Back in the 6th century BC, Lao-Tzu said:

“Failure is the foundation of success. Success is the lurking place of failure.”

So, during this fifth month of the year 2010, I’ve been wondering if this means that sometimes the fastest route to success is right through failure. What do you think?

For the last 10 days, I’ve been participating in a collegial exchange at LinkedIn in a learning, education and training group. One member of the group raised the question,”What do you think the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tzu, meant when he said, ‘Failure is the foundation of success…success is the lurking place of failure?’”

Folks from around the globe have been weighing in on this question from a many perspectives. While I’m not any kind of authoritative interpreter of Lao-Tzu, I found myself provoked by the quotation and the question, too. I shared that it seems to me that…

“…Live, experiential learning environments provide real-world feedback. And this always includes feedback about failure. If we already knew how to do something, we’d already be doing it, right? I find experiential learn-by-doing environments with small-group coaching to be the fastest route to success. And it goes right through failure…”

I went on to describe a bit about the Madhatters Tea Party Group Coaching Programs as high-fun, low-pressure learning environments in which small groups of experienced trainers, coaches and consultants are transitioning from delivering high-value services in face-to-face meetings to delivering services in the very different environment of virtual meetings.

I shared with the group that I have deliberately designed the Madhatters Group Coaching Programs so that all participants – both Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers – have a chance to learn from their personal successes and failures as well as others’.

This means there’s not a lot of one-on-one handholding or upfront explanation going on in the Madhatters Virtual Tea Parties. There is quite a bit of communication through email and in two private online learning spaces – one for the Madhatters and one for the Virtual Tea Partiers. But, in the end, both coaching programs are based on two presumptions:

1)  Adults have enrolled because they want to learn more about using free or very low-cost virtual meeting tools in a safe, laughter-filled learning space and
2)  Everyone will be learning by doing.

IS A VIRTUAL MEETING COACH A DRIVERS’ ED TEACHER, A DIRECTOR, OR BOTH?
This means both the Madhatter presenters and their friends, followers and fans – the Virtual Tea Partiers – receive weekly guidance and coaching. But the Monday afternoon Virtual Tea Parties are always more like zany “on-the-job training” sessions than like “recitals.”

I’m calling the sessions Madhatters Tea Parties because so many of our expectations for how human beings can and should behave when we’re “meeting” are turned upside down, inside out, and backwards. That’s just the truth of the matter in virtual meetings, isn’t it?

Each week everyone has an opportunity to learn by doing. There have, so far, been some delightful displays of genius! There have also been some gnarly difficulties getting the free online tools to work as promised and some problems with participants’ computer and phone equipment. Sometimes things happen as planned, sometimes they don’t. Either way, there’s a ton of learning going on – via both successes and failures. Sometimes there’s frustration, but no one’s getting hurt.

A current Madhatter participant, Cynthia Winton-Henry, one of the co-founders of Interplay, calls me her “Driver’s Ed Teacher.” Another Hatter calls me her “Director.” She says I’m eliciting new kinds of creativity and performance from her well-honed talents – stuff she didn’t know she had available. From my side of the game, both “driver’s ed teacher” and “director” seem like pretty useful metaphors for the two ends of the spectrum we’re developing. On the one hand, none of the Hatters has run a truly interactive virtual meeting before and they all need to master the connectivity tools. On the other, every one of them is already a proven trainer, coach and/or consultant who knows her stuff inside out and upside down and only needs help repackaging her “magic” for delivery at a distance.

NEW CHOICES CAN BE OVERWHELMING
Using sound and text and visual images, simultaneously with other people – at a distance – can be a bit overwhelming for people using web meeting tools for the first time. It can be a big surprise to be not only permitted – but expected – to do more than sit passively and observe others’ slideshows or software demos.

Faced with the need to choose where to put their attention, some participants – Madhatters and Virtual Tea Partiers, alike – have frozen or gotten really frustrated. Do I track the continuous flow in the public text chat, start up a private text chat with someone I know, draw or write on the whiteboard or the presenters’ slides, or just use the telephone bridge to speak? HELP! When what you’re wanting to do is be as fully present as you can with others, that’s a lot to figure out at once!

Other participants – those who’ve already acquired a taste for and some experience with multi-media – have found themselves so stimulated and excited by all the channels available to connect that they’ve been using all the channels at once! Which makes a lot of noise – both visual and auditory.

And from my perspective, all of this is just perfect! Learning by doing – in a deliberately managed and intentionally playful learning space – allows adults at different skill levels to learn what they need at their own pace.

FRESH, HOT, ADVICE FROM THE FIELD
This week, I’ve asked Susan Kramer-Pope, our fourth Madhatter hostess, to share her best advice about leading your first virtual meeting, based on the tricky experience we had together Monday in DimDim.

Here’s Susan sharing with me and Tom Carroll, from EvolutionaryLearning.com, who’s been our background photographer and my valued thinking partner throughout this Virtual Meeting Camp.

NOW IT’S YOUR TURN
Now that you’ve heard from Susan, will you share your best advice for her – and other experienced trainers, coaches, and consultants – as they make their journey towards virtual meeting mastery? If you’ll do this, I promise I’ll compile all your responses and publish them here on the blog!

Opening day of the Madhatters Tea Party 6-Week Virtual Meeting Camp went just about as I’d imagined it would. Wild. Crazy. Full of surprises. And a little on the chaotic side for the first 15-20 minutes.

How else would you expect things to go with a gang of mostly inexperienced virtual meeters, coming from a dozen different frames of reference, with wide-ranging computer literacy, using both PC and Macintosh computers, and connecting through a free teleconferencing line and a full-featured multi-media virtual meeting room at the same time? And did I say most of them were middle-aged women?

As the Madhatter of Madhatters, I was utterly delighted by the whole event! It was the quintessential Virtual Madhatters Tea Party!

When it was over, participants’ feedback reflected various levels of cognitive overload … and excitement …and curiosity …and a desire for more!

I had a debriefing conversation about the first Madhatters Tea Party today with my colleague, friend, and former client, Tom Carroll, founder of EvolutionaryLearning.com.

Tom’s lifetime of research mapping human excellence and designing strategies to rapidly transfer that excellence from one human to another (and another and another…) has inspired me since we met a decade ago in Austin, Texas. When I first met Tom, he was a Senior Performance Consultant at International SEMATECH where he and his colleague, Mike Bown, helped semiconductor engineering and wafer fabrication teams make the most of their full human capacities in a high pressure, multi-company, multi-cultural consortium whose mission was to ensure that the US get ahead – and stay ahead – of the rest of the world in the development of semiconductor technologies.

These days, Tom has moved into his own consulting practice where he continues to research and test ways to help human beings perform better, faster, and cheaper in a variety of industries where the competition is tough and stakes are high.

At my request, Tom was a participant/observer during the first Madhatters Tea Party and I’ve asked him to continue observing. I’ll be publishing a series of our “behind the scenes” debriefing conversations here on the blog to help the Madhatters and the Virtual Tea Partiers – and anyone else who’s interested – get some background context for the experience-based-learning they’re doing.

I hope you find  something useful for yourself in this dialogue and, as always, I’m interested in your thoughts and feelings. Please feel free to comment below.

This first conversation is focused on Tom’s perceptions about the Virtual Tea Party and explores some of my assumptions about the language and culture of virtual meetings. Out of my training in educational psychology and anthropology, my personal experience teaching ESL and cross-cultural communication, and my research and testing of hundreds of virtual meeting technologies over the last three years, I have come to believe that immersing people in a learning experience that is both safe and serious is the only sound way to help human beings quickly build the literacy and fluency each of us needs in order to make the most of new, online meeting tools.

In this economy, the stakes couldn’t be higher – particularly for independent business people with high-value services to sell.

I’m completely convinced that once we understand how to use them, virtual meetings can allow teachers, trainers, coaches and consultants to lower costs while providing more and better service.

Give a listen. And by all means, feel free to share what you think…

From Clark Quinn’s blog, Learnlets, December 8, 2009:

What if the learner’s experience was ‘hard fun’: challenging, but engaging, yielding a desirable experience, not just an event to be tolerated, OR what is learning experience design?

Can you imagine creating a ‘course’ that wins raving fans?  It’s about designing learning that is not only effective but seriously engaging.  I believe that this is not only doable, but doable under real world constraints.

Let me start with this bit of the wikipedia definition of experience design:

the practice of designing…with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience…, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality

That is, experience design is about creating a user experience, not just focusing on their goals, but thinking about the process as well.   And that’s, to me, what is largely ignored in creating elearning is thinking about process from the learner’s perspective. There are really two components: what we need to accomplish, and what we’d like the learner to experience.

Our first goal still has to look at the learning need, and identify an objective that we’d like learners to meet, but even that we need to rethink.  We may have constraints on delivery environment, resources, and more that we have to address as well, but that’s not the barrier.  The barrier is the mistake of focusing on knowledge-level objectives, not on meaningful skill change.  Let me be very clear: one of the real components of creating a learning experience is ensuring that we develop, and communicate, a learning objective that the learner will ‘get’ is important and meaningful to them.  And we have to take on the responsibility for making that happen.

Then, we need to design an experience that accomplishes that goal, but in a way that yields a worthwhile experience.  I’ve talked before about the emotional trajectory we might want the learner to go through.  It should start with a (potentially wry) recognition that this is needed, some initial anxiety but a cautious optimism, etc.  We want the learner to gradually develop confidence in their ability, and even some excitement about the experience and the outcome.  We’d like them to leave with no anxiety about the learning, and a sense of accomplishment.  There are a lot of components I’ve talked about along the way, but at core it’s about addressing motivation, expectations, and concerns.

Actually, we might even shoot for more: a transformative experience, where the learner leaves with an awareness of a fundamental shift in their understanding of the world, with new perspectives and attitudes to accompany their changed vocabulary and capabilities.  People look for those in many ways in their life; we should deliver.

This does not come from applying traditional instructional design to an interview with a SME (or even a Subject Matter Network, as I’m increasingly hearing and inclined to agree).  As I defined it before, learning design is the intersection of learning, information, and experience design.  It takes a broad awareness of how we learn, incorporating viewpoints behavior, cognitive, constructive, connective, and more.  It takes an awareness of how we experience: media effects on cognition and emotion, and of the dramatic arts.  And most of all, it takes creativity and vision.

However, that does not mean it can’t be developed reliably and repeatably, on a pragmatic basis.   It just means you have to approach it anew.  It take expertise, and a team with the requisite complementary skill sets, and organizational support. And commitment.  What will work will depend on the context and goals (best principles, not best practices), but I will suggest that with good content development processes, a sound design approach, and a will to achieve more than the ordinary.  This is doable on a scalable basis, but we have to be willing to take the necessary steps.  Are you ready to take your learning to the next level, and create experiences?

Let me briefly explain. For the past three years, Clark Quinn’s thinking has been of enormous value to me while I’ve been researching and testing virtual meeting tools. I stumbled across this piece today through a pointer in Harold Jarche’s blog and I have to say that this post describes in the most eerily synchronistic way the assumptions that have been driving me as I’ve been building my new coaching programs for VirtualMeetingStartup.com.

The Madhatter’s Tea Party Group Coaching Programs are, precisely, experiential learning programs. And as I design them, I’ve been focused much more on creating quality user experiences than on increasing or improving functionality.

Why? Because the kinds of people I’m most interested in supporting are already experienced teachers, trainers, coaches, and consultants who have developed high levels of functionality. They just don’t know how to take the things they’re best at and move their interaction with others into cyberspace. They’re subject matter experts (SMEs), but that’s not what’s most precious about them. It’s their compassion, their creativity, their curiosity, and the depth of their empathy for others that make a real difference in others’ lives. Like they say these days, “information is free, experience is expensive.”

Out of my extensive research and testing experiences, it seems to me the best way for teachers, trainers, coaches, and consultants to learn to SHARE THEIR LIVING PRESENCE WITH OTHERS across space and time is to set up situations in which they just DO it. And then fail to connect. And then learn from their failure. And then do it again. And fail to connect in another way. Learn from the failure. And do it again. Etc…

And, since adults really don’t enjoy failing – especially when they’re sitting in a room all by themselves in uncomfortable chairs, staring at a monitor, wearing a headset that pulls their hair and makes their ears hurt – I’ve designed the learning experience to provide regular high-energy interaction, in real-time. And what they’re doing is learning to dump their fear, worry, embarrassment, and self-consciousness as quickly as possible.

Because of this, the Madhatter’s Group Coaching Programs focus on the Madhatters un-learning how to act like subject matter experts – especially at a distance – more than on any deliberate, staged learning about pumping their expertise through the computer into someone else’s mind.

I’m documenting every step of the process so that the design can be repeated, quite pragmatically. But I’m definitely seeing that what I’m doing is creating an experience design that I’ll be replicating, not a traditional “instructional design.”

Fascinating work for me! Hard, hard fun!

Join us, if this interests you…

I’ll be writing more about all this in the days and weeks ahead. What do you think about all this?

When adults need to learn something new, they either welcome training/coaching/consulting opportunities – or they shy away from them. There’s not much middle ground.

When we look at the facts about formal learning, it’s no wonder there’s a divide like this. Whether we happen to be people who enjoy it – or not – formal training, coaching and consulting just don’t seem to improve people’s real-world performance of most things. Real life situations have so many more variables in them than even the most engaging workshops or simulations. People have a hard time translating great new information into great new performance.

The training, coaching, or consulting outcomes we set are often poorly realized because once we’ve transferred our “expertise,” we and the other parties move on. We go back to the real world. This means we’re no longer shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. Then, when clients run into problem situations in the real world – and need some brief, over-the-shoulder support for skilfully applying new principles or routines we’ve suggested – we’re not around. And they fail. The sad part us that clients are often too busy to take time to learn from their failures. So, even if they’ve mastered an acronym that enables them to recite by heart the new principles, new information, or new routines we shared, their performance doesn’t change much. Rats.

Besides hanging our heads or complaining, what can we do about this?

I suggest we make more frequent use of free virtual meeting tools to support clients in “informal” learning environments.

There must be hundreds of ways we can do this! This morning, here are a half-dozen ways I can think of right off the top of my head. I bet you can come up with a half-dozen more!

1. When someone is learning to use a particular piece of software or a complex website, you can do a quick desktop share to demonstrate, specifically, how you use the program or what you find most useful about a particular website. (You could also make a quick screencast and share it asynchronously, if you can’t get together in real-time and share some back-and-forth dialogue while you’re “showing and telling.”)

2. Skip the lectures and the production of accompanying “manuals” and simply publish process “checklists.” Then offer a series of short, conversational virtual meetings to explain/expand the process steps. Be sure to allow sufficient time for the back-and-forth people need to master the sequencing of new routines. Also be sure to allow for time to talk about what’s important to them about making changes to their habits. Everyone needs to establish their own sense of the meaning and purpose – to them – for changing things.

3. Develop a regular 30-minute “mentoring” meeting and use it to troubleshoot specific documents, images, videos, or other “evidence” that a mentee doesn’t know how to respond to as effectively as s/he would like. Call this meeting “Coffee with Susan (or Mike)” and schedule it for the same time every week or two weeks so both mentor and mentee can count on enjoying a cup of coffee while they get smarter about something tricky.

4. Host regular 8-minute virtual brainstorming routines to help clients, coworkers, teammates find new ways to solve specific real-world business problems. Invite the person with the problem to take 3 minutes to describe what it is that has him/her stuck. Turn the description of the situation into a simple question and ask the person with the problem to type that question onto the whiteboard. Then take 5 minutes for everyone participating in the VM to type their ideas onto the whiteboard as quickly as they can think of them. (Or open a Google Document and use it to capture everyone’s responses.) No evaluating, no discussion. No analysis. Just use one – or more – whiteboards to capture ideas as quickly as people spit them out.

Brainstorming works best when there’s little or no cross-talk permitted. Just “popcorn” the ideas aloud and capture the words in text. When 5 minutes is up, quit. Just let the person with the problem take the offerings offline and decide later how to use them. Stop promptly after 5 minutes and let someone else take a turn. Or come back later if you’re in a hurry. Online brainstorming can be a fun and creative “break” that people look forward to if you set a ground rule that you’re going to get in, do it, and get out – without belaboring anything.

5. Create a WIKI or a project team space (using vYew or Wiggio or Basecamp) where people can share their thoughts whenever they have time (asynchronously) and also at a regularly scheduled private live virtual meeting (synchronously).

Give everyone permission to add whatever they like to the online space. Ask a team member who’s not a control freak to “manage” the space so that it doesn’t get too cluttered. (But it’s important not to worry too much about the working-studio-look, either.) Active project spaces are great for just capturing and holding documents, photos, videos and links that people are finding useful and posting them quickly where others can find and use them in their work. It can be helpful to use part of your weekly (online) team meeting to “tour” the project space together and “survey” the riches. Take 5 minutes to hear from whoever parked things in the space during the week to say a few words about what they think is so valuable about the items that they added them to the workspace. If others agree they’re finding something useful, it stays. If not, it goes. Simple housekeeping.

6. Use virtual meetings for OJT (on job training). Set up a rotating schedule of short briefings that trainees/learners can attend. Use short videos or PDF text files to display content that can and will be repeated, but use the whiteboard and text chat and VOIP tools in the virtual meeting space to briefly discuss questions and concerns that come up for trainees/learners as they watch the video and/or read the text file.

Making changes or improving performance requires adults to master new information, new principles and new routines. But learning while we’re working also requires us to create and absorb the purpose of new routines so that we can make the most effective non-routine choices when unexpected or unplanned circumstances occur.

Scheduling a deliberate series of short online meetings based on various OJT learning topics allows trainers, coaches, and consultants to support both formal and informal change processes over the whole span of time it takes people to make lasting changes.

What are some ways YOU could use virtual meetings to support adult learners, clients, and co-workers in their ongoing ‘informal’ change processes?

You don’t have to write a dissertation about it. Just popcorn your ideas out below as comments. Why not use this space to do a little ‘informal’ learning right out in public?

After all, a blog is nothing more than an asynchronous meeting of the minds. N’est-ce-pas?

I just learned about a new virtual meeting tool that makes it easy to have virtual meetings – of all sizes – in virtual reality.

Of course we’ve been able to use Second Life this way for several years already. But many people find Second Life too complex and a little too immersive for their tastes. I’ve been one of those people myself. I just couldn’t see the ROI for taking the additional time to create scenes and develop avatars. I like everyday 3D reality a lot and I want to get off my computer and get outside as often as I can. Besides, I really like getting things done quickly with people I don’t happen to be co-located with. So, before now, virtual reality meetings just haven’t been nearly as interesting as being able to quickly see and hear other people in something closer to our everyday reality – using VOIP and webcams and whiteboards.

But today, on a tip from Jane Hart, I wandered over to Assemb’Live and I have to say, I’m curious enough about the simple frames and navigation they’re offering that I signed up for a test drive. On first inspection, it looks like the developers have been thinking about what I would call “meeting culture” in the same ways I already think about it. Meeting setup and invitation processes follow the same kinds of protocols as other meeting tools. Webcam participation is still possible. Voice is fully integrated into the participation process. People attending your meeting can participate fully with you – and you can manage the sound if you need to. Being able to choose from a simple set of templates for scene setting simplifies the experience of hosting. This leaves more time to think about what you actually intend to accomplish with your meeting – beyond just having fun playing with each other.

My imagination is provoked and my curiosity piqued – but not overwhelmed – by the possibilities in Assemb’Live. I’ll need to go inside and spend some time before I say more. If you’re looking for more virtual reality in your virtual meetings – and your attendees would enjoy that, too – you might want to give Assemb’Live a spin. If you do decide to try it, please leave me a comment below and I’ll come experiment with you over the next 30 days.

And, hey! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, too!!

When times get tough, the tough get going, they say. Well, times remain tough, don’t they? I’m having so many people telling me they need my help but can’t afford it that I’ve decided to create my own Economic Stimulus Package for 2010. It’s called “Meri Bucks.”

Here’s how it works: I want and need to exchange my services for cash so I can pay the rent and buy groceries and fuel while we reinvent the economy together. Clients and potential clients want and need my help tweaking their businesses processes so they CAN take advantage of the incredible time and cost savings virtual meetings have to offer. Most people would really like to use web conferencing and other kinds of virtual meetings with clients, customers, coworkers, and suppliers. They just don’t want to risk losing their relationships with people. They don’t want to look stupid. They don’t think they have time to learn something new. And, worst of all, they don’t know how to tweak the way they’re doing things now – just a little – so they can translate some of their service processes into virtual meeting spaces.

On top of that, everyone needs to be able to squeeze every last drop of value out of whatever cash they do have. That means they’re agonizing over which help they can afford to get now – and what just has to wait.

So, here’s my offer: Throughout the entire year of 2010, I’m going to be trading in “Meri Bucks.” These certificates of service come in two denominations only, $1250 and $625. I’m trading them for $1000 or $500 in US greenbacks. This means that “Meri Bucks” are paying 25% return on investment.

Now I know – and you know – that no one is offering to give you a 25% return on investment for your precious greenbacks right now. So this is a terrific deal for you! And the deal is worth it to me because I have some holes in my calendar and want to fill them now. So, I’m willing to offer this extraordinary return as part of playing fair and doing my part to stimulate the economy in 2010.

I know you can’t afford to keep coping with workarounds that are costing you profits you need to pocket. And I can’t do what I love to help small business people if you can’t afford to get the service you need from me.

If you’re ready to make a few changes to your business processes – and learn quickly and painlessly how you can use virtual meetings to pocket more real profits throughout 2010 and all the years ahead – you can get an extra FREE 25% service from me by purchasing and trading in “Meri Bucks” right now. This could translate into you getting several team members trained for FREE, several hours of management consulting for FREE, several hours of producer support for FREE, or some other kind of help you know you need to get busy transitioning into virtual meeting space. You design your project and, using “Meri Bucks,” I’ll deliver 25% extra into it for FREE.

So, tell Santa. Tell your partners. Tell your CFO. Tell your investors. Tell your husband/wife… Starting right now you can use “Meri Bucks” to get a leg up on transitioning your business into the 21st century using virtual meetings.

If you’re interested in taking me up on this offer and want to discuss it further, please feel free to phone me directly at 541.488.7942.

You will need to call soon, though, because I have minted a LIMITED NUMBER of these certificates and when they’re gone, they’re gone. You can use them for service anytime in 2010, but you will need to purchase them now if you’re interested!

“Meri Bucks” to the rescue for 2010!!

Okay friends, here we go. I’ve been promising some new material for The Virtual Meeting Coach Show for the last several weeks. I’ve got a window of time today to post the first in a series of conversations I’ve been having with virtual meeting pros. The series is called Virtual Meeting Masters and I intend to use it to provide you with cutting-edge advice from the pros so that you can become a “virtual meeting master,” too.

I’ve been talking with people who fully understand the tremendous potential of virtual meeting tools, web conferencing, online meetings – whatever you want to call real-time dialogue with your coworkers, clients, customers, suppliers, students, patients, and other people who you’re working with.

Hunting up these folks and finding new ways to capture our conversations has been a blast! Thanks in large part to the ingenuity and persistence of my partner-in-crime, Tom Carroll, of Evolutionary Learning, we have a new kind of video format for you to enjoy along with some high-quality audio-only podcasts.

This first show is a short, powerful conversation with best-selling author Sharon Drew Morgen. Sharon Drew just released a new book last week on Amazon called “Dirty Little Secrets: Why Buyers Can’t Buy and Sellers Can’t Sell and What You Can Do About It.”

I’ve been following Sharon Drew’s work for many years now and this is, without a doubt, the best book she’s written. It couldn’t be more timely. The book elegantly many things we all need to bear in mind as we work together to help each other move ahead in this crazy economy.

Sharon Drew is famous for helping people speed up the process of long-term or complex sales but the real wisdom she has to share in this particular book goes far beyond sales. She understands the process of change and her way of looking at change makes it clear how we can either help or hinder people we’re working with as they make their best decisions about incorporating new solutions into their systems.

Whether you’re looking to speed up the sales cycle on a complex sale, train or coach clients in new ways of doing things, or boost the productivity of distance workteams, there’s a lot for all of us in this conversation. I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, by all means, pick up a copy of Dirty Little Secrets. You can get one here.

As always, we like reading your comments and requests for future shows.

Coming up next… a fascinating conversation about providing telehealth care using live virtual meetings.

I’ve been in a flurry of local activity for the last 10 days or so and every conversation has come back to this question:

“What are you doing to prepare yourself and your people to respond in real-time to the tidal wave of buyers, patients, learners, workers, and clients who are already online now shopping for what you have to offer?”

This little slide show does a masterful job of outlining the issues and some of the challenges facing people working in the arenas of telehealth, telemedicine, and the other domains covered by connected health.

But the issues are the same for people who want to learn from you online, people who want to buy houses from you online, people who want to work with you online, and clients who want you to consult with them online. Take a look:

So what’s your plan? How are you gearing up to serve digital consumers?

They’re already online looking for what they want. And if you want them to “meet” with you, you need to be able to meet them digitally. Virtually. Online.

If you’re not sure how to get started safely – and confidently – please let me help you start stepping through a simple way you can start using virtual meetings to serve e-buyers, e-patients, e-learners, and e-clients the way they want to be served by you!

Real-time virtual meetings aren’t rocket science, friends. And, if you’re not already using virtual meetings to empower digital buyers, digital patients, digital learners, and digital clients, time’s a’wasting… You’d better believe it: your competition is gearing up right now.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you already know I’m crazy about all kinds of virtual meeting tools. And in this economy, I’m especially crazy about helping people practice their chops using some of the fabulous new FREE tools.

DimDim is one of the best of the free web conferencing, virtual meeting, internet conferencing, online meeting tools out there. They recently published a new set of simple setup tutorials and if you’re ready to dive in and explore, you can’t go wrong using them. Go here to find a well-organized set of tutorials.

Then, when you’re ready to focus on how to think about and organize your virtual meetings so you get – and keep – the rapport you need with the folks you’re meeting with, come back and see me here. Your next step? Get yourself a copy of The Coach’s Short List and sign up for my next live – or online – training.

It’s not rocket science learning to setup and use virtual meeting tools skillfully.  It’s also not something most people want to do without some help – until they get good at both the technical part AND the relationship part. That’s what I’m here for.

DimDim just made it a lot easier to get started!

I can’t count the number of people who have asked me in the last month for a list of apps that might help them simplify their meeting scheduling processes. I haven’t had time to compile a list like that yet, but now I’m not going to bother. Readwriteweb.com just published a great post yesterday that lists 10 top apps. You can find it here.

I like TimeBridge a lot and it integrates seamlessly into DimDim for virtual meetings. I also use Doodle regularly with multi-party local and nonlocal groups, like project teams, committees and boards. Until I saw the post at ReadWriteWeb, I hadn’t heard about Tungle, but it looks very cool so I just signed up.

If you’re ready to simplify your meeting scheduling life, this list is a great place to start.