http://bit.ly/o0QPKG Day 17 - Wherever Would I Be Without having My Technological innovation?

If I didn't have my technology, I would be walking barefoot with a sore knee and have no pics for the Edutographer's 30-Day Image Problem.

Consider this: managers devote amongst thirty to 80 % of their time in meetings and far more than 50 % of them take into account numerous meetings to be a “waste of time.” Ninety % of managers attribute the failure of most meetings to a “lack of planning and business,” and most managers have never been qualified on how to host a productive meeting. When you add in the complexity of leveraging the Web for hosting distributed meetings online, it is even a lot more tough to make certain a successful consequence. With no some amount of preparation and preparing, remote group members can come to feel disconnected, disregarded and even unwelcome in meetings.
At oDesk, our in-home full-time staff perform from residence at least a single day a week, and we’re frequently collaborating with a crew of about 250 remote contractors who act as a essential extension of our internal staff. This has forced us to study how to make meetings function for all involved.
We’ve found there are three steps to a productive on-line meeting:
Be confident you need a meeting to accomplish the wanted outcome
Establish topics and their time allocation, roles and processes (arranging goals, details sharing, difficulty fixing, choice making, romantic relationship building)
Evaluate your meeting afterwards (outcomes met, approach adhered to, relationships strengthened)
We commenced by defining the roles involved in making a remote meeting perform: the organizer, coordinator, presenter(s) and attendees. Every single function has its obligations to the group, and by defining people roles, we’re capable to make sure accountability for every single meeting’s achievement and seek out techniques to constantly improve the remote meeting encounter. Adopting these roles has permitted us to make sure members of a dispersed staff are as lively, bundled, and productive for the duration of a meeting as these who are on-web site.
Organizer: Setting the stage
An individual requirements to make confident the meeting will accommodate all participants. The format of the meeting will mostly depend on the requirements of the team and the targets of the meeting. The meeting organizer operates with the presenter to guarantee that the proper format is chosen and ready in advance of time.
Wherever will we maintain the on-web site meeting? Usually, this will be a conference place or office large sufficient to maintain all the on-site attendees, with the technology essential to accommodate remote attendees.
What variety of entry do remote attendees need? Is audio adequate, or do they need to have video clip of the room? Do they want to be in a position to see slides or other components?
How will remote attendees “dial in”? This means deciding on the platform of the meeting, which can include a bridge line, Skype, or a desktop sharing/presenting platform this sort of as GoToMeeting.
How will we talk when and how to go to? Invitees want to know when, exactly where and how to show up at the meeting. If remote attendees need to have a login to sign-up or to obtain and install a plugin, the organizer can make positive they are conscious of this potential roadblock and are prepared in advance.
Is everybody clear on the roles and their responsibilities? Make confident all attendees are informed of the presenters and meeting coordinator, and share the agenda and finest practices with them.
Presenters: Adapting to the environment
Presenters should don't forget to consider into account the remote participants. When you are detailing ideas or an initiative to a distributed group, will there be visual aids? Do you intend to display some thing on a computer display? Does it want to be observed reside, as you manipulate it, or can you deliver a copy of the materials, this sort of as a PowerPoint presentation, to remote participants so they can comply with along? Prior to the meeting, the presenter ought to function with the meeting organizer to make positive they—and the facility—are prepared technically to current by means of nearby projection and remote platforms.
Throughout the meeting, presenters should:
Log onto their presentation platform five minutes early to tackle any technical troubles.
Welcome everyone and ask remote attendees whether they can listen to and see appropriately
Make confident to verbalize all the way through the meeting what attendees need to be seeing (slide range, visual cues, and many others.) to assist flag sharing issues speedily.
Request no matter whether the remote team has any questions. It can be difficult for remote participants to interject or notify organizers of their want to converse. Give them equal chance to contribute by offering them the floor at meeting/slide transitions.
If a contributor is not in the vicinity of a microphone or speakerphone, repeat the declaration or issue oneself to make sure remote attendees can hear all conversations (because you’ll possibly be greatest situated for microphone pickup).
Coordinators: Trying to keep almost everything on monitor
Discover a coordinator before the meeting. This particular person helps make confident that the technical aspect runs smoothly and is prepared to react to challenges as they come up. The meeting coordinator can also be the organizer, but need to not be a presenter. If presentations are getting created from much more than a single area, there ought to ideally be a coordinator in every place. Also, the coordinators need to be members of the department presenting the meeting, to make sure that they’ll understand the material becoming offered, even if they’re distracted by the on-the-fly back again-end administration.
In the course of the meeting, the coordinator:
Facilitates an instant messaging group chat with remote team members, like updating the conversation on a regular basis as problems are acknowledged and tackled. This IM session makes it possible for remote members to talk technical difficulties or other distractions that need to have to be addressed without interrupting the meeting flow.
Handles all troubleshooting requiring neighborhood action, such as adjusting microphones, encouraging speakers to chat louder, refreshing slide screens, etc.
Attendees: Ready to go
Attendees have a position to play in keeping the meeting jogging easily, as well. They’re accountable for:
Logging onto the platform five minutes early to deal with any technical problems prior to the meeting.
Communicating issues for the duration of the meeting to the coordinator via the chosen quick messaging channel.
A note on possessing a reliable platform
Often a simple mobile phone contact and speakerphone is adequate, but make sure any printed material, such as an agenda, is also shared with remote participants before the meeting. Based on your presentation requirements, much more involved platform possibilities consist of:
Dial-in conference bridges or direct-dial phone calls
Skype (video clip and voice chat)
Shared paperwork (Google Docs)
GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar
WebEx
What ever platform you choose, adapt your presentation to the platform’s strengths (do not attempt to current a PowerPoint about a direct-dial cellphone phone), and make sure that absolutely everyone is ready. Verify in with remote attendees afterward to make sure they had a constructive encounter, and function on ironing out wrinkles as they are identified.
At oDesk, we’ve been refining our strategies for a long time, and we’re progressing toward meetings that are each bit as effortless as getting every person below the same roof — at times even less complicated. More importantly, we’ve produced confident that our remote employees are in a position to entirely contribute to our results at minimum as nicely as if they were in our company. Which is the entire stage of what we do, right after all.
Gary Swart is CEO of oDesk. He has much more than 17 years’ knowledge foremost remote and regional teams as an executive at Intellibank, IBM and Pure Software package. 
Image courtesy of Flickr user Joe Shlabotnik
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