I think this is a good paper that summarizes a lot of important
concepts. I also agree with the overall strategic approach.
Targeting standards organizations is an excellent choice -- it gives
you a well-defined, concrete audience that is dealing with a very
wicked problem of collaboration, both synchronous and asynchronous. I
also think there's a good market opportunity here. OASIS is an
excellent group that exploits this opportunity using crude tools --
mailing lists -- and excellent process. If OASIS were to offer better
tools than mailing lists, I think it would be an even more compelling
organization than it already is. (01)
(Side note: In addition to reading the paper, I've also seen Eric's
PowerPoint presentation. I've shared many comments with him already
about tightening up both the paper and presentation. The following
comments go into more depth, and I think will be of general interest.) (02)
Eric presents a three phase tool strategy: (03)
* Develop a version-controlled, purple numbered document
sharing/authoring system. (This, incidentally, is what PurpleWiki
is.) (04)
* Develop an asynchronous IBIS discussion tool. (05)
* Develop an OHS? (06)
One comment I made to Eric was that it's important to do the due
diligence to see what the biggest pain points for standards committees
might be. I suspect that currently, most of the real work is done
synchronously, meaning that perhaps the better place to start is to
offer tools for synchronous collaboration like Dialog Mapping. I'm
also reminded of Jon Bosak's proposal at Doug Engelbart's 2000
Colloquium for an asynchronous tool that embodied Robert's Rules of
Order: (07)
http://www.bootstrap.org/colloquium/session_07/session_07_bosak.jsp (08)
This kind of tool seems compelling for an organization like OASIS
that uses Robert's Rules, because the tool supports the process. (09)
As for building an asynchronous IBIS tool, I would like to argue
strongly for building a tool that facilitates IBIS facilitation of
asynchronous discussions, rather than expecting participants to
structure the discussion themselves. Jeff Conklin has cited many
reasons for why he thinks that asynchronous IBIS tools will not work,
and he has real experience supporting this contention. (010)
I've experimented with facilitatating asynchronous discussions quite a
bit, and think that with the proper tools, it could be extremely
effective: (011)
http://www.bootstrap.org/lists/ohs-lc/msg00078.html (012)
http://www.bootstrap.org/lists/ohs-lc/msg00089.html (013)
http://www.bootstrap.org/lists/ba-ohs-talk/0202/msg00143.html (014)
http://webservices.devchannel.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/15/0956249&mode=thread (015)
http://lab.bootstrap.org/port/papers/2002/portreviewsummary.html (016)
-Eugene (017)
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http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/cgi-bin/mesg.cgi?a=yak&i=20030311063434.GB1072@douge.blueoxen.net (019)
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