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I came across a fantastic conceptualization of "documents" by Larry Hawes from CMS Wire, and the way documents and collaboration are related. Especially considering the fluid meaning of "documents" today, this conceptualization gains special significance. There are three models to understand this:- 1) Static Collaboration Objects. Under this model, documents are static objects in a collaborative environment, most often called a "document manager" or an "intranet workspace".These are stored and organized as standard file types (MS Office, Open Office etc.) with structured information, which different people can work on at different times (asynchronously). Features which are wrapped around the document capture the collaboration process like versioning, notifications, check in check out etc. 2) Collaborative Authoring Environments. In this model. which has emerged in recent years collaboration is enabled within the document itself. Different people can simultaneously edit a document online, and manage the collaborative process with chat, comments etc., which edit within the document itself. Examples of this are Google Docs and Zoho. But these "documents" still exist in a larger collaborative environment, where there can be stored and accessed. 3) Collaborative Documents. Under this model, the documents are the collaboration environment. There is no larger collaborative context (workspaces, document libraries) in which these "documents" exist. The document is where the entire collaboration and decision making process is executed, rather than just content publishing and co authoring. The best examples of this is the portfolios feature in Adobe Acrobat. In Hawes words:- "Portfolios, which were first introduced in Acrobat 9, in 2008, enable content creators to bring together multiple related files into a single space without altering them, and then share that bundle with others. Think of a Portfolio as a ZIP file in which the relationship between the individual files in the container is defined and sequenced, as are the slides in a presentation."
According to Hawes, documents are becoming a collaboration channel in themselves, and model 3 might be the way of the future. The opposite view is articulated in this article -"the collaboration continuum", which sees a collaborative context around the document, which reflects organizational structure, as essential to collaboration in businesses.
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