Tips and tools for running online meetings
The tips. Online meetings need managing and organisation just like face-to-face meetings:
- Have an agenda, with timings, which should be forwarded to all participants beforehand, and outlined again at the beginning of the meeting
- Allocate someone in charge of chairing to keep the meeting focussed and running to time
- Adhere to the same protocols that you would in offline meetings – listening to whoever is speaking, not interrupting
- Allocate someone responsible for taking minutes to record what was discussed, agreed and decided, and writing these up to circulate to rest of group
The tools. (some we’ve mentioned before):
Skype: hosts conference calls for up to 9 participants, with video, file sharing and instant messaging (useful for sharing web links or notes whilst talking). The latest version also enables screen sharing to show your colleagues exactly what you’re looking at.
Twiddla - a more creative environment to share images and sketches with all team members online at the same time. Has a supporting chat (text and audio) function for discussions (unfortunately no longer free, except for a 30-day trial)
Etherpad – a dynamic method of online collaborative writing which allows you to see your teams edits in real-time. Useful if the focus of the meeting is to get a document finalised. This application is free if the files are kept public, but there is a cost to make them private.
Google Wave – the new conversational tool from Google (still currently in invite mode) which allows for real-time editing like Etherpad, but also acts like a wiki (allowing for attachments and links), e-mail (you can start new ‘waves’ with your contacts) and instant messaging.
(So there’s no excuse if we’re hit by another bout of snow!)
January 20 2010 11:34 pm | Meetings and Online tools
