes to hit a quantity threshold, without it first passing a quality threshold.

Lest we think Alex and Marco are the lone cries for help, you can see other comments this week from The Angry Drunk, and from Google's DeWitt Clinton, who posted to Twitter, "Don't worry. Save some time. Your story doesn't need a shred of truth to it. It will be retweeted just the same." in response not to a tech blog story, but a mainstream media piece that had missed the mark. (He later, in contrast, praised Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb for solid reporting)

Content producers need to make choices in terms of what it is they cover, and where their field of expertise lies. If not breaking the news, or having access to the technology elite, there are many other ways to make your voice heard, through analysis and personal use cases, as well as the option to find new stories. Content consumers too have the choice as to where they get their news. I would hope that those people who are being spoon fed repeats of others' original reporting, or are waiting, jaws agape, for recaps of company blog posts, recognize what it is they are really missing.

Given the low cost structure needed to create content, it doesn't look like there is going to be a painful consolidation any time soon. In the meantime, the system is set up to reward those who publish quickly and pile on - for extra effort doesn't bring home the page views. There are going to be pockets of the Web that harbor original ideas, a focus on quality and data, and there are going to be other places where copying, scraping, and shortcuts are going to rule the day. I know what I hope to be. The question is, can we do our part, as publishers and consumers, to somehow reward those that do things right?

Many of MSPmentor’s readers are entrepreneurs — the folks who launch and fund VARs, managed service providers and IT consulting firms. Many of those readers are dealing with the following paradox: You’re trying to decide how much of your own money to pump into your company in 2010. But you don’t know your own net worth. That’s a potential problem…

When I graduated from college and launched my career, I tracked my net worth pretty closely. It wasn’t much but I basically knew what funds I had at any given moment.

Then, life got complicated. I’ve jumped from one job to the next. Got married and had three kids. Moved twice. Co-launched Nine Lives Media Inc. and its associated media sites. I was still paying all of my bills and living within reason. But did I really know my net worth? Um, no.

That’s bad. On the one hand, there’s a wall between business and personal finances. But on the other hand you need to understand your own financial health — down to the penny — in order to help determine just how much effort, time and money you’re going to pour into your business.

Finally, I’m getting organized. I’m consolidating my retirement accounts into a single account. I’m getting some clarity about where I am financially. I’m tracking my net worth again. I may not always like the number. But at least I know it.

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According to some of the business models employed within this industry your dealership should realize as much as 79% of its profits from service. My question then is, how are you managing your service department to maximize this opportunity?

Where is Your Focus?

It seems to me that most dealer principals spend more time managing their sales professionals and sales department than the service department which actually produces the profits. Many invest in software tools for CRM and managing the sales funnel but how many utilize advanced tools to measure and manage their technicians and maximize service department profitability?

Now I am in no way suggesting sales management is not important, we all know it is but I am suggesting we can do better at managing the function of the dealership where profitability is actually realized.

What Does Good Look Like?

When I question dealer principals directly I usually get a response that they run reports on service metrics to measure service performance. While an excellent practice, if you are doing this what is the baseline you are using to measure your results? Simply put, what does good look like, and are you really good?

Let me illustrate in a couple of specific areas.

Technician Performance

I recently reviewed an assessment of the service department for a relatively small dealership with less than 10 service technicians. Based on their internal “rankings” they expressed concern about the performance of several of their service technicians.

This review compared their service performance against a large national database and part of it graded service technicians from ”A” to “F” based on a number of measurements. What caught everyone’s attention was that not a single one of their technicians scored an average above a “D”. Further analysis of these results showed that by simply managing all of their service technicians to a “C” level would provide tens of thousands of dollars additional profitability to this dealership.

I believe this illustrates the question of what does good look like: instead of being concerned with a couple of individuals this dealership should be taking steps to improve performance across the board.

Performance of the MIF

Similar to the previous discussion do you know if your MIF is performing as good as it can and what could be gained from improvements.

If we were to analyze your in place population by model and compare it against thousands of other devices of same model across the country how would your parts usage and call frequency stand up?

I can tell you from experience that the average dealership can improve profitability by tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by identifying those units with above average service expense and managing them down to the national average. The potential within your own dealership would probably amaze you!

Additional benefits are improved client satisfaction and therefore retention, and the ability to identify additional or supplemental training for specific technicians.

Marketing Ramifications

So now to what I believe is a bit of novel thought: how do you leverage this type of detailed analysis within a marketing strategy to drive higher profits for your dealership?

Since most of us agree that the function of sales is to place units so that we can realize profits on the aftermarket would it make sense to incent sales professionals to sell those models that drive the greatest profitability within their target volumes?

For those of you attempting to move into MPS how about the ability to compensate your sales professionals on a combination of hardware placement, capturing page volumes and profitability within an account? Do you think this may cause them to place the correct hardware and manage the account to greater efficiencies?

Summary

If you are already doing all of these things I congratulate you; you are definitely ahead of the curve. If you are not then this effort may provide one of the best returns on investment of anything you could do within your dealership.

There are resources and support available for you today that enable you to compare your performance against national averages with minimum effort on your part. Now as with anything else if you do nothing with the information then you will gain the same – nothing. However, if you manage to these numbers you are going to be surprised how much more efficient and profitable you can become while increasing client satisfaction.

To reiterate here, the value is the ability compare against what good is based on a very large set of service statistics, not just within your own organization.

If this discussion caught your attention and you would like to pursue it further please contact me (ghawkins@buscomgroup.com / 602.989.5667) at your convenience.

 John Moffitt has over 13 years experience in Electronic Document Management. He has been an engineer, developer and project manager in the EDMS space. He is currently Chief Technology Officer for Document Platform Solutions and available for consulting in SharePoint Document Management applications. 

8 Capture and Search Strategies for SharePoint

There are many methods of Capture and Search that have been refined to allow users to find the right information they're looking for in traditional document management.  Below are eight (8) methods that are useful in SharePoint. Some of them are common to all document management systems and some are specific to SharePoint only.

CAPTURE

1 -- Full Text Capture.

This method is as it sounds. Capture all the text and data that is in the document, place it into a database and then enable searching on every word in the document. The great part about this method is that it's easy, fast and requires little training for users. SharePoint's ability to capture full-text documents is native with any Microsoft Office document, and iFilters can be installed to search all other file formats.

2 -- Index Capture.

This method reduces the amount of data captured to a few key fields. It reduces the size of the database and makes for specific searches allowing users to find the exact document they want. The downside is that it takes more time for users to enter the selected key fields at capture time and significant planning has to take place to choose the right fields. SharePoint achieves this capability via the "Document Information Panel" native to all Microsoft Office Documents and via third party partners for all other file formats.

3 -- Database Assisted Capture.

Like Index Capture this method also consists of just a few key fields however if a database exists with the fields already in them, a single key field can be used to populate the rest of the fields. The speed of capture increases as a function of how many fields are being populated by the database. Accuracy increases because one-to-many relationships of documents to data can be identified and the correct record chosen for storage. Line of Business Data (databases) and documents end up having a one-to-one relationship and searches reveal the correct document. Using the SDK available with SharePoint, integration can be developed to take advantage of this function. This capability can also be achieved via third party SharePoint partners.

4 -- LOB (Line of Business) Integration Capture.

Most process oriented operations in business are tracked by databases and have "interfaces" for their process (i.e. PeopleSoft, Oracle Financials, JDEdwards, MS Dynamics etc.) This provides a unique capability to capture documents both quickly AND accurately. Integration with the database interface "Line of Business Application" can provide all the index fields required to the Capture Software. Index fields are "captured" by virtue of which record the user is focused on at the time of capture. Simply pushing a button opens the document to be submitted (or launches a paper scanner) with all the proper index fields identified for storage. What's better, documents can be recalled with the same type of button for retrieval. Many times, users don't realize the documents are stored in a separate system! The tri-fecta benefit is that retention policies established for Line of Business processes can be mirrored in the Document Management System. Again, this integration can be achieved via the SDK in SharePoint or through third party partners.

SEARCH

5 -- Full-Text Search.

Most of us are familiar with this type of search. It emulates "Google" like functionality in our corporate systems. The nice part about this search is that it "finds everything everywhere". The bad part about this search is that it "finds everything everywhere" meaning that the user is overloaded with information and often the wrong information. The "silver lining" with this search is that sometimes finding the wrong document can actually answer the user's question and fullfill the goal of the search. A company calendar from 2007 can actually tell the user if Memorial Day is a holiday for 2009 (i.e., - if it was a holiday in 2007, chances are it will be a holiday for 2009). Because SharePoint is designed as a "content management system" searches are "ranked" in terms of importance. Search Scopes and Keyword searches can also be developed to refine these searches more accurately than a traditional document management system.

6 -- Foldering.

This method is the most popular in the organization. Users create folders on their desktops or shared drives and place documents into them. The great part about this method is that it's intuitive and easy to understand as it emulates the foldering system in most traditional physical filecabinets. The downside is that if you are not "in" the right folder, you won't find the document you're looking for. SharePoint has the ability to natively search these folders and find documents via "full text" and "discrete field" (see below) search capability. These foldering systems can also be "reconstructed" within SharePoint and be part of the existing backup/recovery process designed by the SharePoint administrators thus alleviating them of backup's to file systems.

7 -- Groups.

This method is a SharePoint specific capability. SharePoint can group documents into "Views" for the individual or for the organzation. Groups are organized around a few key fields. When a user clicks on these "key fields" the documents are sorted and re-sorted depending on the key field "focus". Much like a pivot table in a spreadsheet, this capability in searching allows the user to perform "what-if" scenarios on document management retrieval. Again, this is a "SharePoint Only" capability.

8 -- Discrete-Field Search.

This is for when it absolutely positively has to be the right document. Only one document in the system will satisfy the users request. The bad part about this search is that it's not for everyone. Only users involved in a "process" are interested in finding these documents. A search for "Invoice #123456" will reveal the correct information. Finding "Invoice #1234" will not. The great part about this method is that it is infinitely scalable and can be aligned with other corporate data systems (ie - JDEdwards, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, just to name a few). SharePoint exposes this search capability via "managed properties" in the Advanced Search Site and/or through third party partners.

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Also of interest...

• 8 things you need to know about SharePoint governance 
• 8 things SharePoint 2010 needs to be a true ECM system  
• 8 things to consider when implementing SharePoint with another ECM engine
• 8 ways to use SharePoint for social computing 
• 8 more things you need to know about SharePoint 
• 8 things to do to make content more findable in SharePoint 
• 8 things you need to know about automatic classification and metadata tagging in SharePoint 
  
• 8 ways SharePoint help in Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance 

Claude Baudoin recently became an independent consultant in Information Technology and Knowledge Management, after 35 years as an industry practitioner of those disciplines. Most recently, he was IT and KM Advisor at Schlumberger, the leading global oilfield services company. As owner and principal consultant at cébé IT and Knowledge Management, he helps clients put in place IT strategies, software roadmaps, knowledge communities and knowledge retention processes, and manage their IT innovation processes and portfolios.

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8 Reasons Why Google Wave May (or May Not) Kill E-Mail

1 – Google Wave does away with communication and collaboration silos.

Every time a new collaboration medium has entered the scene, we’ve been faced with an increasingly difficult choice of what to use. In fact, we usually don’t make that choice consciously, or very well (how many times have you discovered in the evening an e-mail that was sent at 11:30 to tell you of the change of location of your 12:00 lunch?) 

Google Wave merges e-mail, instant messaging (IM), and wikis. It no longer matter what “style” you use to start the conversation, it can migrate seamlessly as the wave develops. You can start with alternating individual “blips” (like e-mail replies, just a little easier on the eyes), then decide that you should all edit one of the blips, making it a joint effort, like a wiki entry. And when you do that, you might suddenly see one of the other participants typing in real-time, and you naturally move into an IM-like mode of conversation. And so on. You need to see it to believe how powerful this is.

2 – Persistence.

Once you start a wave, it persists and accumulates information.  An IM conversation is typically lost once it ends.  In e-mail, the information accumulation is by virtue of threaded replies, but there are three annoying issues: if two people reply to your e-mail at the same time, there isn’t a single message containing all three contributions; the thread needs to be read from bottom to top to be intelligible; and e-mail client idiosyncrasies, especially when it comes to wrapping lines, means that many contributions appear totally messed up once they have been quoted multiple times. Wave shows you each blip where it belongs, decorated with the avatar of its author, with “collapse/expand” buttons to facilitate navigation.

3 – Gadgets.

You can add a “gadget,” which is a Web part, to a Wave. They can be silly, entertaining in a social sense (adding a dynamically updated weather report for each participant’s city), or profoundly useful to an enterprise (the SAP Gravity tool is a collaborative business process modeling tool packaged as a Wave gadget). Some Wave gadgets will certainly evolve to become complete collaboration applications. For example, since Google offers the Google Voice service, Wave will probably become a platform for web conferencing too.

4 – Wave is social.

When you add people to a Wave, you are instantly creating a small ad-hoc community. Just like people are begging their friends for a Wave invitation during the beta-test period, people will want to join some popular waves. When you add a new participant, he or she can immediately review all the previous discussions (using the great “playback” feature of Wave), which serves as an “induction rite” into the club. Participants in a Wave will probably feel more “invested” in the subject than if they had just been CC’ed on an e-mail thread already started. When you invite a new person into a Wave, you often feel like you’re making introductions at a party, and your profile can be seen by the other participants.

But, at the same time…

5 – Wave is complex.

The initial mechanics of Wave are not that complex, but the process of finding and adding people, the choices about whether to add a reply at the end of a wave or edit an existing blip, how to find a useful widget (you currently add them by URL, and multiple grass-roots directory sites are emerging to provide catalogs, which is going to be very confusing), are all obstacles to adoption. The product needs to mature a lot before it will be easy to adopt by the average, non-geek, current e-mail user.

6 – Security and confidentiality concerns.

Wave is “in the cloud” (hosted by Google) and this will be seen as a huge risk for enterprises. There is a confidentiality issue, and also the risk that important information might be lost. Enterprises will want a solution they can host internally, as most do for e-mail or Sharepoint. Selling and supporting an enterprise solution is probably not the route Google wants to take. This might eventually limit the use of the tool in a corporate context.

7 – You don’t need Wave to kill e-mail!

Many younger people don’t use e-mail anymore. They find it too cumbersome, full of spam, lacking in immediacy. Instead, they already “micro-communicate” using Twitter, Facebook status updates, and direct text messages. They want the unit of communication to become smaller, not larger (a Wave can grow up to be an entire months-long conversation between dozens of people).

8 – Old habits die hard.

The final obstacle to the uptake of Wave is good old cultural inertia. I started using e-mail in 1980, but I still know some people (usually older) who don’t use it and don’t want to. So in spite of the convergence that Wave promises, it will probably not displace e-mail, IM, and wikis completely, at least not for a long time. But it is a very interesting development, and you should experiment with it, and make up your own mind.

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Also on this topic from George Parapadakis.  I always like George's insights.

If you haven't seen the Complete Wave Guide, worth a look.

I'm looking for guest post/e-book authors on 1) open source ECM/WCM and 2) electronic health records and ECM.  Here are the ground-rules.

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