Speaking at ... Open Collaboration Forum, Nov 15

The Open Collaboration Forum is a meeting place for senior messaging and collaboration executives across the world, with a focus on improving business performance through open-source enterprise collaboration technologies. It has been chartered by Akiva Corp.

I will be presenting a Web seminar for the Forum on November 15, 2005 at 9am PST. My topic is Why Closed Doesn't Work for Collaborative Workspaces: Three Reasons Why Openness Is Required.

Email carries too much baggage for effective use as a team coordination and collaboration system. A better option is for team members to use a collaborative workspace, that is a pre-assembled collection of tools specifically designed for sharing of information about a project between team members. As great as the idea sounds, and for all the power of today's tools, adoption of collaborative workspaces in day-to-day work has been miniscule.

It is my contention that "closedness" is preventing adoption, and that greater openness through interoperability is essential if the industry is to bring the benefits of collaborative workspaces to the masses. The plethora of very good, good, and not so good collaborative workspace products on the market are standalone, force people to learn multiple ways of interacting with others, and actually makes it more difficult to collaborate compared to email. This Web seminar outlines three reasons why today's approach doesn't work, and advocates three agreements that the industry needs to drive toward.

If you are able to attend, please complete the registration form.