I spoke at IDRC last June, helping Allen Gunn with a workshop on facilitation and giving what’s becoming a stock talk on patterns and Collaborative Tools. For those of you who haven’t seen me give the talk or heard me run my mouth in person, the fundamental premise is simple: The best way to think about, evaluate, and talk about Collaborative Tools is to understand the patterns they facilitate.    (JOF)

The old ways don’t work. Feature lists mean very little to the average user. The traditional matrix of asynchronous versus synchronous is also of limited value, because most tools fall under more than one category.    (JOG)

Graham Todd has put together a very nice decision-making grid to help decide what tools to use for different circumstances. It’s fairly general and by no means comprehensive, but it’s still useful, and it’s in the spirit of how we should start thinking about Collaborative Tools. Context is king.    (JOH)