The 10 Commandments of Video Calls

Video calls – If you work from home then you won’t be able to avoid them, if you work (anywhere) you probably won’t be able to avoid them for much longer. We all have to get our head round how to make effective video calls.

Chris Lee has written his top 10 tips when it comes to making video calls. Chris is studying for a BA in Music, and spends what little spare time he has musing about everything from philosophy, to economics, to developments in technology. This post was inspired by a recent, awkward Google+ Hangouts conversation, and the subsequent thoughts about how to get the most out of video conversations. He maintains a blog (somewhat sporadically) at —(p)latitudes.

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With the recent advent of Skype, Google+ Hangouts, and business video conferencing¸ the way we communicate with friends, family, and even business partners around the world is changing. Though highly beneficial mediums (no travel expenses, access to local resources, ability to include others in the conversation, and so on), they can take a bit of getting used to for the inexperienced user.

I’ve drafted up “10 Commandments of video calls”, which will hopefully lead to a smooth video call, regardless of the context. Disclaimer: Given the modern subject matter, I’ve dispensed with the ‘thou shalts’ and ‘thou shalt nots’: apologies if this makes the commandments seem less authentic!

1. Give your equipment a test-run before the conference

There’s nothing worse than getting caught off-guard by technology and software you’re not familiar with, or by a connectivity problem. To make sure this doesn’t happen, have a practice run in which you can get used to setting up and using your microphone, monitor, and headsets, and ensure you check all devices are connected and that the internet connection is working correctly before starting the call.

It can sometimes seem more complicated than it is!

2. Dress appropriately for the occasion

If you’re preparing for a business based video conference, the expectation of what you should wear will probably be similar to a face-to-face business meeting. This means smart, clean business attire. Creases still show up over webcam! If you’re preparing for a more casual call with friends or family, your options are less restrictive, although remembers it’s unlikely anyone wants to see you in just your underwear!

3. Try to sit still

A webcam will amplify movement and sound made by participants on both ends and lag in the video stream may cause the screen to freeze. The best way to avoid becoming a messy blur is to remain as still as possible during the call, and ensure the lighting is optimal.

4. Optimise the lighting and environment

Talking to an ill-defined shape is less appealing than talking with the well-defined visage of a friend / family member / business contact. Ensuring the lighting is correct will prevent the former, and will improve the quality of the whole conversation. Some good tips to achieve optimal lighting include not having a window or bright light in shot, and not having your face lit from below (unless you want to look like a character from a horror film).

5. Speak clearly!

Bandwidth discrepancies between participants may create a delay in video and audio on one or both sides of the conversation; allow for this when waiting for a response. If you don’t receive a response straight away it’s more likely that a short delay is occurring somewhere in the connection than your remark has been ignored.

6. Keep it short and sweet

As with a face-to-face conversation, long sessions without a break can grow boring and it’s likely that participants on both sides will become distracted. Regular breaks and a conversation that’s as short and focused as possible are a great way to avoid this pitfall. A good way to gauge this is how frequently awkward silences occur (and how awkward they are).

Keep an eye on the time!

7. Position yourself well

Sitting around three feet from the webcam portrays a feeling of interest on your part, while also maintaining the sense of personal space (still a factor to consider despite the fact participants may be hundreds or even thousands of miles from each other!) While your friends and family may be more interested in your appearance than business partners, a close up view of your face filling up their screen may be off-putting.

8. Maintain eye contact

As has been mentioned previously, rules of face-to-face conversation still apply; keep eye contact during the conversation. This means looking at the webcam rather than the monitor image, and while this may feel unusual at first, you will become accustomed to it quickly.

9. Increase font size for on-screen conversation

Any on-screen text used to compliment the video conversation should be of an appropriate font size to avoid tiring the eyes of the reader.

10. Check comprehension during the conversation

Make sure everyone is following the conversation while it is in progress. Video calling technology is not yet a perfect system and sometimes bugs in the call can cause participants to miss part of what has been said. Answer questions and address any concerns that may arise in order to avoid this causing problems.

Staying Productive at Home

It’s always brilliant to hear from people who read the blog, stops me from thinking that I’m speaking into a vacuum – not that I’d mind – I spend most of my time out of work doing it 😉

Amar Patel contacted me to say that he’d recently started working from home and was increasingly working on the road. He’d been apprehensive about moving away from the office and had found my blog useful when trying to ‘normalise’ himself with the new way of working. He wanted to share some tips that he’s found had really worked for him.

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I am a recruitment consultant. This essentially means that I played matchmaker between prospective candidates and financial companies, in reality this meant sorting through thousands and thousands of C.V.s. Recently, I was offered a promotion, which meant that instead of combing through resumes I would be conducting screening interviews for our international offices, this came with the added bonus of the chance to work from home.

After making the daily commute to the office for over 7 years to my ‘wonderful job’ as a recruitment consultant, I was offered a promotion which came with the added bonus of the chance to work from home.

Working from home can be hard, especially if you are used to the ‘norms’ of office life. At first the move from an office to your home can be daunting, as you are by yourself, however, it doesn’t always have to be so bad, following the tips below you should be able to keep productive and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to spend time the train/tube/bus/car commute, and ultimately spend more time with the family.

Amar's Home Office

1. Desk and Chair.
   Sounds obvious but you need a good desk and chair. Working from home affords you the opportunity to have a desk and chair that you want and will be able to sit at for 8 hours a day. By using online auction sites in partnership with shipping sites you can find cheap courier services, Therefore, making finding that perfect desk at a cheap price and shipping it your home office, easy and at a very affordable price
2. Define your spaces.
   Separate work from home. Have a room devoted to working. Don’t just work where you happen to be. Set aside some space, preferably a room (it doesn’t have to be a large space) to be your workspace. That way, when you enter it, you know consciously what you’re there to do: and that’s to work. It changes your state of mind from “I’m at home” to “I’m at work”.
3. Get showered and dressed.
   It’s all too tempting to slob about in pyjamas all day without having a shower or getting properly dressed but this will only leave you feeling sluggish and lazy. Dress like you’re going to work and you’ll feel professional and ready for the working day.
4. Take a break! Having all that quiet time to get your head stuck into some serious work is great, but your body, eyes and mind need a rest several times during the day. Take a walk outside; make a call or a cup of coffee, if the kids are at home, spend some time with them. Especially if you are on the PC
5. Set Deadlines.
   Ever wonder why you’re mega productive when facing a tight deadline, while a simple task can take hours to complete. You might chalk this up to working well under pressure, but it could also be Parkinson’s Law which basically states that a task will expand to fill the time you can give it. Combat this phenomenon by imposing your own deadlines for specific tasks. These can be as complicated as finishing a proposal or as simple as responding to a client email.
6. Get the right tech.
   Most importantly if you are working from home, you need to make sure you have the right technology, both in terms of hardware and software. If you are connecting to your corporate network, this means setting up a VPN network, which can be difficult. It might be wise to take the machine you will be using at home to your I.T. department and get it properly set-up. You also need to make sure that you are easily reachable, so ensuring your internet connection can handle video-conferencing is essential.

Amar Patel

Staying Connected in a Big Remote Worker World

As remote working becomes more usual I’ve started to notice a few more people like me: people who work from home or outside the office and who blog about their experiences. One such person is Doug Campbell who shares his thoughts on the Remote Worker Daily blog. You can follow Doug on Twitter at @dailyremotework or email him at remoteworkerdaily@gmail.com.

Doug has written a guest blog post on Staying Connected in a Big Remote Worker World – Family and Friends versus Work and Business – My Approach.

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My name is Doug Campbell. In addition to writing for my blog, Remote Worker Daily, which I write remotely and to which I have posted to from around the world, I work a full time job as a technology consultant in the metro Washington, DC area where I work remotely part of the week.

My current client is fully remote, located in three separate cities across the United States. In my spare time, I am a part-time freelance consultant in the Enterprise Document Management space, which is also fully remote. My current freelance client is located in the UK.

In past jobs, I have worked with remote teams in India, Europe, and Canada on software development projects. I have also worked longer term fully remote while on vacation in Canada and South America.
I have been involved in some level or degree of remote work for almost 14 years.

The first challenge is staying connected.

As you can imagine, staying connected with all of these different teams in different countries, cultures, and time zones has provided an interesting challenge, and I haven’t even mentioned my family, located a thousand miles away.
So how do I stay connected in this big remote worker world? I have one approach for work and business, and a different approach for family and friends.

The second challenge is effectively drawing the line to keep family and friends separate from work and business.

Let’s start the discussion of what I call the “firewall to my personal life”. I have separate approaches to work and business connectedness than I do to family and friends for several reasons;

1. Privacy – I don’t necessarily share my weekend photos from the pub with my clients.
2. Safety – As Remote Worker Daily grows, so does the possibility of running into the occasional weirdo, stalker, angry reader, or identity thief.
3. Peace of mind – I also like to keep work and business separate from friends and family.

I find this works well for me, but some people effectively mix work and pleasure.

How I stay connected with work and business

1. Dell laptop – for all writing and work related software.
2. Apple iPhone 4S – I use this phone for everything from internet browsing to video-conference to email to phone calls.
3. LinkedIn – keep an extensive professional network.
4. Facebook – a separate account for Remote Worker Daily.
5. Email – a separate account for Remote Worker Daily, remoteworkerdaily@gmail.com
6. Twitter – used for Remoter Worker Daily @dailyremotework
7. GoToMeeting – affordable and reliable video conferencing.

Quick Tips:

1. Set expectations with employers, colleagues and clients on agreed upon work days and times, preferred communication channels, and frequency of communication.
2. Cheap isn’t always better, make sure you have a good quality, reliable connection.
3. Keep it professional. It’s easy to accidentally let your guard down when working at home in your pajamas.

How I stay connected with family and friends

I have been fully utilizing technology to cost-effectively keep in touch with friends and family (who are currently spread out in Canada and South America) whether I am home in the United States, travelling for fun, or vacationing. I have always been able to find free or affordable internet access wherever I travel.

The list of technology and tools that works well for me:

1. Dell laptop – for all writing and work related software.
2. Apple iPhone 4S – I use this phone for everything from internet browsing to video-conference to email to phone calls.
3. Skype – I regularly video-conference with family and friends.
4. Vonage – for home telephone and long distance. They have a very affordable world plan. I also use their iPhone application.
5. Facebook – my personal account, I regularly update throughout the day.
6. Twitter – My personal account.
7. Email – Personal email account.

Quick Tips:

1. Be sensitive to time zones. I learned this the hard way when I accidentally called my brother at 3 AM in his local time from China, which was an 11 hour time difference.
2. Be sensitive to technology preferences. Skype video-conferencing works great with my brother, but it has to be a telephone call with my parents.
3. If you wouldn’t want your boss, mother, and priest to see it, don’t send it via Twitter or post it publically on Facebook. And yes, many employers and recruiters do research employees or future employee’s public social media profiles.

Conclusion

Keeping connected with work and business, and family and friends should be guided first and foremost by common sense, and secondly by putting yourself in their shoes before acting.

A Brief Introduction to 4G Mobile Broadband

It feels like I’ve only just got my head round 3G (3rd generation mobile telecommunications) when suddenly 4G is here.

I haven’t a clue what it is, luckily Ruben Corbo has written a really useful guest blog post for us explaining the ins and outs.

Ruben is a technical writer for the web site Broadband Expert where you can find internet service providers in your area and compare prices on the best mobile broadband deals.

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Lately, a lot of mobile phone companies have been advertising a new 4g network. Few people seem to understand, though, what this technology is, and why it is such an asset for mobile phone usage. Technology is developing at rapid speeds these days, so to stay on the cutting edge, it’s important to know what the benefits of 4g are, and how they can work for both business and individual consumers.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Users: imagineWiMax and LGEPR

In a nutshell, 4g mobile broadband will enable mobile phones to act as efficiently and effectively as laptop computers, while remaining wireless. This will allow mobile phone users to access the full internet as they would on a computer without any decrease in speed or dropping any data. The 4g network will be the fastest mobile broadband network to date.

The technology behind the 4g network has not been defined, although experts say it will either be WiMax or LTE. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have either done trials using LTE, or are anticipating trials in the next year. Sprint, is already unveiling the new 4g network in major cities such as Atlanta, New York and Boston. Basically, the difference in these networks has to do with how data is transferred. WiMax users a broadband network over a wireless connection. LTE, on the other hand, transfers data using IP connections. Basically, it will create an IP address for every mobile device. The big advantage to this kind of network is that it can work with preexisting architectures such as 3g whereas WiMax will force a restructuring of mobile communication networks.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Users: osde8info and The Consumerist

No matter the type of technology used, the advantage to the mobile user will be the same. Data transfer to and from the internet will become almost limitless. Users will be able to do the same things on their mobile devices that they can do on their computers at home including updating blogs and uploading videos. The current technology makes these kinds of tasks cumbersome or even expensive since it can use so much of the users data transfer minutes. With the 4g technology, users will most likely see many new broadband deals that will mean lower prices and more utility.

Mobile applications will also benefit from the 4g network. Many apps that are being created are too robust for the current 3g network. They are either slow to download and run, or are totally unusable. With 4g technology and its increased data transfer rates, these applications will be able to run to their full potential. Again, this benefit will most likely be passed on to the consumer as mobile communication companies offer better and better broadband deals consumers that will use these applications.

Companies such as Motorola and Apple are beginning to roll out devices that are capable of using the 4g network, with many communication companies anticipating using it by the end of 2011. These devices are hotly anticipated and there are many rumors as to the release date, cost and availability. One thing is certain, though, as technology moves forward and becomes bigger and faster, the consumer will find more and more broadband deals to entice them to use it for business as well as personal use.

Create a “Virtual Presence” at Work with Skype and VNC

I’ve talked about telepresence/virtual presence before on this blog. Both terms refer primarily to use of technologies that allow “a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location” (Wikipedia). Jonathon Wilson is a software engineer in Austin, TX, USA and has created his own virtual presence set up. He’s been kind enough to write up the details and share them with Ramblings.

Jonathon creates video piano lessons in his spare time and more information is available on him at www.groovewindow.com. You can also email him at jonathon@groovewindow.com.

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As most remote workers know, there is more than one way to work remotely. Combining technologies in a way that fits the working environment is part of making the arrangement work. Before describing what I ended up using, here is a quick overview of the dynamics of my job.

The Work Environment
I work for the research and development group in a large internet content company. My managers consist of a taskmaster, a product market researcher and a traditional marketer.

My coworkers include software engineers, graphic designers and writers. We’re usually working on prototypes, data analysis, and presentation materials demonstrating our findings.

I work in a cluster of cubes with other software engineers. There is a fair bit of “cube chatter” as the engineers ask questions and discuss solutions for new projects. The managers generally come over to our cube cluster to discuss what they need: The task master will discuss priority changes and status. Our marketing manager comes to us with data requests for inclusion in her materials, and the market researcher comes over for technical questions and idea sounding.

It’s fairly chaotic, with frequent changes in priorities, and focus shifts. Things that were critical yesterday will often take a back-burner to today’s new requests. Workers and managers alike are stretched pretty thin, and struggle to meet changing deadlines.

The group has a flexible mindset, and workers are free to set their own hours and work from home if needed as long as work is getting done. That being said, nearly all of the communication happens in the physical space around my cluster of cubes, and people who are not physically present are generally omitted from the conversations. Instant messaging, email and phone calls are used sometimes to reach out to people who are not on site, but people who aren’t in the office generally miss a lot.

I only work remotely about half of the time, so I have a real cube in the office which is right in the middle of things.

The Remote Solution

The chaos of my group means that people don’t have time to change their existing habits or learn new technologies simply to facilitate remote workers.

I strongly feel that the person working remotely owns the responsibility to make it work. I wanted a solution which would let my coworkers and managers interact with me the same way, regardless of whether I was in the office. Ideally, I would be the only one making changes to the way I work.

I created an additional work Skype account and log into it from my work computer, which has a high-quality webcam. That work account only has one contact: my other Skype account, and it is configured to auto-answer with video whenever I call.

On the days I work remotely, I “call myself” in my work cube, and stay connected as long as I’m working. When I go to lunch or run errands, I disconnect, and call back once I’m “back in the office.”

This allows my entire team to continue to work with me just as they always have. They can glance at my cube to see if I’m available or not, and I’m able to hear and contribute to informal conversations. Others can visit me in my cube regardless of whether I’m physically there, or “virtually” there.

The position of my home Skype window is actually quite important. It’s in the lower-left corner of my right-monitor, which places it directly behind my camera (see the “Home Setup” picture above). This lets people interacting with me feel like I’m making eye contact with them because I’m looking very near to the camera while I’m conversing.

I also use a tool called VNC to broadcast my home computer screen to my work screen. This way, people can look at my cube to not only see my face, but also see what I’m working on. I can show other engineers code, and review priority lists with managers just as if I were there showing them files on my work computer. Some people are concerned about security with VNC. However, I make this connection using an encrypted tunnel to my work computer, which I can only make when I’m connected to my work’s virtual private network.

There’s an industry term for this remote approach: “Virtual Presence” and there are a several commercially-available solutions. I’ve seen interesting videos of people attaching monitors and cameras to robots so that they could physically move around at work.

The Good Things

I’ve been working this way for over a year now, and for most day-to-day work, it’s almost as good as being there. Specifically, I hear all of the normal communication, and people are completely comfortable walking up to my cube and talking with me. It’s amazing how valuable it is to be able to hear the informal cube conversations. In my case, much more information passes this way than traditional meetings.

It’s completely obvious to the other people in my office when I’m “at work” and what I’m working on. All of those nagging little questions that managers have about remote workers — wondering if they’re actually working — are completely non-issues with me. They glance at my cube (just as they would if I were physically present) and see whether I’m there or not, and can see what’s on my screen if they’re interested.

This approach is essentially free, aside from normal internet bandwidth and the purchase of two relatively inexpensive webcams (around $80 USD a piece these days). While I currently use dual monitors at both work and home, I’ve done this with one monitor on both ends without any problems.

The fact that my coworkers don’t have to make any changes is a huge positive in this situation. It removes the struggle that comes with “getting people on board.”

The Bad Things

Standard meetings (somewhere other than my cube cluster) are still problematic. When I’m remote, I have to do the normal dial-in to an audio conference with all of its inherent problems. Thankfully, my team doesn’t have many sit-down meetings, so I generally choose my remote days for days without meetings. This could be remedied by using a dedicated netbook for my virtual presence, which someone could just “bring to the meeting” and return once it’s over.

Technical issues are occasionally problematic. Network issues at home shut me down completely. If my work setup gets flummoxed, it’s a bit of a pain to connect to my work machine in order to straighten it out. In some cases, the situation cannot be remedied remotely, and I need coworkers to help sort things out on the work computer. In general, these are infrequent and solvable, but they’re still annoying when they happen.

Working this way has a time commitment similar to actually being in the office. Some people work remotely specifically because they need more flexibility all day long, and don’t want to be tethered to their computer. For those people, this solution will be frustrating. Personally, I like it because it helps the rest of my team easily see that I’m working, and it firmly defines when I’m working from home and when I’m not. This improves my family life, because it’s more clear for everyone where the work/home lines are drawn.

Although this solution doesn’t require my coworkers to make any changes, this is also a drawback, because they don’t learn about other possibilities. For example, If more of my coworkers were on Skype, it would be much easier to have a conversation with them without forcing them to walk over to my cube.

Adapting to your Situation

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, this solution is custom tailored to my work environment. The chances that it will exactly fit yours are close to zero. Of course, that will be true for nearly any remote working solution. Every environment is different and having a number of tricks in your tool chest can help you be more successful by combining different techniques.

Given the low-cost, this approach could be used for shorter sessions. Setting up “office hours” for a couple hours each day could help connect you to your team without requiring you to be connected all day long.

It doesn’t require an entire cube or dedicated office. We temporarily setup a part-time remote worker by simply giving him a station on the corner of someone else’s desk. It worked fine, without requiring much space.

Video Conferencing Hints and Tips

Use good lighting. Despite advances in webcam technology, every camera relies on good light to create a reasonable picture. When I work remotely, I use a bright work light (with a diffused screen) to light my home space better. I want my coworkers to easily see me, and I’m careful to cover any windows behind me and create a nicely lit working space.

Look at the camera. I place my home camera in front of the monitor I use, with the view of my work office in a window directly behind and above the camera. This allows me to essentially have eye-contact with the people I’m talking to. It’s a subtle thing, but it really helps people feel more “normal” when you appear to be looking them in the eye when you speak to them.

In Summary

I hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of using Skype and VNC to create a “virtual presence” at work. I’m always happy to talk with other remote workers, so if you have any specific questions, feel free to contact me. Hopefully you can adapt these techniques in appropriate situations to make your remote working a more successful experience!

Wide Teams: A sustainable vision for creative work

A lot of us work in teams, but these teams are not necessarily people from our own organisation or people who are based at the same geographic location.

Avdi Grimm taken by REP3 ©2010

Virtual or Wide Teams require a different type of handling from a team that see each other most days.

One expert in this area is Avdi Grimm, creator of Wide Teams. Avdi published a post on my work on his blog last week and I’m lucky enough to be able to publish a post here on his experiences.

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For decades, workers in the US have been satellites of their jobs. If we are tech workers, we move to one of the big tech hubs like San Francisco or Seattle in order to find work in the first place. Then, if the company decides to open a new plant, or consolidate operations, we move where they tell us to go. Community, if we can find it, is a temporary byproduct; a transient perk. We get used to seeing extended family only once a year. The notion of a “sense of place” is all but forgotten.

This isn’t the life I wanted for myself and my family. I wanted to choose where we lived based on something other than what software companies were nearby. I wanted to be part of a long-lived community, while still having the freedom to take long trips from time to time.

I realized years ago that in order to make this dream a reality, I would have to become a remote worker. As a first step, I found an employer that was willing to let me telecommute for part of the week. That was a big step, and enabled me to start learning the skills necessary to work productively with a remote team. After that company, I joined a startup that was completely distributed. And after a year with them, I moved on to be a freelance software developer working exclusively with geographically distributed teams.

As I made this journey from traditional commuting to remote work, I realized that there were a lot of other knowledge workers in the same boat as me. There was a nascent movement towards remote work and dispersed teams, but everyone was for the most part feeling their own way: there was no central forum for discussing the practices and adjustments necessary to make distributed teams work. I started dreaming of a central place where remote workers could share lessons learned and compare notes.

In June 2010, I launched Wide Teams – a blog and podcast for dispersed teams and remote workers. I hoped that with this site I could begin to form a community around remote work, where we could discuss the tools, techniques, and practices that make for effective distributed teams.

In order to kick the site off with more than just my own observations, I started off by interviewing people in software development community, particularly the Ruby on Rails web development community, who were working in distributed teams. I was immediately blown away by the feedback I got. Everyone I talked to was so eager to talk about their experience with remote work! It was as if they had been saving up for months or years to share their thoughts on this topic. Everyone I spoke to was very excited to give their perspective and tell of their experiences, and eager to hear about how other distributed teams were operating. Clearly, I had hit a nerve!

Since then, I’ve interviewed everyone from developers to CEOs to nonprofit community managers about their work with remote teams. I’ve learned that there are many reasons to form a distributed team, including:

• Being able to find the perfect job candidate by widening the net to include people outside one metropolitan area.
• Holding down costs by hiring team members who live in areas where the cost of living is lower.
• Maintaining a presence in multiple time zones.
• Making jobs available to people who would otherwise be unable to work, such as stay-at-home parents or people with disabilities.
• Forming low-overhead startups by holding off on buying a brick-and-mortar office and instead working entirely from home.
• Eliminating the environmental impact associated with a daily commute.
• …and many other reasons.

The people I’ve talked to have shared a wealth of insights into how to make dispersed teams work well. I could never share all the tips I’ve learned in one article (for that you’ll just have to subscribe to the blog!) but a few lessons that stand out include:

• Making sure your team members meet up in person at least a couple of times a year.
• Maintaining a level playing field for both remote and in-office workers – for instance, by making sure everyone uses the same communications tools, even if they are in the same room with each other.
• Setting aside time for culture-building activities, even if they don’t contribute directly to the bottom line.

Those are just a few examples of the lessons I’ve learned both firsthand and from the remote team members I’ve interviewed.

Almost six months into this adventure of writing and podcasting about dispersed teams, one thing is clear: remote work is here to stay. More and more companies are embracing this model, and reaping the benefits. There are unique challenges associated with distributed teams, but none of them are insurmountable. The more we can share our experiences, on sites such as this one, the more we enable a future wherein the work can come to the worker instead of vice-versa.

Blowing my Own Trumpet!

I’ve had a guest blog post published on the Wide teams blog. The post is really just an introductory piece about me and my work in this area, though I do spend a little time speculating about the future.

Wide Teams is a blog and podcast series about geographically dispersed teams, with an emphasis on software development teams. It covers all aspects of remote collaboration, including how to get started, interviews with active practitioners, tool reviews etc. It is primarily authored by Avdi Grimm, and I will be printing a reciprocal guest blog post by Avdi very soon!

How Green is my Videoconference?

Eh? Surely all videoconferencing is green? Well it seems one video conference can be greener than another. Geoff Constable, Welsh Video Network Support Officer working on the How Green Was My Videoconference? JISC Project, tells us more.

Geoff can be followed on Twitter at gardeninggeoff.

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I have been working in supporting and researching videoconferencing for about fifteen years now. Since 2001 I have been working for the Welsh Video Network. With its main base in Swansea, South Wales, and additional workers at Aberystwyth (Mid-Wales) and Bangor (North Wales) the WVN installs and supports much of the public sector videoconferencing in Wales. As well as installing equipment, replacing and fixing any broken parts, and looking after the networking side of things; the WVN also has a ‘Learning and Teaching’ section of four part-time workers who give users training, put on events and generally raise awareness of videoconferencing.

Over the last couple of years my role has evolved so that I have done a lot of work for the Video Technologies Advisory Service. This is a loose group of experts who offer support to videoconferencers everywhere ( – my spellchecker is telling me there is no such thing, but I know otherwise!) by publishing independent evaluations of equipment and offering tailored advice to individuals and organisations having equipment and/or network problems. Both organisations offer independent and unbiased advice which is more difficult to come by where there is a financial interest.

I have noticed in recent years that videoconferencing equipment makers have been keen to extol the green credentials of videoconferencing, and in general, the technology has been promoted as being planet-friendly. But many of the ‘measurements’ of just how planet-friendly out there are examples from manufacturers and resellers themselves. There seemed to be an absence of empirical, academic evidence for the trumpeting of videoconferencing as a green solution.

This is how the project that I am currently working on: How Green Was My Videoconference? came to be. Sponsored by the JISC’s Greening ICT Programme, the project is looking at the carbon footprint of videoconferencing, including the lifecycle impact of the equipment itself, as well as the power consumed by the equipment, to try to arrive at a carbon cost of a videoconference. It is looking closely at particular videoconferences, and analysing the savings that have been made in time, money and emissions by not travelling.

The project has a close relationship with a JANET-UK/Suste-IT project: Good Campus, which is trying to raise the usage of videoconferencing and looking at the barriers to videoconferencing, and what makes people persist in travelling. The two projects are jointly staging events for travel managers at colleges and universities – and the next one will be in Wales on the 2nd February 2011.

I am also working with professional groups and projects in Wales to try to hand-hold them through a process of moving away from travel and using videoconferencing more frequently. Some of this is documented on the project web site and also on the YouTube channel.

Conference Suite

One group that I have been working with recently is the Women’s Universities Mentoring Scheme. This group “aims to promote and facilitate professional development for women working in Welsh universities by setting up inter-university mentoring partnerships. The WUMS has been funded by HEFCW to help support women working in HEIs in Wales into more senior academic and managerial positions. Under this all-Wales scheme, mentees receive encouragement, support and advice from a more experienced colleague to help realise potential and fulfil career aspirations.”

Until quite recently the Steering Group met up physically at a location somewhere in Wales, everybody drove to that location, taking the best part of a day out of their working lives. People who had family commitments might have held back from committing to involvement in the Steering Group because of childcare issues. If you have a two hour drive at the start and end of the day as well as a lengthy meeting in the middle of the two drives, you might not want to commit to this if there is the added stress of arranging child-care or being back in time to pick the kids up from school. Traditionally (whether rightly or wrongly), even in two parent families, a lot of childcare arrangements fall to the woman, and I hadn’t previously thought of videoconferencing being an enabler of equality in the workplace. But when you replace that two hour drive at the top and bottom of the day with a five minute, fifty yard stroll to the videoconferencing room, suddenly the stresses of family commitments are no longer there, which frees people up to commit to more meetings and activities that would previously eaten into family time..

Apart from the Steering Group, the mentors and mentees either travelled to or from mentoring sessions around Wales (and by the way, a return trip from Aberystwyth to Cardiff takes two hours and releases 76kg of CO2 into the atmosphere, given a 1.4 litre car!). They also used the telephone which obviously saves time and travel and – again, obviously, but most importantly – does not allow you to see your colleague, or in this case, mentor/mentee. Visual communication is a very important part of how we communicate and my personal opinion after years of using the medium is that it allows for more informality and playfulness than a telephone does. Because you can’t see the other person a telephone (like text communication) is more open to misinterpretation and hence formality and occasionally awkwardness as it takes longer to get to know people and relax with them.

I asked one of the mentees in the scheme to put down some thoughts on being mentored over videoconference and her reply makes for interesting reading:

I really have found video conferencing as part of WUMS beneficial to me. I am a busy Careers Adviser and working mum and I really value time and don’t like to travel if I can help it, so knowing that I can just book it and pop downstairs to our VC suite 10 minutes before the arranged start is a real time-saving element to the programme. It’s also saving our department money in travel fees at a time when budgets are being squeezed.

When my mentor suggested it I was initially apprehensive, but only from the point of view of the question ‘what happens if something goes wrong/ it breaks down mid-conference?’, as I have experienced this before but not while I have been on my own. However, then I thought about it logically and pre-programmed our technician’s number into my phone, and my mentor has my mobile number too! I’ve done video conferencing before in a previous job and it’s a great way of sharing information and discussing issues without having the hassle of travel. The one thing I’d say is that you quickly have to get over feeling ‘self-conscious’ if seeing yourself on a screen bothers you.

The conferencing I’ve done with my mentor has been really positive. We’ve been able to get to know each other, discuss things and share experiences of working and management almost as if we’re having a face-to-face conversation. I’d certainly recommend it for others to give it a go.

…So the How green was my videoconference? project continues and seems to encompass these subjective and revealing moments, right though to objective measurement in a lab with electrical measuring equipment (I have learnt a lot about watts and amps during the last year!). Which reminds me, I must get back to seeing how much CO2 the monitor I am testing has used while I’ve been typing this…

I hope you have found this interesting, if so, check out project progress at the addresses above – and remember videoconferencing saves greenhouse gas emissions, time and money – and it makes you more efficient and your kids happier!

Why an online conference?

On Monday I published a post about the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference which will take place in November. In the post I name checked James Clay, ILT & Learning Resources Manager at Gloucestershire College, who will be the conference blogger. James has kindly agreed to write a guest blog post for us on why he’s taken on this role and why online conferences are becoming increasingly important.

James has been with Gloucestershire College since November 2006. He is responsible for the VLE, the use of learning technologies, e-learning, the libraries, digital and online resources and the strategic direction of the college in relation to the use of learning technologies.

In 2009 James was awarded the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Learning Technologist of the Year Award.

James can be followed on Twitter and by reading his e-learning Stuff blog.

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Over the years I have attended many conferences, online and in physical locations.

This November JISC are running their fifth online conference, Innovating e-Learning 2010. For the third year running I will be the official conference blogger, adding my thoughts and opinions on the conference and posting tips and advice to those new to the format. I really do enjoy attending these online conferences and find they do challenge me and my assumptions, make me think and influence my practice.

A bit of background perhaps may be in order.

At the 2006 JISC Online Conference I presented a piece entitled Mobile Learning on the VLE.

This was seminal piece of work that has had an impact on a lot of what I have done since. It was a key factor in my involvement in the MoLeNET programme and a bit influence on how I view the use of mobile devices to enhance and enrich learning.

I really did enjoy not just presenting at the conference, but also taking part as a delegate in the other presentations. One of the key factors for me was the depth and breadth of discussion that took place, something that is often “missing” from a physical conference. This discussion was textual and asynchronous and took place over a day or so rather than in the few minutes for questions you normally get at a physical conference.

2007 saw me jointly present with Helen Beetham, more of a challenge, but I presented from Weston-super-Mare, whilst Helen presented from Devon. At various online conferences I have attended people have been able to present from all over the world. Any conference is going to have an impact on the environment. With hundreds of people travelling hundreds (if not thousands) of miles this will contribute to the carbon footprint of the event. Now it has to be said that an online conference can help reduce the environmental impact of an event. If you are like me you probably have a laptop with you at a conference, so if you are staying at home or in the office and using the laptop at the online conference this will have a negligible impact on the carbon footprint as you would be using the laptop at both kinds of events.

2008 was my first as the official conference blogger. This was a big change for me, as before I could focus one day on presenting and then enjoy the rest of the conference. As the official conference blogger I was expected to help in the build up and blog over the conference. I think when asked to do this my own e-Learning Stuff was only about a year old (though I had a blog in my previous role before then) and blogged a few times a week, so at first I wasn’t sure exactly what was wanted. I knew I would need to blog a quite a few times a day, so this was quite a challenge. I also had the “day job” so needed to fit it all around that too. So after much thinking, I really threw myself into the role, and as well as using text, I also made use of audio and video. I made short videos and uploaded them to the blog. Some of these videos were edited and put together in advance.

Others were shot during the conference (sometimes on a phone) and uploaded within minutes of taking them.

These video summaries were appreciated by the delegates as was my textual commentary, advice and help.

So perhaps it was no surprise that in 2009 I was invited back again as the conference blogger.

So here we are back in 2010 and once more I will be blogging at the JISC Online Conference.

So what is it about an online conference?

For me the main reason for attending an online conference, as well as the excellent presentations, is the engagement between the delegates. Most physical conferences I have attended have in the main been passive affairs, I sit, I listen, I think, digest and reflect. Discussion and debate does happen at these conferences, but usually informally over coffee. At the online conference the debate and discussion takes place using a textual asyncrhonous discussion forum over two days. As a result it allows for reflection, it enables delegates to refer and check other papers and sources, and for all delegates to read that discussion and if they want to, add their own comment.

Other reasons why I like online conferences, is that I can attend the conference even when doing other things. I can still attend meetings, see people in my office, teach, even go to other places. At the last two online conferences I have had to go to London during the week of the conference, and have using 3G and coffee shop wifi hotspots continued to take part in the conference even though I am away from my desk.

Having said all that it is useful too to make time for the conference, shut the office door, work from home for a bit, wear headphones, move to a different office, work in the coffee spaces in the college or university.

You can see presentations again, you can ignore them and (virtually) walk out without feeling you may be offending someone as their talk doesn’t relate to you as you thought it did.

Unlike a physical conference, the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference remains open for reading until the 31st December to allow participants to catch up on what they missed. So unlike missing the train to a physical conference or falling ill, it is possible to still get a lot out of the online conference.

There are advantages to attending the conference, but reduced travel and accommodation costs, no travel time and no need to leave the office, are additional advantages.

Of course the real value of the online conference is the programme, one that will inspire and challenge you. It has variety and interest.

So if it is proving difficult to attend all the conferences you want to, one you shouldn’t miss is the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference.

Are public bodies gambling with Smart Working?

I’ve been following Don Cooke on Twitter on @enhanced_teams for a while now and he posts a lot of useful links on distributed/dispersed team working. This makes sense, he is the founder and co-owner of CAL, the smart working team specialists working with clients in the public and private sector to raise team performance and lower operating costs through the introduction of smarter works of working. They help organisations ask “how good are we as a team and could we be better?” The company practice what they preach and use ‘best of breed’ software and analytics tools internally. They have also produced a smarter-Working Costs CALculator which uses industry gathered data to use stats such as sickness absence and travel costs to show organisation could be saving if their staff started working remotely.

CAL has had worked with clients from the public sector, both within academia and local government, including Coventry University, Southampton Solent University (working on The Digital Enterprise Programme), Hampshire County Council, Sussex County Council and the city of Westminster. Don regularly talks to audiences on the effective use of remote and mobile technologies in today’s business world and he’s written a blog post for us asking Are public bodies gambling with Smart Working?

Don lives with his wife and four children in West Sussex and blogs at http://remote-aspect.blogspot.com/.

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Many public bodies already have or are considering the introduction of smarter working teams with the goal of reducing office and accommodation costs, even more so in the light of cuts, but are some organisations gambling on it being a success?

My organisation, CAL has been involved in Smarter working teams for over twenty years and have been involved in many successful projects to create the right team accommodation to support and encourage Smarter working. But many organisations take a chance at their success by not undertaking initial work to understand how the teams work and how this will change as the team becomes smarter about how they deliver services.

I want to look at what the crucial factors are in getting smarter working teams and how you can adopt these simple steps into your project or at your organisation.

What do you want to achieve?
Now this may sound a silly question, but very often different managers, departments or directors can want different things, so it is important that this is understood. For example a manager may just want to keep his team area as near as possible to what they have, as they see it as an attack on their team, to be resisted at the expense of others. A department may want to explore different ways of working, encourage part-time working or job share. A director is likely to be looking at the bottom line savings, which the board have agreed to the project based upon making these savings, so it’s all about ROI.

What do your teams think?
We often find that the team members have not been consulted and a feeling of ‘This is a stupid change that will result in no benefit to me and I will lose my desk!’ can set in. Of course this is never the aim of Smart working teams, but any organisation failing to engage fully with their teams will miss the major benefits and an opportunity to create new and dynamic teams, working more effectively.

Setting goals and objectives
We have lost count of the number meetings we have attend, where the first question is; why are we not seeing the savings we predicted from the introduction of smart working? This is usually followed by a catalogue of the above mistakes, where stakeholders have different ideas of what they thought they were buying and engagement at team level has been poorly communicated. The result is there are no real objectives or goals relevant and measurable. So always understand what you want to achieve and the goals that need to be set at every level, from director to team member. Also make sure you understand them all, not just the lowering of accommodation costs.

Measuring on going success
If you can’t measure it you can’t achieve it. The most frequently asked question we get is ‘How can you measure such an indefinable benefit, as Smart team working?’ The answer is looking at the benefits and aligning with costs, such as higher occupancy of a building for the full day, not just at the peaks of the day. Reduction in service delivery times, because teams are working dynamically and the old static team’s boundaries have been removed. Obviously these are just examples and each organisation will be different in how these are found. But by tracking the savings on-going you will start to see savings building month by month, then when the question is asked, ‘What have we saved?’ a comprehensive answer can be given.

Hopefully these pointers will help you avoid the pitfalls before you embark of your smart working journey. If you have any questions about smarter working practices just contact me.