Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail

A few years ago, the team I worked in was merged with two other teams. One of the first things we did was set up a team Quickplace with a Q&A forum for team communications. One particular incident sticks vividly in my mind. In response to a question I posed on the forum, I got an email reply from the director. My reply to him was along the lines of, "thank you - you know the answer and now I know the answer. The point of putting the question on the forum was so that everyone in the team should get the benefit of the answer". He never did post the answer on the forum. I guess he just didn't "get it".

I am reminded of this whenever I see articles about reducing email traffic.

Hands up everyone who gets too much email. OK, so what are you going to do about it?

Some suggestions for alternatives to email were posted on the Thought Sparks blog, 13 Good Alternatives to Email : Thought Sparks some time ago. Worth a read.

But this guy has gone one better than just reading about it and is putting some of the ideas into practice:
A Refreshing New Way of Collaborating and Sharing Knowledge - Giving up on e-mail! (Part I)
This is the first in a series of posts where he tracks his progress. This is his most recent update: Giving up on Work e-mail - Status Report on Week 13

He has gone on to put together the following presentation. (Not as snappy as 'Meet Charlie', but there are a couple of gems in there - I particularly like slides 20-23)
Next08 - Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail (Presentation Material):

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So what have you tried to reduce the flood? (Use the comments facility to share your favourites).

To open the bidding, here are my two:

1. Started using an RSS reader so I could unsubscribe from email alerts
2. Started a Blog!