The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• SharePoint = UCC Agent … Viral (from Microsoft) argues that SharePoint is going to bring about big changes in work culture. “The last universal cultural change occurred with email becoming mainstream. The next dramatic shift will occur with a powerful collaboration infrastructure i.e. SharePoint. More and more companies are realizing the importance of developing a managed collaboration environment.” What he argues equally applies to other collaboration tools. Viral Tarpara
• Jeff on Virtual Teams … A recent presentation from Jeff Stamps on making the workplace thrive with collaboration, with an emphasis on the human factors. See 3 rules on pp.7-11 of the slide deck. Jessica Lipnack

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Wachovia Goes Microsoft … “The nation’s fourth largest bank will roll out a social networking service for 110,000 employees over the next several months, giving workers a sophisticated knowledge-management platform that combines the user-friendly approach of the popular Facebook service with broad integration into Wachovia Corp.’s business applications.” Key decision factor: rich integration with desktop and productivity tools. CIO Insight
• MOSS for Social Computing: B- … Mike looks at the use of SharePoint Server 2007 for enterprise social computing. “Right now, I would grade MOSS 2007 a B- in terms of it being a social computing platform (from a technology perspective): Blogs: B-, Wikis: C+, Tag/Social Bookmark System: N/A, Social Networking: B+, and XML Syndication: N/A (feed aggregation and management).” … “In many ways, the issue as to whether Microsoft will or will not become Facebook for the enterprise is the wrong question. Right now, there are several technical deficiencies in SharePoint but companies may or may not care given its overall strengths as a unified collaboration and content management platform and synergies with other Microsoft technologies. Microsoft is likely to fill most social computing gaps through acquisition or in the next SharePoint release. Companies that cannot wait have plenty of options.” Mike Gotta
• Grupthink 1.8.1 … Grupthink released Version 1.8 of its social discussion and collaboration system. “Grupthink 1.8 is a little different from recent versions because most of the major improvements are invisible to visitors (I can feel your excitement building already). For example, we put a lot of work into organizing and consolidating code so that future updates can be done much more quickly, and we’ll be in a better position to complete some highly demanded features. We also rebuilt the way Grupthink accepts and presents user input so that it is more secure and gives us flexibility to support display formatting and other character sets. Though these and other back-end improvements can’t be fully appreciated yet, we’ll be able to fit more improvements in future releases because of this work.” Version 1.8.1 fixed a couple of bugs. Grupthink
• Visto and IBM … Visto announced an agreement with IBM for the mobile enablement of Lotus Notes. “Under the terms of the agreement, Visto and IBM will collaborate on the enablement and marketing of a connector for Visto Mobile for Lotus Domino, providing existing and new Lotus Domino customers with mobile access to email, calendar appointments, contacts and other data pushed directly to their mobile phones. ” webitpr
• Sybase iAnywhere for Notes 8 … Sybase released an update of its mobility platform for Notes and Domino 8. “Enhancements for Lotus Domino 8 support include: the ability to take a photo on a mobile device, attach it to a contact and synchronize information so it appears in the Lotus Address Book; and new calendaring functionality that shows “tentative” meetings on a calendar that can be pushed to a mobile device. In addition, the mobile instant messaging client provides enhanced integration with Sybase wireless email and security components for optimized battery performance and enhanced usability.” Available immediately. Sybase

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Eat Better … “Besides eating to lose weight, why not eat to improve your productivity? Whether the following foods help sharpen your eyesight, keep your brain focused, or just fill you up without making you feel lazy, you’ll find they’ll help you keep your day on track.” Bootstrapper
• 6 Organization Tips … Six tips for being more organized: (1) toss out more, (2) label locations for items, (3) do it on 15 minutes a day, (4) get others involved, (5) lead by example, and (6) cut back. Achieve-It
• MindManager for Authors … Roger outlines how to use MindManager when planning a book or article. “Writer’s block is an inability to come up with the right words for articles, blogs, newsletters, proposals, or speeches, and is one of the most stressful situations an individual can face. And it can cost companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year in wasted time and lost opportunities. Writer’s block typically occurs when the stakes are high, and deadlines are fast approaching. ” Mindjet