This blog was designed to serve the Workshifting community with relevant information contributed by the community, and when appropriate mention our services.  However, every now and again a really interesting and useful fact lands on my desk that I feel compelled to share.

The graph represents Citrix Online's internal use of GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar compared to our Average Travel Spend per Head Count.  The reduction in our Average Travel Spend is significant as our use of online meeting tools has increased (special thanks to Scott Allen).

I thought it would be useful to pull back the kimono and show internal data that demonstrates the value of online meeting tools.  I feel like I should add the disclaimer, "...individual results may vary".  However, I don't believe that to be true.  There are many choices as it pertains to Workshifting tools, and plenty is being written about adoption.  Once put into practice, whatever your tool of choice, the impact can be significant.

However, ROI for online meeting services is not always measured by a reduction in travel expenses.  In many cases your travel may increase because your use of the tools has allowed you to interact with an even greater number of clients and potential clients.  If you're that person, ROI could be measured in terms of an increase in Leads, Gross Revenue or Bookings.  For many others, ROI is defined by Productivity and Family Time.

The point is not to pigeonhole yourself into one or the other.  Select the tools that best serve your needs and the needs of your team.  It's your adoption of the tools into your life that makes them effective, not vice versa.  

How do you measure the effectiveness of your Workshifting tools?

Ratings and reviews have become a large part of what influences my decisions on where I eat, sleep and drink while traveling.  I constantly find myself checking tips on Foursquare and reviews on Yelp to help me decide where I want to spend my time and money.  These reviews and ratings are valuable because I know they are user generated and I can trust the opinion of normal people like myself, for the most part.  

Now imagine if we applied these ratings and reviews to workshifting.  I go to Starbucks in Stratford upon Avon looking to get some work done.  I get my coffee, sit down and realize they have free wifi, plugs at nearly every table against the wall and its pretty quite (except at 3:30pm when all the kids get out of school).  So I get out my Nexus One, check in on foursquare and write a tip about the great atmosphere, free wifi and outlets and I tag this tip with our cute hashtag #workshifting.  Or I am at my coffee shop in NYC and I write a tip that the Bean has free wifi however they have only three outlets and I use the #workshifting hashtag.  Next time you are in the East Village looking for a place to workshift you probably won't go to the Bean if you need to plug in.  Now we have the ability to make our #workshifting hashtag valuable.

What are your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Melissa Leon

In social media we understand and accept the principles of sharing, engaging and being open to serendipity. We benefit from engaging and sharing information with people online to form new friendships and working relationships. But how often do we ignore these same social media principles in "real life"? How many times do we sit in the coffee shop working all day with our headphones in trying not to make eye contact with the person sitting next to us?

I share my thoughts on sharing, engagement, and serendipity in a short video....


Your thoughts?

Photo Credit: Medmoiselle T

So much advice is being disseminated I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about lessons learned from the inside.  We were experimenting around with social media in late 2008.  To be honest, we were just tinkering with Twitter.  We noticed that people were having conversations about our brand and we wanted to get in on the action.  To keep this post brief, I'm going to focus specially on Twitter.
 
We started working with New Marketing Labs to help us narrow our focus, or should I say, start focusing. Lesson 1: learn how to listen.  Listening is hard.  When we started, we responded to just about every post on Twitter. There is a balance between the community being self sufficient and the company's desire to join the conversation.  We were trying not to be "that guy".  You know..."that guy", the one that brings a hundred business cards to an event and measures his success by the amount of cards he gave out.  I think, in the beginning, we were "that guy".  We measured success by the amount of conversations we were involved in as opposed to engagement with the community.
 
Twitter, to many companies, is public customer service and the Twitter public timeline is the diary.  A company's successes and failures are there for the world to watch in real time.  The companies that do it right, are the best listeners, not the best talkers.  My advice is spend 2/3 of your time listening and 1/3 engaging.  It's a simple metric which is derived from from how we listen in the real world.  As humans we have the ability to listen at 400 words per minute but we talk at roughly 130 words per minute.  That's a good guidepost as opposed to a rule.  However, some of the most useful advice comes from the people that are the faces behind the branded Twitter accounts.

Glenn Dobson manages our GoToMeeting Twitter account and he was kind enough to give me his thoughts on how to be an effective listener.  Most people that follow GoToMeeting on Twitter know Glenn as ^GD.  He is the man behind the tweets.  I believe he even had a marriage proposal on Twitter from a crazed fan.  You should ask him about it.  

Glenn's Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Be genuine in your interactions: People can spot a fake and do not appreciate lip service, you could do more damage than not engaging at all.
   
   
2. Be responsive:  If you are going to offer a presence you need to be there when needed.
   
   
3. Know when to take it offline: Sometimes 140 characters are not enough to work through an issue, know when to offer a more traditional support channel so that you can resolve the issue sooner. Don't be afraid to lose the publicity of resolving the issue in public on Twitter.
   
   
4. Be open to feedback even if it's negative: All feedback is good and sometimes negative feedback is best for growth.
   
   
5. Don't feed the trolls: Everyone knows the Internet is full of trolls, no one can make them happy so sometimes the best response is none at all. Put your efforts into the people who want to work with you.
   

My Top 5 Tips for Effective Social Listening:

1. Use tools such as CoTweet and Radian6 (and hire a ^GD clone).
   
   
2. Separate support inquiries from general conversations about your brand.  Assign a specific group to manage the support inquiries (in our case, tech support and product queries).
   
   
3. Create a branded Twitter account.  List the real names and pictures of the people "on deck" as part of the Twitter profile.  This helps humanize the brand.  Check out GoToMeeting Twitter account for an example of how we're doing it.
   
   
4. Use the carrot symbol and initials to identity who is posting.  If I was posting from the branded account I would end my post with ^DB. 
   
   
5. Learn from the best.  Check out: Southwest Airlines and Comcast as just two of the many great examples available.
   

It's very likely that you and/or your brand are being talked about on Twitter.  Follow the advice that is relevant to your needs, and toss out the rest.

What are your tips for effective listening?

Photo Credit: abrinsky
 

Business Week did a fascinating story about the effect of the real estate market on unemployment and economic recovery.

Twenty-three percent of all mortgagees owe more than their house is worth. In Nevada, a whopping 65% of property owners are upside-down with their mortgage. According to the article, that together with a depressed housing market, the aging population, and other factors, has led to record low mobility.

So what does that have to do with unemployment? It turns out, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, that mobility is fundamental to economic recovery. If people aren't willing or able to relocate in order to find work, high rates of unemployment will continue.

That's where workshifting comes in! Bringing the work to the worker, rather than the other way around would allow people to find gainful employment without taking a bath on the sale of their home. It would also save companies a bundle in relocation packages.

Has workshifting allowed you to avoid a costly move? How else might it help speed up our economic recovery?

Photo Credit: The Shifted Librarian 

This is a guest post from Deb Brown, an internet workshifter and small business owner of www.debworks.com

An Internet Workshifter in the Hinterlands

In my county of 10,000 people, I'm a workshifter.  I bring my business to you.  I teach small businesses how to determine a social media plan that works for them, then I help them get it started and we work together to grow it. 

I meet in the local coffee shop with a client, determine what kind of assistance they are looking for, work with them to match my services with their needs and make the appointment for our first on site visit.  The coffee shop does not have internet service.  It does have a group of local people that show up there regularly for coffee.  We all know each other and believe in supporting our local businesses.  

My client wants to know how to use social media.  Should they blog?  Or create a Facebook account and reach out to the community?  We've devised a plan based on what they need, and what they can commit too.  They are not sure what kind of computer they have, but are pretty sure they have cable.  (There's my first clue.)

Are You Ready for the Surprises?

I show up on time at their office or store, with my lovely Dell Inspiron, ready to hook up to their router system.  Except they don't have one.  They have a desktop running Windows 98 in the back office.  The desktop hooks up to the phone line.  That would be dial up.  You know what internet service they use - yup, AOL.

You know the desktop has no real memory, moves slower than molasses in January in Iowa and is not equipped to work with photos, doesn't have Word - and was only really designed to be used to read email and maybe look at a site or two.  Mac?  That's the cousin who lives in Missouri.  Not a known animal in the hinterlands. 

This happens.  If you're not smart, it will happen to you a lot.  Don't give up on these rural small businesses.  They have been doing the best they know how to do with what they have.  It's YOUR job, local workshifter, to show them the way. 

Listen, Really Listen

I learned quickly to start interviewing my clients before making any kind of agreement for work. I ask a lot of questions.  I listen to the answers.    I know when I walk into that office or store exactly what kind of computer, what kind of internet service, what kind of hook up they have.  I keep The Computer Guy on speed dial.  That's our local man that provides computer repair service, new hook up service and new computers for sale.  He can be at my location within 20 minutes - ready to service the client.  He will also bill them and work with them on payment.  Who does that?  We do that in a small community.
 

A Commitment to the Community

Workershifters in a rural community have a great challenge.  We are asked to bring our friends and families into this century.  We choose to do it, because it needs to be done.  We have stepped up to the plate and expect to hit the ball out of the park.  Because that is what people in rural America do - we help each other.
 
Score.org gives these statistics for small businesses in the rural economy:
 

• Since 1969, the number of self-employed persons in rural America has increased over 240 percent to 5.3 million.
• There are more than 1.2 million rural, small businesses. 
• In the rural economy, small business comprises almost two-thirds of jobs and 90 percent of rural establishments.
• In the service sector, rural firms are particularly important where they account for 64 percent of rural jobs and 89 percent of rural establishments.
• It is estimated that by 2015, one in three persons in rural America will be self-employed in some capacity.
  

We have a commitment to the community.  This workshifter is determined to work with the small businesses where she lives to keep our community vibrant, exciting and growing.

Photo Credit: David Michael Morris

The spirit of workshifting is really personified by Twitter. So much of the current Twitter culture is made up of folks that workshift from anywhere their work takes them. Workshifting is not just about the tools or location, it's often about crowd sourcing. Working with people whom you've never met, in locations you've never been, and with whom you've only communicated with via a tool such as Twitter.
 
This was never more true than when I decided to help organize Twestival in Santa Barbara, California. I had to stretch my capacity and ask for help through Twitter to help manage the event. It's been an amazing experience. We have received offers to help with promoting the event, A/V, and more.  I'm meeting some amazing and passionate people.
 
As we talk about workshifing and Twestival, we are reaching out to everyone to do the same....which is to talk about what we care about.  I've wondered if this is the right approach. Is "everyone" to inundated? Should our efforts be focused on those that care the most?  How do you define "care" if you only get a piece of them in 140 bites (or bytes..ha!)? 
 
What I've discovered is that workshifting is a culture. It's also a choice. I'd love to hear how others are workshifting and building a community of givers, not just followers.

Photo by: niallkennedy
 

Here in Orlando, I am very proud to sit on the Board at Rock For Hunger, a nonprofit that helps those in the homeless community get back on their feet. One of the programs that we have started to help with building community relations and build jobs is a street paper. This model has proven to be very successful and some of you may be familiar with StreetWsie in Chicago or the Homeless Voice in South Florida. Our version is called Talk For Hunger and has been a great way for homeless individuals to feel like they are a part of something that is really going to help their community.

So what does this have to do with workshifting?

While working on an issue in the spring I turned to one of the more sociable homeless, Jeff, and asked him if he wanted to contribute an article about the homeless and technology. After a few of our conversations it was evident that the homeless were just as tuned into technology as we were, just without the luxury of owning most of the tech toys. Jeff told me that any homeless person in Orlando that had ID and no outstanding balance could have a library card, which entitled them to time on the public computers. This time was spent doing many activities that we take for granted, from checking the news and weather to reconnecting with family members and friends via social networks. Some were even attempting to start their own business, find contract work or rebuild their lives via research, personal branding and financial education.

After learning of some cases of our local homeless using technology to either work, or find work, I started to think about some of the luxuries that we take for granted workshifting and how we can help local communities improve by advancing the technologies of the local homeless and poverty communities.

Donations

This is the easiest thing to do and starts in your own office. Instead of pawning off your 2-3 year old laptop on Craigslist for $50, bring it to a local homeless organization and see how that laptop can help get someone a job, start a business or be used by the organization.

Data Storage

We backup (or hopefully backup) all that we have on our computers to hard drives and in the cloud. For the homeless, they carry most of what they own in a backpack and papers are easily lost or stolen. Imagine having to retype your resume every time you needed a copy due to not having a way to save it. Think about thumb drives or education on cloud servers so the next time they need to reference a document, they can login and print, email or upload.

Mobile Phones and Smart Phones

Many homeless are very savvy with text messaging and using phones to get online to check bank accounts, social security status and sports scores. Most of the phones are pay as you go with very limited data plans. Anyone with ideas to improve this situation are greatly appreciated. I hope this was a good introduction to how the homeless community is using technology to workshift. In the future I hope to expand more and talk about how nonprofits are teaching and leveraging new rules of "workshifting" for the community they serve, their volunteers and how their organizations are run.

Photo by: mrtruffle