Cabin Fever

I?ve been busy with process this week, so it?s been hard to keep on top of the fun stuff. Especially after a tough week being snowed in at home. I say snowed in ? not really true ? but the roads were way to lethal to risk life and limb on a bobsleigh run over the valley? In that week, my eyes have been opened up to how good RoundTable (and LiveMeeting et al) really are. I had a great audio and video experience and was able to take part in some fairly complex interactive meetings without feeling ?remote?. (I love the term ?remote user? ? never sure whether it?s supposed to be inferring a geographical position, or just a sense of engagement. I?ve met with many "remote users? sitting right in front of me?") I?m bringing this up because I was sat in a session yesterday where the speaker began the usual spiel of ?how to manage email blah blah blah?. He pointed out the ?three colour rule? (which is: once there?s 3 colours in an email ? such as that caused by reply, reply, reply ? then it?s time to pick up the phone) and so on. But then he was challenged that actually email is more effective for some types of work, but then someone else challenged that face to face was better and so on. It?s dancing around the point. As any architect knows, all communication is asynchronous (yes, even when you?re chatting 1:1). But the level of synchronicity changes depending on the tool employed to perform that communication. So here?s why you need a bunch of different types of communication depending upon the context of the situation, or project. This supports the ?three colour rule? of course. Something that was seemingly a slow-paced async conversation has accelerated and requires a technique allowing for more rapid cycles (like the old dog ?n? bone). For more handy hints on managing the chaos that is ?how we communicate these days?, then I recommend Lifehacker or simply switching off for a bit and raging against the machine... I used ?Formality? as the Y-axis here, but there are surely many variants (like ? whether your vTeam is split across continents). There are many people wiser to the ways of OCS than me, but a useful starting point is right here.