Once upon a time in business, government, higher ed, non-profits…somebody somewhere must have been responsible for encouraging organizations to adopt email.  This post dates me, but I imagine a time in the 1980’s when businesses still relied on carbon copies, phone calls, and letters.  And maybe people had personal word processors…but hardly anyone had networked, online computer systems. (I seem to remember my parents starting to use computers at work in the early 1990’s.)

Who were the people that stood up within these respective fields and said “There’s this thing called email and we need to look at the business implications”?  And why are we not hearing their stories or advice more?  I, personally, would love to know how these advocates and evangelists convinced people that email was a good thing.  I want to know, were there immediately guidelines issued for email use?  What were the roadblocks or crisis communications situations that occurred?

I have yet to meet any self-identified email evangelists.  I have to believe they are out there…but I have no hard proof.  What happened to them?  Have they retired, moved on to other innovations, etc.  I think there are things we could learn from them about social media and the potential stumbling blocks we face.  We are trying to change the way we do business, just like these email evangelists must have done.

If you have encountered any of these thought leaders from the email revolution, I have a few questions:

• Who was responsible for helping government and higher education see the light?  How long of a process was it to gain buy-in and adoption?
• If you have talked with these people, where are they now and what advice have they given you regarding social media?  Do they support social media in business?

What do you think we could learn from the email revolution?