Eric Mack On-Line

Want to collaborate on a document with
your seatmate at 30,000 feet? It's easy; all you need are the right tools.

Last month, on our way to the recent Collaborative Technologies Conference
in New York, Michael
Sampson and I put to use everything
Amy and Wendy showed us about OneNote Shared Sessions. (Missed it? See
here
and here.)

Using our new Tecra M4 Tablet PCs, we were able to successfully conduct
a OneNote shared session at 30,000' using our in-flight gigabit network.
(Notice the red crossover cable between our seats.) Even more amazing to
me, was that the guy across the isle from us overheard our evaluations
and comments about OneNote and he jumped into the conversation. It turns
out that he had recently joined Microsoft Research. (We promised him that
we would not to post his name.) He was extremely interested in what we
were doing with our Tablet PCs. and we spent much of the remainder of the
flight discussing Tablet PCs, OneNote, and collaboration tools. If that's
not interesting enough, he had - you guessed it - his own new Tecra M4,
still in the box, in the overhead bin.

Michael and I offered to help him set up his new M4; I was even willing
to extend our network across the isle so that he could help us test and
evaluate OneNote Shared Session capability. (When I realized that the stewardess
was becoming suspicious of our efforts to rewire the plane, I backed off
from that plan.)

I'm still intrigued by the thought of
three shiny new Tecra M4's all in the same row, at 30,000'. Now, what are
the odds of that?

Note: I've made many posts about OneNote Shared Sessions. I've actually
had these in my drafts folder for some time. Michael gently reminded me
that if I did not blog about our trip, he would. Two more to go. Stay tuned!