Wikis and email lists over conference calls

In which I discuss my dislike of conference calls and preference for email lists and wikis for collaboration on open source projects.

The JA-SIG webpresence working group recently switched from a mode of trying to drive progress via monthly conference calls to a mode of centering conversation and drive towards progress on an email list for discussion and a wiki for collaboration and cementing of decisions.

I'm very pleased with this change of collaboration modalities and I think it will result in a more effective and progress-achieving working group.

It's a matter of conference calls being ineffective versus other forms of collaboration. In this blog post I try to discuss why this is.

But first, a disclaimer: I'm here talking about conference calls specifically in the context of trying to collaborate with a geographically chronologically distributed group of stakeholders on an open source project. I'm not complaining here about conference calls with potential or actual customers, or even Unicon-internal meetings. This post isn't about those sorts of communications. Rather, this post is specifically about communication for collaboration on a distributed-participation open source project. That distinction drawn, without further ado, here's the post:

Because conference calls happen at a particular slot in time, busy would-be open source project collaborators often cannot make the call. Alice and Bob are blocked by other commitments. Heroics are required to announce and schedule the call, to agenda the call, to take minutes from the call. We can get more formal and timely about documenting calls, but that means extra work because the means of communication chosen doesn't naturally have the right properties.

Contrast what happens if JA-SIG, Apache-style, embraces email lists as the mechanism for group discussion and decision making. Because the discussion is asynchronous, busy people can choose to make time to participate at any time slot they have. Alice and Bob are not blocked by the accident of scheduling of other commitments. Heroics are not required to announce, schedule, agenda, record, the conversation, since the act of conversing naturally does all these things. The communication has more of the right properties.

Email lists tend to bias participation towards people who choose to make time to be involved. People with no time at all still can't participate. But volunteers with any time at all can participate. There's more participation of people who have busy days but still care. That seems like a better characteristic to select on for success.

JA-SIG can have conference calls and then do heroics to try to make them more open. Or JA-SIG can do even better and, to the extent feasible, conduct efforts in better communication modalities.

Sure, I don't like conference calls. But it's not just a matter of personal preference. I dislike them because they don't work very well and there are alternatives that work better.

Less with the conference calls and conference call scheduling. More with the making decisions and executing on them. And soon communication will be more effective, include more participants, and get more done. I'm very pleased to see things going in this direction.

(Note that some of these thoughts about effective communication are being distilled into a statement of approach on this JA-SIG wiki page.)