Email isn’t always an effective form of communication. I personally find it useful and much easier than picking up the phone and calling someone, but I prefer quick IM chats over all else. I know certain people, however, that prefer to call and do most of their communication in person or over the phone. These people and I tend to have communication challenges; I certainly don’t check my work voicemail as often as I check email, and they don’t respond to my emails as quickly as they respond to my calls.

So what’s the solution?

The temporary solution is to have good people management skills. Determine how and when the people you do any type of business with communicate most effectively and adjust accordingly.

The better solution is new technology that lets you access and manipulate all your conversations (email, phone, IM) from one central hub. I want to be able to auto forward my voicemails to my email inbox and vice versa, and archive some of my IMs to my email folders. Wouldn’t it be cool if my central hub for the day was email and I could configure all my voicemails to be converted to text and sent to my email account? Wouldn’t it then be cool to respond to a voicemail with an IM or with an email thats get converted to audio (for those who prefer the phone message)?

These are just some of my thoughts on what email could look like in the future. What are yours?

Browse Timeline

• « Sex and the City Therapy
• » Test Run