Distance Networking

Hello!

I have some friends asking me how to manage and keep in good terms a working team that lives abroad; that wants to keep communicated, and share their experiences among its peers. So this post is related to a strategy we applied to improve our team confidence.

On past December we wanted to have a Christmas party, but we were just 4 people on Monterrey, the rest of the team was on different cities: Mexico City, Guadalajara, Panama, Lima, Bogota and Miami

We had limited budget to make the trip and have personal contact, so we better organize a virtual video call, that means we had to use our cameras and microphones on the computer, connect using an operative system and start the communication.

There are several systems that allow virtual video calling, some of them are private, other have cost, other are 100% free and public, it depends on the needs for communication, handling confidential information or other needs.

We decided to use Skype, because it has good rates on the cities where the personnel lived. We organized previously the event agenda and share the information. The general idea was to learn a little bit more about the personal issues of the rest of the team.

We started and participated by turns, everyone can ask questions on specific matters on the personal presentation of each one. Some of the themes that were mentioned included, hobbies, trips, family and pets. Skype allows to share audio and video material so we shared pictures, videos and songs.

By the end of the party, the team told me that the experience was really motivating, and even though they where far apart, the possibility they had to share make them feel confident with their peers.

The following video includes a general description on how you can use this type of technology so you can learn on the advantages of it and try to keep your family, friends and peers closer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qulggXtg00