Forums at work ?

[Caro]

I work for a big multinational company and today we got to experience an 'open forum' with some senior leaders in our organisation.
Works like any forum, except that it is only open for an hour, where you know that the leaders will be online to answer questions and interact (it was well advertised beforehand). People can only post during that hour.
You get a basic profile and an avatar (a pic of your face usually - some will be happy to know that I did put one up of me ).

I thought it was really good to interact with leaders with whom you don't get a chance to talk that much, in a slightly informal environment. Also it gives a chance to build on other's participation, who may be located in completely different places (we had people sat in at least 3 countries, and some guys on the offshore platforms).

As with other forums, you're sometimes frustrated with the answers you get, for example people don't necessarily reply to all the points you are making, etc.

But overall an interesting experience. I think I might have betrayed my liking for forums though, a bit too overly familiar with the forum concept to be honest me thinks
But I did post the most popular thread


Anyway, that got me to wonder if other people have had the chance to use (work-related of course) forums and what they thought of it. Is it useful? Is it a valid communication medium? Does it bring value or is it just another fancy thing that will die-off quickly ?

[whitetiger1518]

My company seems fascinated with communication mediums of all types (mind you we are the Scottish Education Quango so it sort of goes with the territory )

So far we have Face to face, Phone, Email, Blogs, Wikis, Forums, Podcasts, RSS feeds, Video Conferencing, Instant Messenger, Message boards, etc etc etc We even have stuff on YouTube and Wikipeadia

- I don't so much have an overload of information, but a surfeit of methods with which to communicate!

Cheers Whitetiger