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Communication mechanisms

Tue, 08/31/2010 - 14:04 — Ken Coar

Communication is Key

Postulate:
If an endeavour involves multiple people, they need to communicate for anything to happen -- otherwise anything that does happen will do so in silence and be unremarked.

With that postulated, let's move on to listing various communication mechanisms. There are lots of them, and more are appearing all the time. Each has its own set of advantages and drawbacks, and none are perfect for all situations.

But first let's define a couple of words according to how they're going to be used:

Hir and Shi
Gender-neutral pronouns for 'his/hers' and 'he/she'.
Synchronous
A synchronous communication mechanism is one which allows all parties to participate at the same time -- including things like interrupting each other.
Asynchronous
When an asynchronous mechanism is in use, each participant makes hir contribution independent of all others' submissions.
Paralingual Cues
Paralanguage refers to the 'sideband' information that can accompany normal speech. For example: facial expressions, voice tone, volume, body position -- these are all paralingual elements. Most people learn to use and evaluate these cues during childhood.
O×4
Taken from the three-axis orientation judged during triage: does the patient know: who shi is, where shi is, and when shi is? In this discussion, it means something is conducive to communication regardless of geographic location (OGEO), time (OTIME), language (OLANG), or culture (OCULT).

Now, on to enumerating some of the devices and techniques available.

Means and their Characteristics

Email and mailing lists
Telephone calls
Video calls
IRC
Pen & paper
Wikis
Textual whiteboard
Graphical whiteboarding
F2F in-person meetings

One of the generally-accepted aspects of open development ecosystems is that participants are not necessarily co-located.

Challenges

  1. Where (geography)
  2. When (time zones)
  3. Language
  4. Culture
Mechanism Synchronous Asynchronous Generally Available Paralanguage OGEO OTIME OLANG OCULT
Email • • • • •[1] •[1]
F2F meeting • • • • •
Telephone • • • •
Videophone • • • •
IRC • • • •
Pen & paper • • •[1] •[1]
Wiki • • • • • •
Whiteboard (text) • • • • • •[1],[2] •
Whiteboard (graphic) • • • • • • •

[1] During a current discussion, confusions or uncertainties caused by mismatched expectations or understanding can typically be clarified before the discussion is finished.

[2] Although someone perusing the record of a long-dormant (or completed) discussion can sometimes obtain explication of idiomata and such, the intentions of the original participants may no longer be accessible -- so they may continue to lead to confusion.