Instant Messaging within an organization has always been a thorn in my side, because there is definite value in being able to quickly ask/answer questions with other employees for things that do not necessarily justify an email. However, IM has lots of problems: it's a rare employee who isn't *also* IMing their non-work friends (and no way to allow one and block the other); interactions are one-on-one; and there's no corporate archiving of the information (GTalk archives don't work well here).

A Laconi.ca instance within a company would solve all of these problems – encourage community/teamwork, logging answers to questions and making them searchable, and allowing any employee to pose a question to the entire organization. As long as the nature of the platform is clear – that is, there's no obligation to keep it open all day, respond to every message, or even the READ every message – I see it as a positive in many corporate environments.

(Thanks for linking to the “Oh, Identi.ca” blog!)

Instant Messaging within an organization has always been a thorn in my side, because there is definite value in being able to quickly ask/answer questions with other employees for things that do not necessarily justify an email. However, IM has lots of problems: it's a rare employee who isn't *also* IMing their non-work friends (and no way to allow one and block the other); interactions are one-on-one; and there's no corporate archiving of the information (GTalk archives don't work well here).

A Laconi.ca instance within a company would solve all of these problems – encourage community/teamwork, logging answers to questions and making them searchable, and allowing any employee to pose a question to the entire organization. As long as the nature of the platform is clear – that is, there's no obligation to keep it open all day, respond to every message, or even the READ every message – I see it as a positive in many corporate environments.

(Thanks for linking to the “Oh, Identi.ca” blog!)