(ISF) Re: The house that WebEx built

-----original message-----
>>;WebEx had been on my mind lately, because I'm helping an esteemed nonprofit client sort through options for accounting software. This means that I log in to a fair number of WebEx presentations these days. This is not my favorite kind of learning experience, because it combines two forms of communication (PowerPoint slides and conference calls) that I particularly dislike.>>

This is a bit divergent from your main point, but I do want to point out that while most people treat same-time conferencing tools like WebEx as a broadcast medium (i.e. way to ply your PowerPoint slides on more poor souls, they can be used in vastly more effective ways. One of the best ways to use a shared display like WebEx during a telephone call is in conjunction with a mapping tool, such as MindJet (http://www.mindjet.com/) or Compendium (http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/). Having one person map the conversation live during a discussion is a very powerful way to collaborate over the phone.

For those of you in Boston this week, Nancy White will be leading a session on Effective Online Meetings at the Collaborative Technologies Conference, where she'll cover techniques like this:

http://www.ctcevents.com/

>>It was a shock to discover that WebEx, that distinguished provider of web conferencing and online meeting solutions, houses its corporate headquarters in a behemoth of a building that is named after itself. Even while WebEx strives to make the distributed organization possible, it shows signs of an edifice complex!>>

Cisco Systems suffers from the same problem, and John Chambers, their CEO, has not been shy about bewailing this. On the one hand, they're selling the promise of a networked world. On the other hand, they recognize the importance of face-to-face, and they struggle internally to balance the two modes. Cisco has a very good telecommuting policy, but they've also built a wonderful prototype "office of the future" on their San Jose campus that is very much about encouraging face-to-face interactions.

The lesson here is that one mode of collaboration should complement, not replace the other. It may sound obvious, but a lot of organizations (nonprofits and for-profits alike) struggle because they focus too much on leveraging online tools without first considering their overall collaborative strategy.

A quick anecdote about this: A client once asked me to come in to talk about collaborative strategies with his sales team. He was specifically interested in what online tools he could use to improve collaboration within his team. I met with the whole team, most of whom worked from the same location, and in the course of the meeting, a familiar pattern emerged. The newest salesperson would pepper me with questions, and one of the veterans would raise her hand each time with the right answer.

These two salespeople worked 50 feet apart from each other and attended the same weekly sales meeting for a year, yet they had no idea that one had the answers to all of the other's questions.

I told my client to forget about online tools and to end each weekly sales meeting with ten minutes of open Q&A, where people could ask each other whatever was on their mind. It was a simple process change that didn't require anyone to change their behavior in significant ways, but it had the potential to make them vastly more effective.

-Eugene

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Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
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-----original message-----
>>;For those of you in Boston this week, Nancy White will be leading a session on Effective Online Meetings at the Collaborative Technologies Conference, where she'll cover techniques like this: > http://www.ctcevents.com/ >>

Eric (or others) --

That workshop sounds like a perfect match for some of what we're looking for -- how to get a series of meetings off the ground for a distributed network of clients and consultants. However, it appears from http://www.ctcevents.com/registration/packages-and-pricing.php that if I haven't already signed up (I haven't), the least I'd end up paying is $1895 for a three-day pass, even just to attend that session. Um...are there any, say, more nonprofit-friendly prices to be had somehow?

thanks,

-arthur.

>> I told my client to forget about online tools... >>

Hoorah! Great remark Eugene! (As usual.) Online tools are important and Nancy White is among the top authorities... and it is crucial they are used in context, to augment existing memes, collaboration and social interaction.

>> ...open Q&A, where people could ask each other whatever was on their mind. >>

Wow! That is revolutionary. Authentic conversation? What a concept...

It is critical not to allow overbearing collaborative technology people to interfere with conversation. This often happens, at great expense. These systems are routinely abandoned after much pain.

>> ?[conversation] didn't require anyone to change their behavior in significant ways, but it had the potential to make them vastly more effective.>>

Are you saying we should have a collaborative strategy BEFORE investing millions in technology? Blasphemy! Don't you know the vendor said the application will *ENABLE* collaboration? They said w/o technology we won't know how to collaborate. Please, doesn't technology simply REPLACE face-to-face interaction like the brochure says?!?

Why is there a Collaborative Technologies "Conference"; in Boston in the first place? Isn't that ironic?

(And so forth and so on through a litany of collaborative technology absurdities?)

Meanwhile, does anyone think it is even more ironic that the winner of the "World's Longest Commute' works at the world largest networking company? See:

http://tinyurl.com/zapdc

"Givens, an electrical engineer with Cisco Systems, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., drives a 186-mile one-way commute five days a week, a round-trip journey of 372 miles that takes a total of seven hours. He has been making the lengthy commute since 1989. "I have a great job and my family loves the ranch where we live,"; he said in explaining why he makes the commute. "So this is the only solution."

Cheers,

-j
http://kmblogs.com/

-----original message-----
>>; That workshop sounds like a perfect match for some of what we're looking for -- how to get a series of meetings off the ground for a distributed network of clients and consultants. However, it appears from http://www.ctcevents.com/registration/packages-and-pricing.php that if I haven't already signed up (I haven't), the least I'd end up paying is $1895 for a three-day pass, even just to attend that session. Um...are there any, say, more nonprofit-friendly prices to be had somehow?>>

Just chatted with Nancy about this. We'll figure out a way to do a similar session for this community online and cheaply. Will post more as details emerge, but if folks have ideas/suggestions/requests, feel free to post them.

-Eugene

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Eugene Eric Kim ................................ http://xri.net/=eekim
Blue Oxen Associates ........................ http://www.blueoxen.com/
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