My blackberry went off again non-stop with people signing up at 6:30am IST. I thought maybe Techcrunch wrote about us! Nope, thats never happened and I don’t know why (maybe they are too US-centric). My RSS feed picked it up and amazingly, Web Worker Daily, a really well-written blog of web apps, productivity news and stuff for the “web worker” reviewed DeskAway once again - DeskAway Embraces the Social Turn, Adds More Personalization Options. The stuff that we churned out last week was now there for everyone to see and try out. Very cool. The first time they reviewed us in May 2008 was here.

Thank you Darell Etherington & Web Worker Daily! Hope your readers find the new DeskAway social features useful. There is lots more to come in the next few months.

I read an interesting comment by someone last night about how project management tools should mirror current reality. This is absolutely true. What is happening currently? Who is doing what? Did the client like the new banner that we showed them? No? Why not? Capturing inter and intra-workplace conversations can eventually become your project health yardstick.
Would you want to know how your Gantt charts and plans look that you created 2 weeks back or would you want to know what is happening within your project today and how its going to impact tomorrow?

“Collaboration at the heart of project management” - PM 2.0 Definition: Wikipedia

Projects are no longer created, managed, tracked and controlled by project managers. Thats the thing of the past. Today, everyday work that has a business outcome is treated like a ‘project’. e.g. launching your website, releasing a new version of a software, gathering input from your clients etc. Business people (even business owners) that have a stake in the project are the new ‘project managers’. The control has shifted from top-down to bottom-up. At the heart of this shift is the need to collaborate effectively, easily and quickly. 

Going back in time, project management 1.0 was all about planning, getting schedules right and setting up the project with nice looking charts and graphs. Today, with dispersed teams, always-online gadgets and sophisticated online technology, Project Management 2.0 is about people, conversations, relationships, sharing, execution and collaboration. Less planning and getting more work done.

Project management 2.0 gives you complete visiblity to whats going on within your projects. Real-time changes and updates to your projects can be easily tracked online. This helps your team to take action early or change course quickly if things are not going right. 

At DeskAway, we are striving to create an online service that is not only simple and powerful to use but also facilitates social collaboration. DeskAway already includes comment threads, RSS and instant email notifications. In the coming months we plan to integrate user profiles, twitter-like social message updates, email integration so that your conversation via email can be logged easily into DeskAway. 

At the end of the day software should be fun and easy to use. Just like your social network, right?