There is an excellent article on O’Reilly Radar about the use of Web applications in a military environment. Basically, DARPA came up with a combination of a Wiki and Google Maps that would allow soldiers to see where IEDs were being utilized by the enemy, sharing intelligence in real time and allowing patterns to be found and actions to be implemented by the people on the ground.

This really is an outstanding example of the power of information architecture. Traditional intelligence focused on getting information up the chain of command, getting it analyzed, and getting a comprehensive plan back to the troops. However, this situation was too fluid, too fast, too rapidly changing to go through all that rigamarole. So, the oversight and aggregation process was automated.

This is fascinating for a couple of reasons:

First, it seems to highlight a general rule of technology: Once a process can’t move faster or be more flexible than automation, it will be subsumed. We have seen this a million times in a million different ways. Most of us have been a part of this process, either as an automator or being automated.

Second, it highlights how important it is for management and administration to improve as rapidly as the organizations they support. In the past, it has been the job of management to drive their subordinate organizations to improve, and often they did not hold themselves to the same standards. I can recall a time where the person who demanded that we automate everything possible required us to manually fill out and send an Excel spreadsheets that documented our progress.

I think that we are in the throws of new wave of organizational change based on newer, more flexible technologies like Wikis, Open Mapping Tools, and Social Networking. We should be seeing a lot more of stories like this in the MSM over the next year or so as it moves into the more public consciousness. And, in 24 months it will be a part of the common wisdom, and we won’t remember doing thing any differently.

Well, I have to admit it. I am really, really, really impressed with Livescribe. This is the single most important, must-have tool for me in my professional life. I have been an Apple guy since my first Powerbook 520c (in the mid 1990’s) but put off the purchase of a MacBook Pro because of the lack of availability of Livescribe Desktop.

If you haven’t used Livescribe before, let me explain. Imagine a cross between a Moleskine notebook, a digital voice recorder, and Tivo. Based on a specialized pen and paper, it allows you to automatically transfer any notes you take onto your computer, where you can search through them or share them as PDF’s. In addition, the pen can record sound as you are writing, which gives a much more human element to your notes. Best of all, these notes can be shared remotely with other people through the power of the web. You really have to see it to believe it.

Let me go on a bit about why I value Livescribe so much …

Flexibility

Livescribe has the basic flexibility of pen and paper, and that can’t be overrated. Back in the day I was that person who brought his laptop to meetings to type up notes and send them out to everyone. It seemed cool, and nice, and it was good to be able to refer to things later. The problem was, it was deceptively ineffective. I was confusing motion for action. If someone is presenting, I may need to take notes. If they are drawing, I may need to do a quick sketch. If they are talking (especially emotionally) I need to understand.

This just can’t be done typing into any text based tools, and I have tried a lot of them (I used the heck out of VoodooPad and heartily recommend it, but not more than paper). I can’t stop in the middle of a meeting to open a drawing program to try and copy what is on the whiteboard. Even if I could, I couldn’t go back and examine the flow of the meeting, determine what the key points were and what I might have missed or could have done better.

Accessibility

Livescribe has the accessibility of both paper and computer. I use a Moleskine-sized notebook as my “daybook”, to record who I met, what I did, and things I need to do in the future. I also take notes on meetings and do a lot of brainstorming before I start coding. This allows me to really focus on the important things (people, concepts, ideas) and not get wrapped up in time-wasters. This isn’t something unique to Livescribe, I got the same thing with the moleskine or a plain pad of paper.

The dramatic advantage that Livescribe has over paper is that I can go back and search my notes for previous entries or words or phrases that might pertain to whatever I am thinking about today. I do that a lot less with Livescribe than I thought I would, simply because I seem to remember things better if I write them down. However, the times that I have had to do a search it has been absolutely invaluable.

Recording and Sharing

The most impressive feature of the system is the ability to share your notes with others. While some people would use this for class notes and the like, I am long out of college and working in the world. As a Sales Engineer I have to travel a lot and visit clients and prospects in pretty remote locations. I don’t always have my Account Executive with me, but he definitely needs to know what is going on whenever possible.

This is where Livescribe really proves its worth. The ability to share a recording of a meeting (along with detailed notes) is awesome. When I get on a plane I can review a meeting myself, and later send it to my partner who can know just about everything that went on in the room, with enough detail to understand what was verbalized and how.

In Conclusion

Livescribe really gives you the best of both worlds, paper and electronic. It fully lives in both media, but combines the two in a way that is greater than the sum of the parts. Sure, I have some grumbles (the pen is large, I wish there were more paper options, the pen doesn’t have a top and there isn’t a good, small pen case available, it is harder than it should be to search across multiple notebooks, you can’t group pages or use metadata with the electronic text) but overall it is invaluable to me.

You will have to pull Livescribe from my cold, dead fingers!