Trending Topics In Your Project
06. Dec, 2009 
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Every moment in a project has a specific set of topics and discussions you would expect. During the start up “planning” and “scope”, just before delivery “creating the final build” and “acceptance”.
If you are in a room with your team it happens very often that a talk between people in the same room morphs from murmur in the background to a conversation you find yourself all of a sudden eavesdropping on. Remember “osmotic communication“?
The shift from ignoring the conversation to focusing on it is most of the times triggered by a word or topic you didn’t expect in this context or phase of the project.
“Why are they talking about this, now?”
Often it means nothing, sometimes it’s a sign of an emerging problem.
This works fine when you are in the same room. But with virtual communications this gets harder to do. Too many information streams.
Although. Twitter found a solution. On its homepage it displays the real time trending topics. The keywords most often used in the current information stream.
Sometimes it’s expected. Like in December people talk about Christmas.
But sometimes (actually most of the times) I find myself asking:
“Why are people talking about this, now?”
If Google Wave catches on as an online communication and conversation channel, I hope some one creates a “Trending Topics” feature. I would love that. I think we would need that.
We need filters like that. I always thought about this in the context of “information overload”.
Until I read this quote from Clay Shirky:
“So there is no such thing as information overload, there’s only filter failure, right? Which is to say the normal case of modern life is information overload for all educated members of society.”
So we need to focus on filters.
I want my “Trending Topics”. Now.
Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve found a way to make Twitter one of the tools we need to perform our duties as PMs, especially for virtual teams. Now I’ve got to learn to use another tool. I’ve been avoiding Twitter because I’m already barraged by useless information, now my prime excuse has been voided. I’m not sure if I should thank you, or pretend I never heard this.
Ha Ray
I am not suggesting you’ll use twitter for your teams. BUT, you get a glimpse of what the future might bring.