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!