One of yesterday’s posts, Virtual Organizations…Or Not, has generated some interesting email, Twitter tweets and DMs. As such, there are a few questions I’d like to ask to further that conversation. Questions I really should have asked in the first post but I didn’t want it to drag on. Feel free to answer and post your thoughts in the comments, via email or via Twitter or FriendFeed (@greggvm).
That should get us going. I can think of several more questions that are pertinent to this conversation but I’ll save those and post them after we see what people have to say here. If there are any questions or suggestions you have, or would like to see asked, please send those on. I’ll post results I get outside of this blog in the next posting on this topic.
I’m going to post my experiences in the first comment (is that allowed?). I’ll be speaking as a virtual worker, which I was in the mid 1990s. I may even post one on what it was like as a supervisor of virtual workers, which I was for almost 15 years. Thanks for sharing your insights!
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I was a virtual worker from late ‘93 through July of ‘94. I loved it. I’m not certain that I was any happier than I would have been in the office but I was definitely more productive. The distractions that occur in an office setting just weren’t an issue. I also have no trouble motivating myself to work so that was never an issue either.
The home office did a pretty good job communicating with me and remember, the tools we had then were no where near as sophisticated as those we have at our disposal today.
Where we did fall down was in that sense of team. That’s why I feel a tool like Socialcast, with Chris Brogan’s enhancements, can really be effective in this area. You could “keep up” with what was going on without being constantly distracted.
I can’t help but think that we’ll see more virtual workers and workspaces not fewer as we move forward. In this always on, almost realtime, 2010 web world that we live in, the need to be in an office just doesn’t seem to be there. The cost savings alone, from both a business and employee standpoint, seem to make this a foregone conclusion to me. What we’ve always called “control freaks” are the only wild card in the equation for me. In companies where those types are in charge, I don’t really see virtual workers prospering.
Just came across this from Lifehacker.
The Serene Workspace http://bit.ly/15WG54
A worthy virtual workspace to be sure!
Gregg,
Great couple of posts on virtual teams. I agree that teams will become more and more geographically dispersed in the future.
Having worked in that environment, collaborating with people in time zones completely out of phase with my own, I realized that with little or no overlapping working hours it was very difficult to get to know someone and without knowing each other it was difficult to be effective.
To create a face-to-face type relationship but with the convenience of email, I created http://www.timzon.com.
It’s a secure visual collaboration solution that enables remote teams to effectively collaborate through recorded conversations.
I would be very interested in your feedback on this solution.
Regards,
Jerome.
Thanks for stopping by Jerome! I headed to timzon.com right now and will be back to continue the conversation…
Wow! What a terrific looking solution. I really like the interface. Very Gmail like obviously so it’s immediately intuitive. How long has this been available? How did it slip past my radar? Are you targeting dev teams primarily? I ran a Windows component dev company in a previous life and they have devs in China, Vietnam and Japan. This would be perfect for them I would think. Much better than Groove and much less resource intensive. But, dev teams aside, this looks like a great solution for any company that has a virtual workforce.
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