Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Technography, Knowledge Management and Frontier

Author:ghanek@cs.indiana.edu
Posted:2/27/1999; 2:46:04 PM
Topic:Technography, Knowledge Management and Frontier
Msg #:3328 (In response to 3315)
Prev/Next:3327 / 3329

We've seen all the video conferencing and "Magic Whiteboard" apps out there and.. NONE OF THEM WORK

Exactly, which is kind of what I thought we're working toward changing here, but leaving the trail of electrons behind for future review, too. ;-) We're looking for a method of making groups of folks more productive in ways that the currently available tools do not allow.

I'm tired of hearing about Magic Whiteboards. If they don't do expand/collapse and support easy understandable reorganization, then they are worthless in this context. Thanks for listening.

We're on the same page here, Dave.

I tried to use the mWB story as a method to get at how we might want the participants of a meeting to be able to interact with each other's ideas using this potential system. I guess my poor attempt to use it as a metaphor underscores the difficulty of this task we're taking on here.

The outliner does things that a physical whiteboard just can't, and it makes a huge difference in productivity -- how often I've wished for cut/paste or the ability to look at an earlier version of something that has been erased or changed.

At the same time, there are some things that most outliners don't allow (and I hope this changes real soon) -- e.g., including pictures, sound, and other media types.

There is also another huge part involved here, that Bernie and some others have hinted at in this and related threads: not JUST the results of a meeting, but also a record of how those results came to be. A record of the conversations and shared understanding that it takes to arrive at that consensus.

Knowing what went into a decision being made can be very valuable for folks involved in a project who may not have been at the meeting, or who were but can't remember all the details. (I can think of a few consulting gigs where I'd have given an eye-tooth to know what went on when they were coming up with a particular decision.)

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