I’m stuck on Windows Mobile for 6 more months, so for now I typically email myself–or capture into Evernote. When I’m less electronic, I write on a napkin and save in my wallet, then perhaps scan in later.

I like the Wiki idea – I’m wondering if ideation might be something for Google Wave, particularly for distributed teams? The community’s comments here remind me I need to setup an easy way to voicemail myself.

All in a day’s work!

Here’s food for thought as you dig into it – the key part of your response that I struggle with is that “anyone –can– see what’s happening”. The whole organization has the capability to see it, but only a handful of tech-minded people actually take advantage of that.

I’ve started to resign myself to not thinking big on this one, because it doesn’t seem to scale – organizing your own ideas is (relatively) easy, gathering those of your team is possible, but reconstructing communication lines for the entire organization a serious challenge.

I think the wiki ends up being kind of the communal fire that everyone can warm their hands around, but isn’t really for us a forum, per se; it’s a jumping off point to conversations in real life.

We have biweekly meetings where we can run through the day-to-day but also look at the bigger picture. Thanks to the wiki, anyone can see what’s happening, what’s been proposed, and then expound on that in the last half of the meeting.

We’re also fortunate that the seating arrangement here really helps foster communication–for the most part, we’re all seated in the same “pod” so everyone’s within earshot/walking distance. Being able to just stand up and say, “What?” helps cut down on the reply-to-all-ness.

Also: I’ve got a nice, comfy couch in my space that fosters community, too!

- Chris

PS: I think you’ve just given us another topic to dig into

Thanks for keeping your blog thoughts short and to the point – its very helpful when I’m trying to get through my blog roll in the morning.

On a bit of a side note, how did you manage to foster a culture of community such that people actually DO riff on your ideas? In a culture that has grown up using the “reply-to-all” button as the formal way to communicate thoughts, we’ve had a tough time converting to a more asynchronous, wiki-style pattern for communication.

@Scott – I didn’t do it often, but there was a period where I was leaving myself idea voicemails, too! This is pre-smartphones so I was fast-dialing my work phone from the car. That system quickly proved untenable for me, combined with my insane Post-It Note system

I also have the everpresent notebook, which usually gets all of the sketched ideas (I tend to “invent” spatially, and re-hash ideas in diagrams). I also have a couple visio stencils that I use for rapid visio-drawings of stuff (I use visio enough that it actually is “rapid” for me).

Anecdotally, I’ve scanned in sketches from my notebook and emailed to clients (cc: evernote post-by-email addr) for quick discussions over the phone.

Looking forward to hearing other people’s ideas – great topic, Chris!

@sehlhorst

Regardless of how you do it, the act of writing down ideas is critical to progress and success.

-Michael

PS. Thanks for the link!