Having a teenage son, I experience the same disdain from his generation Anne talks about in her blog. In fact, I have to remind him to look at his email account every so often to make sure he is answering emails from all those great colleges he applied to and expects to hear from.

Is it because email has become so cumbersome and hard to manage that the youth is fleeing from the technology only to recreate the same problems and some new ones on another platform? Now that more of the ‘older generation’ (those over the age of 25 according to my son) is using Face Book, will the younger generation find a new venue for collaboration and sharing. As Anne said, this is a question to address at another time.

The question posed to me for this week is “What would an ideal email management system look like?” My answer comes from the perspective of a RIM professional and overlaps Glen’s wish list in many ways. An ideal email management system would

• Have only links to information and no attachments;
• Allow me to seamlessly access the linked information from my email account without having to supply any userids or passwords; this applies whether the email comes from an internal source or from outside my company;
• All email that qualifies as a record is automatically classified, stored, and secured in an ECRM system, leaving a stub in my account for me to reference until it is disposed according to the retention schedule; and
• All non-record email is automatically classified into folders in an ECRM system so I can seamlessly browse and/or search for it from my email system until it lives out its life cycle.

In summary, I would like the systems to take care of managing the information in the most cost effective and compliant manner and allow me the ability to search for and find what I need to do my job either within the ECRM system or the email system.

I am an eternal optimist, and I believe technology will get us close to this ideal , if not in email then in the next enterprise communication platform. Some of it already exists.

I echo Glen’s invitation – Tell us what’s on your email wish list.