Information Research Weblog

A good deal of the knowledge management literature actually deals with communication in organizations and it is welcome to see an item on ZDNet that deals with this in terms of communication rather than in terms of km. Collaboration: Real time, real value?, by Dan Farber, deals mainly with instant messaging, which is now available in a variety of forms for use within business, rather than across the Internet. There's also an interview with Simon Hayward of the consulancy group, Gartner, which, sad to say reveals virtually total ignorance of the way people work in offices. He tells us, for example, that a message will be 'less intrusive' than a 'phone call - exactly how is not made clear. We're also advised that messaging will increase trust! I would have thought that without trust in the first place you can't get going with messaging.

Fortunately the readers of ZDNet appear to be very well aware of the problems and limitations of the technology. For example, one correspondent on the Feedback notes something of interest against the IT hype:

I’ve worked in places that use both Outlook and Notes and at least 95% of the people used them exclusively for email. The other 5% used the calendar features occasionally. That’s a lot in licensing fees for something that could be substituted for free. It leads you to believe that before free/open source will succeed on cost alone, the decision makers have to lose their emotional attachment with some of these apps. I’ve even seen certain processes made compulsory using features in these suites, for no apparent reason other than to justify the purchase.

And another observes a core problem:

The last thing I need is more real-time interrupts during the day. As it is, my productivity is down almost half because I can't complete even a simple task before someone phones, drops by, or otherwise demands my attention. Once they're taken care of, it takes several minutes to get back into the context of what I was doing again, at which point the next interruption occurs.

and another:

Attempting to replace face to face meetings with IM is nothing but a marketing attempt by those very companies to sell more software. I don't NEED MORE INTERRUPTIONS during the day than I already get from phone and email while working.

and another:

The problem with most modern forms of communication is that you can't tell if the other person is busy. As already pointed out the business day has too many interuptions in it to begin with.

Finally, it is interesting that several of the ideas discussed here were actually incorporated into trial systems in 1985 when I was investigating the Department of Trade and Industry's 'office automation' pilots. Things don't always move rapidly in IT :-) And, you know, it might be a good idea for the vendors of these systems to check on the outcomes of those pilots - I imagine that the reason that such a time has passed before some elements reached the market is that it was found that no one wanted them!