It’s Strategies and Tools That Make Remote Team Collaboration Work

Although many people feel remote collaboration is all about technology – the truth is virtual team work is a human endeavor – it’s about people working with people. Sure the tech is important as it enables people to work together while apart – but the strategy behind which tools you choose and how you use them is easily just as critical.

As Jason and I often say it’s about “the right tools thoughtfully applied”. Yesterday I came across a great blog post by Isaac Gube (@IAMTHEGUBE) about the tools and strategies he and his brother put into place when they launched their latest venture DesignInstruct.com – a regularly updated web magazine for designers and digital artists where you can find and learn design tips and tricks. The Brothers Gube clearly share the same philosophy as the Brothers Montero:

Design Instruct is our first real venture together. It is the first time my brother and I sought to actually build something of our own (unless of course you count all the make-believe forts we built when we were kids).

There are many challenges associated with working with someone over a long distance. However, we found that there are solutions to those challenges, and so far, we’ve managed to make it work.

via How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work.

I love the way the post breaks down the 5 main challenges they had and describes the solutions they came up with.  When technology was needed they used free or low cost tools that can be embraced by any small business owner, solo professional, or entrepreneur. Read more

Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015 (maybe sooner)

It’s no surprise with all the ads you see for iPhones, iPads, Blackberry’s, and Android phones that accessing the web on mobile devices is a growing trend. I probably spend a good 1/3 or more of my time on the internet using my iPod Touch rather than my laptop to search Google, view websites, and connect with people on Twitter.

This article shares some eye-opening stats and graphs from Morgan Stanley analysts showing the most important online trends:

Mobile Web Will Rule by 2015

Here are a few highlights:

• Video accounts for 69% of mobile data traffic.
• Facebook is the single largest repository for user-generated content such as pics, videos, links and comments.
• Apple and Android platforms are gaining in the mobile OS market, while Windows Mobile, RIM and Palm decline. Read more

Using Technology for a Lean, Green, Virtual Team

It’s no surprise that telecommuting, workshifting, or virtual work - whatever you choose to call it - not only makes smart business sense but can also help you run a more environmentally friendly business.

Whether you are a large corporation, small business, or solo professional there is a lot you can do to lighten your ecological footprint. When you reduce the need to travel and take advantage of technology to collaborate from anywhere you keep tons of carbon emissions from polluting the world.  A shift to printing less and using more digital documents saves untold numbers of trees.

By taking The Anywhere Office® approach you’ll save money, be more productive, and be more green. So this Earth Day make a commitment to make even a small adjustment to the way you work to do your part.

You can start by downloading The Anywhere Office Toolbox – our free eBook contains information and links to technology, services, and other resources we find of benefit to mobile workers, virtual teams and supporting virtual offices and distributed work.

You’ll find tools for gaining remote access to your documents or computer, holding web meetings and conferences, sending and receiving digital faxes, sending video email and holding video conferences, dealing with time-zones, and marketing your business online.

These are all free or affordable solutions with free trials – so there is no excuse!  Incorporate some of these tools today and make your business more green.

Unchain yourself from the office; work where and when you want.

Free Webinar: Work Unchained – The Competitive Edge of the Anywhere Office®

If you have employees working remotely or are just getting started with telecommuting, virtual teams, or workshifting you won’t want to miss the free webinar I’m delivering next Thursday, April 29th:

Work Unchained: The Competitive Edge
of the Anywhere Office®
Thursday, April 29 at 11 AM (PDT) / 2 PM (EDT)

Business as usual no longer involves working in a traditional workplace at set hours. Today’s workforce is more mobile than ever, and every day more people are working from virtual offices, client sites, home offices, coffee shops, airports, hotels, and any number of remote workplaces. Companies that take an ad-hoc approach to this work-style struggle, while those with a strategic, planned approach reap the benefit and flexibility of distributed work.

I partnered with Citrix (makers of GoToMyPC) to deliver this free Webinar. Learn how to evaluate your own organization’s workflow to strategically turn your ordinary office into The Anywhere Office®.

Attend to learn:

• Why workshifting provides a critical competitive edge
• Common mistakes to avoid when enabling a mobile workforce
• Best practices for evaluating your organization before implementing a workshifting strategy
• And more…

Click here to reserve your complimentary seat

I’m looking forward to the presentation and I hope you’ll join us!

4 Easy Ways to Share Large Files

It’s not unusual in these days of webworking and remote collaboration to have the need to share large files with colleagues, clients, or even family members.  Not only do we have large reports but there are also the ever growing collection of photos, audio, and video files.

While Gmail allows you to send attachment up to a generous 25 MB in size – there are times where that just isn’t large enough as you may have files that are 100 or more MB to send. Here are 4 great services I’ve found that will let you easily send large files to others:

YouSendIt – The free version of this service will let you send files up to 100 MB with a 1 GB monthly download limit. The file will remain available for 7 days to download.  Simply go to their website, fill out a short form (with your email address, the address of who you want to send the file to, a subject line, and short message), then click the browse button and choose which file you want to send.  It upload the file to their servers and emails a link to the person you are sending the file to. If you want additional features including the ability to send files up to 2GB in size you can choose one of their paid services (including pay per use if you only need to do this once in a while).

Dropbox – Dropbox not only lets you easily share files with others but it also allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically. They give you 2GB of online storage for free and you can pay for up to 100 GB. You need to download a small program but it’s free and work on Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. It creates a dropbox folder on your computer where you can easily copy files to upload them or share them with others.  What I love about Dropbox is that you can share an entire folder and make it public or just share it with a group of people. There are some other great features: Read more

Should I upgrade to Windows 7? A quick primer

This is a questions I am sure many of you are asking yourself – and a lot of people have been asking me.  So with Microsoft’s Windows 7 now a week old here are my thoughts and some links to help you make this decision for yourself.

If you’re running Vista – it’s almost a no brainer.  It’s no surprise to anyone all the issues Vista has.  It has made many people down right disgruntled (me being one of them).  Plain and simple Windows 7 is what Vista should have been.  It takes less resources to run (even runs on portable netbooks), it’s snappier, more stable, works with more hardware, and had some really nice interface improvements that are more fun and can make you more productive.  The great thing if you are upgrading from Vista is that you don’t have to reinstall everything – you can just run the upgrade on your current Vista system and it will keep all your programs and data in place.  Of course that being said – make SURE you backup your system before doing the upgrade just in case something goes wrong.

One thing to note is that while I have read that installing Windows 7 on a freshly formatted system only takes about 20 minutes – doing an upgrade to my existing Vista system took almost 5 hours.  From what I have heard that is not unusual.  However after answering a few initial questions I did not need to interact with or babysit the install.  It chugged merrily away on the laptop in my home office and 5 hours later I was punching in the activation code and playing around with the new interface.

Normally I always like to wipe my system clean before installing a new operating system but I honestly am too busy to take the 2 – 3 days it Read more

E-learning, cloud computing, distributed work, and telecommuting (Techwatch Radio interview)

I had the pleasure of joining my friends Sam Bushman and Jay Harrison, the hosts of Techwatch Radio, last Saturday on their weekly tech talk show.  I’ve been a fairly regular guest on their show over the last 5 years and always enjoy the discussions we have. What I love about their show is that, much like this blog,  they take a practical approach to technology and living a digital lifestyle.

The program consists of fast-paced news, callers, guests, and features such as the website of the week and the do’s and dont’s of tech. Sam and Jay focus on balancing technology in your life and letting hi-tech serve you, not own you! Their fun, casual way of simplifying complex issues will help the average person get up-to-speed on the tricks and tools for the times we live in.

Last week I joined them for the second half of the show and we discussed elearning, managing remote workers, the growth of telecommuting, why I’m drinking the Apple Kool-Aid (and switching to a Mac soon), cloud computing, and the shifts involved with successful distributed work. You can listen using the player below and I invite you to comment on this post and share your thoughts on these topics and our discussion.

Techwatch Radio can be heard Saturday mornings from 10-11am ET.  You can listen live from anywhere online or download past shows from their RSS feed.  I subscribe to their podcast and listen on my iPod Touch so I don’t miss a thing!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:36 — 3.4MB)

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