Invited to speak at the EC's 1st Conference on Collaborative Working Environments, a NewWOW member reached out to the community for suggestions on identifying key research themes in the area of collaborative working environments. A rich discussion ensued and a number of helpful suggestions were offered. Here’s a glimpse:
- Corporate firewalls impede seamless virtual collaboration (web/video conferencing)
- It’s difficult to introduce the possibility of "surprise" into routine distributed collaboration when it's best to minimize surprises (i.e. common expectations, processes, etc.).
- What factors should be considered when evaluating distributed team performance? (e.g. parent group's culture and values, purpose of the team (breakthrough, project collaboration, management/operational collaboration), operational overlap (time zone differences), overlap of informal organization traits (values, language, outlook, engagement, loyalty, etc.), commonality of formal organizational practices (processes, organizational structure, practices), technologies (common technology platforms, systems)
- Establishing trust is highly important. If an initial face-to-face meeting is not possible, sharing resumes (with pictures) is a cheaper but less effective alternative.
- Need bundled collaboration tools that run off the same engine, utilize the same support infrastructure and password management control, have thin client profiles, and are extremely security-rich
- Need to be clear about netiquette and expectations, identify the goals and objectives, implement relevant processes and roles for facilitating, moderating, advancing, and monitoring of each collaborative work/learning team, and clarify the assessment process.
For more on this topic, see http://www.newwow.net/members/node/46
