It’s been a wild and wooly first few months of 2011 and I’ve been so busy over at my new blog, BeingSocial.Us, that I haven’t updated much here. My sincere apologies to anyone who hasn’t yet heard about the extension of my work to helping Baby Boomer and senior thought leaders use BOTH social media AND virtual meetings to connect with their people.  I hope you’ll join me over at BeingSocial.Us

And I’m blogging back here today because the news is so important: Microsoft’s purchase of our precious Skype this week for $8.5B is a big, big deal. On so many fronts.

It’s going to take awhile to see what’s going to happen to us 700 million registered users of Skype. But here are a few things to bear in mind:

When Skype was part of EBay, the company used to issue all kind of data about its growth but solid recent numbers have been harder to locate. A couple of things we do know:

• At peak times, over 23 million users are logged into Skype.
• Skype is available in 29 languages and is used in almost every country around the world.
• 35 percent of Skype users utilize it for business purposes.

Skypejournal.com reports that Microsoft bought Skype because it pays for itself and has 180 million registered users actively video calling. That seems obvious.

It also makes sense because Microsoft seems like the most obvious player to offer the general public video chat at home, school and work using mobile phones tables, desktops, game consoles equipped with webcams (like the latest XBox units) and large screen televisions.

Microsoft stands well-prepared to build video chat into all sorts of applications – which only makes sense when everyone now wants to use all their senses to connect with others as we work, play and learn together – across the globe.

However, it’s my hunch that the Microsoft/Skype deal foretells  a much bigger game than this. A game I’ve been pointing to for the last five years, while feeling like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness.

The big game is moving counseling, coaching, and both traditional and alternative medicine into our living rooms quickly – and a lot more cheaply – than Cisco’s home-based telepresence system called Umi.

Today’s TeleMental Health Institute blog brings Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype into clearer focus for psychotherapists. I want to underscore everything Marlene had to say there. The fact that Microsoft was willing to spend a full $2B more to acquire Skype than either Google or Facebook was willing put on the table is waving the flag of big business, friends: the business of physical and mental healthcare.

Since way back in 2007, I’ve been urging counselors, coaches, health coaches, physicians, and alternative healers of all shapes and sizes to begin testing various virtual meeting tools and to start practicing your virtual meeting chops.

When Xbox consoles have webcams built it (which has been the case for at least the last six months) and Microsoft pays $8.5B to acquire Skype so they can “build Skype’s functionality into Microsoft apps and products” (as Microsoft announced it plans to do)… it’s maybe 12-18 months until it’s going to be possible for YOU to be meeting easily and cheaply with your clients- from your office to their living rooms.

So, if you’re not confident you can easily transition both

1) your crucial business processes and

2) your subtle healing skills

into virtual meeting rooms, now is the time to take a look at what it’s going to take for you to play the new game.

If you want some support for making the transition, you can start with my little ebook, “The Coach’s Short List,” or sign up for my 10-week FREE ecourse, “21-Ways to Build Trust and Respect Working With Others Online.”

I’m blogging several times a week over at BeingSocial.Us and I’m also happy to offer any reader of this blog a free, 30-minute consultation so I can hear more about your specific situation and explore the fit between your needs and my coaching programs. It would be my great delight to help mental health professionals of all kinds bring your services within easy reach of new clients.

How exciting! That $8.5B  purchase signals showtime’s just around the corner! And you’re going to be the show.

If you’re the kind of person who needs to SEE to BELIEVE, please take a look at this vid about Cisco’s Umi unit. And, take a very careful look at the comments beneath the vid there on YouTube. The comments tell the story behind Microsoft’s purchase. At least that’s my hunch. Wondering what you think…

Cisco Demos the Umi

First comment beneath this vid on YouTube as I pulled the link today: “I pay $43 a month for my internet service. I download Yahoo Messenger, with Video and voice chat, … with full FPS. hook up a HDMI or S-Video cord from my laptop to my TV, right click on my desktop, choose output to : TV, and in a matter of seconds, I see my desktop on the TV, “with the messenger Video Chat” and beats the $599 that you’d pay for this crap. even if I had the $600, “I Will NOT” buy this crap.” ~UserIsAnFBIAgent

And here’s a short vid showing how easy it is to use a Logitech TV Cam and Google TV:

Logitech TV Cam and Google TV

Get the picture?

Image from France Telecom Magic Telepresence Wall

There’s news coming out over the last month that technology can – and will – soon provide us with new ways to be present with one another ala Star Wars/Star Trek “holodecks” and “holograms.”

If your fondest wish for a virtual meeting experience is to being able to simulate people being physically present (telepresent) with one another, here are a couple of new stories you may find interesting:

http://bit.ly/dJgQW9

http://bit.ly/fAQ7Bd

Fueled by extensive market research, Citrix and Cisco are taking different paths towards providing telepresence capabilities to business, education and medical markets. And all of this is fascinating for those of us who find technology fascinating.

But the even more fascinating inquiry – for me, and maybe for you – is wondering how these new holographic capabilities are going to affect our business communication practices and meeting processes.

Telepresence tools – like all of man’s tools – create new possibilities, new environments for human behavior. In so doing, they also create new limitations, new frames of reference that circumscribe behavior. Automobiles, for example, have opened up a whole new “way” of being on the planet – and a whole new set of constraints and hazards, too.

My everyday business requires me to think about new ways I can help my clients take advantage of social media and real-time virtual meeting tools to save time and money – without sacrificing quality outcomes. And every day I run into walls of assumptions about how people can – and should – interact around information and shared tasks together. Face-to-face is hard enough. Then there are the challenges of working together at a distance. . Climbing over the walls of  assumptions  about “appropriate” interaction in collaborative activities can either liberate groups or tie them up in knots. To be candid, quite often it does both – at first.

So, as I’m reading today about new possibilities for telepresence, I’m both excited about potential new terrain and more curious than ever about the new constraints clients are certainly going to encounter as they move to take advantage of these tools.

It’s going to be fascinating helping human beings look through their assumptions about what someone’s “quasi” physical presence might actually contribute to achieving shared outcomes. And how it might impede that achievement, as well.

So many of us have a Star Trek boy- or girlself who has been longing to be able to “see” and “feel” the semi-physical presence of others in our meetings. There’s no reason to deny it – it’s going to be totally cool!

And, if you haven’t already looked ahead to how having semi-physical presence possibilities is going to affect your communication and collaboration, I invite you this week to consider what you’re going to say and do when you step onto a “holodeck.” How are you imagining you’ll be able to contribute more to a virtual meeting than you can contribute now using FREE web conferencing tools that are already available?

Besides starting out with “Wow! Isn’t this cool? I can hardly believe this is happening…” how will you use telepresence to accelerate the achievement of your meeting objectives? And how will you work around the limitations that “quasi” physical presence may bring to the creation – and sustenance – of shared meaning that groups of human beings require if they’re going to get things done together?

I’d love to hear your thoughts here below or over at Amplify. Take your pick.

On his e-learning focused blog, Christopher Pappas just provided a quick, meaty overview of several of the best free virtual meeting, web conferencing, and online meeting and online learning tools. I hope you’ll take a look at it today.

For several years, Christopher and I have been learning and from each other – across the globe. He’s in Greece and I’m in southern Oregon. And we’ve both been participating in online communities focused on e-learning. We haven’t met in person yet, but I look forward to getting a chance to shake Christopher’s physical hand one day soon and thank him for this post and all the rest of the pointers he’s shared with me and other colleagues focused on helping people work and learn from each other at a distance.

People have asked me several times to make a post like this and I’ve simply been too busy to take the time, so I’m grateful to able to point you to Christopher’s blog.

INTERMITTENT AND PERSISTENT COLLABORATION IS A WAY OF BEING
I particularly appreciate this vid he found from the folks at Yugma because it articulates a crucial distinction between intermittent and persistent collaboration.

I love the way this vid highlights the magic of using virtual meetings, web conferences, and online learning tools to enable different people to think about and work on the same thing in different ways – in real-time. Because that’s what’s important: the people working and learning together using whatever tools they find easiest to use when they’re not co-located.

I’ve found Yugma to be a practical tool for what the Yugma team calls “fluid collaboration.” So are all the other apps Christopher highlighted in his post. They all provide simple, practical, browser-based platforms for people to work together – both intermittently and persistently.  There are a couple of dozen other tools that work well, too.

But the issue isn’t really so much about finding the right TOOLS to use. The trick is understanding how to work with others fluidly and collaboratively. The real challenge isn’t so much how to technically access an online whiteboard or do a screen share. It’s learning to think about work and learning as continuous processes of creating and nourishing a sense of shared meaning – and purpose – with others.

MY PERSONAL PROCESS
Four years ago, I relocated from Austin, TX, a busy major metropolitan area, to a sweet town of 20,000 in rural southern Oregon.  Since I did this, I’ve been using all kinds of free virtual meeting tools on a daily basis to work with old and new clients across the country and continents.

After my move, clients and colleagues (many of whom have since become clients) started telling and showing me that they didn’t understand HOW I thought about work and learning as processes of persistent collaboration.

They didn’t understand how I chunked the work into manageable pieces we could accomplish in 30-90 minutes. They didn’t understand how I set up the tools to make it easy for us to interact in real-time. And they didn’t understand how I made decisions – on the fly – that made it easy for BOTH of us to contribute to the work product at the same time. (Especially useful when people have different ways of thinking and looking at what they need to do together.)

So, I started coaching my clients and friends and colleagues…and now, four years later, I’m “The Virtual Meeting Coach” as well as a health and wellness coach who uses virtual meetings to support my clients’ deliberately reorienting their lives around their natural strengths.

Over the last four years, I’ve field-tested all kinds of helping strategies, from one-on-one coaching to small group meetings. At this point, I’ve discovered that the one-on-one coaching is the fastest and easiest way for people to learn. But it’s also the most expensive. Some people need to speed things up and are ready to go for it, one-on-one. Others can’t focus all their energy on new skills because they’ve got a lot to attend to just to keep their revenue streams flowing. I can help in either situation.

To address the needs of people who can’t do one-on-one work right now, this year I developed what I call the Madhatters’ Tea Party Group Coaching Programs. They provide a 10-week fun, high-energy, and emotionally supportive practice environment where small groups of people can quickly learn “fluid collaboration” processes by doing them weekly – with me and their friends, fans and followers.

Participants report the outcomes are greater ease and a sense of excitement and facility at creating both intermittent meetings and persistent collaborative practices that nourish – and sustain – a sense of shared meaning and purpose with the people who are most important to them. Even when they’re not able to be physically co-located.

If you’re not sure which tools you’d like to get started with, I hope you’ll take a look at this post in Christopher’s blog.

When you’re ready for some one-on-one coaching, or to build your skills by practicing in a small group – using whichever FREE tools you like the most – I hope you’ll give me a call. I use all of the tools Christopher highlighted in his post and many others. I offer a FREE initial 30-minute consultation and I’d love to hear more about your situation.

As “The Virtual Meeting Coach,” I’m committed to helping smart people learn to use the free tools in ways – and at a price – that’s affordable and sustainable for everyone as well as our fragile Earth.

This is the future we’ve been waiting for, friends. The tools are FREE and they’re available NOW. If you’ve still got a lot more to share with others – and you can’t afford either the time or the money it takes to fly and drive all over the place all the time to share it – I’d love to help you get started collaborating fluidly with the people who are most important to you – in the areas that you’ve got crucial gifts to contribute. We need your gifts. Now.

I just caught sight of a promising new development going on in a graduate lab at MIT.

When the tools described below are fully integrated into simple virtual meeting interfaces, we really will have many more choices about how we give and receive healthcare support services, won’t we? How utterly exciting!

MIT Team Developing Tool To Monitor Vital Signs Through Camera

A device under development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could monitor changes in a person’s vital signs through a low-cost camera, the Boston Globe’s “White Coat Notes” reports (Johnson, “White Coat Notes,” Boston Globe, 10/5).

Researchers led by MIT graduate student Ming-Zher Poh used public-domain software to identify facial positions and to deconstruct the information into red, green and blue portions of video images.

The device then determines an individual’s pulse by tracking small changes in how light reflects off their face as blood flows under the skin.

The tool could be embedded into a mirror or integrated with a Web-based camera.

In May, researchers published initial results from the project in the journal Optics Express.

Early results found that the MIT device identified pulses accurately within three beats per minute, even when up to three people stood in front of the camera and when test subjects moved (Armstrong Moore, CNET News, 10/5).

The team currently is working on refining the device to take other measurements, such as:

* Blood pressure;

* Oxygen saturation; and

* Respiration rate (“White Coat Notes,” Boston Globe, 10/5).

According to Poh, the device’s noninvasive design could make it useful for several purposes, such as monitoring newborn infants or burn victims.

In addition, the device could be used for telemedicine-based health screenings or remote patient monitoring (MIT release, 10/4).

So, what d’you think about them apples?

Are you prepared to take advantage of opportunities to consult with your healthcare providers remotely? Do you know what it’s going to take to be prepared?

I’ve been following the development of this initiative in California for the last three years and I invite you to think of the post below as the starting gun … on a race that will have many heats.

How is telemedicine getting a foothold in your community? I’d love to hear more if you’re willing to leave a comment below…

Health care takes digital leap forward

By Bobby Caina Calvan bcalvan@sacbee.com

Imagine a doctor listening to the heartbeat of a patient half a world away. Or a young child opening wide into the peering lens of a high-definition camera. And doctors collaborating online, exchanging digital X-rays, MRIs and potential diagnoses.

Dr. Thomas Nesbitt, right, announces the birth of the California Telehealth Network by demonstrating a live linkup with three UC Davis Medical Center telemedicine locations. Using broadband technology, specialists will be able to assist local doctors in faraway communities.

Telemedicine’s future took another leap forward Tuesday with the launch of the California Telehealth Network, the most ambitious foray yet into the rapidly developing field that links doctors and patients via high-tech tools.

“What it means is that no matter where you are in this huge state, you’ll have access to the expertise you need and the best medical care,” said Dr. Thomas Nesbitt, director of the Center for Health and Technology for the UC Davis Health System.

Initially, just 50 clinics, hospitals and other health care providers in California will tap into a broadband network that could eventually link nearly 900 facilities statewide by the end of 2011.

“California is showing the way,” said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger during a Tuesday ceremony at the UC Davis Medical Center.

The medical center will serve as the control center for the new network and will help the state develop its telemedicine infrastructure. The telehealth network is expected to cost $30 million, with about $22 million from the federal government as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Health Care Pilot Program, an effort to improve health care in rural America.

With the telemedicine network, more Californians, particularly those in far-flung areas, will have access to medicine’s best and brightest, Schwarzenegger said.

“It should not be a matter of how rich you are or where you live,” he said. “We are celebrating the future of medicine, also known as telemedicine.”

That future couldn’t come soon enough for the family of Rennee Wilson, a young Shasta County girl whose skull was fractured earlier this month during a traffic accident near Redding.

The 3-year-old was in need of immediate care, and the trip from Redding to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento would have consumed precious hours and possibly exposed the patient to additional medical trauma.

Instead, using video cameras that streamed real-time images from Redding to Sacramento, doctors collaborated on saving the girl’s life. From 160 miles away in Sacramento, Dr. James Marcin, a UC Davis associate professor of pediatrics critical care, assisted the intensive care physicians in Redding.

Using the latest telemedicine technology, he consulted with his remote partners on digital images that revealed a fractured skull. He recommended the drugs to administer and even when the Redding doctors should remove the ventilator after she could breathe on her own.

“They needed my brains more than they needed my hands,” Marcin said.

The girl’s family was thankful that they didn’t need to travel to Sacramento for her critical care. “The technology was awesome,” said Phillip Potter, the child’s grandfather.

Telemedicine has been around for years. But until recently, much of the technology has been crude – landline phones that offered no video, dial-up Internet that took an eternity to transmit images or grainy black-and-white videos that were of little use to diagnose an ailing patient.

Today, broadband technology is allowing sophisticated instruments to tap into the Internet’s high-speed digital currents. For example, stethoscopes can be connected to equipment that allows a doctor to remotely listen to a heartbeat. Other equipment allows doctors to examine a wound or see into a patient’s mouth, ears and other parts of the body.

That means physicians now have the ability to treat a patient without ever being in the same room or physically touching them.

“When telemedicine started, no one knew what high-definition was,” said Nesbitt, the medical center’s technology director. “Now we can look into someone’s ear to get a clear picture of an eardrum and look directly into an eye.”

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

It’s 100% true. You can use your computer and free virtual meeting tools to grow your income and enrich important relationships. Take a look:

I love these Verishow clips because they show real-world situations with real people that are easy to relate to.

(Yeah, yeah, yeah…they might be actors. But they’re behaving just like real people. I have meetings like this every day with my clients, using a desktop computer or my laptop – from my home office, a coffee shop, or a hotel room. No kidding!)

If you took a couple of minutes to watch, you saw that virtual meetings really can be like child’s play!  Fast and easy for the host – and clients love them. They save everyone time, money, and hassle – whether you’re across town or across the globe from each other.

So…. The question is, if virtual meetings are really this easy, what’s keeping you from using them for 40-60% of your work?

That’s a real question.

Your answer might be something like:

1) I can’t believe it’s actually that easy – there must be a catch.
2) I don’t want to be chained to a desk on a computer.
3) I hate the way I look on a webcam.
4) I don’t want my privacy invaded all the time.
5) To use virtual meetings with my clients, I’d have to change so many things about the way I do business … and I don’t have time to do that right now.

Or something similar. I’ve heard a hundred reasons since I opened my practice as “The Virtual Meeting Coach” and launched Virtual Meeting Startup.

Every reason people have for not already using virtual meetings with their clients holds the seed of a legitimate concern. But not one of them is a serious obstacle. Not one. Certainly there are concerns to address, and ways you’ll need to tailor your approach to make it fit your clients. But every day, I’m helping small- and mid-sized business owners – just like you – quickly work through the challenges.

So, go ahead! Take the plunge! Just sign up now so you can use Verishow, ShowDocument, DimDim or vYew – or something similar – and start doing this week what you see happening in these clips! All four of those tools have robust free versions- and there lots of others like them.

HERE’S A LEG UP, NO STRINGS ATTACHED

On the other hand, if you can’t bring yourself to take the plunge on your own… but you want to be able to meet with your clients this way in 2011 – I want to offer you a leg up right now. To get it, you can use THE CONTACT BUTTON at Virtual Meeting Startup and ask for a FREE 30-minute private consultation with me.

I’ll listen to you, ask a few questions, and make some free recommendations based on your unique situation and the needs of your clients and customers.

ONLY TWO SEATS LEFT IN THE FALL GROUP COACHING PROGRAM

The Fall session of my 10-Week Online Group Coaching Program begins the week of September 19th. I’ve got 2 seats left in this group. And, if your situation is one that could really benefit from you being part of a learning group, I don’t want you to miss the chance to sign up for the next cycle.

Cynthia Winton-Henry, co-founder of Interplay, was a participant in the Spring session of the program. Here’s something she said about her experience:

The Madhatter’s Program was great for my learning curve. In spite of personal and job time constraints, it’s proof that when the heart and mind are in the right place, things work. Meri was the perfect coach for me at this time! Her spirit of fun, play, and that its OK to fail help the change become incremental, instead of overwhelming.

I love Meri’s accessibility and the amount of practice she’s had. It’s also fun learning who the other Madhatters are and sharing with one another.

One more time, here’s a link to the contact form to request a free 30-minute private consultation with me.

C U soon~!

I’m going to be speaking locally tomorrow with a group of nonprofit consultants about how they could begin using virtual meeting tools to generate new revenues in their businesses.

Experience levels vary widely, so I decided to make a little mindmap to illustrate the primary factors affecting our “individual” decisions about when to use virtual meetings in our work – and when not to.

It occurred to me, as I made the map, that others might find the format useful as you dig deeper into your work processes with co-workers, clients and suppliers.

It would be nice if we could just unilaterally decide to start using some of the virtual meeting tools to simplify our work and save us time and money without damaging crucial relationships.

But the truth of the matter is that we can’t start having virtual meetings alone. ;^) We need people to meet with, don’t we? And not everyone is working from the same beliefs, attitudes, and systems to keep things rolling in their organizations. Human beings meet in the ways that we’re used to meeting – because we’ve got systems built up around those ways. And, even if our habits, beliefs and processes are burning up irreplaceable resources, we can’t help but resist changing them. It’s human nature! Nevertheless, our beliefs, habits, attitudes and systems are going to need to shift – at least just a bit – if we want to reap the benefits available from virtual meetings. (If we could have just copied over our face-to-face practices and skills – as is – everyone would already be using these tools, wouldn’t they?)

Please feel free to link to this little map. Use it in your self-inquiry. Use it to support your inquiry with co-workers and clients. You’re going to need to talk carefully about which things might need to shift a bit so that everyone can SHARE the benefits and savings available when you start use real-time virtual meetings together to get stuff done. You, your co-workers, your clients, and even your suppliers – everyone stands to benefit. But only if you’re able to give each other what you need to perform – and stay motivated – when you’re not in the same place or even the same time.

So, which things need to shift in ways that won’t overturn your apple carts?

If you need help facilitating these kinds of internal conversations with co-workers or clients, I’d love to help.

And, if you’re all ready to start exploring some of the possibilities EXPERIENTIALLY, I’ve got two places left in the next Madhatters Tea Party 10-Week Group Coaching Program starting the week of July 5th. You can grab one of those spots for yourself by contacting me here: http://virtualmeetingstartup.com/contact.html. Do it today, though. This is a first-come first-served program and I wouldn’t want you to miss out on this opportunity.

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears.
- Rainer Marie Rilke

Okay, I’m breathing deliberately at my desk. I’m taking short walks and breathing deliberately. I’m meditating. I’m chanting. I’m practicing the Power of Now, the Law of Attraction and doing The Work. I’m crying. And I’m still not okay about watching, helplessly, as the Gulf of Mexico turns into a toxic waste site.

I grew up going to the Gulf on vacations to swim with my family from the time I was a tiny girl. Then, when I was a teenager, we moved to the west coast of Florida and my adolescence was spent swimming on Lido Beach and Longboat Key. I had a short stint up in Georgia while I went to college and started a family, but I always went home to the Gulf to find my bearings. And I took my kids there from the time they were little. Even when I moved to Austin, I made as many trips as possible to the east coast of Texas to immerse myself in my beautiful Gulf. My whole life, it’s been my holy water.

So, while I’m now living in southern Oregon, I might as well be right there on the coast of Louisiana because I FEEL what’s happening there – every second – deep in my heart. And I’m at my wit’s end. I feel angry, helpless, and so sad I can barely breathe.

And, the worst part is I’ve been telling myself I don’t know what I can do – from up here – to help. Friends, colleagues and clients tell me they’re feeling the same anger, helplessness and sadness. My friend and colleague, Sharon Drew Morgan, even wrote a totally wacky post in her biz blog this week about Aliens and their possible role in this tragedy.

In fact, it was Sharon Drew’s post that actually shook me out of the trance of helpless rage at BP for failing to take responsibility for what’s happening. The insanity of talking about aliens popped my attention over to my personal responsibility as a driver whose demand for gasoline to power my car continues to fuel BP’s race to produce oil to meet that demand – at any cost.

And here’s a fresh video about the cost. The real cost:

So, What Can We Do – From Right Where We Are – About the Disaster in the Gulf?
If you can watch that footage without wanting to vomit, you’re a better wo/man than I. I can barely stand to watch it. Because I loved those waters. I loved those fish. And I love every single shell that washed up on the pristine, white sands of those beaches  since I first set my little foot on them. I’ve been picking up shells from Gulf beaches since I was three years old – shells left by sea creatures who died a natural death in those waters.

I simply cannot physically go down to the Gulf right now to help with the clean up. I’ve had the same kind of financially challenging year that everyone else has and I don’t have the cash to take off work and drive or fly down there right now to help with the clean up in person.

But, I can do something from right here. I can stand up – in my full humanity – and lead sans  shame or embarrassment. Like this guy:

Who cares if I look like a fool to start with? This is our precious Gulf of Mexico!!

So, here’s my declaration:

I can – and I will – offer every day to help people who sell professional services learn to use virtual meetings to start delivering some of your services without having to get into your cars to drive somewhere just so you can sit down in a room to work with other people. Sometimes we have to, but we don’t always have to do this!!

I can – and I will – keep reminding people through this blog that until we all learn to use these tools in skillful ways, we are just blowing smoke when we open our mouths and speak about “greening” this economy or “saving the environment.”

It’s time now for us to walk our talk! Will you join me?

The Times They Are A’Changin’
If you don’t know how to use virtual meetings to work with clients and colleagues at a distance, you have no other choice but to walk, ride your bike, ride the bus, or get into your car – or fly – to work with other people! But not having another choice is simply no excuse when the tools to work collaboratively – and at a distance – are FREE and I’m here to help you learn to use them!

The truth of the matter is this: Until each of us knows enough to be able to exercise choice with our colleagues and clients – ie., to work virtually sometimes, using live meeting tools and Web 2.0 collaborative applications, whenever doing so won’t damage crucial relationships – each of us must take personal responsible for creating the tragedy in the Gulf.

It is our driving habits that are the driving force in the demand for oil production.
Along with BP and lazy, selfish congressional regulators, it is YOU AND I who must take full responsibility for what our unquestioned – frequently senseless – work routines and habits are now doing to drive the demand for oil that is killing the Gulf and the other precious oceans!

So, how about singing along with me and Don Henley and song-writer extraordinaire Bob Dylan (celebrating his 69th birthday this week)? How about learning to use virtual meeting tools? And how about starting NOW?

Want to Do More Than Just Sing?
I’m starting up a new Madhatter’s Tea Party Group Coaching Program in July. It’s going to be fun…and it’s just not that damn hard!

If you want to participate, contact me this week right here for a FREE 20-minute consultation: http://virtualmeetingstartup.com/contact.html.

And if not now, when? While we keep fiddling around, the Gulf is burning.

Speaking of fiddling, a million thanks to Diana Fairbanks whose wide-ranging, quirky intelligence and warm friendship brought both the Rilke poem and the Leadership Guy vid to my attention early Thursday. You can enjoy her eclectic taste in music here on her new station at Blip.fm as you ponder next steps….

This deceptively simple talk holds the keys to a whole new way of thinking about whatever we used to call “positioning.”

Using Simon Sinek’s way of looking at what’s true about my biz, I end up speaking about what I offer in a whole new way. What do you think?

In everything I do, I believe in finding the least expensive and fastest way to get things done well … so I have as much time and money as I can to take care of myself, friends, family, and community the way I want to. Without hurting other people – or the environment.

I get quick, inexpensive, high quality results by learning – continuously – about new ways people can use personal computers and the internet to connect with one another to get the best outcomes we can afford.

These days, I coach my peers (people who sell professional services) to use virtual meetings so we can extend our reach, save money, save time, and strengthen relationships with our clients. Without driving or flying around all the time.

Are you someone who wants this, too? Want to be my client?

(I also consult around social media use and help people reap big benefits from “cloud” computing apps and processes. I do those things from the same perspective: finding the least expensive and fastest way to get things done well. But that’s another conversation….)

If you’re someone who also believes that getting stuff done quickly, inexpensively, and well – without hurting other people or the environment – really matters… I offer a FREE 20-minute consultation here.

Use the link on the right-hand-side of the page to schedule a one-on-one virtual meeting with me and let’s talk about YOU and virtual meetings.

Here’s a pretty exciting report from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show. I’ve been talkin’ ’bout this…writin’ ’bout this…waitin’ for this…And now here it comes: 2010. Take a look here.

Get ready to launch your boat and head for the New World. Think: Columbus taking off from Spain across the Atlantic.

If you haven’t yet updated your idea of yourself from “watcher” to “full participant” in two-way conversations that happen from home – as well as from work – using something that looks like that thing we used to call the “TV Set,” it’s time to get started this year. Whether for conversations with your distant relatives and friends, your coworkers – or your doctor – pretty soon you’re going to be talking outloud to a TV screen in your home.  And then someone you know is going to be talking back at you.

From my perspective, the best thing about this is that we’ll be able to use video technology to be present with the people who matter most to us and free ourselves, from the passive consumption of broadcast media – including corporate-financed advertising of all kinds! WooHoo!

Think about all the people you’d enjoy being able to meet with from your living room:

- People you want to learn from
- People you want to play with
- People you can receive healthcare from
- People you work with
- People you want to serve
- People in your family you can’t travel to be with face-to-face
- People across the globe doing things you care about
- People…people…people…

The list can be as long as your curiosity and desire for engagement!

What do you think? Damn exciting, if you ask me… I was born before there were any one-way broadcast reception devices (called TVs) in our homes.

Who’s used one of these new telepresence systems in your living room already? Please share your experience with us here…