Jodi asked recently about tools for weekly reporting. I thought a
brief summary of what we’ve tried in general may be of use. I’d be
interested in others’ experiences too.

I run a three-site firm (UK, Germany, Texas), but with consultants
spread across clients from the US West to East Coasts, to various
places in Europe, and with growing contacts in Asia, the Far East, and
South America. The challenge is helping my team to remember that they
are a team, that they are *my* team (i.e. that they are Verilab as
opposed to ), to let them benefit from
being that team, and to do that across space and time (zones).

We’ve tried (and still use):

a.) Company-wide email lists - This is the oldest mechanism. We used to
have several of them - some technical, some business, some serious,
and some for Friday afternoon nonsense. But we realized that volume is
important for lists, and too many lists each with too little volume
would die. So we merged them into one until such time as the volume
gets too much. This works well, but needed a lot of care and nurturing
to begin with. Some shy individuals still hide in the shadows too
much.

b.) Company wiki (we use Twiki) - This has lots of potential but hasn’t
yet worked as well as I’d hoped. We have a ton of stuff on there, but
lots of “entropy food”. There is a core of material that is useful,
but a lot that is old and hairy. Overall, it’s worth having, but
probably needs more personal attention.

c.) Internal blogs - Some success. This seems to be a very personal
thing. Some people love to tell other people what they’re up to - and
some don’t. This is a horse I’m still flogging, because I think it’s A
Good Thing.

d.) External blogs - More success. My ideal would be that there would be
*only* external blogs, but then there’s almost no chance of getting
the quiet shy people to speak up. Also, see point below about Yammer
versus Twitter.

e.) Yammer - A surprising recent success. We messed with Twitter, but
that’s externally visible. One of my guys found Yammer and we gave it
a go. All of a sudden, people are ... well, yammering back and forth
across the Atlantic. The odd one-liner of status, occasional yells for
help, and even the beginnings of technical discussions that then move
onto some of the more appropriate forums (like our mailing list). My
aim was that it provide the same sort of impromptu conversation that
co-located people get by standing up and yelling over their cubicle
wall. Seems to be achieving some of that. The fact that Twitter
(public) got very little uptake while Yammer (internal only) took off
was noteworthy. As with all of this stuff, the human issues are more
important than the technical ones, and obviously feeling safe that
your conversation was only among “family” was an important human
issue. Recommended if you want to try something out.

We’ve also dabbled with the usual meeting-enhancing suspects, including:

GotoMeeting - works fine, does what it says on the tin

Skype - ditto. We use this a lot for one-to-one, and occasional video
conferences. Multi-cast video would be cool.

Shared Google Apps presentations. Just tried this last week and it
worked great. Much Cheaper than GotoMeeting, and if all you were using
that for is PowerPointing, Google may be worth a look.

We’ve had at least one such meeting where the attendee list was:

Group A - Austin, TX office
Group B - Munich, Germany office
Attendee C - at home in Edinburgh, Scotland
Attendee D - in his car in Texas
Attendee E - in Bristol, UK airport waiting for his flight

Worked surprisingly well.

Overall, the degree of technical collaboration we’ve achieved is, I
think, superb. I see detailed technical inquiries flashing back and
forth and being answered with a speed that the official support
channels of the tools we use just can’t match. Some of my team have
never even met some of the others, but the developing “net presence”
seems to be obviating that. Still lots of room for improvement, but
the above mechanisms do seem to help. Your mileage may, of course,
vary.

t

P.S. And my bonus Collaborative Web App for the week is this, to let
you organize multi-person meetings and phone calls: