Which chimed with another element of my experience over the last few years. In working with groups around their collaboration tool strategy**, we often went through a whole bunch of options (a wiki, no, Facebook, no, Ning, no, LinkedIn, no Twitter, no…) but ended up with an email list. Email is simple, reliable and good enough. It is the AK47 of collaboration technologies (compared to the finicky M16 of most other collaboration tools).

Email is here to stay (even if it may be replaced or augmented by other tools in certain contexts). So I went off read all the academic research on email that I could find. And then wrote the first of a series of articles on email use and its future. At the time, I reckoned such content would be considered hopelessly passé (allegedly, we are living in a post-peak email world). So I wasn’t that bothered when the publication dates for the articles got pushed back.

So imagine my mixture of self-satisfaction and annoyance at the subsequent public debate about Atos CEO Thierry Breton banning email in his organisation. It seems that email is still a live topic . BTW My armchair quarterback response to the 4 contributions in the NYT “Room for Debate“:

• I think that Luis Suarez has the most nuanced points to make – given that he has spent the last 3 years walking the walk, not just talking the talk;
• Peggy Duncan has some nice tips but blows it with the last sentence*** (yes, meetings are bad but that might mean better meetings rather than just fewer meetings – just like with email);
• William Powers also seems reasonable position but again blows it with the last sentence*** – most of people the I work with are not in the same building as I am. F2F is lovely but often simply not practical.
• Nicholas Carr has an interesting point but it’s not really his. Linking to other people’s stuff is good, Nick***.

Will Thierry Breton will succeed in his mission? My suspicion is that executive pressure will lead to greater use of non-email-based collaboration tools. However people will simply find email-like ways to use these tools – and projects that involve Atos clients or partners as well as internal staff will continue to use email. M. Breton may get less than he bargained for.

The question about email is whether its more like the phone or the fax. The phone has its limitations but it offers some unique advantages so it will be around in one form or another for the foreseeable future. I made several phone calls today (including some non-prank ones). Whereas the functions of the fax machine can be wholly subsumed by more advanced technologies (cheap scanners and, gulp, email). I cannot remember the last time I sent a fax – but I would have had considerably more hair and less flab. My take is that email falls into the “phone” category – its unique advantages mean that it’ll be around for  a while.

Now that doesn’t mean we can’t use email more productively (or just plain less) and use our new-fangle collaboration tools more. It just means that I think the “Death to Email” cries that occasionally emanate from the Social Business world are way premature.

*Cue lots of emails from organisations that have done so.
**Sadly for my bank balance, these groups had no money.
***This may be down to subbing.

This presentation is a bit of a mixed bag and falls roughly into thirds:

1. The first third looks at folksonomies. It steals liberally from Thomas Vander Wal and the work of others (see previous articles). It is my impression that folksonomies were hot from about 2006 to 2009 and have not delivered the benefits that many thought that they would. That doesn’t mean that user generated metadata has gone away, just that delicious may not be the model. In preparing for this talk, I emailed Mr Wal and he sent me back a wonderfully detailed and thorough answer. Rather than me reprinting that, I am hoping that he will publish a version of it on his blog (hint, hint). Also, Many thanks to Jordan Cassel, Glenda Brown, Lee Romero and Gary Carlson for their contributions on Taxocop.
2. The next bit talks about the semantic web / linked data and an Australian start-up called ReadCloud. I think that ReadCloud should be of particular interest to book indexers.
3. The final section deals with the Australian Taxonomy survey.

I was tag-teaming the taxonomy topic with Anna Gifford (who gave an excellent presentation about ontologies, education and drugs among other things). However we were in competition with a session on quilts.

This is part of presentation given at Metadata 2011 back in May. It is mostly based on this article. The rest of the presentation drew on this article and video but with more references to Star Trek*.

*Such as the Spock/Bones distinction in taxonomy work.

At this point, it is as though I have entered a virtual recreation of a stoned teenager’s bedroom…

Download the article

It’s strange, but start talking to hard-bitten, seasoned executives about information in the enterprise and they automatically switch off their critical faculties. They’ll believe anything. Really. Like, information and how it is used in your organisation can be understood by a piece of software, out of the box. Like, you don’t need to actually understand your information environment in order to manage it. Like, the best people to ask about making your information generally accessible, are narrow subject matter specialists. Like, you can fix your information environment once, and it’ll stay fixed forever without paying any more attention to it. In this article we explore three fairy tales about taxonomies that executives seem particularly prone to believing:

1. That you don’t need taxonomies if you get a good search engine;
2. That taxonomies can look after themselves or can be delegated piecemeal to non-taxonomists;
3. That the best people to advise on taxonomy development are subject matter experts.

Download Taxonomy Fairytales

Annette was featured in the Australian Financial Review last week talking about emotions and the workplace. In Melbourne, Ian will be presenting at ISPSO and they will both be at the KMLF.

In Sydney, I will be arranging something short ‘n’ sweet with the NSW KM Forum to showcase Annette’s and Ian’s work but if anyone wants to either arrange or participate in something more “meaty” then please contact me directly.

Download the article

• We began by individually noting down information governance issues and then mapped then against the Cynefin framework. As can be seen, most of the issues were identified as being “complex”. N.B.Most of the attendees had information management roles.
• We then worked through some of the serious issues around “ownership”, “getting management support” and finally, “tools”.
• Some further resources: ECM3, AIIM, Information Ecology.

See you in Melbourne.

Followership. We hear a lot about leaders but what about followers? Some more background at the Followership Centre.
Sydney: Monday, 4 April 14:00-16:00 Book now.
Melbourne: Monday, 11 April 14:00-16:00 Book now.

Information Governance. How do we manage this flood of “stuff” that we have created as individuals and organisations? More information here.
Sydney: Monday, 4 April 10:00-12:00 Book now.
Melbourne: Monday, 11 April 10:00-12:00 Book now.