Collaborative Technology

"...Allowing information to be recombined in untold ways and by allowing individuals to interact in unplanned ways creates understandings and options not previously possible"

-- from Power to the Edge

For its NATO/PfP audience, PIMS provides technology that enables communication and collaboration in new ways.

PIMS capabilities are manifested primarily in the form of Internet-based applications that enable groups of people to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate. These password protected environments differ from static website where one webmaster is responsible for posting content. Instead, on a PIMS instance, the participants themselves are the primary content creators. The members are enabled with the tools to publish their conversations and communications to small teams or entire communities.

PIMS online environments like members.pims.org, the PfP Consortium Portal, or exercise instances such as Combined Endeavor and RESCUER, are tailored for the specific group of people, yet all these sites enable the participants of each group to post and "pull" data from the site that makes it useful to their everyday lives.

For example, working groups that may have traditionally communicated only on email, now have an opportunity to post presentations, reports, audio and video files to the site to share. Then, others can begin conversations in a "threaded discussion" that displays the discussion for future reference.

The instances offer improved asynchronous communication; exchanges that do not require the parties to be present at the same time. But, these online sites also have real time communication tools embedded into the software. For example, if you see a colleague present online, you can start a web-based instant message conversation. PIMS sites have a new Multi-Lingual Chat capability that does basic translations that can assist with conversations in an international environment.

• email this page
• printer-friendly version