The ever-increasing wonders of technology allow us to do some amazing stuff today that no-one would have guessed 10, or even 5, years ago. Technology now helps us in ways that allow us to blur the lines even more between our personal and professional lives. While some people cringe at the idea that work intrudes even further into our personal lives, the same technology also allows for some movement in the opposite direction too – in small ways that can improve our lives significantly!

Yesterday I had to take my minivan in for a minor service. My husband and I both worked from home that day. We scheduled the service for around lunch time.

When it was time to go we both packed up our laptops, hopped in our cars, and met at the service station. We left the minivan, got in our other car, and drove to the nearby downtown area. My husband then pulled out his iPhone and did a search on locations nearby that had free wireless access. After a few moments of tapping on his handheld screen, he found a café/deli and off we went.

We found it quite easily. It was a nice little restaurant, offering sandwiches, salads, coffees, etc. And, of course, the ever-important free wireless access. Since the weather was pleasant we ordered lunch and then grabbed a table outside. Out came our laptops, we got our wireless access working without any effort and then both of us accessed our VPNs to get onto the internal networks of our respective companies. I had all the same access as if I were at home or, for that matter, in the office. We were well into our work when our sandwiches arrived.

We were able to work while we ate, occasionally stopping to exchange a friendly comment with each other (or rather, commiserate over some frustrating corporate politics we were facing). The hour and a half passed by in a productive, yet very pleasant manner.

Before we knew it my husband’s phone was ringing – the minivan was ready. I was almost disappointed to leave the sunny, outdoor seating we had. We packed up, picked up the minivan, and headed home.

Although we’d been gone from the house for over 2 hours, we’d managed to get quite a bit of work done during that time. We’d been online to respond to coworkers’ emails and IMs. We’d completed an important errand so that the following weekend could be spent in quality time with our kids instead of having to schlep them to the service station. Oh, and don’t forget the ever-important fact that we’d both done far less driving that day than if we’d gone into the office – saving gas and helping the environment.

Wow – that’s a win-win-win-win-…uh…-win (did I get the number right?) situation! Now I bet you can’t do THAT without leaving the office!

Think about what kinds of things you could get done while still working productively, if you had more flexibility over where you work. Telecommuting even once or twice per week can make a huge difference in today’s hectic lifestyles.

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, remote worker, work from home, work at home moms

There are right ways and wrong ways to run a meeting that has virtual participants and yesterday I had the privilege of seeing it done right!

Yesterday I went to an all-day face-to-face meeting with a team in my organization. There were about 15 people attending in person and 3 attending by phone. Usually when I attend these kinds of meetings, the people on the phone are on their own. Sure, there’s a polycom speaker and the presenter is sharing his/her screen so the virtual attendees can see the slides. But that’s it. No attention is paid to whether the attendees can here the whole conversation - especially when people in the back of the room, furthest from the mic, are speaking. There is no concern over whether the virtual attendees can hear, can keep up, or can even tell who is speaking.

But this was quite different. Tony, the person leading the meeting and doing most of the presentation, really cared about the folks on the phone. He constantly asked them if they could hear. When someone who wasn’t near the mic was talking he’d either hand them the polycom or, if they were too far, he’d quickly summarize what they said when they finished – speaking quietly into the phone. He also took copious notes on his computer, while sharing his screen – summarizing what each person said.

But it wasn’t all just what Tony did. Apparently the whole team had a culture of taking care of their virtual team members. Someone had brought a small webcam and either she or someone near her always made sure the web cam was pointing at the current speaker, turning the webcam, balancing it on a Kleenex box or water bottle to get it up high enough if need be. They made sure if someone got up and wrote on the whiteboard, that the webcam took that in too.

The whole effort of the team was quite amazing. This is a team I haven’t interacted with very much before, so I don’t know if this was just a fluke – perhaps driven by Tony who seemed to make the most effort. Or perhaps this is how the team always behaves. But regardless, I was very impressed.

So if you’re a telecommuter or remote worker who can’t make it into the office for face-to-face meetings because you live too far away, consider yourself very lucky if you work in a team like this one. If your team is not quite so conscientious, perhaps you can recruit a few friends to take this approach for you and see if they can spread the attitude to the rest of the team.

Most importantly, when you are attending a meeting in person and there are other virtual attendees, make it your business (as much as you can) to be the Tony in the room and take care of those virtual attendees!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, remote work, virtual presence, telework, virtual teams, remote teams

I’m going on vacation tomorrow - and I won’t be bringing my laptop!

That’s such a freeing thing to say. The problem with all this great technology that allows us to work from home so easily is that it allows us to work from home so easily. We duck into the office to check work emails right before we go to bed, or here and there on the weekend. And we see something important so we just “spend 5 minutes” taking care of it. Which becomes 10 minutes, etc.

If you’re really unlucky, your coworker in another part of the world will see your IM go active when you check your email and start to chat with you when you really want to go to bed. I got caught once by a local coworker who was on pager duty and there was a problem with my service. Of course, as soon as he saw me, he pounced on me and then I was on the phone for the next 1/2 hour.

Anyway, enough complaining. I sometimes fail to follow my own advice from my book (shameless plug here - sign up on the right side of this page to get on my mailing list and get access to my book) about shutting down my laptop when I’m done with my workday.

But the nice thing about going on vacation - an actual trip - is that I’m not going to schlep my laptop with me so I *won’t* be able to check email whether I want to or not.

Uh-oh. My teammate just signed me up to get a PDA for work that will allow me to check email, etc - as I have to test some compatibility for my own services on the PDA. Thank goodness it won’t arrive until after I leave for my trip!!!

Technorati Tags: telecommuting advice, telecommute, work at home, work from home moms, vacations