DivaBlog

So yesterday I was bashing "tribe" communities. Today I'm in the mood to praise iChat. Honestly my whole workday has changed since more Sun employees started chatting. The dawn of this shift traces roughly to two years ago when many of us at Sun traded in our x86 laptops for Macintosh PowerBooks.

Ah the PowerBook! Has there *ever* been a more elegant laptop? I had one of the first Sun-purchased ones but over the course of about 6 months it was plain to see most Sun software executives shyly or proudly toting a new Mac. Once NeoOffice/J came out it was even easier to choose a Mac for your daily work at Sun.

Understand that its not necessarily easy to iChat from within Sun. You have to keep track of proxies and what kind of connection you're using (directly on SWAN or from a VPN connection you have to route iChat prefs to SWAN proxies). But as of about a year ago many Sun employees work much of their week outside a Sun office. All of a sudden, the iChat subculture has become very significant.

Its common for several of us to be on iChat all day long. Meanwhile we're attending meetings (in person or by phone). Say that you and I are each in different meetings, but we are both working on the same initiative. Your name comes up in my meeting..."What does X say about this?". I chat to you and ask for a comment. It takes only a moment to get a response...and you can likewise check with me. Efficiency!

Another big advantage of iChat is something I've noticed occuring at O'Reilly conferences. With critical mass of people iChatting, there is real-time consensus building about a given presenter and his/her topic that drives learning and experience of the session much deeper (at least for me). Even on a small scale, say 3 people chatting during a presentation in an All-Hands meeting, you get a broader critical consideration of the topic (and often better Q&A as a result).

Of course there are downsides to iChat. I know it urks some people to hear typing during a talk (although as a person who speaks for a living I have to say it doesn't bother me). I know there are people who resent having to split their attention/focus between speaker and iChat window(s). But as I grew up with videogames, this feels like making the slow process of meetings a little faster-paced.

So, chat me up in that next long meeting. I'd love to hear from you!