RSS and email
A good post here from Many-to-Many on ID and push versus pull communication models. Because I am looking at a deal that crosses in to this space (P2P information updating; this time push versus pull) the post touches upon a number of the areas that I think about.
I think that both Ross and I exist outside the big company way of doing things ("behind the firewall) and therefore think about email in a different way from an IBM'er. Michael Sippey comment makes the point better than I can. He concludes; "We�?re doomed to a life of infoglut, push or pull!"
Maybe the question we need to be asking is not trusted versus untrusted, push versus pull; but restoring quality of information. Is it really better if a meeting note is posted to a corporate blog-site or mailed to the everyone who might want to know about this. The same information has different meanings to different people. Since I started pondering corporate information networks I cannot count the number of times that I have been told that the seemingly useless dissemination of information (cc; all) has resulted in a bad decision not being made byforcingg someone to turn up to a meeting with additional information.
Whether the information is pushed or pulled matters not. We have to read an enormous amount and discard 99% of it so as not to miss something.
With one of our companies (a $5mn+ 2nd year start-up) they are blogging the softer elements of sales/marketing meetings. I receive the RSS feed more as an experiment in communication than trying to play a role in product marketing. The writers are all "trusted" emailers and the VP sales, a founder and board member, will regularly email me as well. He'll get in to my inbox whether he pushes or I pull. However, I rarely get informational email from the company, instead I get actionable email. I pay more attention to the actionable email when that has to be dealt with because they want me to pay attention. And when I set aside time to be informed I get more out of that. Better quality information.
You could argue that if I managed my time better I would achieve the same purpose.
22 June 2004
RSS and email
A good post here from Many-to-Many on ID and push versus pull communication models. Because I am looking at a deal that crosses in to this space (P2P information updating; this time push versus pull) the post touches upon a number of the areas that I think about.
I think that both Ross and I exist outside the big company way of doing things ("behind the firewall) and therefore think about email in a different way from an IBM'er. Michael Sippey comment makes the point better than I can. He concludes; "We�?re doomed to a life of infoglut, push or pull!"
Maybe the question we need to be asking is not trusted versus untrusted, push versus pull; but restoring quality of information. Is it really better if a meeting note is posted to a corporate blog-site or mailed to the everyone who might want to know about this. The same information has different meanings to different people. Since I started pondering corporate information networks I cannot count the number of times that I have been told that the seemingly useless dissemination of information (cc; all) has resulted in a bad decision not being made byforcingg someone to turn up to a meeting with additional information.
Whether the information is pushed or pulled matters not. We have to read an enormous amount and discard 99% of it so as not to miss something.
With one of our companies (a $5mn+ 2nd year start-up) they are blogging the softer elements of sales/marketing meetings. I receive the RSS feed more as an experiment in communication than trying to play a role in product marketing. The writers are all "trusted" emailers and the VP sales, a founder and board member, will regularly email me as well. He'll get in to my inbox whether he pushes or I pull. However, I rarely get informational email from the company, instead I get actionable email. I pay more attention to the actionable email when that has to be dealt with because they want me to pay attention. And when I set aside time to be informed I get more out of that. Better quality information.
You could argue that if I managed my time better I would achieve the same purpose.
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