Technology+Initiative

Email, it seems, has become both god and mammon in our society. Many of us juggle multiple email accounts for both business and personal use, all of them bursting at the seams with new mail, waiting for our attention. In the corporate world email has often replaced all other forms of office communication, or at the very least surpassed them as the "goto" option, with office workers only reluctantly moving to another, lesser choice, usually after multiple email attempts fail to catch the recipients attention.
 * Description**

When did it happen? When did we become slaves to our inboxes? The change was so gradual that we never even noticed that email had shifted from a convenience to a burden, with no signs of slowing. In my corporate environment, a television programming arm of a large telecommunications company, email is indeed the "goto" form of office communication. I find myself receiving multiple emails of the same documents several times a week with minor revisions. Sometimes the revisions occur in the same day, with a new email sent each time. And with each new email is another document to be saved to my computer, replacing (hopefully) the earlier version, while the original copy sits on the senders computer, patiently waiting for the next revision. These multiple emails are productivity killers, and contribute to the overall problem of email pollution. This technology initiative attempts to address some specific concerns that can help reduce email pollution, save time, and increase productivity. The initiative describes ways in which multiple emails of documents can be eliminated by moving those documents to cloud-computing applications, like Google Docs, and to shared network drives. full initiative can be found here: @http://edt6040russ812.pbworks.com/

The selection process for this technology initiative began with my own frustrations dealing with my corporate email inbox. Over and over again I receive documents with minor revisions, or an email note asking me to make a change to an existing document. Having been exposed to Google Docs for the first time in EDT6000, I wondered if a possible solution could be found there. To find out if others shared these concerns about bloated, redundant emails, I created a non-scientific survey and distributed it to a broad demographic of office workers from several different corporate cultures. Of 66 respondents, over 25% stated that they spent more than 3 hours dealing with their work email each day, and more than half admitted that they have missed an important work email communication because it was "lost in the clutter." Full survey results can be found here: @http://edt6040russ812.pbworks.com/Findings-and-Results
 * Selection Process**

Using the survey data and discussions with my technology committee, I was able to select the necessary aspects that the technology initiative needed to focus on the most. Eliminating email pollution completely is impossible, but it is possible to reduce it to some extent, perhaps significantly in some companies, but implementing some of these ideas. I attempted to select areas that are relatively easy to integrate into the average work environment, and have manageable costs. (In my organization the costs are negligible, but that is probably not the case in every corporate environment.) Focusing on two specific areas, Google Docs and shared network drives, I was able to craft a viable technology solution to an issue that many agreed was a significant problem in my workplace. The literature review indicated that increasing worker productivity in relation to time spent on email can also save a company money, so the benefits of this project are significant.

This was the first time in 5 EDT courses that I used an aspect of my work in the corporate world for a project. In previous classes I have focused on my teaching experience as an adjunct instructor to provide the necessary content for class assignments. Creating this technology initiative was the first time I worked with something tangible, that could directly impact corporate finance and "the bottom line." It caused me to investigate, for the first time in my career, how technology items are budgeted in my organization. My specific job duties have never caused me to work directly with any budgets, and after almost 12 years working in live television, researching this project was the first time I was every exposed to how things get funded in my company. It was an enlightening experience to say the least. I found it particularly fulfilling to create an initiative that would, by all indications, actually end up increasing productivity and saving money for the company. While it is unclear if this specific technology initiative will ever be implemented, it was still a thought-provoking and rewarding process. If even some aspects of the initiative are implemented at some level, it will make some improvement in corporate email pollution, however small. Changing minds about technology and trying something new usually has to be taken incrementally, but even baby steps are still progress.
 * Reflection**


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