I was lucky to study Computer Science in grad school at a time when digital collaboration had become something research paid attention to. Not that people went out of their way to make it interesting or exciting. They called it CSCW, computer-supported collaborative work. (Still call it that.) The field was young enough that most of what mattered hinged on the fundamentals of effective collaboration: synchronous or asynchronous time, shared artifacts, clear communication. This was a time, between 1999-2001, when social media was taking hold throughout Internet culture. It was easy for me to combine the ideas, to treat social media as digital collaboration. The perspective has served me well even though much has changed about the nature of work, culture, collaboration and social media in the 21st Century.
Last week I got to tell an editor my “email is a message in a bottle” story. Back in grad school at Georgia Tech email was the dominant form of electronic communication but it was beginning to display the scale and performance problems that would lead users to switch their messaging habits to text, Facebook and Twitter. In my mind, it seemed naive to write an email and assume that it was going to arrive at the target address. Who knows what goes on in digital space between electronic mailboxes? Lots could go wrong.
The best thing for me is to think of email as a message in a bottle. I’ll try to write the shortest, most useful message I can and I hope you will be glad I sent it. But if anything comes back to me it will be miraculous, something I should prize.
My email practice is somewhat different from Mark Cuban’s. Cuban had some of his emails go public in the Sony computer security breach, gossipy stuff that doesn’t make Cuban look good, but ultimately is of no consequence. Cuban explains in this article that he doesn’t email his players or coaches because the likelihood that it would go public outweighs any benefit the electronic message might offer.
There was also this news item about a former Duke football player who has a startup that wants to better organize the existence of student athletes. He has set up the collaborative interface for coaches, education administrators, professors and sport/student colleagues to successfully make it through their oversubscribed days. The product idea sounds like a good thing.
The day is coming soon for when skillful electronic communication is an advantage that gets teams victories against teams that fail to prepare as successfully.
The Best Things I Read Last Week:
- Season’s Greetings From the Premier League! Now Go Play Four Games in Two Weeks Grantland … It doesn’t seem like holiday fixture congestion will go away in the Premier League and it’s interesting to see everyone come to accept and deal with it.
- How to Read and Interpret the Wear Pattern on Your Running Shoes Runners Connect … Not quite a breadcrumb trail but all the work runners do makes its mark on the soles of their shoes.
- Stephen Curry’s Science of Sweet Shooting Wall Street Journal … Lots of great details about how Curry shoots: how he developed, how it flies through the air, how he practices and on and on.
- Return to Sport: When to Resume Full Activity After an ACL Surgery Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy … As sports medicine practice changes to do more with checklists and decision trees these sorts of comprehensive practice guidelines are critical.
- Out on a limb: In defense of prevention Lower Extremity Review … A nice, useful research explainer linking advances in ACL research to clinical practice and athlete performance.