Stu Downes

Thunder is one product in the collaborative solutions portfolio that we are packaging internally. The tool is an electronic whiteboard solution which allows users within and beyond a room to interact with an easel.

We are using this tool internally to fully experience its benefits. I have used the solution remotely but haven’t yet managed to use the physical room (being seperated by the Atlantic at the moment). Once we get our room in country I’ll be going to use the physical room.

Teams have really benefited from the electronic transformation of the whiteboard and the key areas where benefit have been found are:

* Brainstorming in the room
* Ability to place screenshots and diagrams into the flipchart for comment
* Remote user access, some weaknesses if your only input tool is a mouse but much more poweful with a digital pen or tablet PC.
* Ability to save content to PDF

For a full remote user brainstorming session then an electronic meeting room will still win (Interwise, Sametime, Live Meeting, Webex etc.) but when you have an in room requirement, a room which will be utilised to justify the cost, or scenarios which require in room / remote / linked room brainstorming then Thunder is a very powerful tool for business.

Polyvision have some good (if large 43MB) video material showing the room in action as well as other collaterall on their website.

Posted on my internal and personal blog space.

The Oxford Internet Institute publish a number of interesting reports.  One is an survey of UK internet usage survey of UK internet usage which I hadn’t heard of till yesterday.  Its got some really interesting statistics:

66% in UK access internet from home

Users beleive they have a role regulating the internet.  Non-users think it should be a government role

Internet is the first point of call to learn something new not a library

We are spending less and less time watching TV and more and more time on the internet

Less than 20% maintain a social networking profile

Interesting charts show 39% of lowest banded earners use internet compared to 91% of highest earning band

Of the 2007 internet users:

93% have an email address up from 92% in 2005

60% use instant messaging up from 53% in 2005

29% use chat rooms up from 26% in 2005

20% use internet telephony up from 13% in 2005

12% write a blog down from 17% in 2005

The latter flies in the face of stats from search engines such as technorati.  Unless engines like technorati are still counting redundant blogs (likely) and this survey reflects usage.  The survey result is in line with what I see in my organisation which is more of a bias to social networks (facebook etc … which I’m now on for those building a network as stu AT sdownes.co.uk).

I posed this question to a few IT folk recently.  It is interesting the response you get.  Some interesting responses:

• “its Notes and Sametime” and “its Outlook” (depending on who you ask)
• “its the way we do unstructured work and the tools we use to perform that work”
• “is that all this facebook stuff”

It was just blindingly apparent that most IT folks, who don’t work in collaboration, really don’t appreciate collaboration in its deepest senses.  Hey ho, looks like we’ve ALL got to educate the rest of the IT industry   I’ll be qualifying for Graham’s Wallace and Gromit group soon (Grumpy Old Men of IT)…Mrs D would argue I’m there already!

So how would you answer the question? …. comments please

Well today I started to blog internally at work.  I do find this blog restrictive in terms of news I’d like to shout about but is covered under NDA.  So I have my sounding board internally now.  I don’t know whether this will impact the number of posts I write here.  I doubt it will considering this writing is snatched during free time at home.  My philosophy is likely to remain anything worth blogging publicly goes here and anything more sensitive in nature stays within the city walls.

My new corporate BlackBerry 8800 arrived yesterday and is fully functional against our corporate email system (Domino) and shortly our corporate instant messaging system (Sametime).

This is my first mobile device which isn’t simply a telephone.  First impressions are that its a well built simple to use device.  I’ll find out as time goes on whether this is a productivity increasing or decreasing tool.  So far simply checking calendars and appointments while on the move has been excellent.  I’m looking forward to testing its ability to playback podcasts etc.

More feedback as I experience it!  No doubt Steve and I will have some interesting conversations about the advantages the Treo has over the BlackBerry  

Spotted today that the official Flickr uploader is now available for Vista.