Collaborative Strategies, has been involved
with groupware and collaborative technologies since 1990 as an industry
analyst, author of books and magazine articles on collaborative
computing, conference chairman and consultant to vendor and user
organizations.
As the principal consultant with Collaborative
Strategies, David works with clients to ensure the best outcome
from groupware. He has led several organizations through the process
of determining their readiness for collaboration practices, the
appropriate business processes to apply groupware to and the best
tools to use in each case. He has facilitated meetings, using
electronic collaboration tools, to determine success factors for
collaborative projects. His facilitation has enabled organizations
like NASA and PacifiCare to determine their internal groupware
strategy.
Additionally, David advises vendor clients,
such as NEC, ICL/Fujitsu, Apple, The Forefront Group, Hewlett
Packard and others, on product strategy and positioning. Often,
product positioning comes from market input. Mr. Coleman has lead
market research studies for Merrill Lynch, and many of the vendors
listed above to help determine product features, pricing, and
competitive differentiators. His unique perspective on the collaborative
technologies market allows him to see the critical issues facing
users of collaboration technologies. David often writes marketing
white papers explaining
product positioning in relation to market issues and concerns.
As founder of the GroupWare 9X conferences,
David has watched over 10,000 people from western cultures cope
with collaboration in a competitive culture. From this experience,
he developed "The
Business Transformation Game" a role playing game that
exposes users to a variety of groupware products while teaching
them about personal and computer-based collaboration. David is
known for his creative solutions to marketing, analytical and
collaborative problems. He has run an independent management consulting
firm for eight years and is a seasoned leader and project manager.
Prior to establishing Collaborative Strategies,
David held positions of Director of Marketing (Natural Language)
and Product Line Marketing Manager (UNIX Products Group, Oracle
Corporation).
Davids entrepreneurial spirit and
commitment to electronic collaboration lead him to found the GroupWare
9X conference in 1992 (held annually in San Jose, Boston,
and London). He is the author/editor of Groupware
Technologies and Applications (Prentice-Hall, 1995) and
Groupware:
Collaborative Strategies for Corporate LANs and Intranets
(Prentice Hall, 1997). He was the editor and publisher of GroupTalk,
the newsletter of workgroup computing. He is the founding editor
of Virtual Workgroups, now DVC
magazine and still contributes a monthly column. Additionally,
David writes monthly columns on groupware for Computer Reseller
News and MainSpring (an on-line resource for intranet
and web developers). David has written for many trade and business
publications such as Network World, Datamation, Fortune,
and is a frequent speaker at conferences and tradeshows worldwide.
David has been on the boards and advisory boards
of a variety of companies and is currently on the advisory boards
of Linkify
and Knowledge
Filter Inc.
David holds a bachelors degree from Connecticut
College and masters degrees from San Jose State University and
Stanford University. He can be contacted directly at 415-282-9197,
or at davidc@collaborate.com.