Reducing email part 2

In response to my last post (which I e-mailed ((blush)) to him), RonJ shared a link to a blog of someone working to rid himself of e-mail. I found this post on Giving Up on Work e-mail to be very interesting. In this article was a graphic (from another blog whose article was Wiki collaboration leads to happiness) which I found to illuminate both the e-mail issue as well as the need for native posting in wikis.

Note that the e-mail case is placing the information in another tool besides native email (in this case Word) and the wiki collaboration system is using native capabilities for both editing and viewing. This is a major point. If another tool (again such as Word) is used unnecessarily, then it reduces the ease of collaboration.

For those who say “it is easier to prepare in ((pick your favorite tool))”, remember collaboration is many to many with many reading each post. The energy should be in the writing to benefit (and ensure) the many readers of each post.

Sometimes, the tool just wins out though (like in preparing a Gantt Chart or other non-Wiki supported complex item), in those cases try to post an image or web page with the information as well as attaching the original tool-specific file.