Collaboration Ideas

New Collaboration Tools That Fit Your Strategy

Collaboration is a hot word amongst the leading IT companies: companies like CISCO, IBM and SAP are all using 'collaboration' as a catch all word to describe the new ways that staff and customers can interact with each other. The word means slightly different things to each of these companies, but on the whole they describe both a physical, and virtual way that we can talk, share and interact with each other, which makes use of a variety of technologies.

Understanding Human Communication in The Boardroom And Beyond

In meaning human interaction facial expression, and direct eye contact matter. They are a critical part of forging relationships, gauging thoughts and feelings and reacting appropriately. In most remote collaboration and videoconferencing applications, eye-contact is neglected. Instead, the discussion revolves around; screen size, HD Codec, proper sound, lighting, bandwidth, QoS considerations. These considerations are important, along with travel cost reductions, green initiatives, improved quality of life for employees, etc. But, if you drill down into remote collaboration and video conferencing to the core, it is about one thing: COMMUNICATION.

Getting Rid of the Boardroom Bowling Alley

The usability of video conferencing in a typical boardroom was dramatically enhanced in the last year, with Polycom's announcement of the Eagle Eye Director II. Most video conferencing deployments in an existing boardroom are problematic. So what ends up happening is that the camera is pointed at the room from the front and is 'zoomed out' to capture the whole table. And this view never changes. People on the other end of the video conferencing call therefore see what can be called the 'Boardroom Bowling Alley' effect.

Collaborating on Your iPad

The iPad is changing the mobility landscape. More mobile workers and corporate executives are making the iPad and other tablets their device of choice for mobile computing. I must admit I was a little sceptical of using the iPad to replace my laptop, but without the need to create documents using desktop apps like Word, PPT and Excel, I find the iPad is light to handle, instantly 'on' and intuitively elegant in its user design. But the real powerhouse iPad apps that I found for mobile collaboration really blew me away, not only in terms of how I can connect but how easily I can participate in active collaboration meetings.