P2P Person to person collaboration tools

Software to help people work together effectively have existed since the development of the network ages ago.  Starting with email, the tools have grown to include groupware, document management systems, and process management systems.  Forums and mailing lists provide for open shared discussion among work groups.  All these tools are intended to coordinate the work of many people, keeping everything running smoothly and facilitating the ever growing communication needs.

With the advent of the internet, new tools have been developed.  Many of them encourage open collaboration with only minimal management.  Instead of trying to control people's behaviour, the tools focus on making collaboration simple.  Then they rely on people to use their own intelligence to ensure things progress smoothly.  Wikis encourage people to get involved by providing freely editable web pages that anyone can improve.  eBay provides a website where retailers can post their wares and consumers can buy them.  FaceBook provides a platform for people to make connections with other people, and to share communications and applications together. 

These new open systems multiply the effective capabilities of a few content managers to produce and manage huge amounts of knowledge, while simultaneously expanding each user's access to shared knowledge and helping each other accomplish their common (or complementary) goals.

Copyright © 2008 Alan Baljeu
Last modified: 04/03/08