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April 20, 2005
The iCohere Virtual Teams & Collaboration Conference
The iCohere Virtual Teams & Collaborations Conference took place from March 29 to 31, 2005 and was a 3-day online event targeting leaders of virtual organizations and teams. Whilst providing excellent recorded presentations by top level speakers, the conference itself failed to apply its own principles of collaboration.
Let me start by introducing you to the presenters.
David Coleman, Managing Director of Collaborative Strategies gave the opening presentation on Who buys whom in the collaborative industry. His tightly packed presentation includes survey results and future outlook and can be listened to following this link. This was one of the three live events during the conference.
Mark Neff, CSC introduced virtual community work. If I understood it correctly, the difference to virtual teams (which are funded and tasked) is that virtual communities are voluntary and that it is a challenge to engage members to contributing and spending time and resources in virtual spaces. This is an excellent recorded presentation by a very considerate speaker. Mark also was outstanding in contributing comment after comment in the forums and during the group chat sessions, always present and always pleasant. You can enjoy his presentation following this link.
Phil Montero, You Can Work from Anywhere showed his analytical consultancy approach during the following presentation.
Michael Randel, The World Bank explained that the work at the World Bank during the 5000 projects at any given time is global and mostly virtual. To improve communication strategies and to take into account cultural differences, we learned about the CultureActive Chart, which was developed by the World Bank over many decades. Every nationality has its place in the matrix from active to passive, from dominant speaker to mostly listeners. Michael Randel says, that communication tool vary with the tasks and, often or not, with cost and the need for speedy results. Enjoy a pleasant voice following this link.
Robin Good, MasterNewMedia and Kolabora presented Grassroots real time collaboration tools, a list of cost-effective and easy-to-use tools and technologies that can facilitate ones ability to collaborate in real-time with partners, suppliers and colleagues. Free of charge Instant Messaging as well as file and application sharing tools and lots more and all within budgets reach. Enjoy listening to a great presentation following this link. Robin also spontaneously offered a synchronous meeting using iVocalize. He showed how to use a simple headset as a microphone a great example of his heartwarming grassroot approach.
Marna Owen's presentation, Cisco Systems was impressive, because she showed, that whilst others are still talking about introducing modern and virtual collaboration tools, Cisco has already started doing so back in 2000 and has already accomplished this momentous task successfully. Cisco employees throughout the company busy themselves using synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and the sheer numbers are mind boggling. Listen to a great presentation following this link.
Arie Baan, Arie Baan Consulting and Rob J.H. Veersma MA, Shell International B.V. were the referees of a presentation about Shells global efforts to create virtual teams. The presentation can be listened to following this link.
Linda White and Vivian Wright, Hewlett-Packard on "HP's GarageWorks provided an amusing and fascinating collection of ideas of how to make a virtual classroom and workshop activity lively and fun. In their recorded presentation you will find great screenshots of virtual classroom games and interactive learning sessions between team members. Enjoy an outburst of creativity on how to use synchronous virtual rooms by following this link.
All of the above mentioned presentations were very informative and full of tips and tricks on how to lead virtual teams into collaborative cyber space. I can highly recommend listening to every single one of them.
Why then do I think that the iCohere conference did not live up to its own message?
Because it failed to engage its virtual audience. It failed to create a collaborative space.
What hindered this vital interactivity of all of the attendees?
Four factors were responsible for this:
The opening talk
David Coleman set the tone of the conference with his keynote address. He rightly said, that collaboration could not be learned by listening to a presentation on collaboration. Yet his presentation was a classic overwhelm my listeners with my great expertise kind of presentation with a staggering 51 densely packed slides. Commenting these slides with a vast amount of additional information in a 51min marathon, he certainly broke some speak limits. As one of the main parts of this talk, he advertised a conference on collaboration, which will take place in San Francisco in October this year called Collaboratory. Whilst explaining the uniqueness of a hands-on, collaborative workshop and game scenario type of event, it is in fact a face-to-face event.
Using a phone bridge
The two live presentations (David Colemans keynote presentation and Hewlett Packards Garageworks) were scheduled using a slide show tool by Realplay Rich Media and a phone bridge. No toll free number was provided and protest of the international audience motivated iCohere staff to add an iVocalize room for voice over IP streaming. Whilst this was the cheaper solution for a large number from abroad, it felt at times like second level citizen, poorer voice quality, less means of interactivity and a trying to juggle two windows. So, why use a phone bridge in the first place?
Bad timing of synchronous chats
Most of the above mentioned material were in form of recorded presentations. Question and Answer Sessions with the presenters took place at 1pm PST in a 1h lasting moderated text chat. This time of the day might be convenient for the US, but it translates to an 11pm in Europe and a 5am in Australia. Why schedule the only chat of the day at this time? Why schedule only one chat?
Presenter-centered discussions
The threaded discussions in the forum too (interestingly, the forum was not called forum but presentation area) were presentation-centred. Each thread started with the presentation and it was more a Q&A session then a forum. In total, of all the 180 attendees of the conference, less than 20% actually participated during the chat or the forum. The presenters, iCohere staff members or any other internals, posted the majority of posts. Where were all the others? Onlookers?
To summarize my impression of the iCohere conference:
There were a number of excellent presentations and great expertise. Kudos to the people on the stage. Yet whilst internet communication technology itself has matured from presentation tools to collaboration tools, The iCohere conference still has to mature from a presentation conference to a collaboration conference.
Posted on April 20, 2005 at 12:21 AM
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Readers' Comments
Heike,
Please realize that people have only been doing real time or data collaboration
for the last 7-8 years. Where was the telephone 8 years after it went
commercial and was being used by the public?
This stuff is still new, and it all is not yet "bullet proof." We look at
hundreds of collaboration products and I have yet to see one that did not
have glitches or bugs.
In terms of your comments about my talk:
Your absolutley right, I do tend to pack too much into my presentations, and
believe me I cut it down from what it was originally. After 15 years in this
industry I guess I know a lot and have a lot of passion about collaboration
and want to share it with the audience. Since I did not set up the
conference, or the technology, but was only asked to present, I did what was
asked for by the conference organizers. How would you have done it
differently? I usually do a discussion rather than a presentation, but I was
somewhat limited by technology. Did you ask any questions? If not your also
contributing to the publish instead of collaborate paradigm you clamin we
should be supporting. So how would you envision a keynote for such a
conference being better? Constructive criticism is always appreciated.
However, I believe many of the people who attended wanted to hear what I had
to say, is there a better way to transfer information? After all
collaboration is just gossip if there is no specific content and a goal for
the interaction. I also noticed that you did not critique Robin Good's
presentation (which I did not here), is that because he did a much better
job, or that he is a colleague of yours?
I would love to have your response to my comments and thanks for the
invitation to respond.
David Coleman
Managing Director
Collaborative Strategies
davidc@collaborate.com
www.collaborate.com
(415) 282-9197 (main office number)
(415) 550-8556 (fax)
(415) 867-9930 (mobile)
"the soft stuff is the hard stuff"
For the Collaboration Blog go to: www.collaborate.com
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