Set Up Remote Colleagues With the Apps They Need Using Ninite: Online Collaboration«

One of the challenges of working with a remote team is making sure that everyone has the various tools they’ll need. One solution for Windows users is bulk installing toolNinite, which makes setting up your remote colleagues with the standard tools they need a snap.

Just choose the tools you need from the selection screen and hit“Get Installer.” So, for example, you could check the boxes for Chrome, Skype, Google Talk, AVG and MalwareBytes. Ninite generates the installer at a special URL (in this case: http://ninite.com/avg-chrome-googletalk-malwarebytes-skype/) that you can send to your colleague; they can point their browser at that URL to download and install all of the apps in one package.

Ninite has a selection of many of the most commonly used apps, including browsers, IM clients, media players, office apps, Flash, PDF readers, security tools, utilities and even some of WWD’s favorite tools, like Dropbox, Evernote and KeePass. The installer installs the most up-to-date version of the apps; running the installer again will update the apps to the latest version.There’s also aNinite for Linux, albeit with a reduced selection of apps. It’s free to use.

(via Lifehacker)

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Convore: Fast, No-fuss Group Chats: Online Collaboration«

There are times when you simply don’t need a complex communication and collaboration tool. Sometimes, you just need to be able to chat with people about a given topic.Convorecan fill that need. It allows you to join existing public topics and conversations, as well as establish private rooms.

In some ways, Convore reminds me of IRC: you can join a conversation about a given topic, and you can connect with some incredible folks through those conversations. It’s also simple to set up a private chat.

A Reliance on Social Networking
To a certain extent, Convore relies on social networking sites to function. You can sign in through either Twitter or Facebook. You’ll immediately be able to see your friends’ conversations— and you can associate both your Twitter and your Facebook accounts to your Convore account.

When I get into an individual conversation on Convore, I get the feeling that I’m looking at a more organized version of Twitter. You can ask questions, and get responses. You can also post longer messages on Convore, and embed images directly in the message. Many users use Twitter conventions, such as addressing individuals with an“@,” within Convore.

Convore’s greatest strength is that you can start a real-time conversation with specific people in a matter of moments. If you need to take a conversation out of the public eye— you want to move a discussion from Twitter, for example, and you’ve got more people involved than will make direct messages practical— Convore is an easy solution. It’s an instant messaging/group chat client without the desktop client. You may receive notifications in Convore. Any time someone mentions you, the web app makes a note of it.

Using Convore
For the time being, Convore is free to use. It’s currently only  available as a web-based application (no mobile or desktop app), but the developers point to theAPIfor anyone interested in building their own.

It’s an easy tool to use, with a clean interface and quick set up. If you need to bring together a few people for a quick conversation, Convore offers an fast way to do it.

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Remote Support Tool TeamViewer Gets an Android App: Online Collaboration«

Cross-platform screen sharing solution TeamViewer has been around for a while (wewrote about ita couple of years ago). But it’s been recently updated to version 6, and also has a new Android app. While there are manyscreen sharingandweb conferencingapps available, TeamViewer stands out by offering an all-in-one solution for making presentations, connecting to and troubleshooting remote computers. I’ve been trying the Android app, and I found it easy to set up and use. It’s responsive, too, as the developer says that it can adapt to different connection speeds.

TeamViewer can be set up in different ways. If you want to share your screen forpresentations or training, you can install the software on your machine, and then share your ID with your audience, who can view your desktop in a web browser. The software is not intended to support large numbers of viewers, so it would not be suitable for webinars.

TeamViewer can also be used fortroubleshooting remote computers, similar toCrossLoop,LogMeIn Rescue, or the“remote assistance” functions built into Windows and Mac OS X. In this configuration, you ask the client to download and run the TeamViewer QuickSupport module (it doesn’t need to be installed). The client gives you the ID and password that the QuickSupport module creates, which you can enter into your copy of the software or use the web version.

The TeamViewer software, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, can also be used to connect remotely tounattended computers. It’s also possible to connect on the go viaiOS and Android apps.

One nice feature of TeamViewer is that (as withLogMeInand similar products) it can create connections behind firewalls, meaning that it doesn’t take the sort of setup thatVNCdoes. A chat and file transfer system is included.

All in all, TeamViewer is a well-developed product that can be used for many needs faced by those of us with remote workforces. I confess, though, that I got a bit of sticker shock from TeamViewer’spricing structure, which starts at $729 for one workstation. But since TeamViewer is priced as a one-time payment with no monthly subscription fees, it may be a good buy for some organizations. Note that TeamViewer is free for non-commercial use, and also offers free trials.

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Cisco’s Making It Easier to Share Telepresence Sessions: Online Collaboration«

Cisco is a company that’s long beenpushing video for the enterprise, and todayannounced a range of new initiativesaimed at boosting production and consumption of video. Most interesting of the announcements is the new integration of itsTelePresence Content Server5.0 unit with the company’sShow and Shareservice and updates to the MXE 3500 transcoding unit, which should make it easier for users to record telepresence sessions and then make them available for sharing, streamlining workflow and opening up a range of possibilities for knowledge capture and video production, such as the creation of training materials.

TelePrecence Content Server (TCS) is a rackmount appliance that can capture HD video from teleprecense sessions (1080p at 30 fps and 720p 60 fps, with support for five concurrent calls, and video conference bandwidth up to 2 Mbps). It’s able to record and stream video and H.239 dual-stream presentations from any H.323 or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) video conferencing unit. Show and Share is an enterprise webcasting and video sharing solution; users can record, edit, post and comment on video. By integrating the two, the content generated during telepresence meetings can be seamlessly captured and then shared within an organization, to enable re-use of training sessions or to enable a meeting to be shred company-wide, regardless of attendee availability.

These kind of capture and sharing features aren’t only found in Cisco’s offerings, of course; web conferencing software such asAdobe Connect 8can also alsocapture video sessions for later playback, and will do so at a much lower cost. The difference is that the quality of video captured by the TCS unit will be much higher, and is also able to take advantage of the multi-camera setups available in typical room-based telepresence installations, which should allow businesses to leverage their existing telepresence investment to easily produce high quality training materials that can be then be distributed within a company, for example.

Also announced today, the MXE 3500 transcoding appliance (a device that can automatically convert both recorded and live video from one format to another) is getting updated with a browser-based interface and Pulse Analytics, a technology that automates the time-consuming process of having to watch hours of video just to find the right content. With Pulse Analytics, the Cisco MXE 3500 now automatically tags words and speakers in videos so users can easily the find speaker and content segments they need, which should greatly streamline the process of editing the videos captured by the TCS unit for distribution on Show and Share.

TelePresence Content Server 5.0 will be available in March, while the Pulse Analytics upgrade to MXE3500 will be released Q2 2011.

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TheDeadline: A Slick Collaborative Task Manager : Online Collaboration«

TheDeadlineis a collaborative task management app in a pretty crowded space. There are a bunch of great to-do list apps available, like WWD favoriteRemember the Milk, but what makes TheDeadline worth checking out is its Twitter-style input mechanism, which makes entering to-dos and sharing them with colleagues feel intuitive and fast.

TheDeadline’s main window is dominated by your to-do list. You can filter the view by clicking the tabs to one side, so you can, for example, only see tasks due today, in the next week, or assigned to others. You can also filter the view by tag. It’s slick and looks good, but where TheDeadline really shines is in its natural (well, it’s natural as long you’re already a Twitter user) input mechanism.

Adding colleagues to a to-do item is just a matter of“@-ing” their email addresses in the task description, for example“Renew hosting subscription @simon@example.com @jane@example.com.” If the people mentioned are already TheDeadline users, the item will be added to their to-do list; otherwise they’ll receive an invite to sign up. Hashtags (to add tags to tasks and organize them) and groups (to distribute tasks) can also be added in a similar fashion, for you could enter“write requirements doc #redesign @dave@example.com&wwd.” Due dates can be added via a calendar widget. You can also enter tasks by emailing them to a special email address.

TheDeadine also supports keyboard shortcuts for nearly every action you can take on the website. Combined with the Twitter-style task entry, it makes for a task manager that’s very rapid in use.

TheDeadline is free. While it doesn’t have the proliferation of native mobile clients and other access options that Remember the Milk has, it’s an HTML5 app, which means the website also works on mobile devices, including the iPhone and Android phones.

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Using a Blogging Tool as a Collaboration Platform: Online Collaboration«

Pulling together a new project team can be done quickly, even if your team members are spread across the entire world. But putting effective collaboration tools in place tends to take a little more time. However, there is a way to do so quickly using simple blogging tools that lets you get to work with your team, without having to wait on organizational bureaucracy or corporate IT to set up something on the internal network.

The approach I’ll outline below relies on using hosted blogging software, such asBlogger,TypepadorWordPress.com(please see disclosure at the bottom of the post– Ed.), so it may not be a perfect solution if you need to guarantee security. Not that hosted blogging tools aren’t secure, but the best way to keep information under your own control is to keep it on your own servers.

Using Blogs for Collaboration

Once you’ve set up an account with your blogging platform of choice, you can create a new blog. The sites of all of the hosted blogging platforms walk you through the process, making it very manageable. During the new blog creation process, you may be asked whether you want to make your blog private. If not, you’ll need to change the blog’s settings to“private” after you’ve finished creating it. The privacy settings can usually be found in the“Settings” menu on your blogging platform (check with the documentation if you can’t find it).

If you use WordPress.com, you’ll find that there’s a theme calledP2that’s especially suited for turning your new blog into a collaboration tool. It can be applied to your blog by selecting the“Appearances” menu and then the“Theme” menu. From there, you’ll be able to search for the P2 themes to apply to your blog. On Blogger and Typepad, you’ll likely find that you’ll need to use less customized themes.

Bringing in Your Team Members

Once your collaboration site is set up and marked as private, the next step is making it accessible specifically to those team members who will be working on your project. On Blogger, you’ll find your access settings on the“Permissions” menu, underneath the“Settings” menu. You can add blog authors as well as blog readers there. On TypePad, you can invite people to contribute to your blog over email in the“Authors” page under the“Edit Configuration” menu. Similarly, on a WordPress.com blog, you have the ability to add more people to the site. You’ll be asked for their name and email address, as well as to choose a role. Because of the way that different user roles work within WordPress, you’ll likely want to make most of your team members either Editors or Authors; Administrators can change anything about your collaboration site, Editors can add, edit or remove any content and Authors can only add, change or remove their own content.

Once the blog is set up, it’s just a matter of sharing updates and attaching any files you need the rest of your team to see.

The Benefits of Using Blogging Software

One of the key benefits of this approach is that you can literally establish a new collaboration site that’s very easy-to-use in a matter of minutes. You can choose your team members and be communicating on a private site without waiting on anyone else.

If you want a more private (not hosted) solution and have easy access to a server, you can set up something similar by installing WordPress fromWordPress.org, usingMoveable Type. You can add security measures and other controls that way, like keeping the site behind a firewall, although the entire process will take a little longer to set up. There are also a variety of third party themes out there, along with plugins, that allow you to customize a blog-based collaboration site if you’re running it on your own server.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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The Challenges of Being a Modern Employee: Online Collaboration«

In today’s 24/7 digital economy, it’s hard to believe that just a decade ago many organizations were still trying to establish how – or even if – they could deploy email in their offices. Now, thanks to the mass adoption of high-speed communications and advances in hardware and software, the office can be wherever your Internet connection and laptop/smartphone/tablet device is.

However, with this change comes a new set of challenges for the modern workforce. When do you switch between personal time and work? How do you ensure that you remain productive and motivated? How do you cope with the onset of cabin fever? What are the security issues?

Security

Let’s start with the issue that strikes fear into the IT manager’s heart: security. A recent study conducted by Vanson Bourne and TNS discoveredthat almost nine in 10 UK IT managersfear the security risks caused by remote working practices. As laptops/smartphones/tablets holding company data venture beyond the office walls, this concern is hardly surprising. Add to this the fact that employees may take paperwork and USB sticks home to access the information they need and you can understand why management and IT teams worldwide break into a cold sweat at the mention of remote working. Intel’sBillion Dollar Lost Laptop Studyrevealed that 329 U.S. businesses had collectively lost more than 86,000 laptops, worth $2.1 billion. For freelancers, the cost of losing their laptop or smartphone is not just the cost of replacing the device but the loss of trust from clients, which can be devastating.

So what can be done? To keep information on devices safe, there are numerous options: hard disk encryption, data back-up, and security tools that wipe and kill a laptop if stolen.IntelandFujitsuare just two vendors that have such offerings. Another option, which avoids people needing to carry around USB sticks or notepads, is using the cloud. There are now a number applications out there, includingHuddle, which enable content to be stored in secure environments that can be accessed from anywhere at any time , with no VPN access or USB stick required. Gone are the days of the sheepish confession:“I left it on the train/put it in the wash/dropped it in the restaurant” and all the data protection and legal issues that can come with it.

Working Long Hours

With 24/7 access to information comes the challenge of switching off.  Most web workers will have been there: the last check of emails before heading to bed, working over the weekend because you only have to travel as far as your sofa, developing that great idea that popped into your head at midnight because you only have to switch on your laptop. The solution is discipline. One of the beauties of web working is the fact that you can work when it’s convenient for you, but this doesn’t mean you should be working all hours. As pointed out by Simon last year:long hours aren’t healthy. Get a personal trainer or start going to gym classes to break up the day and force you to stop working. Don’t forget to take a proper lunch hour and get out into the fresh air. Arrange to see people and get out of your home office. These may sound like simple tips, but it’s all too easy to get into the routine of continually working.

Cabin Fever

A related issue is cabin fever. Especially if you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur, you can get caught up in your own web worker bubble and forget about the world beyond your home office. My tip is to use tools such asPlancastto find out what events and meet-ups are in your local area. Whether you want to meet like-minded people, build your network or just go out for a few drinks, Plancast is a great place to get started. When I relocated to San Francisco last year to set up a U.S. team, it proved invaluable.

If you’re a remote worker for an organization, make sure that you don’t miss out on vital interactions with your colleagues. Use tools such asSkypeto share the snippets of information that you’d normally communicate via face-to-face chats or in passing in the corridor. When there is a company-wide meeting, make sure that you are included via phone, web or video conference so that you have visibility of what’s going on across the business. You are part of the bigger picture, eventhough you’re not in the office all day, every day.

These tips aren’t rocket science, but hopefully they can help you cope with being part of the 21^stcentury workforce.

Andy McLoughlin, Co-founder and EVP Strategy atHuddle, can be reached on Twitter@Bandrew.

Photocourtesy stock.xchng userrajsun22

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Ditto: My New Favorite Windows Clipboard Tool: Online Collaboration«

In myrecent post about ClipCube, a simple Windows app that enables you to check out previously copied/cut items and re-copy the to the clipboard, I said it was missing a couple of features I would have liked it to have: the ability to handle images and keyboard shortcuts. One of our readers, Brett,helpfully noted in the commentsthat he usesDitto, a similar open-source tool that happens to have the functionality I was missing.

I’ve been using Ditto all morning, and I have to say that it’s excellent. Just like ClipCube, it’s unobtrusive and sits out of the way in the system tray until you need it, but it’s more powerful:

• Works with mouse or keyboard shortcuts/hotkeys (instructions are detailed here)
• Supports images, with thumbnails in the copied item list
• Unicode support
• Can keep multiple clipboards in sync over the network and send items between clipboards (with encryption)

Because it has more features than ClipCube, it’s more complex; some of its network settings may take a little figuring out, for example. However, its basic functions are very easy to use; I highly recommend it.

Ditto can be downloaded from Sourceforge. It’s available both with an installer and as a portable application.

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10 Ways to Find Office Space Near You: Online Collaboration«

Web work— also known as telecommuting or remote work— has many benefits, not least of which is a reduction in commuting, and the resulting lower fuel consumption and better work/life balance. But not every remote worker or freelancer wants to work from their home office all of the time; many don’t have the space to build a properly equipped home office, and most people will need a meeting room from time to time. Meeting an important client over the dinner table just isn’t going to cut it.

Fortunately, there are now plenty of places where you can find a workspace outside the home office, ranging from coffees shops with Wi-Fi to dedicated coworking centers and office space sublets. However, it’s not always easy to know where to look for them, and having taken the long commute to the office out of the equation, you don’t want to find a workspace that’s miles from your home. In this post I’m going to round up a few of the most useful resources for finding local desk and meeting room space. All of the resources listed below are free to use unless otherwise indicated.

Coworking Wiki

Coworking centers are café-like collaboration spaces for independent professionals (if you’d like to find out more about coworking,Imran put together a good summary). The movement has grown in popularity over the past few years, fueled by the demand of a growing number of freelancers, and there are now coworking centers in cities (and even more rural locations) all over the world. Generally, coworking spaces will offer monthly memberships (either with your own desk, or as a“hotdesking” membership) and a daily“drop in” rate. While they tend to be populated primarily by freelancers and small business owners, remote employees can also enjoy the benefits of a well-equipped office space, camaraderie and the ability to bounce ideas off others.

Thecoworking wikiis the official repository for all things coworking, and includes adirectory of coworking spacesaround the world.  While its useful for finding out if there is a coworking center in your vicinity, the quality of the entries in the directory itself can be a bit of a mixed bag. As it’s a wiki, and the entries are generally entered by the coworking space owners, the amount of information presented varies— sometimes you’ll just get a list of prices, sometimes you’ll get a description of the space, its facilities and what it’s like to work there. Still, it’s a good resource to draw up a shortlist of potential spaces from.

Jelly Wiki

AJellyis“a casual work event where everyone’s invited.” It’s an informal coworking-like gathering of professionals at a suitably equipped location— that could be someone’s house (which is how Jelly started), but more commonly at a coffee shop or in an office. A Jelly is a great way to get out of the home office, network and spark some great conversation— and they’re usually free (Iwrote more about Jelly here).

Like coworking, Jelly has grown in popularity in the last few years and there are now hundreds of Jellies held regularly— often weekly or monthly— in many locations worldwide, as detailed in theJelly wiki. There is likely a Jelly group near you (and if there isn’t, you can always start one). Again, as the information is held in an unstructured wiki, some groups have more detailed or up-to-date information about their meetings than others, but it should be enough to tell you about your nearby groups.

Loosecubes

Loosecubesis a useful web app that lets you search for both desk and meeting room space; you can look for space to lease for as short as one day. It’s currently in beta, but it’s a nicely designed site, allowing you to browse a map of your city to find suitable locations. Clicking on one of the spaces on the map brings up a thumbnail image of the space, together with its price— clicking on that takes you to a new page with more photos (if available) and a detailed description of the space, its amenities and the working environment. Loosecubes currently lists over 500 spaces in around 180 cities, primarily in the U.S. It lists space in coworking centers, office space to lease and businesses looking to share their office space with others. It’s free to use.

Deskwanted

Similar to Loosecubes,Deskwantedlists available office space from coworking centers and businesses looking to sublet their own space. You can search by location and lease term (daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly) and it’ll return a listing of results. You can also search on a map view. It has listings from over 600 spaces worldwide, although it has more of a focus on Europe — it has plenty of listings in London, for example, whereas Loosecubes only has one). Deskwanted is also still in beta, which may explain why some features are a bit buggy (map search isn’t working on Firefox for me currently, for example). It’s free to use.

Share Your Office

Run by San Francisco-based coworking outfitpariSoma,Share Your Officeis another site with listings advertising available office space. It’s primarily aimed at advertising shared office space (businesses looking to sublet their own space), but also has listings from coworking centers and commercial leases. As with Loosecubes and Deskwanted, you can search by location and budget and also search on a map. Share Your Office doesn’t seem to have quite as many listings as the other two, though.

WorkSnug

WorkSnugis a neat augmented reality mobile app. Go to a supported city (it works in many major cities in Europe and North America), fire up the app and get an augmented reality view of your surroundings that shows suitable work locations in the immediate vicinity, from coffee shops to meeting rooms to coworking centers. You can also view results on a more traditional map view. Each listing provides details of the space, including whether power, Wi-Fi and refreshments are available (together with ratings of their quality), noise level and if formal areas/meeting rooms are available. It’s available as afree app for iPhone and BlackBerry. You can also use WorkSnug via the website.

Laptopfriendlycafes

Similar to Worksnug,Laptopfriendlycafeslists coffee shops suitable for working, including details of whether Wi-Fi and power are available, ratings for the coffee and ambiance, and user reviews. As you might expect given the name, it concentrates on coffee shops, so isn’t the app to use to look for longer office space or meeting room rentals. It’s available via the website and throughan iPhone app, which costs $0.99.

Local listings magazines, Craigslist, Gumtree

Although the options listed above are all great ways of finding office space, many potential office space advertisers may not know about them. Local listings magazines,CraigslistandGumtree(in the U.K.) are all good places to look for shared office advertisements from companies looking to sublet some of their space.

Regus

If you’re just looking to rent a meeting room temporarily, virtual office space providerRegushas them available worldwide, often in convenient locations, such as nearby to transport hubs.

Social Networks

Finally, don’t ignore your networks. A great way to find temporary shared office space is to ask your contacts (and get them to ask their contacts) on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Many businesses may be nervous about subletting their space to complete strangers— a friend of a friend is always going to be a more attractive option.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userhyku.

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Crocodoc’s New HTML5 Viewer Promises Better Speed and Accuracy: Online Collaboration«

Managing the creation and editing of documents, especially heavily-formatted ones, can be a headache within a distributed workforce. Thus, services likeGoogle Docs,Zoho Docs, andScribdare popular. Today, however, the online document serviceCrocodoc, whichThursday wrote aboutlast year, is rolling out some new features that should make it easier to collaborate on and mark up highly-formatted documents, including PDFs, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents, and PNG and JPEG images. The company gave me a preview.

Crocodoc is replacing its Flash-based viewer with an HTML5 version, which Crocodoc claims is a first. The company claims that the new viewer is significantly faster, and renders documents more accurately than Flash-based solutions.Here’s a sampleof a formatted document.

Despite the“viewer” name, embedded documents can be not only viewed, but they can be marked up and forms can be filled in. Marked-up documents can then be downloaded in PDF format. The markup tools don’t allow for full document editing, but they’re probably more than sufficient for many teams’ needs.

Crocodoc’sAPIis also being updated, which allows users to create embeddable HTML5 document viewers that can be customized in both appearance and behavior. The company is also starting a partnership program that will allow other companies to license its technologies. Since manyproject managementsystems include components for marking up documents,Yammer, an enterprise social networking app, will be rolling out Crocodoc’s document tools in the next few days.

Mobile apps are also in development, with an iPad app coming shortly, followed by similar apps for iOS and Android.

Crocodoc is free for individuals, and the API is also free for non-commercial use. Pricing for commercial use of the API is priced based on the number of documents uploaded to Crocodoc each month, whether documents are hosted on their servers or elsewhere, and whether or not the viewer is co-branded.

The folks at Crocodoc tell me that they are out to replace Adobe Acrobat as the preferred way to display, view and mark up highly-formatted documents, and today’s enhancements are just the first step. It will be interesting to see how the service develops.

Have you used Crocodoc? How do you collaborate on document production and editing?

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Working Together: How My Virtual Team Collaborates: Online Collaboration«

In an effort to better understand the dynamics of distributed teams, I decided to interview my own virtual team members at the social media marketing agency I co-own,Conversify. I wanted to move beyond my own personal preferences and opinions, both as a virtual worker for the last eight years and as a co-founder of a virtual company.

I rebranded my virtual consultancy with my long-time friend Monique Elwell to create Conversify. We shared the goal of creating a business that was entirely virtual and that would allow everyone who joined us the flexibility, mobility and better work/life balance we wanted. She and I were based thousands of miles apart when we joined forces, in Denver and Alaska respectively. More recently, we brought on a third business partner, Steven Jackson from Boston, and have built a team that spans the U.S., with a U.K. presence as well.

Here’s what I learned from the members of our virtual team. Note that most of our agency’s team members came from more traditional work environments.

1. Develop clear communications processes.Social media strategist Nik Hewitt emphasizes that one thing that helps our team work well together is that we spent a lot of time developing clear and detailed work processes so we could be consistent and efficient.“We share ideas and discuss them, and a nominated person writes down the salient points based on the knowledge of the team,” Hewitt explains.“Then this information is collated and edited by one team member then passed to another team member for comprehensive expansion.” At each stage of our communications process, we notify each person when it is their turn to participate and give clear deadlines along with scheduled reminders so everyone knows what is expected from whom and when. Attention to a detailed process leads to more consistency and accountability.
2. Shared calendaring is key.According to Haley Kilgour, senior account manager, virtual team members have to be more efficient with their time because of the need to schedule specific meetings with one another to discuss issues or make decisions. Even a quick 15 minute chat requires coordinating schedules across time zones to ensure you can“meet” with someone else. We use Google Apps and heavily rely on Google Calendar; we can see the availability of all team members at all times. Plus we can specify our individual work hours that are based on a core set of hours when we are all available at the same time. Those critical mutual time slots are the sweet spot for getting the whole team together for real-time collaboration.
3. Make use of time zones.“When we have something that is due on Monday, I feel like I have two Mondays in which to do it,” says Karen Woodward, social media manager, referring to the fact that Hewitt, who is based in the U.K., can begin working on something on a Monday during his work hours and then Woodward and social media specialist Shelli Martineau can pick up where he left off during their workday in Pacific Time. This elongates the team’s productivity and can be a bonus during critical communications periods, providing our clients with 24/7 social media monitoring and management.
4. Instant messaging can trump email.Email can be a big challenge for virtual teams especially when team members begin to over-rely on it and everyone can gets buried in emails. Email can also be ineffective if you fail to specify in each email sent to multiple team members exactly who needs to take action, says Elwell, Conversify’s CEO.“If you send an email to five people and say‘check this out,’ everyone will assume at least one of the others will, and no one will check it out.” Sometimes, instant messaging can be far more targeted and effective. Woodward says that IM has has become her virtual version of“popping my head over the cubicle wall.” But IM can also present a more immediate messaging overload, especially since we usually have both GTalk and Skype running. Sometimes you just have to turn them off to get work done.
5. Don’t knock virtual worlds. With severalSecond Lifeenthusiasts on our team from the beginning, we decided to bring the rest of our team members“inworld” for both a weekly“watercooler” social as well as quarterly“state of the company” meetings. Kilgour admits that at first she was opposed to meeting in Second Life, but eventually she came to enjoy it.“There’s something to be said for having a visual representation of a meeting that makes me feel more connected,” she says, adding that the format appeals to her visual nature.

Hewitt says that virtual team members need to make an effort to get to know one another.“We take time to just chat, one-to-one and in teams. We just chew the fat sometimes on Skype as though we’re (sitting) next to each other. I pretty much talk to to everyone personally once a week just to catch-up.”

The team also holds meetings for joint creativity such as their“Production Playtime” where they exchange ideas. Martineau, in particular, appreciates“Production Playtime” noting that it’s an opportunity for the team to jointly explore new tools and networks that may be beneficial to clients.“This is how we all got hooked on Get Glue and what reinvigorated our interest in Tumblr,” she adds.

Says Kilgour, getting together in person a couple times of year, if possible, is important,“Human energy can still be missing in virtual settings.” Another caveat for working virtually is to acknowledge that working from home isn’t for everyone and requires self-discipline, the ability to stay focused and being able to avoid distractions.

What does your virtual team use— and do— to work well together?

Top image: Photo by Mike Kilgour, Second Life screenshot by Nik Hewitt

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Social Media Melding: Marketing and Customer Service Collaborate: Online Collaboration«

Are you thinking about where social media monitoring and management fits into your business? The inclination in most organizations is to put it into marketing or public relations. But is that the right move?

I recently spoke with Ross Daniels, Director of Marketing for Cisco, about the challenges of deploying social media monitoring and management tools inside a larger enterprise. I’d spoken with Daniels aboutCisco’s SocialMiner, a product that companies can use to capture, analyze, prioritize and take action on consumer posts in social media channels. The application is not aimed at the marketing function but instead focuses on customer service, customer support and sales in the social media ecosystem.

One of the first things companies should do before deploying any software solution to help harness social media activities and actions, says Daniels, is to make sure social media is positioned— or repositioned— as residingbetweenmarketing and customer service. If customer service and marketing aren’t talking to each other, there is a high likelihood that social media marketing efforts will fail. Customer service is built for listening and for scaling and can be an integral“pillar” alongside marketing to manage social media.

Here are some suggestions for managers to consider to pave the way for more effective social media management that came out of my conversation with Daniels.

1. Connect customer service with marketing.Start making introductions between departments to establish a more collaborative relationship if it doesn’t already exist. The heads of both your marketing and customer service departments should meet regularly. Marketing plans should be shared with— and can even be enhanced by— customer service. Each side should know how to use social media to not only fulfill their own goals but to help one another to get closer to reaching overall company goals.
2. Assign dedicated staff to social channels.Pick or train people who can develop an expertise in social media engagement and response in social channels. Consider representatives from both marketing and customer service or a shared liaison. Cross pollinate social media activities so no single department— or person— holds the responsibilities.
3. Measure results together.As expectations are high for tangible returns on social media marketing investments, bring customer service in to help measure, analyze and tell the story of how social media is effective for the company. The measurements and analysis customer service already does will bring value to the analysis of social media. Both departments can contribute to generating reports and presenting findings.
4. Mine social media for more than sentiment.Instead of just looking for the positive, negative and neutral of what customers are saying about a company’s product or service, look for clues to how the public perceives the company as a whole. Social media can be used to identify places within an organization where there are silos hindering cross-departmental communications and other operational issues. Use the findings in social media channels to make functional improvements in how the company works, not just what they offer.

As you manage, monitor and respond to social media activity around your company and brand, make sure to spread the awareness and responsibilities across multiple departments. When it comes to social media, operating in silos can be the kiss of death. Social media can also help identify and break down silos, but these changes must be articulated as a core shift in both internal and external communications and interactions. Present social media not as yet another burden for someone to add to their already overloaded work day but as an inherent change in the way the company communicates with the public and within its own walls.

Where do social media responsibilities reside within your organization, and how is that working?

stock xchng imagefrom user svilen001

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SMBs Fueling the Rise of the Career Contractor, Report Says: Online Collaboration«

New datareleased todayby online work marketplaceoDeskshows that small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) are making use of freelancers in record numbers. Tapping the global workforce was once limited to only the very largest of enterprises, but now— thanks to the Internet, a proliferation of inexpensive online collaboration tools, and various online work marketplaces— it’s possible for much smaller firms to reach out to, and work with, a much broader talent pool.

According to theSMB Trends Report, since 2008, the number of SMBs using more than 10 contractors at any given time through oDesk has grown by 214 percent, while at the same time, the number of contracting assignments lasting longer than six months has grown by 540 percent. oDesk says this points to an increasing number of SMBs using contract— rather than in-house— staff to grow their businesses.

This demand for highly-skilled freelancers has led to the emergence of  the“career contractor.” The oDesk data shows demand for contractors with management experience has grown by 489 percent since 2008, and also, the number of“highly-paid” contracting assignments paying at least $20/hour has grown 162 percent. While I’d question whether $20 per hour counts as being particularly highly paid, it does seem that the type of work being sourced through sites like oDesk is moving away from being primarily smaller, cheaper projects that can be carried out in a very short period of time, to more longer-term positions.

As always with such reports, it’s wise to look at the figures with a healthy dose of skepticism. The data comes from just one marketplace (albeit a fairly large one) and the company clearly has an interest in making contracting look like an attractive option. However, looking at it in tandem with other data— theBureau of Labor Statisticsagrees that there’s been a long-term trend ofan increase in the number of contract workers, with a higher proportion of them being highly-skilled, for example–  it does seem that there has been a shift in the workforce in the past few years, perhaps precipitated by the downturn, with a growing number of people moving away from regular long-term employment and becoming contractors.

As I’ve pointed out before, this represents a significant change to the way that we work, and it will have implications for workers, the businesses that employ them and policymakers, particularly in terms of healthcare benefits and retirement planning. Additionally, if oDesk’s report is correct and many SMBs are now preferring to using contract staff in lieu of employees, employers will need to consider both legal and taxation issues. If, for example, the IRS (and similar agencies in other countries, like HMRC in the U.K.) can determine that contract staff should be classed as employees, it will charge back taxes.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userRoss Hill.

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What to Do When An Employee Asks to Telecommute: Online Collaboration«

If it hasn’t already happened, it’s coming: one of your employees is going to ask you if they can telecommute. It may even happen this week, as it’sTelework Week. Many office-based jobs can now be done from anywhere with the right technology. The possibility of employees working remotely is something that is better to think about before the question comes up, rather than finding yourself grasping for an answer in the moment.

Getting Comfortable With the Idea

The first question has to be whether you feel comfortable with letting employees telecommute. The simple truth is that many employers do not, although for many of them it’s something of a gut reaction. If you’re in that group, you have to break down why you  feel that way. The biggest concern is often that if your employees aren’t in the office, you won’t be able to tell if they’re working. There are ways to resolve this issue, however:  you can sett up a way to have employees report in regularly or switch to an accomplishment-based system, rather than expecting employees to show up for a certain number of hours every day, for example.

You may also find that you have concerns about security or expense. Telecommuting arrangements will be different at every company, so the expense will vary, depending on the equipment and  software you’ll need to provide your employees with for their home computers and similar issues. There are ways to protect documents and sensitive information when you make it accessible to employees outside your office, but the levels of security vary and you’ll need to do some research to find exactly what you need.

Do a Trial Run

One of your best options as an employer is a trial run. If an employee asks to telecommute, you can always agree to give it a try and if it doesn’t work out ask the employee to return to the office at the end of the trial period. Similarly, you can put the responsibility of doing the research into what tools will be necessary onto the shoulders of the employee who wants to get out of the office. That person certainly has a reason to look for secure options that will reassure you about the process, as well as to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Telecommuting is becoming more common in organizations of every size. It makes it possible to work with the best people for your projects, no matter where they are based. It can be an opportunity to keep your team happy and it’s a privilege you may be able to provide without a lot of work or expense on your part. Even if telecommuting doesn’t wind up working for all of your team and on all of the projects you work on, it’s worth at least trying out to see when it will work and when it could be useful.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userMike McCune

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OneForty Aims to Become a Social Business Hub: Online Collaboration«

Today,OneFortyofficially announced a new direction for the company and the site. Over the past few months, the online community and searchable database of Twitter-related apps has grown and expanded beyond its original Twitter focus.

The company now aims to become an indispensable“buyers guide” for the businessperson looking for social media strategists and consultants, in addition to social business software. There are currently 120“Social Business Pro” profiles, which are designated with a red badge on their profile, often in conjunction with a yellow“All Star” badge. which designates their active participation on the OneForty site.

OneForty wants its database and online community to become the one-stop shop for anyone’s social business needs. Initially created as a consumer tool to help make sense of Twitter apps, the site has moved on to a  B2B plan. In not-so-stealth mode, OneForty has amassed over 700 guides, called“toolkits”, which are lists of apps grouped by ways to use them accompanied by useful resources to help guide any businessperson in the use of social media for their company. The general consumer is not left out of OneForty, however: there is still an option the on the home page to view the site for personal versus business recommendations.

OneForty founder Laura Fitton said her team followed the lead of its users, the majority of whom were focusing their searches, reviews and other activities on the site around creating business-oriented toolkits.

One newer area for participation on the site— useful to showcase expertise— is a Quora-like Q and A section calledOneForty Answers. Future offerings on OneForty will include more content such as webinars, e-books and a blog, all designed to help people figure out how to best use social media for business. Item pages will be enhanced over time by highlighting key information for the business decision-maker, including price data.

OneForty hopes to help small to mid-sized business owners who are being inundated with solicitations from social media consultants and agencies, as well as from social media tool companies claiming to have the best solution around. Through reviews, recommendations, answers and other vetting done by the OneForty community, the site is well-positioned to be much more than just a Twitter resource.

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Web Conferencing App Adobe Connect Gets XMPP Support: Online Collaboration«

Adobe’s Flash-based enterprise web conferencing app,Connect,now has multi-user XMPP chat support, available as a downloadable extension.

Once installed, Adobe Connect meeting hosts can access chat rooms (“text conferences”) hosted on anXMPPserver by launching the extension in the“Share” pod during the meeting, then connecting to the server and choosing a  conference room to join.

It means Connect hosts can now meet with users of many other XMPP-compatible chat clients, such as Jabber, iChat, Miranda-IM and Adium. Once a chat room is joined, the meeting participants can simply view the chat as guests without logging in (guest viewing can be disabled by the host), or participants can each log into the XMPP server with their own credentials to participate. Chat can continue seamlessly with other meeting activities such as video, audio and screen sharing.

Being able to access chat rooms with users of other software may sound like it’s no big deal — after all, most Connect users will already have an XMPP chat client installed on their machines, or could always download one— but this extension should enhance Connect’s potential as a collaborative tool, as it can now integrate with a much wider ecosystem of apps. Additionally, meetings can now start out as simple chats rather than full-blown web conferences, and can then quickly be escalated to a full conference, if required.

The freeXMPP Multi-User Chat extension can be downloaded here; documentation is included.

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Manage Office Phone Systems On the Go With AT&T Office@Hand : Online Collaboration«

We’re getting used to having remote workers tied into a centralized office phone system, thanks to some of themany VoIP optionsavailable. But while these systems can sometimes be reconfigured on the fly, most of the control panels require a full Internet browser to navigate.

Now, AT&T has worked with VoIP providerRingCentralto develop a mobile app that allows users to manage their company phone system directly from their iPhone. The free app is part of AT&T’sOffice@Handsystem, which includes a comprehensive set of business-oriented features, such as:

• Toll-free or local voice and fax numbers (faxes can be forwarded by email)
• Cloud-based PBX, with extensions for individuals and up to eight departments
• Auto-receptionist
• Ability to transfer calls between mobile numbers and landlines
• Flexible answering rules
• Advanced call forwarding
• Call queues
• Voicemail with email delivery

The iPhone app can be used by managers to reconfigure the flow of an organization’s voice calls, change recorded greetings, and even purchase more capacity if needed— the additional services will be available immediately, and the charges will appear on the manager’s AT&T Wireless bill. The same iPhone app (and a more-limited BlackBerry app) can be used by non-managers to check their messages, configure call screening and voicemail, and make outgoing calls that will show the company’s phone number as the caller ID rather than their own.

While the manager needs to have an AT&T iPhone to use the iPhone app, other workers in the organization can be connected via other types of phones. I haven’t been able to try out the app myself, since I don’t have an AT&T iPhone, but the Office@Hand functions can also be managed using a standard web browser.

AT&T’s Office@Hand service is priced on a per-user basis, with costs starting at $16/user/month on top of whatever you are already paying for phone service. There are no setup fees, but you’ll need a mobile phone with a voice and data plan to use the service, and your carrier may charge voice minutes for forwarded calls. There’s a minimum of two users, and it works with up to 100 users. You may try the service for 30 days, and there are no long-term contracts.

How do you manage your company’s phone system while you’re on the road?

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Taking a Fresh Look at Glasscubes for Virtual Collaboration: Online Collaboration«

UK-basedGlasscubes, a virtual collaborative workspace provider, seems to be flying under the radar, but not for a lack of innovation or usability. I first mentioned the company in a post exploring how myown company was setting up communications systems for our entirely virtual team, while Thursday also wrote about the tool inBuild a Workspace with Glasscubes.

The company recently announced some new features and a shift in overall direction. I had the chance to speak with Wayne Pope, founder of Glasscubes, to get some insight into what’s happening.

The feature changes included:

1. Document approvals. Your team can now approve documents— or any file uploaded into Glasscubes— to ensure the correct version is used with everyone’s sign off. You can specify who on the team needs to be part of the approval process, and they are notified by email to review and approve the document or file.
2. Quick links.Click the“Share This File” button once you’ve uploaded a file to a Glasscubes workspace, and you’ll get a link to the file that you can copy and paste into any message or email. You can also use this feature to share a specific file on Glasscubes with people outside your team including via a tweet or status update. Anyone who has the link can view the file without having to sign into Glasscubes or have an account, but they can’t access anything else in your workspace, and you have the benefit of being able to revoke access whenever you want.
3. Unlimited users. Glasscubes now allows unlimited users across all its accounts, also provides caccess to all of its features across all the accounts. Now the only differentiator between the different package levels for Glasscubes accounts is the number of workspaces used and the amount of storage used.
4. Three packages. The company has reduced its multiple paid offerings down to three, all with a 28-day free trial: Max at $199/month; Professional at $125/month and Standard at $49/month. Pope believes its Free package is also now much more useful, with two free workspaces and access for unlimited users, with up to one gigabyte of storage.

A Shift in Direction

According to Pope, Glasscubes is moving away from the idea of being an“online intranet,”  complete with files, workspaces, a CRM system, and even a“coffee break” area.

“We watched over time how people were using the accounts, and we found that the accounts the made the most of the product were based around the workspaces rather than other elements in Glasscubes,” explains Pope.“From a startup perspective, it’s hard to deliver a clear marketing message when doing‘intranet.’ It’s easier for people to grasp collaboration and‘to simplify.’”

To avoid spreading its own team too thin, the company decided to focus on being the best at one thing: online collaboration. It also wanted to continue offering a free version of the product, but not a stripped down, feature-poor version meant to encourage upgrades. Instead, it now includes all the functionality, only with fewer workspaces and less storage space.

Pope says that while the company is concentrating all of its efforts around the Workspace and upcoming communication and social features, it still supports the CRM/Connect feature, but is no longer actively developing it. He did suggest that the company may spin that feature off into a completely separate free product at some point, time permitting.

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How to Recognize and Praise Remote Team Members: Online Collaboration«

In the era of disparate teams and location-independent employment, praising team members for good work has become a real challenge.

In an office situation, many words of praise are given in passing— in the kitchen or the hallway, for example. Since, in a remote work relationship, those kinds of opportunities don’t exist, the important task of praising remote team members can be forgotten, even if other forms of staff recognition and reward are strong.

Yet, due to their physical isolation from the team, your remote team members may well value incidental praise for good work even more than do your on-site colleagues. Honestly and personally recognizing remote team members’ good work can boost their morale and buy-in significantly. If it’s a natural part of your organization’s (or your) working style, it can also build a strong sense of loyalty and satisfaction among your team members over time.

Here are a few ideas for showing your remote team members you appreciate their contributions.

Tell Them

It sounds simple, but it’s rarely done well. Telling a team member they’ve done a good job isn’t as simple as writing them an email that says,“Good job, Pete.” It requires you to really engage with the team member, and with what they’ve achieved or contributed.

Whether you’re emailing them, IMing them, or you’re on Skype or a call, talk to them specifically about the thing they’ve done well— and explain what it means to the team (or business) overall. I really find an in-person approach works best, so if you decide to email your praise, try to follow it up with a call or IM soon after.

Recently, a team member opened an IM conversation with me to tell me the results of a prototype test I’d been involved with. He told me how my work had compared with the other prototypes in the test, and what decisions had been made as a result of my work. The result? I felt a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment and renewed energy around my client’s project— not bad for a few words of praise in a five-minute IM chat.

Remember, too, that the areas of staff performance that are important to you may not align completely with the aspects on which your team members are focused. Get to know your team members, and you’ll soon find out what makes them tick. If you can make the time to recognize their efforts in the areas that are important to them as professionalsandindividuals (as well as to you, your team, and the business overall), you’ll likely have a pretty happy and fulfilled team member on your hands.

Tell Others

Happy with your team? Tell the world! It’s one thing to stand up in your monthly staff meeting to highlight the work your team has been doing, but giving spontaneous praise over the company’s Yammer service, through your Twitter account, or another public means, is something else altogether.

Praising or rewarding team members in a formal work setting is great, but it does have an air of obligation about it. Meetings where leaders explain what their teams are doing encourage us to talk up our achievements and capabilities. Spontaneous praise, on the other hand, is usually a lot more credible and personal in team members’ eyes. Make it fun and public, and the team member’s sense of achievement and recognition can be lasting— especially as the individual’s colleagues notice your comments and congratulate them as well.

You may not be able to divulge the details of the praised team member’s achievement in a public forum, but that doesn’t mean you can’t comment on the contribution that person has made toward the project’s smooth running, output quality, profit potential, and so on. Mentioning how impressed you were seeing one team member perform under pressure, or how awed you’ve been by their capabilities, can have a huge impact on that person, and inspire other team members to perform.

Even a heartfelt, personal reflection on how easy your team is making your life as their leader will give those individuals a valuable sense of contribution and involvement— particularly if they’re not working on-site.

One of my clients has a habit of tweeting her impressions of her team’s performance, particularly around project deadlines. She makes fairly general but genuine comments about the team’s work, what’s motivating them and the atmosphere of excitement prior to product release. This communicates her appreciation to her team members as well as others in the organization, and contributes to the sense of respect and vitality in this close-knit team.

Praise Matters

Overdo the praise, and it’ll begin to seem meaningless. But give praise genuinely and thoughtfully, and your remote team members will really appreciate it. When was the last time you praised each of your remote team members?

Imagebystock.xchnguserroym.

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Social Connections: Goofing Off or Real Work?: Online Collaboration«

Keeping in touch with people over various online social services can sometimes seem like goofing off, but those connections can turn out to be tremendously valuable. For those of us who are old enough to remember the days before we were always connected and sharing updates over Twitter, we remember a time when you rarely stayed in touch with people that you met casually. You would meet someone at a conference or other event, exchange paper business cards and would most likely never talk to that person again. Now, I can spend an evening hanging out with someone at a conference and keep in touch casually overTwitter,Facebookor evenIRCso that the next time I run into them at some event, we can pick up right where we left off. As a result, I have more meaningful interactions with people than I ever would have been able to maintain in the old days.

Recently, a recruiter asked me how I found great people to recommend for jobs, and I told him that it was because they were all people I had met somewhere that I had kept in touch with online. When the right opportunity came up, I had people that I could reach out to that I knew were likely to be a good fit because of my past experience with them in some other context. Because there are so many ways to keep in touch with people, I can maintain connections with them for longer periods of time and know how their lives and careers have evolved since the last time I saw them in person. The end result of these maintained connections is that my company can use me as a resource to help find great talent.

Gathering information also becomes much easier with these social connections. I remember doing market research before we had so much data in online databases, and to get information I went to libraries to find the data I needed. Now, I can get most basic information with a simple search query in a browser, but for certain types of information, the social networks are the best resource available. I often reach out to my Twitter followers for answers to questions such as,“what is your favorite tool to analyze x?” or“I need a device that does y, what should I get?” Sometimes I just need to talk to someone who works at a particular company, so I often useLinkedInto find friends who work at that company or who know someone who does. Without an online network like LinkedIn, it would have been harder to find the right person to contact for information.

I can rely on my network of contacts because I’ve spent some time over the years building and maintaining the right kinds of social connections with  people. But this is where things get a little tricky: you need to spend time building those connections now to get the benefits later, and you don’t get the benefits without giving as much as you take. This means that you need to spend time answering questions and pointing people in the right direction when they ask something from you. You don’t want to be“that friend” who only comes around when she needs something. The way you build these relationships over time is by being there for people when they need you now; hopefully, someone will be there in the future when you need help. Like all relationships, it involves a balance between give and take.

This doesn’t mean that businesses should let their employees spend all day on Twitter, but it does mean that everyone needs to build time into their work for relationship building. As a community manager, keeping in touch with people is part of my job, so I spend some time using social tools, like IRC and Twitter, to keep in touch with people. But, I also know when to turn it off and focus on other work. As long as you take a balanced approach to relationship building as part of your jobs, you can still get all of your real work done today, while setting yourself and your team up to be even more productive over the long-term.

This is why I am sad to see organizations blocking access to social networks for employees. This is a short-sighted move made out of fear that a few employees will abuse it without any thought to the long-term benefits. Educating employees about productive uses of social networks and measuring employees based on what they deliver and accomplish is how you make sure that people are doing real work and not goofing off. You could block most of the Internet, and the people who want to goof off will still find a way to avoid doing work. However, if you stay focused on measuring output, you can deal with poor performers and figure out which employees are doing great work without preventing them from building longer-term business relationships that will make your organization more successful over time.

Photo by Dawn Fosterused with permission.

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ShareYourOffice Wants to Be a Dating Site for Office Space: Online Collaboration«

ShareYourOfficeis a new website that wants to act as a matchmaker for office space, hooking up people looking for desk space and companies that have spare space available. With a rise in the number of freelancers worldwide, coworking centers have become increasingly popular, but they’re not yet available everywhere. The idea behind ShareYourOffice is to create mini-coworking centers everywhere there are firms with spare desk space. The benefit to the company renting out its space isn’t only financial— in terms of helping to cover the cost of the lease— but also from the kind of network effects and synergies that can eventuate as resources and ideas are pooled, and companies collaborate on ideas together.

The site’s homepage is contains the most recent listings; users can also use the search engine to find suitable space and set up email alerts to notify them if suitable space becomes available.  Each listing on the site has the price (either a monthly or daily cost), location, number of desks available (or square footage), and, optionally, a photo and the category of business. Clicking on a listing takes you to a more detailed page, including a map and  more details about the space available, including the facilities available and a detailed description of what the company does.

The service is new, and scanning through the listings, it looks like there aren’t that many advertisers yet, while many of the spaces that are listed are from existing commercial coworking centers. Whether the site is successful or not will probably depend on being able to make companies with spare desk space aware that it exists, and persuading them to advertise on it.

ShareYourOffice is completely free, both for both advertisers and for people searching for space, although to post a listing or to contact an advertiser you need to create an account. It was put together by the team atfaberNovel, an innovation agency, and will be run by its sister companypariSoma, a San Francisco-based coworking community. The site will compete with a couple of similar services:Deskwanted, which is also mainly free and caters for desk space worldwide, although most of it advertisers seem to be in Europe, andLoosecubes, which aims to provide desk and meeting space by the hour day, or month, and is also mainly free.

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7 Tips for Building a Successful Team of Freelancers: Online Collaboration«

The landscape of the workforce is changing. According toFreelancers Union, a non-profit advocacy organization, approximately 30 percent of the U.S. job market today consists of independent workers: consultants, freelancers, temps, and independent workers. By the end of the decade, this figure is expected to reach 40 percent.

The availability of a growing independent workforce lets companies easily reach large talent pools of specialists and contractors. And while this strategy is hyped as a cost-saving measure, numerous other benefits ripple through small and large businesses alike. By hiring outside talent, companies are able to quickly staff up or down as needed to meet the dynamics of the marketplace. Companies are able to easily access particular talents or areas of expertise to fill niche requirements. And by shifting more and more work to offsite contractors, companies can lower the costs spent on facilities and office space.

However, this hiring trend brings its own set of challenges, as companies need to contend with effectively managing a geographically dispersed workforce that’s now tied to multiple employers. Conference room meetings and office visits are
replaced with emails, remote collaboration sites, networking, and electronic billing and funds transfers. Without the right tools and mindset in place, the benefits of contractors can quickly erode from the inefficiencies of clashing software systems, complex reporting and payments, and poor oversight of projects.

If you’re currently hiring independent specialists, or are anticipating moving toward this direction, here are seven tips to make sure you get solid ROI on your new workforce, ensure that the savings generated from hiring independent specialists are maintained, and can scale no matter what project sizeand scope you have:

1. Set rules for projects, timelines and budget. Whether you’re dealing with in-house or freelance employees, clear communication of project deadlines, expectations, budgets and responsibilities is crucial. Define the rules and roles upfront. When every milestone, task, and deliverable is clear from the onset, you’ll always know where you stand and so will your team.
2. Create a collaborative online work environment. When you’ve got multiple people across the country or globe involved on a given project, you’ve got to make it easy for everyone to work together, share documents, make comments, and view project status. A cloud-based workspace is the new and improved conference room. You want to create a one-stop-shopfor all project-related documents, conversations, tasks, milestones, and financial information.
3. Manage documents and conversations in a single place. A simple project can generate an astonishing volume of email. Eliminate the back and forth by communicating in a secure, shared workspace. This centralized area creates an instant audit trail for any project that’s readily accessible to all involved. It also helps to minimize those pesky emails that eat away at everyone’s productivity: What’s the latest version of the document? When do you expect to have the first draft? Where are we in the review cycle?
4. Stay on top of hours throughout the project lifecycle. On a weekly, if not daily, basis, you should be tracking the actual hours spent by each contractor on a given project, and then compare those numbers to the project’s status and budget. There’s simply no excuse for budget surprises. By continually monitoring a project’s status, you’ll identify potential risks early and be better equipped to make necessary changes to ensure the desired outcome. Of course, this is all easier said than done. It’s critical to first instill a culture where project reporting and hours are given a high priority (and not just deemed busy paperwork). Then give your contractors the right technology tools to make daily or real-time reporting as pain-free as possible.
5. Accept changes. Even the best-managed projects can run into unforeseen roadblocks, or changes in strategy. Make sure you have a workflow in place that can easily handle change, making it as simple as possible for all parties to quickly analyze and approve any changes in price or schedule.
6. Link invoicing to actual project management. Invoicing and payment may be the final step in a project, but they shouldn’t be an afterthought. Each invoice item should be directly linked to actual tasks and deliverables, so that anyone (and not just the specific contractor and project manager) can instantly understand the output purchased. Contractors should be able to instantly create invoices right from inside their project workspace as a logical extension of the project activity. This not only saves everyone time, but ensures seamless continuity from initial contract to project deliverables to final payment.
7. Offer career development and other services.Just because workers are not your full-time employees doesn’t mean human resources and career development services aren’t important. Consider providing access to preferred health insurance rates, offering help on setting up retirement accounts, and other resources. By providing a good set of personal and professional development tools, you’ll benefitfrom having a pool of happy, effective and loyal contractors.

Fortunately the convergence of new cloud technology with mobile and social computing is enhancing collaboration and the virtual workflow. As the world continues to move faster, it’s critical that your selected online environment improves everyone’s effectiveness, rather than constrains it. These cloud-based solutions must include simple transactional and collaboration tools, along with a heavy dose of business acumen sensibilities and a clear management platform.

Of course, technology alone can’t address management issues. Effective management requires a two-pronged solution of new technology tools and well-defined processes. You need to set the priorities and work culture from the top-down, and then deploy the right tools and processes to make those goals happen.

Ray Grainger is founder and CEO ofMavenlink, a comprehensive web-based project management platform that manages the
entire scope of business for consultants, freelancers, and other independent service professionals from a single application.

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