#6: My first Breeze experience and IM at work
Monday night our wiki team held our initial meeting via Breeze. At this point, we haven’t heard from our client (we thought she was going to email us with a list of topics she wanted us to cover on the wiki) so I felt like we still had a lot of uncertainties re: the project.
I’m not new to web meetings—at work we use AT&T Webmeeting a few times a week to meet with telecommuters.
There were some points, thought, that I just didn’t get what someone was talking about. When you’re meeting in person and you don’t understand something, you can say “Wait a minute—what do you mean?” When you’re meeting via electronic communication, you have to 1. type your problem, 2. wait for that person to read your question, 3. let them think of how to better explain themselves, and 4. type a response. With written communication, something will always be lost—the person’s tone of voice, facial expression, etc. It’s just something you deal with when communicating this way.
While we were on Breeze for a little over an hour, I doubt that we would have needed that much time to go over what we did if we met in person.
It also reminds me of communication issues I’ve experienced at work due to the availability of technology. We use Microsoft Communicator (a more professional version of MSN Messenger) quite often—since most people have it set to sign in automatically when they log in to their computers, it’s a quick way to tell if someone is in the office yet, if they are away from their desk, or if they are available to talk. However, I think some people use it as a crutch.
One of my co-workers had an issue a few months ago when she was working on an informed consent form for a drug study and had questions about how to format the footer (I know, it kind of seems nit-picky, doesn’t it? It was an issue involving version control of several amendments, so it actually was a legit problem). She needed to talk to an associate in the Regulatory division. She called and left a voicemail for this person, even though her Communicator status was “online.” Not even a minute later, this person instant-messages my co-worker and proceeds to type out WHOLE PARAGRAPHS explaining the solution to her problem. Now, this is only my opinion, but I don’t think IM is very supportive of long strings of text—like paragraph-length text. It’s harder to read and comprehend, especially because, depending on the size of the window of the IM system, you might have to scroll down to read the entire message, take time to think about it, and then form your response. I think it’s much easier to read and respond to short messages.
I understand that there may be times when, for some reason, you can’t use the phone, but for complex questions, I think it's more effective to discuss the problem over the phone and then, if necessary, follow up with an email. In my co-worker’s case, the IM conversation did not solve the problem—it took several phone calls (when the other person eventually did pick up the phone) and emails. Meeting in person was an option, but not a good choice, since this other person works in another office complex about 30 min away.
Looking back over my last few entries, I probably seem like a big technology-hater. Not true. I just get irritated when certain applications are used inappropriately.
I’m not new to web meetings—at work we use AT&T Webmeeting a few times a week to meet with telecommuters.
There were some points, thought, that I just didn’t get what someone was talking about. When you’re meeting in person and you don’t understand something, you can say “Wait a minute—what do you mean?” When you’re meeting via electronic communication, you have to 1. type your problem, 2. wait for that person to read your question, 3. let them think of how to better explain themselves, and 4. type a response. With written communication, something will always be lost—the person’s tone of voice, facial expression, etc. It’s just something you deal with when communicating this way.
While we were on Breeze for a little over an hour, I doubt that we would have needed that much time to go over what we did if we met in person.
It also reminds me of communication issues I’ve experienced at work due to the availability of technology. We use Microsoft Communicator (a more professional version of MSN Messenger) quite often—since most people have it set to sign in automatically when they log in to their computers, it’s a quick way to tell if someone is in the office yet, if they are away from their desk, or if they are available to talk. However, I think some people use it as a crutch.
One of my co-workers had an issue a few months ago when she was working on an informed consent form for a drug study and had questions about how to format the footer (I know, it kind of seems nit-picky, doesn’t it? It was an issue involving version control of several amendments, so it actually was a legit problem). She needed to talk to an associate in the Regulatory division. She called and left a voicemail for this person, even though her Communicator status was “online.” Not even a minute later, this person instant-messages my co-worker and proceeds to type out WHOLE PARAGRAPHS explaining the solution to her problem. Now, this is only my opinion, but I don’t think IM is very supportive of long strings of text—like paragraph-length text. It’s harder to read and comprehend, especially because, depending on the size of the window of the IM system, you might have to scroll down to read the entire message, take time to think about it, and then form your response. I think it’s much easier to read and respond to short messages.
I understand that there may be times when, for some reason, you can’t use the phone, but for complex questions, I think it's more effective to discuss the problem over the phone and then, if necessary, follow up with an email. In my co-worker’s case, the IM conversation did not solve the problem—it took several phone calls (when the other person eventually did pick up the phone) and emails. Meeting in person was an option, but not a good choice, since this other person works in another office complex about 30 min away.
Looking back over my last few entries, I probably seem like a big technology-hater. Not true. I just get irritated when certain applications are used inappropriately.
Having said that, I've often wondered about the legalese at the bottom of web pages. The computer classes I've had in the past generally end just short of legal issues.