What would you get if you combined email with a wiki? Let’s look at the attributes of each.

Email Strengths:

• Ubiquity - Everyone has email access, and almost everyone can and does use it (even my Mom)
• Simplicity - Whatever tool you use, you have come to a level of competency  that allows you to send an email quickly without too much thought about the mechanics

Email Weakness:

• “Email is where information goes to die” - Have you ever tried to follow a long thread of emails between multiple people? Nuf said.

Wiki Strengths:

• Centrality - The information resides in one place, so there is no confusion about the “latest” information

Wiki Weakness:

• Not Ubituitious - Most people have never heard of wikis, much less have access to one.

If you look at it, the strength of each could counter-balance the weakness of the other, if we could find a way to combine the two.

A Suggestion for Google (or whoever…)

Add functionality to Gmail that will automatically direct the contents of an email, that is addressed to 2 or more people, into a Google Doc or Google Page, and then add the link to the email. So when the recipient gets the email, instead of the dreaded “Reply All”, they have a single click to edit the central doc which then automatically sends a “Notify All” response.

(Note to my Twitter followers: This is not the big plan in the works, just an idea I had this morning.)