Collaboration is low-bandwidth if the mediums in which groups of people coordinate require little resources.
For example, face-to-face collaboration is high-bandwidth in that it requires parties to be in the same place at the same time with no latency between them and transmits information instantaneously using verbal and non-verbal (e.g. body language, whiteboards, etc) communication. Where as sharing memos asynchronously is low-bandwidth collaboration in that it is not tightly coupled with time (read it when you have time) and relies exclusively on a single medium (written communication) to transmit information.
Both forms can be effective, but in different situations. Working on a distributed team necessitates low-bandwidth collaboration for processes to work smoothly, but things like design work is more efficient with high-bandwidth collaboration to get feedback quickly and be creative.
Links to this note
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Immediacy in Creative Tools More Important for Remote Teams
When working remotely, teams rely on low-bandwidth collaboration (e.g. video conferencing). It’s difficult to do certain kinds of creative work that involves fiddling and rapid iteration like product design. To make up for it, tools used need to be exceptionally fast at producing a change (e.g. pixels on a screen, reloading code) that a group can react to otherwise it amplifies the friction of low-bandwidth collaboration.
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It’s Easier to Make Jokes in Person Than on Zoom
After meeting in person with my teammates for work, I realized it’s far easier to joke around and riff in person rather than on Zoom. For this group of people, my primary means of communication was Zoom for the past 6 months and the effects were noticeable.
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Grammarly Comes Close to Being an Organizational Linter
Grammarly improves the overall level of communication within an organization, but if you think of it as an organizational linter it does much more. It eliminates a class of common feedback that would otherwise need to repeated for each work product for each person (with some decay curve as new employees internalize these rules). Even better would be if it could lint the structure of documents (i.e. a minto linter) and not just grammar and phrasing.