[Sigia-l] We could just use whiteboards instead.

[Adrian Howard]

On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 05:27  am, Listera wrote:
[snip]
> This thread reminds me so much of what we all went through with fax. A
> decade ago, you couldn't do business without a fax. The ability to 
> scribble
> on paper and send it back and forth was thought to be essential, 
> something a
> purely digital workflow couldn't possibly duplicate in convenience or
> speed. These days, we don't hear much about fax, which was invented in 
> 1843,
> more than three decades before the telephone!
[snip]

Just to annoy - another anecdote:

Recently had to get feedback and approval on some layout and content 
from a stakeholder who was:
-	in a different area of the country from the rest of the team
-	very, very, busy - so we couldn't schedule meetings to do it 
face-2-face
-	did not have public internet access in her office

I could have gone all digital on her. Installed Acrobat on her machine, 
created some PDFs from the website, emailed them to her, got commented 
PDFs back, etc. This would have involved getting her a new computer, an 
Acrobat licence, and spending time training her in how to use it.

Instead we posted (yes - snail mail!) a bunch of screen shots to her. 
She printed them out, scribbled on them, and then faxed them back again.

Very low tech. She knew how to use a pen. Her PA knew how to use a fax 
machine.
Worked very well.

In another situation (somebody who already had and knew how to use 
Acrobat for example) an all digital solution might have been more 
appropriate of course. But, on occasion, I still like fax machines :-)

Adrian