The April 2009 issue of the Communications of the ACM, a highly respected journal, published an article by Jay F. Nunanamker, Bruce A. Reining, and Robert O. Briggs on ‘Principles for Effective Virtual Teamwork.’ The authors derived these principles from their decade long experience of working with hundreds of virtual teams. I present these principles and also provide links to… Read more →
A while back, Betsy blogged about paradoxes in virtual work. Yesterday’s NY Times had an interesting article that illustrates another paradox. Basically, virtual work can both decrease and increase visibility. Since virtual workers can be located anywhere, they are not visible to their managers. However, since virtual workers conduct a significant part of their work on or via information and… Read more →
Second Life has been in the news again recently. Despite recent changes in upper management and a recent stagnation in new users, the popular virtual world seems to be on an upswing again. Second Life is looking to corporate participation as a key element in their future business (see this CNET article).
Last week’s Time had an article on how President Obama is using the science of change to transform the country. Specifically, President Obama and his economic team are relying on findings in behavioral economics to make people break old habits and adopt behaviors that are better for them and society. Unlike traditional economics which assumes that human rationality, self-interest, and… Read more →
What: NY Times article about cable companies providing (or not providing) faster broadband service in the US Posts it is related to: So You Think You’d Like to Telecommute? Bottom line: For those who desire to, or already do work from home, and need high speed Internet to get optimum performance from various applications for file sharing, video conferencing or… Read more →
It’s both good and bad that I can’t take my work home. These days my biggest limitation is technology. The work I do depends heavily on several expensive software packages. My employer has a policy disallowing the organization from paying for software for home computers, and these applications are too expensive for me to buy on my own dime. … Read more →
What: LA Times article about President Obama conducting a virtual town hall meeting to reach out and connect to Americans Posts it is related to: What President Obama Teaches Us For Leading Virtually Bottom line: President Obama continues to be innovative in embracing technology to engage his constituency, the people of America. Last week, he hosted a virtual town hall… Read more →
I had an interesting experience recently that reminded me of Surinder’s post on what he sees as some negative trends in email communication, only this experience happened in Second Life. I was visiting an area dedicated to online learning when I ran into another avatar–I’ll call him Mike–who began speaking with me. Mike immediately told me that he was… Read more →
What: NYTimes article about Cisco’s showcasing its TelePresence system. Posts to which it is related: Supportive and Critical Communication in Virtual Teams, Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology Bottom line: This article reviews the use of Cisco’s TelePresence system during a press conference at which the company announced new servers. According to the author (Ashlee Vance), the press conference was too long, felt unnatural and… Read more →
In response to my last post (Clearing the Air About Corporate Blogging), Andrew Meyer of ‘Inquiries Into Alignment‘ commented about the problem of getting contributors. He points out that the number of active bloggers within a firm is typically low. In fact, in one of the research papers that I included in my post, the authors found that in a… Read more →