Email Free Fridays
October 16, 2007 - 2:57pm — bexNot a bad idea... apparently engineers at Intel instituted Email Free Fridays a few weeks ago...
about 150 engineers at chipmaker Intel (INTC) will kick off "Zero E-mail Fridays." E-mail isn't forbidden, but everyone is encouraged to phone or meet face-to-face. The goal is more direct, free-flowing communication and better exchange of ideas, Intel principal engineer Nathan Zeldes says in a company blog post.
Whereas I support the reduction of email clutter, this doesn't solve the actual problem: manufactured emergencies. If people have to switch to the phone, then you're just clogged with voice mail. If they switch to meetings, then Friday becomes "meeting day." People will still be swamped with work and communications, its just offline.
I think it might be better to have an auto-responder that replies with how many unread messages you have in your inbox... plus a time estimate on how long (on average) it will take to get a response. Sort of like when you call up the customer service reps:
There are 1,673 emails ahead of you. Average time to a response is eight days, and that's if you're lucky. So ask yourself: do you feel lucky?
You could also set up a "tip jar" system... where if senders tip you $10 in the email, their email gets a special priority. Or perhaps an autoresponder that says:
I'm currently swamped with projects X, Y, and Z at the moment. If I answer your email, one of them will suffer. Please let me know which one should suffer, let me inform the project manager that it will suffer because of you, and then I'll be happy to answer your question.
Naturally, this all needs to be automated... otherwise people will think you're a big mean jerk ;-)
Good questions...
The possibility that reducing email will clog, say, voice mail is there, and we will be monitoring our pilot (it IS a pilot, mind you) closely to see whether that happens. My guess is that email is so abused and overused today that a better balance point between the different comm channels can and will be found.
As to the idea of paying for priority reading of one's message - a more sophisticated implementation of this approach is being developed by Seriosity in California... check http://www.seriosity.com
interesting...
Seriosity is similar to an idea I had a while back: a StampServer. Sort of an open protocol for attaching "stamps" to email. Not a requirement, but available if needed.
My goal was to enable people like Bill Gates to answer his own email. He could "whitelist" certain people with cryptographically strong "perma-stamps," otherwise somebody random could spend $10,000 on a stamp to get his attention. Of course, there's no guarantee that Bill Gates would ever read that letter... but I'd probably pay attention if somebody spent $10k to send me mail! It would have to be an open standard so anybody could set up a stamp server.
The best part? You get the money for every stamp sold. The stamp server will take a cut, just like EBay, but you'd get the bulk. Imagine if all junk mailers had to pay you a dollar to send you a catalog... I'd be a lot less annoyed in that world!
I just couldn't figure out how to do mass email lists in a cryptographically strong way... You'd have to attach a hundred stamps to one email... Or whitelist certain From addresses. Or just trust certain mail servers that sign mass email (like Yahoo and Google).
Or maybe its just an idea best left to the enterprise...
Post new comment