Free yourself from email's grip

• Dmitry Ratnikov
• July 03, 2008

During our interviews we've discovered that one of the most likely impediments to sharing knowledge online is that more experienced people already feel that they get too many requests to share their know-how. It’s not that they don’t want to help others, it's that they don't have the time—and they "don't get points for sharing."

We've been hoping that CommunityCollab might allow experts to share their knowledge and help more colleagues and reduce their communication load at the same time.

We were glad to get some support for that idea from an article in the New York Times.

Luis Suarez, a social computing evangelist for IBM in Spain, writes that he was able cut number of emails he receives by 80% in a single week. How did he do it? By using social networking tools like blogs, wikis, etc:

It’s not that I stopped communicating; I just communicated in different and more productive ways… I have had continuing support from my management in this effort, because I’ve been able to prove how much more I can accomplish by answering a question, and posting it on a blog, for example, than I can by answering the same question over and over. I still help people, but in a more open and collaborative fashion. Other people can join in the discussions — maybe they will have a better idea than mine.

The idea is simple—if you get a question, you answer it on the website. Next time you get a similar question, just point the person to a link that has the answer (instead of re-writing it). We expect that we'll provide every site member with a page that shows all the material they've added. Send people with questions to that page first, and you may be able to cut your workload and "get points" at the same time.

We mentioned this idea in an earlier blog post (in the second video, and the photo and text right above it).

Read the full NYT article. And feel free to write a comment if you have any tips or tricks for reducing the number of emails and calls you get.