chat Archives | Ian M Rountree

The Power of Immediate Collaboration

February 12, 2011 by Ian 2 Comments

One of the things I love about the web is it’s asynchronicity.

I can send you an email, or address a tweet your way on Monday morning and, unless it’s something urgent, you can respond as late as you like – right through to happy hour the following Friday. Based entirely on our needs, we can schedule our interactions loosely, and have conversations over the course of days, weeks, or even months without losing the thread of things, because there is almost always a meta-data supplied history for everything we do.

We can even consume media asynchronously. Through Google Reader or Instapaper, I can gather up weeks of stories from my favorite blogs,

Another thing I love about the web is it’s immediacy.

If I need to listen real-time for something, I can set up a net of Google Alerts and have them delivered by RSS into my feed reader of choice. I can get the information I’m looking for on an as-indexed basis. I could also use other listening tools, if I needed to, to expand my ears and make myself into a super-hero quality observer. I’d never miss a thing.

I stopped actively checking my mail years ago – there’s an app for that. I also stopped worrying over content management and coding the text of each page on my site a long time ago – there’s a plethora of apps for that

Need a quick response? Find me on Twitter.

Want to host a distributed chat event? Again, see Twitter – this time just make a hashtag and let people come to you.

Need to edit a document at the same time as I do? Let’s share a Google Doc and work on it at the same time.

When it comes time to publish my book, I’ll barely need a publisher at all.

I also stopped relying on online chats and tools like IRC a while ago. Through tools available now on the web, I’ve almost entirely eliminated the need for destination-based communication in my work.

Recently, I also moved much of my collaborative writing into Google Docs specifically, and have completely abandoned the last remaining web chat I’ve been using for the last ten years. No more need of it. Sure, I’m losing some serendipity – the possibility that a new player might randomly stumble into a game I’m running – but I’m gaining curatorial control, synchronism, and the benefit of a closed platform for speed and focus. And when the aim is to pump out large volumes of high-quality writing in short periods of time, that’s a huge benefit.

How amazing is this: In less than three hours on a Google Doc, my writing cohort and I managed to churn out 3000 words of content between us. Single paragraphs, in cyclical production, with a fully functional back-channel right in the window with us, and the option of Skype if we wanted to really dive into the meta side of the work.

Two days’ worth of NaNoWriMo-class writing in just a few hours. Neither of us were tired, neither of us concerned with running out of data or inspiration. We only got through about a chapter and a half, after all, of plot. If we manage to keep working the plot hard enough for a few weeks, we may have a mini-novel to do something with. No planning, no strategy. Just the work, instant and simple reference, built-in editing, and some otherwise idle time.

Imagine what people working with intention might do?

Two people working on a book could churn out a manuscript (conceivably) in just a few weeks, working full-time. That’s with time to do research, collaborate on structure, set up a framework, and get all the facts checked at the same time.

However you need to work with someone remotely – whether in the same room or across the world – the web provides.

And the means are always improving, for everyone using them. Not just because of the advances in the tools themselves, but also because of the way people use them for increasingly ingenious things.

What do you do on the web with others that totally blows your mind?

3 Steps to Mastering Any Social Network

February 7, 2011 by Ian Leave a Comment

Great news! There’s a new social network, and the word is, it’s awesome!

Oh. But it’s fundamentally different than anything you’re using right now, and the first reports are that just about everyone is, as usual, doing it wrong.

Pop quiz, tough guy. Do you join the new network?

One of the biggest challenges when approaching a given platform is feeling like you’re actually getting your head around it. Are you publishing the right material? Are you making the right friends? Are you ticking anyone off?

Getting over the fear of diving in is difficult – but it doesn’t have to be.

Whenever I start making use of a new platform – whether it’s digging into Twitter, or changing my approach to Facebook or LinkedIn – there are three simple things I do before solidifying my strategy: Listen, Observe, Catalog. You might think these are similar activities, but they’re really quite different – and essential to do before actually taking any action on a new plan.

How does it work? Simple:

1) Listen to what other people are saying about locales, individuals, or artifacts on the new platform.

Granted, this is easier with open networks than closed ones – it’s easier to do sentiment research on what’s going on within Twitter, for example, than it is on LinkedIn. However, if you have any kind of network to start with, you probably have a buffer – a back channel – to help you navigate the initial onslaught of information.

Chances are there are some movers and shakers, no matter how early the days of the new network are. Who are they? Are they making splashes? Are people you follow mentioning the same things consistently? Listening, especially on purpose, can be a powerful first indication of what people are doing, why they’re doing it, and how they’re managing to get results. Listening will also let you in on what kinds of results people are actually looking for.

Now, I’m not saying this should be done before filling out that tempting, well-designed sign up form. Not a bit. But it is easy enough, with some tools like Google Blog Search, Google Alerts and (gasp) asking your friends, to get a sense of where to go next, where the movers are actually doing their shaking.

Listening should give you your first indication of whether or not a space is worth further investment of time and energy.

2) Observe what others are actually doing with their networks in the new space.

I know, radical isn’t it? Once you’ve found out what you should be looking for by listening to the noise surrounding a new space – and, bonus points, this is actually easier as the space ages; anyone listening for Facebook news would find a wealth of information these days – you’ll know what kinds of people to actually spend time watching.

Pay attention to what’s getting done. Take note of how it’s being done as well. Is auto-publishing of blog posts or Twitter feeds welcomed? Are there opportunities for leadership? Are the leaders in the space actively investing in others, or promoting themselves?

Where listening is generally outside-the-wall activity, observation is being a fly on the wall in the same room where the party is.

3) Catalog what you’ve learned and start breaking out your plan of action.

What did you learn during your listening and observation? By now, you should have an accurate sense of:

What gets done in this new space
How people are doing this work effectively
What kinds of behaviors are encouraged or accepted
What kinds of behaviors are expected, whether encouraged or invisible
How to get ahead easily
What tools are available to reduce emotional overhead and administration effort

This preemptive insider knowledge will help remove a lot of the thrash from starting out on a new network, and make even your first days there easier. When you have a sense of what’s accepted, expected and anticipated, you can live up to expectations – and manage them – far better than going in blind.

Don’t have that sense yet? Repeat steps one and two until you can hammer out at least a 14 day revolving plan.

It’s really that simple. Everything else is over-complication.

Yes, there’s detail involved. there always is. And sometimes, the new network may not be for you – or you may go for years using it in a certain way, based on your initial perception of where the value is. Above all; don’t be afraid to course-correct and make a new plan of action. But, if you’re making changes in your network navigation intentionally, I’d strongly suggest spending at least a day on each of the above activities.

Going in to any network with more information, and using aware observer skills in building your knowledge, is always a good idea.

Have you been in any situations where more information could have been helpful? Where later observation put a new spin on your initial perception? I’d love to hear about it – please do share in the comments.

Keeping it Under the Buffer

October 16, 2010 by Ian 3 Comments

A long time ago, on an internet far away, I used to be a role-player.

I – and as many as a hundred other players – helped to curate, create and control a diverse world of characters, with centuries of in-game history, hundreds of criss-crossing plots, and inter-personal drama… Both between the dozens upon dozens of characters, and the few dozen players who made the game their life for years.

We had everything a community would expect – sex, lies, videotape – and then some. We were one of the first greatly inter-woven community groups on the web. We knew each other. Some of the players met in real life (and at the time, in the late nineties, that was a really big deal) and some players even got married.

None of that could have been possible without the buffer.

On the chat we wrote our worlds at, the segment of the screen reserved for private messages between chatters was called the buffer. Players – or, when out of character, chatters – who were either getting personal, displaying inappropriate activity, or often just plain lewd (it was internet chat in the nineties, after all) would be told quite clearly to “take it into the buffer” as a hint that their messages should be private.

We’re stripping a lot of the expectation of privacy away online. On Twitter, Direct Messages are a last resort – and usually not used unless you lack someone’s email address or IM. On Facebook, messages are very rare. Tonight, on #tweetdiner, Margie Clayman and Stanford from @pushingsocial’s weekly twitter chat, there was some talk about the idea that eventually Twitter might splinter into many smaller, more private groups.

This may not be necessary – we already have the means by which to get private – but if people fail to recognize when they should take their connections into the buffer, they’re missing out. The buffer doesn’t just mean privacy in the sense of strictly one-to-one connection. The buffer is anywhere that you can speak without the crowd at large listening. Business deals happen here. Lasting friendships happen here.

Without segmentation – not to be confused with segregation or exclusion – real interpersonal connection is a lot harder.

Not impossible. Just harder. But how do we get past the idea that everything we do is public? How about looking for buffers – and then making use of them?

Perhaps;

Email is a buffer. Whether one-to-one or group.
IM is a perfect buffer – even with small groups.
Podcast production can be a buffer – both in group production, and in distribution until a big audience gathers.
DMs can be a buffer – but they’re a better gateway to more efficient buffers.
Blogs and blog comments can even be buffers – they’re public, but sometimes just direct enough to be a source of real connection.

It’s not hard to see the spaces where we can make real connections with people. Make some connections.

Maybe even make a connection here. Hi. Nice to see you.

image by Steve Jurvetson.