Comments on: How far one can push online collaboration in research?

By: victor

victor — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 07:32:48 +0000

hi, mr. Pawel

I am a nonlinear physisist from Vladivostok
My specialization is the analysis of nonlinear equations – chaos etc.
i am interested in collaboration. Please contact me by e-mail (in this post) or icq 177098115

By: Pawel Szczesny

Pawel Szczesny — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:58:22 +0000

Raik, I didn’t mention that because I think that science communication should be free of nonverbal messages. In other words, we should be discussing facts and theories as clearly as possible, without the need of relying on other means of communication (for many reasons it’s not always the case). From my own experience, one-to-one videoconferencing is quite close to the in-person scientific discussion (and yes, telephone is a poor way of communicating things).

BTW, Scott Hanselman just posted about his one-year long experience in teleworking – http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WorkingRemotelyFromHomeTelepresenceAndVideoConferencingOneYearLater.aspx It’s an interesing read.

By: Raik

Raik — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:15:29 +0000

Pawel, you didn’t even mention the biggest issue with online collaborations: the nonverbal communication is lost. We are animals after all and we need all those body-language clues to really efficiently communicate. This is even more important if we don’t know the other person all that well. Besides, in my experience, telephone conferences, for example, tend to be less rather than more focused than a face-to-face meeting. All the rigid agendas are just our desperate attempt to prevent total failure…
Another issue is that, if we are talking to a person face-to-face, most of us are polite enough to fully focus on this conversation. Compare that to an instant message, quickly typed while you were also browsing your e-mails and doing at least two other things