In May, Stewart Mader and Scott Abel conducted a survey of 523 content professionals about collaboration within their companies. The survey contains 12 questions around use of email and how meetings are organized within companies. The picture drawn from the survey results supports what Stewart has been writing in his blog for years: Email is a terrible collaboration tool. Below is a quick summaries of the report's findings. Check out Stewart's blog for the full report - it can be downloaded for free.

Too much email: 82% of respondants said they receive dozens of email messages per day.

Attachment issues: 25% said at least half of those messages contain attachments, and 65% said they receive at least a few attachments every day.

Email time consumption: 55% reported that at least half of the emails they receive require their direct feedback.

Collaborative revision by email: 96% said they have sent emails asking for input or feedback on a document from their immediate colleagues. 92% said they have had to combine revision responses from multiple emails into a single document.

Wiki awareness: 75% said they were aware that wikis could solve many of email's collaboration bottlenecks. Those already using wikis were satisifed with the results. Those not using wikis cited barriers such as difficult software, management disapproval and the full array of common wiki misconceptions.

Meetings are still very prevalent: 62% reported that they attend 1-5 meetings and 28% attend 6-10 meetings per week. Most are still conducted in person.

Meeting agendas: 62% said they regularly read meeting agendas before attending. Most do not request revisions to the agenda prior to the meeting.

Meeting notes: 62% reported usually or always taking meeting notes. 52% reported reviewing notes after the meeting.

The full report includes a lot of valuable insight from participants in the form of comments associated with each question.

What's all this getting at? Wikis enable colleagues to review and revise documents themselves within a central location, with built-in change tracking and revision control. Email attachments, on the other hand, are static - everyone has their own copy so that changes can't be shared with the other email recipients. Wikis move common document sharing and collaboration tasks from dozens of indivual and siloed email inboxes to a central, shared space. This shift provides a dramatic increase in efficiency when compared with email.

Stewart Mader literally wrote the book on wiki adoption and maintains a blog at FutureChanges.org. Scott Abel is a content management consultant who organizes conferences around the country. He writes The Content Wrangler blog and heads The Content Wrangler community for content professionals.