A really interesting post from Ewan on teleworking. I “work from home” – I’m just not at home very often. I don’t have to contend with time differences but I do have geography against me. Covering the whole of Scotland and now having some responsibilities in the North of England (thats north as in north of Oxford!) the challenges of being in all the places I need to be while having a meaningful family life are getting tougher. Ewan is making the most of the remote working tools available to him and taking advantage of the time zones. I’m conscious that I, and my colleagues, need to make more use of these tools. Do we always have to be there in person? Is a Yugma conference or a Skype call good enough? I think it will all come down to the quality of the experience for the end user. If our customers don’t have a good experience then I’ll be in the car driving all over the country and while I’m behind the wheel I’m not productive. So there’s a bit of a quandary. There’s a compelling commercial argument for me to do three remote meetings in a day rather than doing a six hour round trip for one meeting. But if the experience for the customer is not flawless then they won’t accept it.
I’d love to spend less time in the car, hopefully I’ll be able to harness some of this technology to help achieve this. I think I’ll be returning to this over the coming months.
I’ve been actually useing both Skype and Yugma together and have been really pleased with quality and user experience. My main interests were ease, support of both pc and mac, and low cost. Thes 2 tools together have made an amazimg different in how I can collaborate on the fly with people. I think its well worth the effort to try them out.
Here’s another alternative. Elluminate vRoom is a full-featured virtual meeting room for up to three people that works over low bandwidths and on multiple plarforms. And it’s free. For more information, visit http://www.getvroom.com.
Our own employees use vRoom and Elluminate Live! to meet with others on a global level from our home offices, ariports, cars (don’t drive and Elluminate!), etc. Our customers have saved thousands from reducing or even eliminating travel expenses and time away from job. Here’s just one story: http://www.elluminate.com/sales/casestudies/prairie-spirit-school.jsp.
- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication
Hi Douglas,
This is Connie from Yugma. On behalf of Yugma with our One Year Anniversary, I would like to thank you for mentioning us on your site and helping us to spread the word about our product. The blogging community had had an integral part in making Yugma one of the fastest growing real-time web collaborations services in 2007 with over 100,000 users to date.
To express our thanks, we’re donating/sponsoring Yearly Premium Yugma accounts (valued at $99.50) to bloggers who simply ask. To learn more about this program and how to get your sponsored Yugma account, check out the details on the Yugma blog – linked below.
http://www.yugma.com/blog/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=261&Itemid=1
Please be sure to check this out soon! The window to request your account through the Yugma Blogger Program is open through today, 1/31/08.
With Greatest Appreciation,
Connie and the rest of the Yugma Team
PS: Be sure to stay tuned! Yugma is set to release new features and improved performance in the next few weeks and months. To keep informed of all the happenings, check out http://www.yugma.com under the news and blog.