(2006-10-20) Dyson Office2 Workflow

Esther Dyson thinks Office Two is about Work-Flow. Rules can be peer-to-peer too-if we have tools to create and share them in a bottom-up way. What's missing is tools that can add this awareness and functionality to our existing tools and data, not a seamless, closed environment. We need to be able to track our EMail-s and bring outsiders into the stream. The ideal tool doesn't simply let you synch Calendar-s and share work; it tracks Commitment-s, requests, fulfillment of requests-in a word, work transactions... Putting these kinds of capabilities online does not just let users collaborate. In the long run, it will be another important step towards what the Internet does in so many places-empower the little guy, and in this case, empower lots of little guys working on their own or for little-guy companies to collaborate effectively with other little guys. (Network Economy) Notes ITensil, ZoHo, NearTime, and IBM's Unified Activity Management framework.

Andrew Mc Afee commented on his and Esther's sessions. ... let one user quickly set up a business process - a linked sequence of tasks performed by people with different roles - deploy that process across all the people and groups involved in executing it, then monitor progress toward its completion. (Interesting Framing in his diagrams.)

Mark Crofton, from the Office2 conf, notes that she confirmed that challenge in moving Wiki along the Adoption Life Cycle - Problem with a wiki is that it's not explicit. It is a container, but not a flow manager. (Spreading Wikiweblog) Are templates really the answer? Or maybe just an FAQ page suggesting patterns of use?

Is some of this about a To-Do List based on Open Collaboration Ware?