Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams Report (October 23, 2007)

The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

Introducing Collaboration Tech … Penny outlines three ways in which collaboration technologies can be introduced into organizations: (1) focus on business needs first and then identify technologies that can help, (2) matching promising innovations with relevant problems, and (3) me-too copying of other organizations. She then comments on these approaches in light of wikis … “In light of the reported barriers to wikis’ use (e.g. time to contribute/maintain content, reliance on email, lack of managerial support, culture, lack of clear purpose for the wiki and wiki not being integrated with other tools) it seems that reliance on the Rogers’ approach or the Mimetic Isomorphism approach is resulting in a lack of commitment to the change process integral to the adoption of this style of collaborative technology, undue reliance on voluntary adoption and insufficient support during the adoption process, and loss of opportunity to recognise why such tools like wikis are being introduced to the business and their potential to help resolve issues with existing knowledge management/work practices and develop collaborative capabilities both internally and externally. In other words, a more holistic ‘inside-out’ approach.” Penny Edwards

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

Amika Mobility Server … “Amika Mobile, the pioneer in the delivery of key mobile content to any phone, announces the launch of its new Amika Mobility Server™ – Enterprise Edition. The Server provides users with a cost-effective Email-SMS solution for mobile phone users at 10% of the cost of typical mobile messaging solutions. Featuring seamless enterprise integration, the software server runs on any enterprise hardware and features an easy to use console that simplifies administration and management for the IT team. The server is a fully scalable, real-time, robust solution that can be customized to meet the needs of any size enterprise.” Amika Mobile

Entourage 2008 Calendar … The Mac team at Microsoft talk about some of the changes that are coming in the calendaring capabilities in Entourage 2008. “In the Exchange world, “Calendar” means a lot of things: delegation, free/busy, attendee tracking, invite mail flow, updates, recurrence exceptions, cancellations… I could go on, but the point is clear, there are a lot of moving parts involved in coordinating Calendar interactions, especially when workflows like delegation are involved. I’m excited to finally be able to show off some of the work we’ve done in the Entourage 2008 Calendar to improve the feature consistency and reliability of this coordination.” Mac Mojo (Rui’s happy)

Virtual Meetings … Key trends in virtual meetings: telepresence (for larger companies), integration with business processes, and 3-D meetings, eg, Qwaq. eCommerceTimes

New Meeting Maker … “PeopleCube, the leader in on-demand calendaring, resource and event management solutions, today announced it has issued a new release of Meeting Maker, the popular collaborative calendaring and scheduling solution. This new release includes new functionality for the Meeting Maker Web Client that makes it easier for users to schedule meetings, accept meeting invitation, and change meeting times from directly within the web-based calendar client. In addition, this new version includes an enhancement to the NotifyLink for Meeting Maker solution that makes it easier for users to synchronize their passwords between Meeting Maker and their BlackBerry or other mobile device.” PeopleCube

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

Productivity for Doctors … David Allen outlines some thoughts on how doctors can maximize their productivity. Great thought on holidays: “If you want to take a holiday because you need a new perspective, fabulous, but what’s the value of a new perspective? To see things you haven’t seen before, to come up with creative ideas you haven’t had before, to see things in new ways. So of course I’m going to have a note-taking device with me on holiday because that’s where I’m going to have some of my best ideas. I don’t want to have that idea more than once, so my notebook is close by. There’s an assumption that work is not fun. Why would you not want to do fun things on a vacation?” BMJ

Concentrate Better … 5 tips for better concentration: (1) be rested, (2) make a plan, (3) eat healthy, (4) exercise, and (5) take breaks. ZenHabits

Michael Sampson