Week 1 Readings

One of the themes that caught my interest in the readings for this week was group dynamics and behaviour using social software. I am currently working in an organization where we use Lotus Notes and Sametime which is, just as its name suggests, a sametime communication feature that allows "chat" (like ms messenger). We also use depositories for information that we want to share with each other in the research group. Being new to the organization, I've had to work out what the conventions are for using the various social software. Sametime leaves it up to members of the organization to choose who is in the list of contacts always displayed when you open the tool. As the article "Are you ready for social software?" and "Social software and the politics of groups" point out, social software like Sametime allows new groups to form that are not based on those imposed by an organization. People naturally reach out and share infomation with people who help you do your job. It is so important to learn the proper conventions for social software and people have figured out some interesting ways of communicating effectively. For instance, researchers looking for another researcher to take on a project communicate by mass e-mail, but the information you need to be able to delete or open the message is in the subject line. Sametime is also effective for caucusing during teleconferences. I'm sure that I'm not using the social software at my organization to its full potential and am fascinated by how communication itself is evolving and shaping how we socialize.