You have emails...lots and lots of emails! Don't we all? Each email is usually either a notification from someone or an ongoing discussion between two or more people (hopefully you aren't emailing yourself!).
These "discussion" emails generally allow you to scroll through all previous messages in order to get your bearings on the conversation, but what happens if the whole thread is not included? Or when you forward the discussion on to someone else and then you have 2 "copies" of the discussion going on with 2 groups of people? Sound familiar? What you need is not just context, but "context-state".
So, what is context-state, you ask? Let's define it first:
Con - text n.
The part of a text or statement that surrounds a particular word or passage and determines its meaning
Dictionary.comState n.
The condition of a person or thing, as with respect to circumstances or attributes.
Taking these two definitions together, context-state would be something like:
The condition of a text or statement used to determine its meaning
Okay, this time so it actually makes sense:
The ability to look at some text (information) and always have the necessary information to easily determine the context of that text.
This is exactly what email cannot do. Will your email software tell you about the Word document on your desktop related to the conversation? Or the Excel spreadsheet in you're My Documents folder that really needs to be reviewed in order to fully understand the content of the email? Probably not.
Enter a Wiki. Not just any Wiki mind you, but a good Enterprise Wiki. One that allows you to capture your knowledge, tag (categorize) it, attach related files, invite other people to comment on it and determine who should be able to view or edit it with Wiki Permissions.
Obviously, we are a little biased, and fully believe that the BrainKeeper Enterprise Wiki solves this problem better than most, but solving the problem is more important than the Enterprise Wiki tool that you use to solve it.
Back to our example:
That email you are about to send off to 5 people to kick-start a conversation, put it into your Wiki instead as a Wiki Page. Now, email the page (from within your Wiki of course) to those same 5 people, and ask them to add some comments to the page, or (gasp) go real crazy and ask them to just edit it (don't worry, you'll be able to see who made what changes later).
So, now you have this conversation happening within your Wiki, and everyone is on the same "Page" with this conversational knowledge. Now what? Why not add a tag or two to the Page? This not only provides additional context so that other people know the topics covered within the Page, but also allows even deeper context by providing the ability to browse those tags and see other related content .
By tagging your information within an online Wiki (state!), you can extend its context, and therefore make it easier for other people to quickly figure out what is going on (context-state!).
So, you ask again, what is context-state? Is it putting your knowledge where others can access it? Attaching related files to it? Tagging that knowledge? It's all of the above, and then some. It's also being able to see who has made the most changes and who is truly the Expert for specific knowledge.
Wikis are great tools; combine them with Blogs for your Organization and they are even better. Use them to their fullest, and you might think that they were sent from above.
