Remote working: Employees' needs not being met

Telecommuting and virtual offices are becoming more pervasive across enterprises, but it's presenting a trade-off. "... while workers want autonomy and flexibility, they also want social connection," writes Jessica Stillman in a recent GigaOM article.

We're seeing this among enterprises too. One of the common challenges executives are grappling with is how to overcome the sense of isolation employees can get when working remotely.

Dr. Tony O'Driscoll and the benefits of 3-D collaboration

Yesterday I spent some time with my good friend Dr. Tony O'Driscoll, and recorded a quick video of him where he speaks about his recent visit with a group of life science CIOs and the benefits of 3-D collaboration to aid in generative learning. See what he had to say.

Needed: a virtual assault on global warming

NO SMOKE-BLOWING: Virtual teaming is the new green energy

As I zipped between airports on my way to Research Triangle Park this week, burning jet fuel in an oxymoronic quest to tell the world about the benefits of working virtually, scenes of the massive oil spill unfolding in the gulf haunted me on every public TV I passed.

I think this event has the potential to be a wake-up call for us in the IT industry, start-up and established players alike.

We can't afford to wait for next-generation energy sources to be discovered, developed, and commercialized. That shift from fossil fuels to green energy will take a generation.

Meanwhile, we have to conserve energy and protect the planet now. And that means we have to establish the next-generation workplace now -- one that makes good use of virtual collaboration technologies to cut fuel-burning, emissions-belching travel. How much of our business travel is actually necessary? I dare say a small fraction of it, once a virtual workplace is factored into the equation.

We need to step up as a society, and show the world it's possible. We need to stop talking about the mobile, high-performance workforce, and start empowering it. And it's not just about flying. It's about driving and railroads, too.

We recently had one of our life sciences customers in the Mid-Atlantic area take stock of how much commuting was going on between their New Jersey and Pennsylvania campuses. It wasn't that far, as the crow flies. But multiply that by thousands of employees, thousands round trips per week, tens of thousands of hours of productivity lost, untold gallons to fill 'er up (along with however many tons of carbon emissions), and now we can say, "Houston, we have a problem."

Most industries are publicly committed to working virtually, whether they call it telecommuting, the mobile workforce, or virtual workplaces. In meetings with top brass at global companies, I hear time and again that "virtual teaming" is a key strategy of these organizations. But the frustration and disillusionment sets in when people attempt to spend a day on platforms such as WebEx, GoToMeeting, etc.

There are two fundamental problems that surface. First there's the notion of spending a day "on" WebEx (or what have you). Whenever you work virtually with a 2-D "flatland" meeting product, you are "on" something but not "in" anything. Second, there's the squishy use of the word "meeting" to describe these tools. In truth, they're not collaboration platforms. They're screen-sharing programs. Big difference.

Compare this conceptually to a 3-D workplace powered by ProtoSphere. The team members are invited "in" to their virtual office. It's a place (not a screen) where they can see their coworkers come and go, sit and talk, share ideas, work on documents and projects together, and collectively tap the businesses other IT assets. They can also work with data in 3-D, as visualizations, gaining perspectives and insights that are simply not available in 2-D.

That's not a sales pitch. It's a definition of the gating factors that dampen the adoption of virtual teaming, and a statement of the opportunity we have to overcome these gating factors -- and the opportunity to have a measurable impact on the environment -- by teaming in 3-D.

We can now work with anyone anywhere, without burning fossil fuels, and without losing our humanity in a 2-D flatland screen share. The time is right for bold business leaders to set the pace, and lead by example. We can empower a massive and highly productive remote workforce with a 3-D high-performance workplace like ProtoSphere. And doing so would have a measurable impact on the planet, not to mention the bottom line.

PowerPoint redux

PAIN POINT: PowerPoint is a 2-D solution for 3-D challenges

I've recently joined ProtonMedia's Executive Advisory Board and I couldn't be more thrilled. As a true believer in the power of 3-D environments to enable new collaboration models, I've known ProtonMedia for several years and admired ProtoSphere.

However, the market is just now reaching an inflection point where technology and user needs are converging to create the 21st-century workplace. This workplace is not a real place, but a virtual one. It is global, data-rich, interactive, collaborative, and visual. Most important, it is also 3-D.

Ron's posting last week covered one of the most used and abused of all business tools: PowerPoint. In this case, the U.S. Army's strategy in Afghanistan was illustrated by what can only be described as the PowerPoint equivalent of a neural network.

I can't fault the author of this chart because we've all faced the same struggle in the past. We have a complex set of information to convey to our audience, and we slice it into 8 1/2-by-11-inch pages. Clicking through them one by one comes about as close to our original intent as the Visible Human Project comes to meeting a real person.

We have two objectives when using PowerPoint. One, to convey relevant information, and two, to tell a story so that the audience reaches the desired conclusion. Our charts might capture data as elegantly as Edward Tufte or have the emotional simplicity of Steve Jobs, but we are still fighting a losing battle.

The problem is that PowerPoint is trapped in 2-D, while people live life in 3-D. This problem is only exacerbated as we increasingly work in distributed virtual teams, where the nuances of face-to-face discussion are lost. PowerPoint must be viewed passively, without the scowls and hand-waving and laser pointers of the conference room.

The solution to the problem can be found in 3-D collaborative environments. A 3-D environment allows complex data to be captured in forms that our brains are already wired to process. Think about viewing a stack of blueprints versus walking around inside a completed building, and you quickly see the difference.

3-D environments also allow storytelling in both a linear and non-linear fashion -- whichever works better for your audience. As an example, consider your last visit to a history museum. It was likely laid out chronologically so that as you progress through the building, you move forward in time.

Each time period laid a foundation for the next, and the story unfolded one century at a time. However, if your appetite for history matches many executives' appetite for information, you might have quickly moved on to the gift shop and skipped a few of those historical details.

3-D environments are more than just a replacement for PowerPoint. I believe they are the foundation for the 21st-century workplace, and I'd like to explore some of the reasons right here in future posts.

The art of being simplistic and the science of using the right tool to explain the impossible

My friend Sam Batterman, Business Intelligence Evangelist, Pharmaceutical/Life Science at Microsoft, offered to do a guest blog post on a topic that's near and dear to our heart: Keeping it simple.

Thanks, Sam, for putting this together. Read on to see what he has to say. Have a comment? Leave it for Sam below.

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A few days ago, The New York Times ran a column in which the generals managing the war on terror condemned PowerPoint as a tool perhaps more dangerous than the insurgents killing service men. As a student of Business Intelligence, and a presenter for more than a decade, I have some opinions about this.

First, Microsoft is not blameless. PowerPoint is a huge part of the American and, indeed, the planet's business landscape. It isn't going away, no matter how many NASA officials and generals prohibit its use.

This is your brain on PowerPoint

Take a look at this image published in The New York Times yesterday. It's an actual PowerPoint slide created by the U.S. Army for Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. It shows the American military strategy in Afghanistan.

I'm no military leader, but even if I was, I still don't think I could make heads or tails of what the heck the strategy is based on that big blob of spaghetti on the screen. To call it overwhelming is an understatement.

But think about this for a moment: That PowerPoint image could also be your global supply chain. Or your network of TV broadcasters and correspondents. Or the flight patterns over Europe after the eruption of the Icelandic volcano. Or any one of a number of complex business systems.

This PowerPoint image doesn't work at any of those levels. Why? Because it's a 2-D depiction, and we don't think in 2-D. We think in 3-D. We work in 3-D. We live in 3-D. And it's time we start communicating and collaborating in 3-D.

Many of our business communication and collaboration models have been stuck in what I'll call "flatland" for generations. If you're sharing information with PowerPoint, that's flatland. If you're learning through an e-Learning course, that's flatland. If you're meeting using an online conferencing service, that's flatland.

These flat modes have no depth; they can't be used to solve complex multi-dimensional problems. The Pentagon is finding that out the hard way as it tries to map a very complicated problem -- our Afghan military strategy -- on a PowerPoint graphic.

This isn't isolated to the U.S. military. It's an issue we see in our businesses every day. We see it with pharmaceutical companies, for example, and their complex research and sales force processes. We see it with any data or process that is complex or difficult to understand.

Tandberg's desktop video conferencing tool: Once telepresence, always telepresence

CAMERA READY? Many enterprise users say no

I don't really have an axe to grind with Tandberg. But it just seems every time I see news about Tandberg and the way it sells video, my alarm bells go off.

So with apologies and all due respect to the good folks at Tandberg, I really need to respond to their recent announcement.

The company released desktop telepresence solution, EX90 the other week. I have two main thoughts on it.

First off, it might be a step in the right direction as far as enterprise collaboration goes. Any tool that reduces costs and increases efficiency can be advantageous for enterprise users.

But it still doesn't solve the broad distribution and enterprise penetration issue surrounding telepresence. At the risk of being repetitive, there are a lot of reasons I don't see all employees in an organization using video every time they want to collaborate. Rather than rehash all my viewpoints, I'll refer you back to some of my previous posts on telepresence.

This also brings to mind an article written by Kishore S. Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at Accenture. He penned a piece for the company's Outlook journal last month, saying, "Now, a new medium, the videoconference, is rapidly emerging as an important way for executives to communicate with their employees, upper management and customers. By understanding the medium and mastering its dynamics, you can significantly improve your effectiveness as an executive."

Hear us out! It's virtual worlds for business, not just virtual worlds.

Rafe Needleman wrote a post on his CNET blog, Rafe's Radar, a few days ago about Venuegen's 3-D virtual meeting service. One part of his article that jumped out at me was were he said, "There may be big problems getting everyone in a team to take the service seriously."

Couldn't agree more... We've been facing and overcoming those types of misconceptions for several years. The problem is, when people hear "virtual worlds for business," they don't hear the "for business" part. They just hear "virtual world." They immediately think of 3-D gaming and romparoos.

As I wrote in the comments, I can't imagine ever having a solution that is going to be liked by everyone who comes in contact with it. However, we've found if you can get people to use the environment as part of a collaborative project, as opposed to just kicking the tires, the real business benefits start to become clear.

We have case studies showing that global organizations have serious business collaboration objectives they are attempting to achieve with a 3-D virtual world, and when they measure the outcomes, the results are often astounding. That's not hype. Those are the actual metrics we continue to find and document.

When our customers have rolled out  ProtoSphere, even the skeptics often come around to understand the true role of virtual world technology in business. And it's through these engagements that we can dispel popular notions about 3-D virtual technology.

There's absolutely demand for more engaging and immersive collaboration tools that help people work faster. This is painfully evident is global organizations, where teams are usually dispersed.

In those environments, you're dealing with not only demand for engagement and immersion, but also cost reduction, which virtual environments can help you do well. It's a simple equation. No need to travel, means no travel expenses. The savings are obvious.

The same can be said of 2-D online conferencing services. But you don't gain the immersion that studies show improve knowledge transfer, knowledge retention, collaboration, and productivity.

Let's not forget that people were skeptical about blogs at the turn of the century. And then they were skeptical of social networking. Heck, people were skeptical of computers and the Internet! Skepticism in and of itself can sometimes be part of the learning curve for new technology. We believe that's what's happening with virtual worlds for business.

Why 3-D? Replicate real-world learning environments, unbound by distance and place

Karl Kapp, author of the forthcoming book "Learning in 3D", and a good friend of mine, penned a blog post that I thought hit the nail on the head when it comes to answering the question of Why 3-D? He says that 3-D immersive environments can accurately replicate real-world learning spaces, without being constrained by real-world bounds of distance and place.

"The real power of a virtual immersive environment is the ability to transport the learner or collaborators into an environment that is ideally suited for the learning or collaborating that needs to take place and this usually requires an altering of the spaces," he writes.

Why 3-D? It supports private, personalized training and learning.

Exploring the Why 3-D? question more ... I wanted to add that 3-D supports myriad interactive training methods that imitate real-world classroom instruction. In particular, it supports private, personalized training and learning. Meanwhile, 2-D screen share or Web conference limits you to just one training method of showing learners slides, pictures, etc. in a group setting.

For instance, one of the features that many of our customers request in their ProtoSphere environments is the private VoIP zone. Certain areas within a zone are deemed to be private, usually defined by some sort of signage or visual cue, and contain a small table with a few chairs around it.

James Cameron's Avatar shows parallels to immersive virtual worlds for business

Avatar.

It has been a word we have been using for awhile now to describe an anthropomorphized human network connection in an immersive virtual environment. However, the traditional definition is as follows:

In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatara describes the descent of a deity from heaven to earth. In English, we translate avatar to mean "incarnation," "appearance," or "manifestation." And for us computer nerds, we have known avatars as representations of ourselves or our alter egos. It could be in the form of a 3-D model, 2-D icon, or text construct as found in early online gaming.

I think after this weekend, the word will be more broadly understood by the masses, as James Cameron's new movie, "Avatar", opened across the country. Being a CGI (computer-generated imagery) fan from jump street, I of course had to go day one. How was it? In a single word, stunning. Go see it in a properly equipped digital theater, with the funky 3-D glasses, and you will be "immersed."

Why 3-D? Interactivity can't be had in 2-D -- and neither can its improved learning and collaboration

In my day-to-day conversations with customers, analysts, partners, and peers, a common theme that comes up is, Why 3-D? Why are 3-D virtual environments better than 2-D environments for collaborating, meeting, teaming, and learning? What can 3-D offer that 2-D just cannot match? I find similar answers arising out of these conversations to explain the business advantages of 3-D virtual worlds.

One of the primary ones is that 3-D enables interactivity that can lead to benefits such as higher retention rates, improved learning, increased collaboration, more productive brainstorming, and more efficient conflict resolution.

2-D Web conferences are mostly one way, or "half-duplex." Someone has the token, and they can talk and control the content. When someone else wants to interact, they get the token and then they talk or manipulate the document.

While ProtoSphere has this mode of operation too -- in our app-share, for example -- general communications are interactive, or "full-duplex," and ad hoc, like gathering at the water cooler. Think of how much people learn in those water cooler conversations (though the office gossip might not always be so useful).

Same idea holds true for learning. One-way learning consists of the instructor talking and leading learners through the material in the way she/he feels most appropriate. And we can do that in ProtoSphere too. However, the 3-D space lets users go through the material and learn in different ways (i.e., via exploration), depending on their learning style.

This also contributes to the higher retention rates that we are seeing, such as those experienced by one global pharmaceutical company when it used ProtoSphere to build a 3-D social network to significantly improve its onboarding process for new MBA candidates.

Interactivity also leads to the "social leveling" we see ProtoSphere users talking about. An example of this is when another pharmaceutical firm created the industry's first virtual poster session in ProtoSphere. Junior scientists approached senior ones, business people interacted with scientists, and employees of one generation engaged with newbies.

All of this can eliminate silos and break down cultural barriers that often impede collaboration and productivity. At the same time, users are able to get a glimpse of the person’s background with a right-click on their avatar to see their social profile.

The benefits of interactivity are also felt when it comes to brainstorming and conflict resolution. University of North Carolina researchers identified in a recent study two challenges when groups try to collaborate using video conferencing: Video conferencing is not the best environment for brainstorming, nor conflict resolution.

Why? Because, as the researchers found, people can't interact easily, bounce ideas off one another, negotiate, and bargain. Video conferencing tends to fall under the token-passing phenomenon we see with 2-D Web meetings. 3-D environments, on the other hand, lend themselves to the collaboration necessary to brainstorm and solve problems efficiently and effectively.

There are many other reasons we hear amidst our circles as to why 3-D environments have the advantage over 2-D environments. We'll continue to share them with you on the blog. And as always, feel free to share your ideas in the comments.