Speak First, Then What? - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 150

Chapter 11
Speak First, Then What?

Jay Heuer
SarJay GmbH, USA

AbstrACt

In a world of information overload, digital collaboration provides the means to spew out more and
more content. Mass does not equal class. Simply adding data to a “knowledge base” does not make
it better, just as adding “eyeballs” to a web site does not make it more significant. In this chapter, Dr.
Heuer explores how to unleash the undernourished “dark side” of collaboration: Listening. As a sea-
soned practitioner of online collaboration, he argues from the lead user's perspective. His objective: to
propose enhancements to a hypothetical system, increasing the amount of “Listening” (that is content
consumption rather than production) in online collaboration. This should help transform a band of
content junkies into true participants in a discussion rather than folks on soapboxes.

introduCtion

of interaction: Listening, Talking, and Observing.
In the age of Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft
SharePoint, “Talking” is available in abundance.
Since “Observing” (including facial expressions,
body language, etc.) is rather difficult to achieve
in the asynchronous, dispersed, and overloaded
context of today's workplace, the key to improving
collaborative systems could be “Listening”.
Listening is in short supply. Experience shows
that the more folks listen to each other, the better
the results. “Listen before you Speak” is true in
the world of online work, even more so than in the
real world, as the online medium is less forgiving,

In a world where content is created and published
at the drop of a hat (and a very small one for all
that matters), digital collaboration has become a
quest for relevance. How many times have you
started a new knowledge base for a project with
high hopes, only to see it decay into a cluttered mess
of unrelated pontifications, untraceable decisions,
and irrelevance? Why is that so? Can it be avoided?
Potentially, answers wait at the fundamental levels