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Email? Very Interesting

It occurs to me the following quote may instill a bit of cognitive dissonance in my friend @elsua:
“Welcome to Posterous! We think e-mailing is such a natural way to share information, there can be no better way to publish something on the internet”.

Hope you see this, Luis. If not, I’ll bring it to your attention. I’m interested in your thoughts about the statement.

Posted via email from rickladd’s posterous

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About Rick Ladd

Born in 1947, I am an officially retired pensioner who still has two teenage daughters and a desire to contribute. I remain intensely interested in, and fascinated by, Systems Thinking, Machine Learning, Knowledge Management, Decision Intelligence, and Business in general. I am also conversant in such concepts as innovation and ideation, collaborative tools and strategies, crowdsourcing, and the use of social media to accomplish goals ranging from improving business processes to promoting small retail businesses. Since my "retirement" I have done a little bit of freelancing as an editor/proofreader, as well as some technical writing. I've also done a fair amount of Facebook marketing as well. There's lots more where that came from. Need some help? Perhaps another set of eyes? Contact me. The first one's free! ;0) View all posts by Rick Ladd

5 responses to “Email? Very Interesting

  • Rick Ladd

    Hi Luis. Thanks for chiming in. I think we’re in complete accord on this. As I mentioned in my response to Brett, I don’t think email sent to individuals or groups even is a very good way to share information and knowledge. Even if you include everyone who “ought” to be informed, all it takes is one person breaking the thread of a conversation and the integrity of the knowledge is compromised.

    I was curious to see how you would respond to Posterous’s suggestion and you didn’t disappoint. Thanks again and, yes, it makes perfect sense. We’ll talk soon.

    Like

    • Luis Suarez

      Hi Rick! Thanks a bunch for the follow up and for the additional comments! I surely agree with you on this one and too funny, because just recently I experienced what you described above; I was trying to organise an online event from a personal perspective with a couple of folks and we spent over 35 emails to help prepare the logistics and everything, when I know using some social software tools would have taken us no more than 4 to 5 interactions! OUCH!!!

      Can you imagine if I would have to work on such kind of online events with those many interactions through email every time? There is no way!!! That’s why I started living “A World Without Email” and why I plan to continue with it for a long while!

      This week… Monday and Tuesday gone and so far 1 single email. Yes! One single email! See the difference?!?! 😉

      Take good care and glad you enjoyed the earlier on response! Speak soon!

      Like

  • Luis Suarez

    Hiya, Rick! Thanks for the nudge and for sharing your thoughts on this very intriguing topic, right? Well, to me it is very clear such statement from Posterous: email becomes your blogging platform of choice, just like for me it is Qumana or ecto; or, even, the Web interface for Posterous, which is what I use most of the times.

    To me the key thing is that information and knowledge gets shared across, but outside of the Inbox, so it no longer remains a content repository, but a notification / messaging / blogging system. Basically, I use it as the tool to publish my content out there on the Internet and available to everyone; something that doesn’t happen very much in your email. And most importantly, Posterous, unless they decide to change their policy, stores the information, content, knowledge forever, something that email keeps struggling with time and time again.

    That’s why to me “email is where knowledge goes to die” and Posterous is “where knowledge goes to enjoy a new life of self-improvement and email is just the publishing mechanism”.

    Makes sense? 🙂

    Like

  • Brett

    Another interesting reference to e-mail that I found recently is in the book Rework from the guys at 37signals:

    “…when you do collaborate, try to use passive communications tools, like e-mail, that don’t require an instant reply, instead of interruptive ones…”

    Like

    • Rick Ladd

      Thanks, Brett. What I’m wondering – and the reason I put the suggestion out there – is how someone who advocates decreasing usage of email in favor of increasing usage of social software, would respond to Posterous’s assertion . . . and now that of 37signals as well. I agree the use of passive communication tools (as defined by them, i.e. those that don’t require an instant reply and aren’t interruptive) makes a great deal of sense. However, why not use other communication platforms, e.g. blogs or wikis, when collaborating? From a knowledge management point of view, and something I struggled with for years at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, email does not preserve conversations in any meaningful way for others, whereas using social tools that are persistent and open creates an accessible record of conversations.

      Thanks, again. Most helpful.

      Like

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