My Day

As I spent the day interacting with folks who are frustrated with emails (who is sending them and who gets them), I find this blog entry by Surinder Kahai ("Leading Virtually: Leadership in the Digital Age," May 12, 2008) particularly potent.  He is following up on an earlier posting about the value of using IM or email for collaboration purposes.  In this posting, the author is also wondering about the role of casual social interactions that happen in face-to-face settings separately from the business of a meeting... how this can't/won't happen in the above forms of virtual collaborations.  However, in virtual worlds it might work - with physical manifestations of users inherent to a social networking setting - these "casual, unplanned conversations provide opportunities for organizational members to expand their network of contacts and their knowledge about other members. They enable gossip, which opens up channels that can be used for substantive work in the future. They are also important for socializing organizational members into an organization’s culture. In short, these casual, unplanned conversations are useful for facilitating work and social relationships in an organization. The researchers argue that such conversations are not possible in electronic media, such as electronic mail and discussion boards, because they (the electronic media) require planning or intent to communicate with someone, even if that someone is unknown or unplanned."  But in virtual worlds these conversations might be more readily enabled.