social computing

This morning I read about JP Rangaswami’s open email system in a post by Stowe Boyd. JP has

opened access to his email to his staff. By treating his email as an open forum, he has found that his associates are more involved in his interactions with others. He has found that they can use this — particularly his sent mail — is a great learning opportunity.

Stowe points out “how revolutionary open email could be in a historically closed and secretive corporate context.”

Jimmy Guterman, writing on O’Reilly Radar takes the point a step further — or rather, his fellow Radarite Brady Forrest does; Jimmy quotes him as noting that

Although this is analogous to making email like forums and wikis, the key difference is that you are using email as the entry point. It’s not a separate wiki/forum site.

Good point. “And,” Jimmy adds, “since it’s a tool that everyone uses already, it’s more likely that the non-alphageeks you work with might be more likely to use it.” That’s an even better point.