Recently, we’ve been talking to a lot of people about their hopes for Enterprise 2.0 adoption. Something that may surprise heavy proponents of social media and collaboration technologies was the number of tech-savvy users who were less than enthhusiastic. Whilst these hesitators often valued the tools, they all feared an over-proliferation of channels and noise. This prompted me to ask myself: how many different ways can people can reach me, today, for a conversation?

Actually, I began by mapping my situation in 1999, looking specifically at routes to communication. These are more granular than a channel; for example: instant messaging (IM) may be a channel for communicators, but if I have accounts with 2 different IM providers and contacts on both, those are 2 different routes to conversation for me. The distinction is important because at a practical level those are 2 different services I must log into and monitor (however passively).

Some simple rules for the diagrams: I focused only on routes to conversation and ignored broadcast media, the press etc. I also allowed duplication by virtue of device (if I could get email from the same account on my work and home desktops, that counted as 2 routes). Then I colour-coded everything: blue for work-only, green for mixture of work and personal, and orange for personal-only. Here are the results for me in 1999, when I was a project manager:

NB You can view the above diagram in full-screen (this will open a new window). Zoom in / out buttons will be on the bottom-right of the new window.

Back in 1999 I had around 25 different routes to conversation. That surprised me (I had guessed at 5 or 6). Here are some ways that breaks down:

Three quick observations and recollections:

• Most innovation was happening at work and then being adopted for personal use, thus the high proportion of mixed-use routes.
• Instant messaging was in its infancy, which is reflected in the bias towards asynchronous routes such as email or faxes, which do not require participants in a conversation to be present (physically or virtually) at the same time.
• Mine was an immobile world: most routes were tethered to desktops and physical connections.

However complicated my 1999 set-up seemed then, it looks primitive (but attractively simple) when compared to the picture in 2009. In a decade my routes to conversation have almost tripled to 72. For the map below I used the same rules; the only tweak was that I included bookmarked conversations and IRC channels in which I participate at least daily:

NB You can view the above diagram in full-screen (this will open a new window). Zoom in / out buttons will be on the bottom-right of the new window.

The true number of routes to conversation is probably higher, but I excluded rarely used social networks. Either way, that’s a staggering increase. Here are some ways that breaks down:

Three more quick observations and thoughts:

• Innovation has shifted to the consumer space: the routes I have as a private citizen are often superior to those at work; my proportion of mixed-use routes may also be inflated because as a consultant I have more control over my systems than a typical corporate employee.
• Synchronous routes of all sorts have overtaken asynchronous ones, although the majority are text-based and not as intrusive as voice calls – allowing me to multi-task (there is a case to be argued that IM is actually semi-synchronous).
• The mobile-centric future which we envisaged when I worked at Vodafone a few years ago is definitely begining to take shape, although there’s still a way to go.

So is my communications world too noisy? Suprisingly, not yet. However, what these maps do not show is the relative usage of each route – that’s a really different picture. In a follow-up post I’d like to write about that, as well as how and why I haven’t (yet) fallen victim to noise, but for now I just wanted to share these illustrations and this thought:

Rewinding to my earlier definition of routes to conversation (as opposed to channels), I’d suggest that this is something communicators should acknowledge more. Talking about a channels mix made perfect sense when there was an almost one-to-one relationship between official channels and how an employee interfaced with her/his organisation, but as collaborative functionality proliferates the reality for the individual becomes more complex. And the extra twist is that many of these new routes are beyond the direct control of communicators.

More on this later, but for the moment I would really like to hear from other communicators: today, how many ways can people have a conversation with you?