TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) – Free Conference Calls

In this Mobile Work Tip Phil talks about using free conference call services for real-time brainstorming with people you don’t get to see face to face.

**get more tips like these in our free Mobile Work Tipbook.**

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:06 — 1.9MB)

Travel Delays Highlight the Need for Virtual Team Strategies

Flights delayed for hours by Northeast storms – CNN.com 02/22/2008

We’ve been seeing headlines like this all winter, and we see them EVERY winter; even cavemen knew it was going to snow in winter. But the difficulties imposed on business travel have gone beyond the inevitability of weather delays (which aren’t even always weather events according to CNN 5 Things Airlines Won’t Tell You About Weather Delays), they are compounded by a floundering U.S. Airline industry. Consider this report from the AP wire released earlier this month:

2007 Airline Delays 2nd Worst EverFeb 6, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — A quarter of domestic flights failed to arrive on time in 2007 — the industry’s second poorest performance on record — and analysts say it is likely to get worse. More than 26 percent of commercial flights in the U.S. arrived late or were canceled last year as rising passenger demand and an industry preference for smaller planes intensified congestion in the skies and on runways. The air-travel logjam, reported Tuesday by the Department of Transportation, comes as a growing number of air traffic controllers near retirement age — a trend the controllers’ union says will magnify the problem.

Pile on top of all this lost time and frustration the rising cost of travel and it seems pretty clear that something, somewhere has to give. Putting into place some simple virtual office and virtual team strategies can not only serve as a business continuity plan when you or one of your people is stuck on the tarmac in the snow, they can also increase your organization’s communication and collaboration abilities while decreasing the amount of required travel every day.

Let’s face it, at least the cavemen adapted the way they worked to deal with the changes in their environment – it’s called evolution people. Isn’t it time we came in out of the cold?

To explore some of the premiere tools and services related to virtual teamwork download a FREE copy of The Anywhere Office Toolbox. We have been playing in this sandbox a long time and the Toolbox details the service providers we believe are the best in their respective businesses. Most of them offer free trials and special discounts.

TAO Podcast (Mobile Work Tip) – Communication Guidelines

Here’s a new installment of The Anywhere Office podcast: Mobile Work Tips. Phil offers up some best practices for remote work and virtual teams in 2 minute, digestible tips. This first one deals with setting communication guidelines. You can find a collection of tips like these relating to virtual teams, home offices, laptops, email, and palm pilots in our free Mobile Work Tipbook and we’ll be posting more to the podcast moving forward. Let us know what you think, or if there are any topics that you’d like to hear more about.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11 — 2.0MB)

Virtual Collaboration and Brainstorming – Use the right tools

I recently stumbled on a great article on Read-Write-Web about the “Work From Home” Generation.

They give a good overview of the pros and cons. While I agree with almost all of it, the first issue they raise as a negative is “Brainstorming is difficult”. While I agree initially it can be more challenging while you adapt to collaborating with others virtually, like anything it becomes much easier with practice. A large part of successfully brainstorming and collaboration with others across distance is choosing and “thoughtfully applying” the right technology. This is something we often talk about and stress in our workshops and books. Read more

Dropping Outlook for webmail? My 60 day experiment

Let me start by saying that for as long as I can remember I have been a devout Microsoft Outlook user. I lived, breathed, and worked in Outlook all day long using it not only for email – but also for organizing my contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes. About 6 months ago I upgraded to Office 2007 and really like the new version of Outlook – however I have been giving a lot of thought lately to just how mobile my email is (and can be).

This prompted me to start thinking about making the switch to using webmail. By moving away from Outlook to a web based email system I always have access to all my mail from any web browser. At a client site – no problem just jump on the web and I’m able to send, receive or access all of may mail. Visiting friends and family . . . I don’t even need my laptop with me as long as I can use their computer to get on the web.

But me leave the comforts of Outlook? Just the thought of it made me quiver . . . so I decided to conduct a 60 day experiment to see if I could leave my trusty Outlook behind and free myself to truly work the web!

I evaluated the big boys of webmail – Yahoo, Windows Live (formerly Hotmail), and Google’s Gmail. After a painstaking analysis of their various features and options and a few short tests I have decided to go with Yahoo Mail for my experiment. There are a lot of reasons why which I will explain in future posts – but one of the reasons is their new interface which makes the experience of working with it very similar to working with Outlook or any other desktop email program. Also it was important for me to be able to send mail from a number of different email addresses seamlessly so I could consolidate my mail into one program like I did with Outlook. While the other claim to do this they have some shortcomings in this area that Yahoo did not have (as long as I subscribe to their Yahoo! Mail Plus service for $20 a year).

I also like the fact that I can free myself from having to use a smartphone (like my current Treo 650) to access my email being that almost all phones have internet access and Yahoo provides a very usable wap (phone based) interface to access and work with your email. I’m planning on getting a new phone soon and wanted to move to something a bit simpler (my Treo tends to crash a lot and in the end I realized I want my phone to be mostly just that . . . a phone and not try to do everything). I spend enough time troubleshooting my computer – I don’t want to troubleshoot my phone too!

I decided now would be a good time for the test as I will be traveling a lot for the holidays so it would give me a good chance to really put it through it’s paces. So about 3 weeks ago I made the switch (gulp). I have a copy of all my email forwarding to my Yahoo Plus account (while leaving a copy on the mail server that I still have been downloading into Outlook once a week in case after the 60 days I decide to scrap my webmail experiment).

At first my mouse kept hovering over the Outlook icon on my taskbar every time I went to check or send an email but soon I overcame that and a strange feeling has overtaken me. Let’s call it a lightness of being . . . I feel less tied down not having to live in Outlook anymore. Instead of running into my home office to check my email I just use my phone’s web access to log into yahoo and view messages. And guess what? When I delete a message on my phone it’s gone the next time I access Yahoo’s webmail from my laptop. I also have to admit my laptop has been a lot snappier now that I don’t have a big resource hogging program like Outlook running all the time. Most of the time I am just working in my browser (which I always have open anyway).

I’m not fully convinced I am leaving Outlook yet – but so far I am really enjoying the experience! The next week or so when I am visiting family for the holidays will be much more telling. What about my calendar, tasks, and notes you ask? I’ll save that for another post in a few weeks. At that point I’ll share more details about my experience and what tools I am trying in replace of Outlook there – yes they are also web-based!

So what do you think? Are you an Outlook addict? Have any of you made the switch? Post a comment and let me know your thoughts and experiences.

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