Tuesday
Oct212008
How do you collaborate internationally?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 8:02PM
I believe that most of you know that I'm working for Passpack now as a community/technology evangelist and one of the most difficult things to get used to is the time zone difference. The entire Passpack team is located in Rome, Italy which means that they are generally around 6-7 hours ahead of me on the east coast of the US. This makes for some interesting conversations with me half asleep and they're on their 5th or 6th cups of coffee. The second hardest thing to get used to are the methods and tools used to collaborate.
Of course we have a project management tool and we can now securely share information between our team but it's very different from sitting down at a conference room table with a hot cup-o-joe and a pen and paper. We use tools like Skype to chat while online and Google Reader and alerts to make sure that we are following all of the latest news and trends in the web world but I'm curious to ask some of you how you collaborate with your international teams. What tools help to aid in feeling more connected with the other side of the world? How do you improve your processes (especially with the time zone difference) while working remotely or even presenting to the group?
I know one tool I have found very valuable is a service called EQO. Besides having a fantastic domain (who wouldn't want a three letter domain?) they provide a solid product. I can put a little bit of money into my account and whenever I need to reach my friends and colleagues in Italy, I simply click on their name (since EQO can import your phone's address book, it's easy) and it connects me for a very low cost per minute. For instance, to call the office in Italy, it's only 2.3 cents per minute. Compare that to AT&T which would run me $1.49 per minute! In addition, their application runs on a huge number of cell phone including Blackberry and and Windows Mobile devices.
I've decided to combine EQO with Skype to provide me two very inexpensive solutions to contacting the people that I need to talk to no matter where I am. I for one hope that people and companies continue to innovate and create solutions that aid in remote and international collaboration. It's how our world should work, as one.
Of course we have a project management tool and we can now securely share information between our team but it's very different from sitting down at a conference room table with a hot cup-o-joe and a pen and paper. We use tools like Skype to chat while online and Google Reader and alerts to make sure that we are following all of the latest news and trends in the web world but I'm curious to ask some of you how you collaborate with your international teams. What tools help to aid in feeling more connected with the other side of the world? How do you improve your processes (especially with the time zone difference) while working remotely or even presenting to the group?
I know one tool I have found very valuable is a service called EQO. Besides having a fantastic domain (who wouldn't want a three letter domain?) they provide a solid product. I can put a little bit of money into my account and whenever I need to reach my friends and colleagues in Italy, I simply click on their name (since EQO can import your phone's address book, it's easy) and it connects me for a very low cost per minute. For instance, to call the office in Italy, it's only 2.3 cents per minute. Compare that to AT&T which would run me $1.49 per minute! In addition, their application runs on a huge number of cell phone including Blackberry and and Windows Mobile devices.
I've decided to combine EQO with Skype to provide me two very inexpensive solutions to contacting the people that I need to talk to no matter where I am. I for one hope that people and companies continue to innovate and create solutions that aid in remote and international collaboration. It's how our world should work, as one.
Reader Comments (2)
Looking for your input -- How do you collaborate internationally or with remote workers? http://bit.ly/3XuEUN
Thanks for the post and the great feedback. Glad to hear that EQO's working out for you. Cheers