Less is more

Twitter 101--Gen Y Teaches Us Twitter: The tutorial, the insights, the Gen Y (recording now on Facebook)

This is the session you shouldn't have missed! But it is okay if you did because every single tip and insight that Jenny Blakeprovided was captured and is available for your to review at your leisure at the "Accomplishing more with less" group on Facebook.

Jenny covered many topics including:

• What is Twitter and how is it beneficial.
• What does someone need to know to get started with Twitter and using it effectively.
• What are the key commands and how to use them (step by step demo).
• How much time is best spent on Twitter?
• What resources are available to help participants learn more.

Finally, feel free to connect with Jenny and myself on Twitter (@jenny_blake and @pierrekhawand) and check out #twitter101webinar to learn more about comments and notes from the webinar.

Join us every Thursday for the complimentary lunch & learn webinars at noon Pacific Time.

Lunch & Learn: Virtual Leadership and Team Effectiveness

Many organizations are distributed across a range of locations and time zones. Managers, employees, and business partners in these dispersed environments face many challenges. In today's session, Barbara Miller, president of Artemis Management Consultants and co-founder of Virtual Connection, joined us to share her insights about virtual teams and management. Drawing from her over thirty years of consulting experience, Barbara provided Lunch & Learn attendees with concrete strategies and techniques to be successful as virtual managers.

Barbara's interactive presentation provided participants with specific techniques they could immediately implement to make a difference in themselves and their teams. She addressed how to lead a team whose members are located around the globe and how to work with business partners or key stakeholders whom one never sees face to face. Barbara also shared the best practices others are currently using to achieve results in a virtual world.

For more information about Barbara and her insights on virtual leadership you can contact her at BMiller@VirtualConnection.biz or call (415) 388-9514. Also learn more about Barbara's 6 module web-based tool, Virtual@Work, which teaches managers and teams how to increase their virtual work effectiveness. Contact Virtual Connection at www.VirtualConnection.biz.

Also, check out Barbara's slides:

Download Virtual Leadership and Team Effectiveness

Join us for our upcoming free lunch & learn session!

What Losing 10% (body weight) Can Do (on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 from 12:00 noon to 12:45 pm Pacific Time)

Register for What Losing 10% (body weight) Can Do

Our lunch & learn program description and registration

Get your brown bag lunch (or snack) ready, and join us online every Thursday at 12:00 noon Pacific Time for 45 minutes to learn the latest and most innovative tips and techniques for individual and team productivity, and get the latest updates about important workplace and productivity issues.

Review program and register for our lunch & learn webinars

Lunch & Learn: Virtual Worlds for Virtual Teams

In March of 2008, our guest speaker Eilif Trondsen, Research and Program Director of the Virtual Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (www.sric-bi.com/vwc), talked about the definition, evolution, and applications of Virtual Words, and provided a lively demonstration of Second Life.
 
Then in September of 2008, guest speaker Chuck Hamilton, Learning and New Media Program Manager of the IBM 3D Internet Team, talked about the IBM@PLAY program. He discussed how playful tools and projects are spreading across their workplace and how Virtual Worlds are an important part of this effort, helping connect people globally across the organization.
 
Last week, Eilif and Chuck both came back to our Lunch & Learn webinar to give us an update on the latest applications and developments in Virtual Worlds. They also shared further insights and examples on how Virtual Worlds are helping virtual teams collaborate and their visions on how Virtual Worlds might shape the future of workplace collaboration.

To find out more about Chuck and Eilif's work you can contact them at chamilto@ca.ibm.com and etrondsen@sric-bi.com.  

Join us for our upcoming free lunch & learn session!

Working together effectively: Using Insights to help teams collaborate (on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 from 12:00 noon to 12:45 pm Pacific Time)

Register for Using Insights to help teams collaborate

Our lunch & learn program description and registration

Get your brown bag lunch (or snack) ready, and join us online every Thursday at 12:00 noon Pacific Time for 45 minutes to learn the latest and most innovative tips and techniques for individual and team productivity, and get the latest updates about important workplace and productivity issues.

Review program and register for our lunch & learn webinars

Upcoming Google Apps Lunch & Learn Webinar

Anyone looking to increase their company's or their own productivity will benefit from People-OnTheGo's Thursday, October 2nd lunch & learn session: Google Apps--working and collaborating from anywhere with productivity evangelist Gus Elliott.

Google Apps, in addition to e-mail and calendar, provide you the ability to create and manage documents and sites. In this session Gus will demonstrate the Google Apps functionality and discuss how it can help remote workshops and virtual teams to better collaborate.

Join us for lunch and to learn more about the topic!

Google Apps—working and collaborating from anywhere (Thursday October 2, 2008 from 12:00 noon to 12:45 pm Pacific Time)

Register for Google Apps lunch & learn webinar

Our lunch & learn program description and registration

Get your brown bag lunch (or snack) ready, and join us online every Thursday at 12:00 noon Pacific Time for 45 minutes to learn the latest and most innovative tips and techniques for individual and team productivity, and get the latest updates about important workplace and productivity issues.

Review program and register for our lunch & learn webinars

Lunch & Learn: Managing Across Time Zones

With increased global competition, organizations need to manage increasingly complex challenges that require extensive collaboration among geographically spread team members. Managing across time zones is about how to pull teams together to achieve companies' objectives while preserving employees' work/life balance. In yesterday's lunch & learn session, Catherine Moore, Director of Business HR at Nokia, shared with us best practices and ways in which teams can leverage technology and work together effectively in a virtual global environment.

Catherine's presentation highlighted the importance of organization and team relations in optimizing company productivity in a virtual global organization. She emphasized the critical role of technology in managing across time zones and gave tips on how to best use virtual tools and effectively manage virtual teams. Catherine also shared her insights on how to set a culture of collaboration and trust while leading virtual teams.

The slides from the session: Managing_across_time_zones.pdf

Join us for our upcoming free lunch & learn session!

Google Apps—working and collaborating from anywhere (on Thursday October 2, 2008 from 12:00 noon to 12:45 pm Pacific Time)

Register for Google Apps

Our lunch & learn program description and registration

Get your brown bag lunch (or snack) ready, and join us online every Thursday at 12:00 noon Pacific Time for 45 minutes to learn the latest and most innovative tips and techniques for individual and team productivity, and get the latest updates about important workplace and productivity issues.

Review program and register for our lunch & learn webinars

Lunch & Learn: IBM@PLAY: Learning that work and play are complementary

For those who have been through our Accomplishing-more-with-less workshop, you know that we use “play” as a way to get energized, invigorated, and ready to tackle important challenges. We also use play to unleash creativity and to help build team spirit. Even people who have worked with each other for years, say they learned much more about their colleagues as a result of the play activities in this workshop.

Our lunch & learn session today dealt exactly with this topic (how work and play are compimentary) and was presented by Chuck Hamilton, Learning and New Media Program Manager of the IBM 3D Internet Team. When I met Chuck and heard his presentation, and learned about his effort at IBM and the innovations that he has been leading in this field, I thought this would be the perfect topic for our productivity theme. With his busy schedule, traveling around the world and educating business leaders about these issues, I wasn’t sure we were going to get him, but luckily we did, and he shared with us today plenty of insights on this topic.

Today's Session description & slides

Recent research is pointing out that play is a vital activity that can help us learn, get engaged and energized, better manage stress, increase productivity, and connect people in ways they might not otherwise have been able to do. While incorporating play in team building events seems to have gained some acceptance, play in today's work environment is still a controversial activity in most cultures. In this webinar, we will hear from Chuck Hamilton, Learning and New Media Program Manager of the IBM 3D Internet Team, regarding the IBM@PLAY program and how playful tools and projects are spreading across their workplace.

Download ibm_at_play.pdf

Our upcoming session description and registration

"Lunch & Learn: Social Networking in Action" on Thursday September 18 at 12:00 noon Pacific Time.

Social networks are communities of people who share interests and activities and are interested in exploring these interests and activities with others. Social networking has become a phenomenon and went beyond the social aspect to become an integral part of business, especially as the lines between personal and business lives continues to blur.

In this session, our guest speaker Jason Alba, CEO and creator of JibberJobber.com, author of “I’m on LinkedIn – Now What???” and co-author of “I’m on Facebook – Now What???”, will start with an overview of social networking, and continues to explore its business applications, and the reasons why business professionals and businesses of all sizes needs to get engaged in this field. Jason will also compare some of the popular platforms and include live demonstrations and useful tips.

Register for Social Networking in Action

Our lunch & learn program description and registration

Get your brown bag lunch (or snack) ready, and join us online every Thursday at 12:00 noon Pacific Time for 45 minutes to learn the latest and most innovative tips and techniques for individual and team productivity, and get the latest updates about important workplace and productivity issues.

Review program and register for our lunch & learn webinars

Lunch & Learn Webinar on "Virtual Worlds and Second Life" with guest speaker Eilif Trondsen from SRI Consulting Business Intelligence

This week's complimentary lunch & learn webinar was titled: "Virtual Worlds and Second Life" (see detailed description below). In this webinar Eilif Trondsen, Ph.D. (Research and Program Director, Virtual Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning (VWC), at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI)) presented about the latest innovations in Virtual Worlds and their impact on business and outlook for the futur, as well as demonstrated some interesting destinations and applications in Second Life, one of the most popular Virtual World platforms.

Here are some additional highlights from the lunch & learn webinar, including the slides that you can download, and some helpful announcements and links:

- Download lunch_and_learn_virtual_worlds_and_second_life.pdf

- The next "Accompishing more in less time, less effort, and less stress" workshop on March 27 in San Francisco.

- The next lunch & learn webinar: "Social networking in action" will be held next Thursday March 20 at 12:00 pm PST.

- Session Description from this week:

You may have heard about Virtual Words, or more specifically about Second Life (one of the popular Virtual Words platforms), or you may have already experimented with them, and you may be wondering about their applications and impact on your business in the future. In this lunch & learn webinar, our guest speaker Eilif Trondsen, the Research and Program Director of the Virtual Worlds Consortium for Innovation and Learning at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (www.sric-bi.com/vwc) in Menlo Park, will talk about the definition, evolution, and applications of Virtual Words, and provide a lively demonstration of Second Life.

Sign up for the special "collaboration" bundle--Effective meetings, blogs, wikis, SharePoint ($35.00 special)

The collaboration bundle in March 2008 includes the three workshops listed below, and can be purchased online at:

-------------> Register online now ($35 special expires on 3/10)

• Workshop 1: Microsoft SharePoint Techniques (Tuesday March 11, 2008 from 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM PST)
• Workshop 2: Effective Meetings--Offline & Online (Tuesday March 18, 2008 from 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM PST)
• Workshop 3: Emerging Collaboration Technologies--blog, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint (Wednesday March 26, 2008 from 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST)

They are made available for a nominal registration fee of $35.00 (this includes all three workshops). This is a special one time offer and seats are limited. You can order up to 10 seats.

Once you place your order, and receive the confirmation e-mail, please forward the confirmation e-mail you receive to training@people-onthego.com indicating which of the three workshops you would like to attend, and also the names and e-mails of the additional participants, and which workshops each participant would like to attend--if you order more than one seat. As a result, you and the other participants will each receive their individual login information for the desired workshops (for the web and phone conference).

-------------> Register online now ($35.00 special expires on 3/10)

PS: Please note that these workshops are also availale as corporate workshops. Feel free to e-mail us at training@people-onthego.com if you have questions, or if you would like to discuss bringing the workshops to your team.

We look forward to your participation!

People, process, and technology, as the formula for success for collaboration

As we continue to get deeper into the collaboration topic at People-OnTheGo, we continue to release workshops and webinars about the topic (see list below), and we continue to keep an eye on the latest best practices and on what the thought leaders in this area are saying.

What caught my attention last week at a Silicon Valley event is "Collaboration 2.0" which is a recenly published book about "technology and best practices for successful collaboration in a Web 2.0 World" by David Coleman & Stewart Levine--published by HappyAbout.info

The book is full of valuable insights into the collaboration space, and I am likely to post some addtional information and reviews about it. For now, what caught my attention is the concept of "People, Process, and Technology", and how these three factors are critical to the success of any collaboration effort, especially when virtual teams are concerned. It is usually the "people" factor that is not paid attention to, especially when the collaboration initiative is led by technologists alone, which usually ends up being the cause for the failure of technology deployments.

I see this excitement to dive right into the technology and process, without as much attention to the people factor, among the various audiences that I talk to about collaboration technologies such as blogs, wikis, and Microsoft SharePoint. As part of our effort in educating technology and business leaders about the "people" factor, we spend a lot of time getting the "people" to agree on the purpose of a blog or wiki for instance, and only when an agreement is reached, we get to the technology and process part, at which point things fall into place.

In Collaboration 2.0, David and Steward emphasize that the importance of the "agreement" which is the critical part, and without which collaboration is lacking and even unproductive.

For more information about the related People-OnTheGo workshops, please visit:

- "Emerging Collaboration Technologies: Blogs, Wikis, and SharePoint"

- "Effective meetings: online and offline"

- "Microsoft SharePoint Techniques"