depthq - ccm|mac

I've only been using Twitter recently and just realised how useful it can be. Its the same feeling I get when using Facebook. I am not talking about all the stupid notifications that Facebook apps send but more of a history of things people have done.

Thinking about this it reminds me of our normal "offline" book/magazine/newspaper. There is probably too much information to consume if its all sent in real time. Having it kept as a log where you can view it at pleasure is much better. I guess the people in the print industry know what they are doing. Or maybe we're too used to it? Who knows...

But because its personalized in a way, its much better suited to your reading taste. I guess maybe this is why RSS and feed readers are such a hit, at least for me.

Not only that you can choose to consume the information when you want, consuming it in batches is so much more manageable and allows work to get done! There are just too many things to distract you everyday and its getting more and more addictive, just as Paul Graham says in his recent article. I don't think I'll turn off wifi on my main work machine. I'll just be more disciplined and see how I go from there.

Thinking more about async communication reminds me of the different type of mediums that we have now to communicate with your family, friends and people that you work with.

For me, with family, its always phone or video conferencing. Very direct and real time. Tons of vocal and visual feedback. The best way to communicate for the most important people in your life. I am in Beijing and family is in Malaysia so I can't do face to face.

With friends, its mostly instant messaging (IM), e-mail, twitter, facebook messages and sometimes voice chat through Skype. Looking at this its mostly text but with different levels of interaction. Voice chat definitely requires direct and real time attention. IM is probably the second most disruptive of the bunch as it demands, although not necessarily requires, direct attention. But what are friends for? The rest are mostly offline and are great ways to keep in touch. The best way would be to do it face to face of course but it takes more effort for everyone involved!

With colleagues, at least in the Exoweb, we mainly have face to face (meetings urgh!), voice chat, IM, IRC, e-mail, blog and wiki. Face to face is great but its mostly too disruptive and should be used for the most important of things or for things that aren't easily communicated in other forms. We don't really have that many meetings in Exoweb (thank gawd!) and we try to make full use of meetings when we do. Voice chat is rare and probably used to talk to clients or colleagues that are working remotely.

IM as I said earlier is quite disruptive and its mostly between 2 people in almost real time. IRC is a pretty good way to communicate as most of the time you're talking in real time in a chat room and others can quickly follow the conversation is needed. But again, it can be disruptive, don't expect a reply if you're doing over IRC because its meant to be async.

For most things, e-mail is the preferred way. Since there is a lag, you need to write it well so that there won't be wasted time going back and forth. This is more evident when your client is working at a different timezone. It can be quite a chore to write a good e-mail though.

I've read before that to maximize the value of keystrokes you should blog rather than write an e-mail. I think its quite a cool concept. If you write an e-mail, that information is normally only shared to the recipients. If you blog it, more people can learn and take advantage of that information that you provided. And looking at the whole Web ecosystem, your blog entry can be easily tagged in del.icio.us, digg or reddit, indexed by google, yahoo or your favourite search engine and etc.

Another way is to update the information into a wiki. We use wikis for most (if not all) of the information in Exoweb. Wikis are a great way to collaboratively edit a document which contains some knowledge or information. The problem is wikis is to tell people of the changes. Our current wiki system isn't that great yet and doesn't promote the collaboration part that much.

There are times where there isn't a way that will make everyone happy but choose wisely anyway and you'll be able to get your message across in the most effective way.