Mimi talked a lot about focus, and integration of PIM data allowing you to focus – answering the question “what should I be doing right now?” instead of “where should I look for things I should be doing now?”
Mimi notes that task lists are themselves artifacts of a pre-digital era. For information workers, the item itself (the draft of an email, a meeting that needs scheduling, the document you need to work on) should be on the list – just like we leave the video to be returned in the hallway, instead of writing “return video” on a list. That’s what the Chandler “stamping” concept is about.
Chandler has “bi-directional” references, where each item that belongs to a collection contains data indicating the collection(s) it belongs to, and the collection knows what items it contains.
Three categories: Tagging, Capturing, and Monitoring. Just as items have a life cycle, so do collections – you don’t realize the first time you see a topic, you don’t realize that it will be a project (or collection), so maybe you tag it. But later, when more items come in on the same topic, you want to change that tag into a collection without having to go back and find all those items and create a folder and drag them into it.
In response to a question Mimi brings up the idea of collaborative triage of a shared mail list – an intriguing concept.
– Update – Mimi’s slides are online here.
Technorati Tags: CSG-Winter-2006, PIM
Oren Sreebny 