Jay Cross, a leading thinker on informal learning and Web 2.0, recently released an interesting paper on the state of collaboration. His firm Internet Time Group LLC has provided guidance to companies like Cisco, IBM, Sun, Genentech, Merck, Novartis, HP, among others.
This is particularly timely considering all the public debate right now about the future of online communications and social interactions following the Slate article on 'The Death of Email' or Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection blog post.
As Cross puts it, "the business press, executive conferences, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Newsweek, Stephen Colbert, the Manchester Guardian, and other leading voices can't stop talking about Web 2.0 and collaboration... This is all well and good, but it provides scant guidance to the business manager who wants to take advantage of the technology."
In the paper 'Collaboration 2.0: It's Not About The Technology,' valuable information is provided on the technologies that comprise the Web 2.0 collaboration landscape, like wikis and blogs, as well as recommendations on how to get started to foster a successful deployment. Socialtext executives and customers were actively involved in contributing to the research captured in the paper. For anyone new to Web 2.0 collaboration or curious about how to make their investments in this area more successful (or how these trends relate to the declining use of email), click here and learn more.
