Anyway, the first thing you do upon opening your Google Voice account is select a number:

I haven’t moved pass this step.

Why?

Because I’m not sure what area code I want to use.  In order to set this up, Google – okay, it was really GrandCentral, which Google purchased – obtained a whole slew of phone numbers in almost every area code in the country.  But they don’t restrict you to selecting the area code you live in when you sign up.  Right now I live in New York.  But I want to move to California.  Should I choose New York because that’s where I live now?  But when I move, won’t that be confusing to people I give that number to?  What happens if I select an area code in California but don’t end up moving there?  For that matter, I could pretend I’m based in Alaska, Nebraska, or Texas – three states I’ve never visited!  It could get pretty confusing if everyone starts choosing the area code they want instead of the one they live in…..

Yes, Google does let you change your number later (it’s $10).  But the whole idea of Google Voice is that the number follows you from place to place.  So why am I forced into choosing an area code, which inherently locks me into coming from one location?  I think this is an opportunity to improve on the service.  According to Wikipedia, there are several area codes not in use.  Why can’t Google Voice be assigned an area code?  After all, it’s entirely a virtual service, and as such is not bound by location (no idea what this would entail, but as I don’t work for Google, I don’t have to worry about the paperwork – I can just write what I want and they can choose whether or not to listen).

In the meantime, I suppose I’ll have to choose a number and stick with it for a while.  Do you think that Google Voice should have its own area code?  Did you put any thought into selecting your number?  Or do you think that telephones are so 20th century, and video conferencing/instant messaging/twittering is the way to keep in touch?  Leave a comment – I’m curious!

Take a look at the right hand side of this page and you’ll see a list of links to a few social media sites I’m on.  I’ve signed up for so many services, I can’t begin to assemble a full list.  Tumblr, Posterous, Delicious, YouTube, Disqus, Google, Scribd, SlideShare, and on and on and on.  My accounts on some of these sites are just placeholders in case I decide one day to use whatever features that platform provides.  And what I’ve listed here just scratches the surface of what is online.  What does the fact that there are websites like namechk dedicated solely to checking username availability tell us about the space that social media occupies?

This may perhaps be at odds with my last post, as there I was all excited about the growth of the third dimension of the social graph.  But as social functions are built into more and more websites, we run the risk of being unable to isolate ourselves from others online if we want to.  And why would we want to?  Any number of reason I suppose, from frustration with spam to a desire for privacy to a temporary bout of misanthropy.

Remember that work/life balance concept you may have heard of?  I wonder if we should begin to focus on a physical/digital balance as well as more and more people, companies, and brands enter the digital space.  As high speed mobile internet access spreads, should we be working to grow the number or quality of the interactions we participate in in the real world to match?  What happens when we shift more and more online to a hyperconnected web that lacks many of the nonverbal cues we use during in person interactions?  How can we stay engaged and focused when we flit from platform to platform like a hummingbird amongst the flowers?  And can we afford to take a break from social media to relax and focus on the real world without harming other’s perceptions of us?

Hopefully my social media fatigue will resolve itself soon.  In the meantime, I suppose I’ll be observing more than participating – which is one of the pluses of digital interactions I suppose.

So now let’s set the scene.  It’s sometime during the second half of the semester, and all of your group projects have kicked into gear.  For each class you’re looking through secondary sources, maybe sending out some surveys, maybe putting together a mockup of whatever it is the project is about.  You’re probably starting to write the final report.  You’re definitely putting together some kind of presentation.  It’s also probably a good idea to actually go to all of your classes, not to mention your internship or job, and also try to have some kind of social life (wait, what’s that again?).

This is all generally doable.  Right up until someone says during class “We should probably meet to discuss [insert some part of the project here].”  Because now you’re not just juggling your schedule but also everyone else’s.  If you’re lucky, the professor has cancelled a few classes and you’ve got your meeting time.  But chances are, he or she hasn’t, as that would decrease the amount of time they had to “impart their wisdom upon you” – plus part of the corporate world is working out scheduling conflicts and consulting with colleagues while getting the rest of your work done.  So now you’re all standing around after the lecture as the next class files into the room, smartphones and/or planners out, trying to figure out a meeting time (it’s actually worse if you’re trying to do this over e-mail or text message).

My Management and Organization Analysis professor called the difficulties associated with scheduling coordination costs.  As more people are involved, coordination costs increase.  In other words, it’s harder to schedule a ten person group than a three person group – and trust me, I’ve had to do both.  This could be related to individuals rearranging their schedule, or it could be because of the costs associated with communicating information to group members who couldn’t be there.  If you search Wikipedia for coordination costs, you’ll actually end up at the entry for “transaction costs” instead.  While the entry doesn’t actually define coordination costs (it just links to a blank page instead while using a completely different definition), it started me thinking.  Given the ways that technological developments have changed the way we communicate, what can they do for future classes of students faced with the same tasks I was?

• The most obvious role that technology can play is to make it easier to schedule meetings.  There’s at least one website that can do that – Doodle (I actually really started using this during my last semester).  Doodle lets you create a poll with dates and times, users check off when they can attend, and you end up with a nice chart showing which times work for which people.  Finding a place to meet is considerably harder……but that’s what you get for going to school in the middle of Manhattan.
• Technology can help there too though.  We can video conference instead of sit in the same room, or meet in Second Life instead of real life (never actually tried this), or substitute our physical presence with telepresence.  This doesn’t do much to address scheduling issues, but it can reduce the time and energy costs associated with getting to a physical meeting, not to mention the monetary costs if travel are involved.
• What new media and Internet services can also do is change the way we expect to work together.  I’m thinking specifically of cloud computing here, but there are a lot of potential sources of change.  Collaborative services like Google Apps could allow us to timeshift group work like TiVo did for television.  Students won’t be using their Blackberrys and iPhones to check their calendars when someone proposes meeting – they’ll just jump online instead and use any number of digital collaboration tools.  Maybe they’ll post links to research or work on a draft of their report or annotate a completed presentation.  Maybe they’ll collaboratively create surveys and send them to their social networks.  Or maybe they’ll synthesize trending topics and comments into a market research report for use in their project.

These are just a few ideas I’m throwing out.  I’m sure I’ve read some of these elsewhere, not that I know where right now.  What is perhaps most important out of all of this is that students are going to be able to explore these collaborative technologies and take them beyond the hallowed halls of their academic institutions.  And maybe then they’ll make their way into the hallowed boardrooms of the corporate world.

Of course, none of these tools will keep you from doing most of the work for your group – but that’s another post entirely (you’ll just have to check back for that one).