Tired of lengthy and wordy status reports? PowerPoints that are difficult to follow, or too much information, or take too long to prepare? Too many sources of information need to be brought together?
I have contemplated these questions and other similar factors for several years. One my solutions has been the development of simplistic templates, focusing only on core summary information.
Another area that has had my curiosity for over 3 years is mind mapping. Mind Mapping tools are growing, especially in the initial needs and requirements gathering areas. I believe that there is great potential for alternative presentation approaches using the underlying concepts of these tools --- it may be time for PowerPoint to die. Mindjet is a leader in the commercial product world but is pricy. FreeMind is a commonly recognized leader in the open source, free world but is not necessarily the easiest to use.
Traditional methods of sharing a document or presentation can be very painful as well. Many corporations are still bound to hardcopy. Or even email attachments which then fill up email queues and require the recipient to spend time and energy to save the file and address reading, printing, and reviewing. I have utilized collaboration solutions in The-Web-Cloud arena, such as Google Docs, BaseCamp, and Central Desktop, and have been exposed to SlideShare (.net). There are many others surfacing as well.
If we dig deep enough, have the latitude in the corporate environment to pursue non-traditional options, and push ourselves outside our of comfort box, we can be leaders into new and better communications.
What are you using and doing to improve your communications?
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