As many of you know, I’ve been a fan of DimDim for quite some time, so it’s with heavy heart that I pass on the info that unless you’re a SalesForce user, whenever your current license with DimDim ends this year, you’re going to be moving on to another platform.

Here’s a page of FAQs they’ve posted to help you make plans…

Passing the box of tissues around. I really have enjoyed using DimDim. On the bright side: this acquisition signals the movement of virtual meetings into mainstream business processes, especially in the sales realm.

If you haven’t already incorporated virtual meetings into your business processes, THIS is the year to do so. If you’d like some help, I’d love to coach you and your people to make the easiest possible transitions…

Amplify’d from www.dimdim.com

Frequently Asked Questions

How long will my service be available? Will I be able to access my recordings after my account is no longer available? How can I keep them? I have uploaded documents to my Dimdim account. What will happen to them? My account is on an automatic renewal, what will happen to my credit card information? I am interested in upgrading my account or extending my subscription, can I do this? I just signed up for an annual plan. How long will my account be available? I would like a refund. We have integrated with the Dimdim API. Will you be preserving that functionality? What will happen to the Open Source version of Dimdim? Will I now need to call Salesforce.com for support until my subscription expires? I still have questions. Who can I speak with?

How long will my service be available? Monthly accounts will be available until March 15. Annual accounts are available until their current subscription ends. You can determine the expiration date of your subscription by logging into your account at my.dimdim.com. Will I be able to access my recordings after my account is no longer available? How can I keep them?? Your recordings will no longer be available after your account expires. You can download your recording files and chat transcripts before then. See the Knowledge Base for instructions on downloading recordings and transcripts. I have uploaded documents to my Dimdim account. What will happen to them? The documents will no longer be available after your account expires. We recommend you download any documents you need before then. See the Knowledge Base for instructions on downloading documents. My account is on an automatic renewal, what will happen to my credit card information? Dimdim does not store your credit card information. Your subscription information (including credit card number) is stored in a recurring subscription on PayPal. All recurring Dimdim subscriptions on PayPal will be deleted. No further renewals will be offered. I am interested in upgrading my account or extending my subscription, can I do this? Account upgrades and renewals are no longer available. I just signed up for an annual plan. How long will my account be available? Your annual account will be fully functional until your subscription expiration date. Your subscription expiration date is available in your account at my.dimdim.com. I would like a refund. All accounts will be maintained with full functionality until their expiration dates. We will not issue refunds. We have integrated with the Dimdim API. Will you be preserving that functionality? Current API functionality will be maintained for all active subscriptions. What will happen to the Open Source version of Dimdim? The open source code made available by Dimdim remains available on SourceForge.net. Dimdim will no longer be contributing to this project. Will I now need to call Salesforce.com for support until my subscription expires? No. Customers will be able to access support through existing Dimdim Support channels. I still have questions. Who can I speak with? If your question has not been answered in this FAQ, please email the question to Dimdim Community Manager, Kevin Micalizzi, at info@dimdim.com. Read more at www.dimdim.com

I just heard more good news for people who want to try out the full collaborative capacities of ShowDocument this year. Charter members and new users will all be able to do screen sharing, record meetings, share webcams, use a free conference line, share video from YouTube, share maps, edit documents, and much much more – all from our personal ShowDocument meeting rooms.

Yes, you read that right. Charter members will be able to use all the premium features FREE for the next 12 months. New users will be able to access the full premium feature set for 30 days FREE and then either revert to the basic tools (which are excellent!) or pay a reasonable license fee to continue their access to all the premium tools.

I’ve been using ShowDocument and other fine tools made by HBR Labs for over two years now and I have to say, I think they’re superfine. Easy to use. Reliable. Elegant. Take a look.

If you like ShowDoc, come back and let me know. I’m interested in interviewing a half-dozen new users of virtual meeting tools over the upcoming 90 days. If you’d be willing to have a quick chat, please just drop me a note.

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.

I’m reading a number of new blogs lately and one, in particular,  really got me thinking this week.

You can read the whole post I’ve been chewing on here on Jeff Lowe’s blog at http://bit.ly/fqEiy8 .

In that post, Jeff’s thoughts are focused on planning for meetings in 3D immersive environments. But the issues he’s raising about the need to design the interactive space for collaboration are hardly limited to meetings in 3D environments. And, in particular, the list of questions Jeff poses for meeting designers seem to me to be crucial to the design of every virtual meeting in which your goal for the meeting is high-energy collaboration.

Granted, not all virtual meetings are focused on collaborative work.

But when you’re aiming for collaboration between people who aren’t in the same room (much less the same time zone), then creating a sense of shared presence is everything.  When we’re not able to be face-to-face with collaborators, the room, the meeting flow, and the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic elements and interactions need to work together seamlessly for human beings to achieve a sense of shared presence, shared meaning, and shared purpose.

I’ve clipped all of Jeff’s questions and raised a couple of additional points here on my Amplify blog. Please take a look and, if they stimulate you, too,  join in the conversation at Amplify – or right here below.

I’m always curious about what you’re thinking as you’re designing your virtual meetings… These seem like crucial questions to me.

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.

What Matters Now

It’s no secret to my friends and regular readers of this blog that I love Seth Godin. For years, I’ve loved Seth’s crazy, irreverent approach to getting people unstuck and into action about what matters most. He’s direct, creative, and funny as hell. And, at the same time, he suffers no foolishness… which is extremely helpful to me. His intelligence just cuts right through excuses, leaving the scraps on the floor in a heap.

This morning, Rene Fabre passed me a link to “What Matters Most” with a message that said, “Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around.” Amen, Brother Love!!

It turns out that “What Matters Most” is a sweet, FREE book Seth compiled from the thoughts of a bunch of other smart folks. And Seth’s set it up to see how fast his fans can make it viral. I think he said he’d like to see how fast 5 million people could get it.

I’m playing. Here’s a copy you can enjoy right here, right now.

If you like it enough to pass it on, feel free to
1) send others a link or a Tweet that they can read it here,
2) embed it in your blog
3) download it for yourself from Scribd
4) print a copy and pass it out for free on the street
5) anything else you can think to do with it for FREE.

On the 1st of Christmas, my true friend gave to me…a frrreeee e-book copyyyyyy…. Enjoy!

Here’s a useful, provocative Flash animation in the middle of a McKinsey report on “Using Technology to Improve Workforce Collaboration.”

If you can’t get the full animation from clicking above, go to the report itself here, scroll down to the subhead, “Improving Collaboration,” and click on the graphic to launch the Flash animation. Clicking on any one of the different types of knowledge workers brings up suggestions for online, collaborative, Web 2.0 technologies that can best improve productivity in their jobs.

I’m not sure that the suggestions are comprehensive or even totally accurate. But this is certainly the kind of thinking we all need to be engaged in this year. And this animation is a great place to start the kinds of conversations we need to be having about how we can tweak business work processes in 2010 so we can work together more efficiently and productively. Many thanks to George Siemens and Harold Jarche for their pointers to this report!

Not at all surprising is the fact that virtual meeting tools show up in almost every single occupation!

Enjoy! And what do you think?