Stories about Collaboration

• NHS … The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has embraced Traction TeamPage and NewsGator Enterprise Server to facilitate enhanced communication and collaboration. They particularly wanted to shift some communication out of email and into more appropriate places. NewsGator
• Managing Virtual Teams … Lisa released a podcast interview with the authors of Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools. “We chat about the key differences between in-person and virtual teams and how their process for writing this book practiced many of the methods they suggest.” 26 minutes. Management Craft
• Self-Managing Teams … ICU Medical Inc. (San Clemente CA) developed a way for self-managing teams to form and really work; a focus on deep contribution is central. “ICU offers opportunities to work in teams that make a real contribution to the company. Working on teams can also yield monetary rewards based on the contribution of the project and a team member’s contribution to the work. It can also yield rewards such as recognition and personal satisfaction, all without having to go into management or climb a separate career ladder.” People are permitted to own the agenda at ICU Medical, and form teams to tackle identified projects. ICU Medical finds that team-made decisions are better than top-down ones. Three Star Leadership Blog, WSJ Online

Technology for Collaboration

• Mindquarry GO Pricing … Mindquarry announced its pricing structure for Mindquarry GO, its hosted collaboration service. “Mindquarry GO is an hosted collaborative software platform for file sharing, task management, team collaboration and Wiki editing that meshes simplicity and functionality. As a result, knowledge workers are able to connect with team members and share information from wherever they are, effectively improving team-work and increasing productivity within the company.” Pricing is based on disk space maximums. Mindquarry
• Zoho Viewer … Zoho released Zoho Viewer, for viewing and sharing documents online. Supports Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe PDF and more. Helps move away from emailing attachments around. BusinessWire, Zoho, Zoho Viewer
• Stixy … Stixy is a Web-based application for creating and sharing tasks, appointments, files, photos, notes and bookmarks. It permits a highly graphical layout. Stixy
• MailSite Collaborator 8 … Rockliffe announced Version 8 of MailSite Collaborator, an email, contact management and calendar server. Supports a variety of email clients. It’s free for the first 20 users. Networking World, Rockliffe (PDF)
• NEC UCB … NEC released UC for Business, a unified communications offering for small and mid-sized businesses. “UCB offers scalability and enhanced communication functionality by combining NEC’s world-class call center features with unified messaging, mobility and desktop telephony applications. With these features, UCB can help improve the management of SMB communications through a customizable desktop application that can seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Outlook. Whether used as a stand-alone application or integrated with Outlook, the user interface enables increased productivity and enhanced collaboration across the entire organization.” NEC
• Enterprise 2.0 on the Intranet … James is running a half-day workshop at the Intranet 07 Conference in Australia on integrating Enterprise 2.0 into the corporate intranet. He’ll do it in Europe as well if he gets the right invitation. ChiefTech
• Webinar on Search and Collaboration Tools … AIIM is hosting a Webinar on October 10, 2007 focused on how to integrate search and collaborative tools. “Knowledge workers consume and create content daily. How do you effectively integrate search and collaborative tools so that knowledge workers, singly and as a group, can effectively find, use, and create knowledge.” EMC is a sponsor, but the speaker hasn’t been determined yet. AIIM

Being Productive and Effective

• “Don’t Lose Sight of the Bigger Picture” … Elliot encourages keeping the bigger picture in mind daily, and ensuring that small decisions relate to it. And value your time, “Always take your clients, yourself, and your time seriously. Time passes so quickly, and it seems like there’s never enough of it. Make every opportunity you have to get something out in the world an opportunity to try something new and do something different. It’s not worth it to wait for another day. You owe it to yourself.” Behance
• “Stop Doing” … Jim Collins outlines six ways to stop doing things: (1) clarify your hedgehog, (2) write your stop doing list, (3) make annual objectives for stop doing things, (4) rank order current projects and then chop out the bottom 20%, (5) use the Peter Drucker question, “If it were a fresh start, would you?”, and (6) practice digital budgeting. Jim Collins
• Saturday Review … Calculate two things on Saturday: (1) how much time did I spend during the past week on my top-level goals?, and (2) how much time did I spend on other things? And then … decide what you’ll do differently next week. 7Breaths