Team organisation

[waltervs]

Based on discussions at yesterday's meeting in Manchester, it seems that getting your team organised so that members can communicate with each other is crucial to the success of the team This in turn is likely to have a direct bearing on whether or not you succeeds at the Challenge.

If so, I would be really interested in any "strategies for success" that experienced Challengers might be willing to recommend.

[calison]

Just a couple of things we do and are trying to do in our team - "Team Communicate" (and of course our strategies are still evolving) are as follows.

1. Add each team member as friends/followers/following/network etc on the basic set of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Digg, SU etc etc etc. Also set up each others contacts on Skype

2. Have all members join a room on FriendFeed for team communiques. Post regular bulletins and requests for, and within the team, on twitter which of course flows through to Friendfeed.

3 Subscribe to your Room's Friendfeed feed with google reader

4. Schedule regular meeting to be held either in a conference chat or better yet a conference call on Skype, or if you are lucky enough you could even do them at a local coffee shop if you are all local to each other. As our team spans the globe this is not an option to us.

Warning: Choosing a bar isnt a great idea, as its guaranteed at least one member will leave the meeting without remembering what took place and in fact possibly without even knowing how to get home !)

5. If you choose voice conference calls on skype have one or more members record the call using any number of plugins for skype to do this. We use a plugin called "Pamela" - just cuz the name is cute and we have the ugliest team on the planet. Have one member allocated to distribute those recordings to all the group in case one person couldnt make the call or just as a permanent record of what points were made.
6. Post scheduling of meeting via friendfeed or if you are old school email them to the team.
7. AND VERY IMPORTANT, get to know your team members !
8. For your meetings TRY to structure them into a number of segments.

• General news of whats going on in both the course and in each others projects
• Discuss any issues or problems each member may be having with a section of the challenge
• A specific topic for that day related to online marketing - this is good if you have one or more "experts" in the biz that can help teach the newbies - this can be set at a level suitable for the group
• Schedules and agendas for upcoming conference calls
• General chit chat and getting to know each other as the meeting winds up

you dont have to follow what we are trying to implement as our meeting structure but try to go into it with a plan or it just ends up a chin wagging fest.

Try to communicate as often as needed and as often as possible.
If you are in a group that is a global one its not a bad idea to try also to go along to any local group meetups from your area. Gather as big a support network as possible. Its very valuable to have friends and contacts in this business.
There is HUGE ..no wait "A W E S O ME" power in a team that cannot be generated by going it alone. Support each other all the time.
Im sure others have good ideas also so lets hear how you all do it

One final point is that if you dont have a group of people experienced in either business, management or leadership choose one or two members to lead the group and organize some roles and responsibilities because if left to nobody the role of co-ordination will never occur. If you choose an organizer or admin or leader to begin with and naturally over time another evloves into the role that is better at it, then allow that to occur without any infigthing. Whats best for the team is the paramount consideration

A final thing I just thought of but we dont do is maybe you can also set up a group calender on one of the many calendar application sites so meeting times , times when members might be working, otherwise engaged or away can be placed so the group knows when hookups are possible

Oh one last point. If your team is global such as ours is. Try downloading a nice little plugin for Flock/Firefox called "Foxclocks" Can be found at the extensions for Firefox site.It sites as a tiny icon in the bottom left hand corner of yor browser and when you place your cursor above it it pops up a list of times for each time zone /city /country that you have previously set up. This is REAL handy for teams that span continents to know when each member might be sleeping, at work etc . Also recommend you set up an east coast US time zone even if you dont have any members there as thats the times zone that ED uses for scheduling of broadcasts, releases etc

Anyway thats about is for us...now its over to you

[philoscribe]

We have googlegroup email for quick communication and a ning group for discussion, resources.

We also make use of googledocs to share links to our sites to keep track of the social posting.

D

[waltervs]

Thank you both for some brilliant feedback. Now all I have to do is figure out how to forward it to my co-team members!

[peterray]

A final thing I just thought of but we dont do is maybe you can also set up a group calender on one of the many calendar application sites so meeting times , times when members might be working, otherwise engaged or away can be placed so the group knows when hookups are possible

I'm trying to figure out how to do this so our international team can schedule a conference call...Are they any webservices or easy tutorials/howto's to doing this? (without installing software I might add..)

btw, great post

Peter

[peterray]

Originally Posted by waltervs

Thank you both for some brilliant feedback. Now all I have to do is figure out how to forward it to my co-team members!

why don't you use the Friendfeed bookmarklet and place the link right into your group room at friendfeed. That is, if you have a room set up there...

[calison]

Originally Posted by peterray

I'm trying to figure out how to do this so our international team can schedule a conference call...Are they any webservices or easy tutorials/howto's to doing this? (without installing software I might add..)

You could try something like Google Calendar, theres no need to install anything. Ive never used it but if I recall you can make calendars private or public. Then of course there is the "old standby" simply email them or phone them.