The Delphi Technique is a proven way to harness collaborative group intelligence (popularly known as the wisdom of crowds) in a wide range of applications. Delphi has been around since the 1950’s with a large body of support material, case studies and tools on the web and should be part of any virtual team, community or network leader's toolset.

We really value your call, so much so that we are answering it by computer!

If bioteaming is about making organisations and teams more alive then the current generation of Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRs) must be the complete antithesis of bioteaming.

Schtuff and Writeboard provide good wiki functionality for free

The wiki market is maturing nicely with the arrival of some excellent hosted wiki services which are totally free within average levels of usage. Two of these free wikis which caught my attention are Schtuff from JanRain Inc and Writeboard from 37 signals.

Perhaps I am being harsh or even uninformed but the whole area of Web Accessibility seems to have been largely ignored in the blogosphere. Just try doing a google search on web accessibility and blogs and you will see what I mean.

A tool which leverages the collective intelligence of web users to fight SPAM

I am evaluating an innovative anti-spam product Cloudmark which aims to adopt an automated collaborative approach between its users to identify SPAM flitered through a weighted assessment of each users reputation in correctly spotting and reporting SPAM..Cloudmark works like this:

I ran across an excellent article, Evaluating Social Network Services, by Christopher Allen in his very interesting blog, Life With Alacrity, which reviews four of the leading social network software/services:

How often do you go to a team meeting where you ‘time out’ and send everybody away frustrated simply because you could not get some of the participants to shut up? Or have you ever have meetings on ‘divergent topics’ where you feel you have opened Pandora’s Box so wide that there is little chance of getting back any consensus or convergence in the group? If either of these is your experience then you could really benefit from an innovative software/hardware/method combo called Zing.

The term ‘email addiction’ has been growing very rapidly on the web for the last few years. When I did a google search on it I was amazed to find over 9 million entries which define, debate, discuss, sympathise and offer potential cures.

Copying biology's instant broadcasting systems

One of the things we learn when we study biological teams is that the communications used are designed to instantly reach the intended recipients wherever they are. For example, many forms of social insect communications are chemically based with the intensity and longevity of the scent (and the wind direction) determining who gets the message. In other words biological communications tend to be 'instant broadcasts'.

Can a mobile phone really double as a complete virtual office?

In a previous article, The virtual road warrior software checklist, I described how, with a little bit of preparation and a well-chosen web-based application (such as backpackit.com), you can stay connected and if you wish operate almost business as usual whilst on the road.