Acronym

One more thought from Hanley's session...

She compares the move of a folder system to a collaborative space to that of moving from traditional email to gmail (Google's free email app).

There are no folders in gmail. When I first started using my gmail account, I found this annoying. Then I felt kind of sheepish when I was introduced to the idea of tags. One quick illustration from Hanley and it's easy to see how tags are superior.

A friend of hers gets an email from her father that contains a particularly funny political joke. Her friend loves jokes, is a political junkie and, of course, she likes her father. She wants to save the email -- does she file it with her father's other emails, in her "politics" folder, or in her "humor" folder? Or (yuck!) does she make three copies of the message?

In gmail, she tags it with "dad," "politics," and "humor." At any time, she can choose to see the messages tagged a particular way.