The Virtual Meeting Coach

The Madhatters Virtual Tea Party #2, was another wild ride for the Madhatters and their friends, fans, and followers. It was hosted by the inimitable Gretchen Wegner – Interplay leader, academic coach, blogger, and inventor of MuseCubes.

I admire Gretchen’s commitment to bringing the whole body/mind into even the most intellectual of human pursuits – like writing and other academic pursuits.

I also admire her commitment to keeping play at the front of the mind.

It’s been my personal experience that these two commitments yield work experiences that provide human beings with deep satisfaction – not just paychecks. And, when work enables human beings both to express the skills we have mastered and to experience our fathomless human creativity, then it becomes the highest expression of our humanity. While also producing something of value.

Gretchen’s Virtual Tea Party gave participants an opportunity to see, hear, and begin to imagine a whole new range of possibilities for using live, real-time virtual meeting rooms to faciliate whole body/mind interaction – at a distance. It was a fabulous first-time demonstration of Gretchen’s potential for adding authentic telepresence to her skill pack.

Here’s a recording of a video chat that Gretchen, Tom Carroll of EvolutionaryLearning.com, and I had Thursday, April 29th, as we debriefed our experiences and talked through some of the background issues Gretchen found herself dealing with during the party. We talked for a little over 28 minutes. As I did last week, I’m posting the recording here in the hope that it provides some additional value to participants in the 6-Week Virtual Meeting Camp - and to anyone else who’s lurking in the shadows, peeking through our Virtual Tea Party windows, listening for tips and tricks you can use to improve your virtual meetings.

As always, I welcome your comments below, anytime you’d like to contribute to this conversation…

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…

With the economy still in fragments, lots of people say they’re too busy to investigate social media. They think of social media as too new to mess with.

In the last week, I’ve had at least a dozen people tell me they can’t “waste time” on Twitter. They say they’ve got too much to do already, running from place to place to meet with “real” people, to put up a LinkedIn profile or a Facebook page.

These kinds of conversations, both live and online, worry me. Because the thing is, as I heard my new friend, Rene Fabre, tell a room full of title agents, Realtors, and lenders yesterday in Medford, Oregon, social media technologies aren’t new.

Some of them are 10 years old!

I’ve been reporting in this blog about online medicine. And online government. And online education. And I’ve been talking about some of the free virtual meeting tools available to talk to your doctor, participate in government, and learn whatever you want – all at a distance. This stuff isn’t rocket science. And it’s not new. Yet it amazes me how many people are still operating in the dark about it.

If you’re someone feeling relatively “in the dark” about virtual meetings – or working with other people who are – here are two videos I suggest you take a couple of minutes to watch. Feel free to link back here to share them with your friends. This is Telepresence. And it’s right here, right now, and coming soon to your town and your neighborhood. Maybe your home.

The first video shows Cisco CEO, John Chambers, and Marthin De Beer demonstrating the newest iteration of Cisco’s Telepresence system for an Indian audience. This isn’t Star Trek, it’s real life, right now. And yes, it’s real expensive. If you don’t have the money to put one of these into your organization right now, I suggest you use the time between now and when you find that money to practice using the FREE virtual meeting tools available now so you’re a pro at distance education before you get your Telepresence system.

In fact, at the risk of sounding like a shameless self-promoter, I recommend that if you need some help wrapping your mind around what you need to do to prepare for virtual meetings, you download a copy of “The Coach’s Short List” from this site and use it to support your practice.  The Coach’s Short List is the  “Cliff’s Notes” of virtual meetings. I wrote it so people could have their own little “cheat sheet” to guide them.

The future is upon us, friends. The question is, “How do you want to play?”

San Diego to Singapore to Corvalis, Oregon

The second video was made TWO full years ago, in 2007. It shows Mark Anderson meeting from the HP Halo Studio in San Diego with colleagues in Singapore and Corvalis, Oregon, during the “Future in Review” Conference. This piece shows the “older” Telepresence technology at work. This technology is already at work in corporate settings, doctor’s offices, hotel conference rooms, and even some colleges. And it has been for quite some time now.

Workin’ and Practicin’ …Your Night Moves

If you can’t imagine yourself yet well-prepared to meet with clients, customers, and colleagues as if you were in the same room with them, it’s time to start workin’ and practicin’, as Bob Seeger used to sing. Maybe you’re old enough to remember this one:

Whew, I think I’m starting to get social media well enough to quit kicking constantly and take a little rest. For a minute.

Truly useful insights came this week from reading John Borthwick, Marcia Connor, and Tony Karrer’s thoughts about what people are doing participating on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media — including live-tweeted seminars and webinars.

As I catch my breath and let my legs dangle for a little bit, I’m relaxing into the realization that publishing and meeting are mashing up.

As more and more of us just let go of the side of the pool and swim out into the deep waters of online relationship, we’re “meeting” and “distributing” at the same time. Human communication has always served many functions at once. But the possibilities offered by social media (including live virtual meetings) are really stirring things up.

From out here in the deep, I can see that most newspapers are gonna be gonners. No amount of refinancing will change anything. And magazines are either going to become clubs where all the members publish or they’re gonna die, too. But there’s actually a lot more going on than that.

For sure, as Karen Stephenson says, human beings have begun “storing our knowledge in our friends.” But we’re also finding new ways to store other people’s knowledge in our friends, too. And that has huge implications for all media distributors. Makes my head hurt stretching my mind around that one.

Social media is a much bigger thing than I can understand yet.

Sure is nice finding ScribeFire to support my blogging this week. It’s going to take quite a bit of writing to help me get my thoughts clear while I kick around out here so far away from familiar shores.

Right now though, I notice I’m asking myself over and over, “When we meet virtually, where are we meeting?” And, “Who are we, anyway?” I’m not talking about the tools, now. I’m talking about the place of mind we meet. Where exactly is that? Who is that “we” that’s following me on Twitter? Who are all those “we’s” I’m part of when I’m following someone, especially someone I haven’t met yet F2F? And how are we ever going to keep track of all those fluid identities?

Deep water.

I don’t know about you, but I’m watching the economic news from the sidelines.

On the one hand, things look truly bleak. Some days the future’s so far in the RED that it almost looks BLACK.

On the other hand, with everything in the toilet – now including the US auto industry – there’s a lot more room for new possibilities.

I never thought I’d find myself feeling gleeful watching so many things and so many concepts we’ve considered “valuable” get flushed away all at once. But as the news gets worse and worse, I find I’m often feeling better and better.

Call me perverse.

Maybe I’m finally getting the wisdom of hopelessness Meg Wheatley wrote about after 9/11.

Whatever it is,  besides feeling surprisingly okay watching most of my lifesavings float away,  I’m also getting more and more excited about helping friends and other independent business people develop their “telepresence.” Because it’s time now. Really time!

We simply have to do some things differently if we expect to save money and save time for what’s really important in 2009. And using social media – including virtual meetings – is one of the best ways I know to augment close business and personal relationships without driving and flying all over the place all the time.

So, what is “telepresence?”

The way I use that new word, “telepresence,” is a little different than the way the manufacturers of the expensive, high-definition video conferencing systems are using it. I’m not talking about buying and installing $50-$300K remote viewing systems in your home office.

For me, “telepresence” is a way of referring to your skill at being present with people you’re not able to be in the same room with.

Understood this way, “telepresence” has nothing to do with hardware and very little to do with software.

Instead, “telepresence” is about using your telephone, IM, text messaging, and now virtual meeting rooms in ways that make people feel like you’re with them, even when you’re across town, across the country, or across the globe from their physical bodies.

Looked at this way, telepresence is a set of engagement skills. Some of them are technical. Most of them are social. Some parts can become routine. Some will remain art and, therefore, require practice. But the good news is that all of them are FREE to develop and practice.

Skype, GTalk, DimDim, Yuuguu, Yugma, vYew, Elluminate, and WiZiQ all offer free places to practice and play with people around the block or around the globe.  New places are opening up every week. Get yourself a membership in one or more of these places and let’s practice!

Instead of wringing our hands about things too big for us to change, I’d like to suggest that the year ahead is going to be a great time to practice our “telepresence.” Like Meg Wheatley, I’m ready to “journey through this time of increasing uncertainty. Groundless, hopeless, insecure, patient, clear. And together.”

What have we got to lose?