Virtual Project Huddle Room

Virtual Collaboration to Engage Your Team

President Obama creates a virtual event that spurs questions, debate and collaboration. Nice leverage of technology to create dialogue. Here's a sample of the discussion on the topic of Green Jobs and Energy: 324,994 votes on 7,442 questions from 20,104 people. ...

... "The idea that a president would want to talk directly to the American people has been around since the days of FDR, but what was new about Obama's online town hall is that it encouraged members of the public to interact with each other ... " ...

Via CNN: Obama Town Hall

Global Teams Interact through Reaction

Fun exercise builds collaboration and innovation across globally distributed teams ... a nice ice-breaker if you are starting up a global project. ...


IDEO Global Chain Reaction from IDEO Labs on Vimeo.

Avatar Project Team

Invite your team members' avatars to the project status meeting this week and discuss progress, issues, barriers, and next week's plan. Let me know how it goes. ...

... "Instead of bringing users into an immersive virtual world, this project overlays avatars and visualizations on top of existing web-based meeting services or an arbitrary web page. The research team has developed a Flash-based prototype and is currently running a field study with distributed teams within IBM. " ...

Via IBM: Project Olympus

90% of Virtual World Projects Fail: Lack of Objectives, People Focus to Blame

According to a recent article from Gartner, 90% of "virtual world" projects (such as Second Life, etc.) fail.

In the article, Gartner notes:

"Many were closed down or abandoned by a lack of clear objectives and a limited understanding of the demographics, attitudes and expectations of virtual-world communities... a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics."

I'd add that these statements are true for most projects in general. But, for a virtual world project, which changes the way people interact (from many cultures, beliefs and perspectives), this is doubly so.

It's hard to ignore the fact that these "virtual worlds" are here to stay. Gartner predicts that, by 2012, 70% of organizations will have set up private virtual worlds.

Also, as more organizations work virtually, due to expansion, mergers, telecommuting, offshoring, and so on, virtual worlds can help create a sense of community. This can also influence the way we induce change in our organizations. A recent study has shown that major changes happen as a result of influence in social networks.

Here's the Gartner article:

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=670507

Here's another perspective from CIO Magazine.

http://www.cio.com/article/358665/Gartner_Ninety_Percent_of_Virtual_Worlds_Projects_Fail

And here's an article on how people are influenced by social networks:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20080602_How_a_social_network_can_effect_change.html.

Cisco Telepresence for Your Next Virtual Project Event

Bring the project team to your next event via telepresence ...

Virtual is Green

Managing a project virtually? Team dispersed globally? Travelling less? Team wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers, yet project remains on-schedule? Using collaborative tools, such as team workspaces, teleconferences, virtual whiteboards, instant messaging, web seminars, etc.? You are enabling sustainability in your enterprise. Do this across your project portfolio and there is a tangible payback. ...

... "Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5 for collaboration that offers green benefits for end users and IT departments by enabling significant reductions in travel and commuting. " ...

Via : Software for a Greener World

Next Gen Collaboration Research Supports Global Teams

IBM will invest in research to deliver solutions that enable the global collaboration of virtual project teams. The company sees collaboration, communication and visualization as capabilities to engage the next generation workforce, who are used to these advanced capabilities in their personal pursuits. ...

... "The challenges of globalization are forcing companies to become more nimble, using an increasingly geographically-dispersed and virtual workforce to remain competitive. In the world of software development, this means 24x7 collaboration with specialized teams around the globe to pick up where another left off. " ...

Via IBM: Innovations Support Global Collaboration

Global Perspective Google China

Google's research leader provides insights on developments in China for the company, where virtual teams and collaboration enable success. ...

Project Team Event: Museum Field Trip

Here's an interesting museum you can take your virtual team to. See any familiar items? ...



Pocket Protector Collection

Project Communication: Social Networking is Here!

I knew it wouldn't take long. Technology for project communication is moving at the speed of light. Organizations are already using project blogs and wikis. Intel is spearheading the move towards WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access), which will allow people to be wired to the Internet wherever they are at lightning speeds, through cell phones, laptops, televisions, and so on.

And now, a web site called Ning allows anyone to create their own MySpace-type social networks. This is a great way for a virtual project team to get to know each other and share ideas, discussions, and documents. You can create public networks or invitation-only networks. And it's totally free. Soon project social networks will be the way business is done.

Check it out...

Ning - Create your own Social Networks!

Next Project Presentation: Google Tool On The Way

Google to build web-based presentation tool as part of its office productivity suite. ...

... "First of all, we want to welcome the team from Tonic Systems to Google. Tonic, which we've just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets. " ...

Via Official Google Blog: We're expecting

Real Time Communications: Twitter

New internet communication service, Twitter, morphs as users create unintended consequences. Running a global, virtual project. Need real-time info and asynchronous updates. Check it out. ...

... "What was once initially designed to answer the question: what are you doing?, has turned into a free-form communications service where people are having burts of shorthand conversations ... " ...

Via Logic+Emotion: Twitter Love + Hate