Instant Messaging Facilitates Quick Communication, Collaboration
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Durham, NC -- When Tamberly Ferguson logs on to her computer, she can start an instant chat with more than 100 professionals in places as far away as Mexico and Italy.
A Web producer in Duke’s Office of News and Communications, Ferguson uses Duke’s instant-messaging (IM) service to chat in real time with campus colleagues, as well as vendors and other Web professionals across the U.S.
“If I’m at my computer working on a project, I’ll leave my IM screen up,” Ferguson said. “That’s the best way to reach me, if you want to get to me quickly.”
The service, based on the Jabber/XMPP protocol, facilitates group chat “meetings,” storing a searchable transcript of conversations. It also provides color-coded indicators to show whether someone is present, idle or away.
While IM started primarily as a tool for social interaction, “chat is moving toward not just what you do with your closest, best friends but a way to work with all your collaborators,” said Mark McCahill, systems architect in the Office of Information Technology. “If you know someone is awake and potentially available for conversation, you can probably do a chat instead of sending an e-mail.”
For Ferguson, IM proved essential on collaborative projects with external vendors such as the company that helped with the redesign of the Duke Today Web site. On that project, she regularly “met” in a chat session with developers in Rhode Island and California. They sent working files to her via IM, which she uploaded to a Duke server.
 |
“If you send an e-mail, how long will it take to get there?” Ferguson asked. “It’s so much easier to send an IM, and you get it instantly.”
She also has found it useful in requesting quick feedback from colleagues using different platforms: “I can say, ‘Hey, I just launched this site or did this cool animation – can you tell me what you think? How’s it working for you on that side of the world?’ ”
Jabber can be integrated with other IM services such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo, MSN and Google without running multiple chat clients.
Starting this fall, OIT is creating ready-made Jabber chat rooms for all Duke courses as an option for instructors. Transcripts of the course chat sessions will be stored in that course’s WebFiles space.
