The Rise of Collaborative Web Apps in the Shadow of Oil Gone Mad
Ok that's a lofty title but after reading Seth Godins intriguing post on what $130 oil prices will do to meetings, I can't help but consider other possibilities as well. Namely, collaborative web applciations.
Meetings usually suck. I mean it's good to be there and nod your head and go yeah, we got together, but meetings that drag on past say 30 minutes or so, really suck the life outa people. Most cubical farms in corporate america are nearly back to back meetings for people. Lets have meetings about more meetings. Its amazing people get anything done.
I'm always on the hunt to do meetings better. In research you're often meeting with people, and its combo task for the researcher, you're interviewing them, keeping them engaged in conversation and you often have to take notes at the same time. Finding unique ways to keep conversation going, and somehow recording those nuggets of goodness that occur is an ever changing art form.
Thinking about oil going up and how it make meetings more meaty as I think Seth is pointing to where we'll all get damn active in each others faces cause time and money are not on your side is a solid theme here.
The latest collaborative app we've used at work is called Octopz, and ya know it was pretty decent. Wyatt at work seems to give me these kinds of mini fire drills, we need to find a cool app fast that does x, y, z, p, d, q and so forth. We landed on Octopz after trying PalBee, Brio and a few other flex like apps that basically help bring people, web cams and content to talk. You'd think just use WebEx right? I feel like thats pretty bland and I dunno, I'm always on the hunt for the newer stuff.
Conference calls is another aspect thats always on the rise at work. However we rarely record these calls and lately that's come up, recording and getting mobile folks to connect easier and not have to navigate a complex voip system that only the installers really know how to use. Once again, the web saves me. I used Drop.IO and a cell phone to record calls, and I've messed with using TalkShoe to do the same as well. At the moment, Drop.IO is nice because its simple clean interaction just rules.
Another thought is to use Jott, but I doubt it can really transcribe a call as well as we'd like it to. Its more geared for short burts o text.
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Comments
That's a good point you make about the rising cost of oil making efficient and cheap meetings more important. I've heard that from a number of different sources in the past week, almost simultaneously. I also kick myself each time I hear about it, because its something I should have thought up on my own as the Marketing Manager of Palbee.
I'm sorry to hear that you chose Octopz over our service, but after checking it out I can see it has quite a few nice features. Our Palbee service is still in development, although it is cheaper (as in free) than Octopz.
You might want to give Palbee another look towards the end of June, however, because we will be coming out with a new version around that time. We will include more simultaneous conference attendees and a more intuitive and useful web site. I invite you to check it out soon at palbee.com!
Posted by: Matthew | May 26, 2008 08:49 PM