Hi Cameron,

This is an interesting question and one we contemplate quite frequently at EMC.

With the workforce becoming more and more mobile, we face the challenge of not being able to deliver mobile functionality to our sales force, and we miss out on the knowledge they could bring to the table because of this. As such, we were very pleased to see the Advanced Email Plugin from Jive (although we have not implemented yet) because of the mobile access gaps it bridges by enabling creation and reply to features via email.

That said, there are some mixed feelings about the type and quality of participation that might result in a user's ability to perform functions via email in a seemingly siloed fashion. For example, if a user is creating a wiki or replying to a singular (and implicitly fragmented) discussion thread via email, aren't they possibly missing out on the larger benefit of belonging to a community of users if they choose this as their regular participation mechanism?

Couldn't one argue that the user would possibly get greater benefit by being on the site, searching on something first, and then creating their wiki or discussion thread after they find that what they are looking for does not exist? It seems to me that it possibly waivers on the line between a collaboration community and a community whose focus is pushing content to the masses with less collaboration.

Our motto for EMC|ONE (our internal instance of Clearspace) is Think. Search. Write.

We encourage our users to first think about what it is that interests them, then search on it to see if there's already information out there, and finally write - whether it be contributing to existing discussions and wikis or creating brand new ones. This motto might be lost on our users if we find a large portion of the population stops going to the community itself and instead opts to participate via email only. Now, I don't know what the chances of that are...but it's certainly a possibility with such a mobile and global workforce.

So, what would we like to see available wihtin a mobile UI?

1. Personally, I love exactly what you guys are offering via the email plug-in - creation and replying/commenting of wikis, blogs and discussions, so I'd love to see that play out more fully in a mobile UI instead of it being limited to email functionality.
2. Getting back to our motto, I'd love to see search of some function be available on a mobile UI. Perhaps it could not be as robust as it is on the web browser, but there should be some search functionality.

Just my thoughts for now...will share more as they occur.

Best,

Jamie

Hi Cameron -

While I think the examples you propose above are the norm, I do see some instances of our sales reps blogging frmo their BlackBerry devices.  this capability allows them to provide updates from the conventions / meeting they're at, especially when the entire team isn't able to be in the same place.

That said, I do believe that our reps will more often use their BlackBerry devices in the ways you mention below - i.e. when in a meeting and they don't have an answer to a question, they could ask the community; while on the road, they can keep in touch with the community by replying to the email notifications they receive, etc.

I also think the UI is important as folks may not always have email notifications turned on.  I think the most important thing here will be the ability to quickly / easily upload documents, photos and videos..  Search is also a big one.

More to come as I think of it!

Jenny

I'd say they would probably be more apt to upload photos / video, but possibly some documents - for instance if they got an email with a document attached and wanted to upload that.  But now that I think a bit more about it, viewing various types of documents would probably be used more than uploading documents.

I responded to this by email but it didn't stick.  For us, it would be hands down Blackberry.  The iPhone is only a couple of months old in Canada, and Canada has the highest penetration of Blackberry users in the world -- Blackberry is ubiquitous among our user members.

Some research should be done on iPhone penetration among business users before going down that path, me thinks.

Most groups in our organization use Blackberries, but one group of 100-200 people use Treos.  But I keep reading about predictions that employees will increasingly demand Apple product support from their employers, so that's why I keep iPhone on the table.

Of course, T-Mobile would like to include Android in this list per Cole Brodeman

www.t-mobileg1.com/announcement

Personally, I think the following user story has many of the points that I would think ideal to include in corporate social networking such as 'one time sign on' and 'everywhere integration':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7qbPa1O8Ys

And... this might be interesting for this audience:

http://code.google.com/android/

If you are looking at reaching broader audiences in emerging markets I wonder if SMS messaging rather than email is a more ubiquitous service in cell phones.  Emerging markets tend to face connectivity challenges and a shortage of PC clients so this would help address both of those issues.

Yes, SMS is ubiquitous but a very limited technology. 

There is a charecter limit in SMS (in a GSM network its 160) and there is no support for hyperlinks etc.   All converged devices support email by definition and some are now even supporting rich text, I think the focus on email is most appropriate.

I can see SMS as a form of chat where immediate responses are expected or to alert a user to updates who could then connect via PC to view content.   I wouldn't mind being able to turn on SMS notifications on a per-post basis if the content was extremely time sesitive but I can't imagine that it would actually contain the content itself, more like: "XXXX in the XXXX space has been updated"

I can think of several times when I've been on a business trip and had an idea I wanted to post, but wasn't able to whip out my laptop and connect with my Aircard to log into Clearspace.

Would've been great to have an email address that I could've sent a blurp to from my Blackberry, and have that be converted into a blog post (functionality that we're playing with some internally at Jive in plugin form).

I would like to know the same thing!