Voicemail Messages That Get Returned  

Offers seven tips for increasing the likelihood that messages you leave on voice-mail will elicit return calls.

Walinskas, Karl. Intercom (2001). Careers>Collaboration>Collaboration

Volunteering and Using Your Skills  

Non-profits need all the volunteer help you can give. If you thought about trying your hand at grant writing or developing a marketing campaign, get your experience by helping a nonprofit. Always wanted to teach? Try your skills at a non-profit. You’ll simultaneously gain experience and help others. You, just might enjoy it and discover a new career opportunity.

Norberg, Elsie L. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building

Walking Through Your Product Design With Stakeholders

You are the lead designer--or perhaps even the sole designer on a product team. You have just completed your product design, and it's time to walk through your design approach with the project stakeholders, including management, developers, and users. What do you need to do to prepare for your presentation? This article provides some basic tips to help you better prepare to walk through your product designs with stakeholders.

Szuc, Daniel. UXmatters (2007). Design>Project Management>User Experience>Collaboration

Wearer of Many Hats: One Management Style Does Not Fit All

Trying to convince multiple individuals to head in the same direction requires figuring out the mindsets of those multiple people and what it takes to motivate them to follow your lead. The article discusses four "hats" managers may have to wear and which management “hat” works best for each situation.

Young, Jeffrey R. Writing Assistance (2007). Careers>Management>Collaboration

Web Conferencing Tips

Despite the Internet's emergence as a mainstream business tool, web conferencing can still be a daunting experience for first-timers and even seasoned presenters. For today's business professionals, it's not the technology that makes them apprehensive, but the knowledge that familiar ways of presenting are inadequate to execute an effective web conference. Provide someone with useful information and a little preparation, however, and that person can host an effective, efficient web conference.

Murray, Krysta. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Teleconferencing>Videoconferencing

Web Pages, Interactive Interfaces and Worm Holes: The Next Generation of User Interface Designers  

Working in teams has its challenges. What would you do if you were part of a team that included software engineers, usability professionals, managers, teachers and elementary school students? What would you do if the team had to learn about web technology and user interface design in a few short weeks and then apply that skill to creating a web page ? Well, we had fun, and we achieved our goal. Join our panel discussion to hear more about an exciting project between members of IBM’s S/390 team and local elementary schools from Hyde Park, New York.

Bahruth, Carol, Kirsten Brunner, David Hans, Vikki Hanast and Cheryl Loughlin. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Collaboration>Web Design>Usability

What Kind of Teamwork Improves Usability?

Professionals are increasingly working in networked teams where electronic media and asynchronous communication play an important role. So how can communication behaviours in these contexts predict usability? Do efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction in the communication process lead to the same for the resulting documentation?

Edwards, Kirstie. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration>Usability

What to Do When the Boss Says No

It's an undisputed fact. Some CEOs refuse to acknowledge that their communication skills could use a tune-up. Someone in your organization -- quite possibly you -- needs to assume responsibility for sharpening your CEO's communication skills. If your leader neglects this part of her leadership toolkit, it's time to offer some frank advice on how she can improve. You must also be prepared to deal with the sensitive matter of how to encourage the boss to accept the benefits of learning from a communication training workshop.

Barks, Edward J. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Collaboration

What You Leave in Your Wake

Whether you’re a full timer or a contractor, you’ll eventually part ways with an employer. When you step out the door for the last time, what will you leave in your wake? A mess, or a way for your co-workers or replacement to quickly pick up where you left off?

DMN Communications (2008). Careers>TC>Collaboration

What's Your Problem?

This is a piece on pesky colleagues who are curious about others' activities at work place and try to be the good samaritan but land up in need of one.

Ravi, Suryakantham. Live.com. Humor>Workplace>Collaboration>Blogs

When the Show Must Go On, It's Time to Collaborate Or Die

Lighting design has a utilitarian role: to put enough light on the stage so that the audience can see the actors. But the lighting also helps shape the performance by providing the color and overtones that add meaning and layers and depth. The same mix of art and technology, craft and discipline exists in user interface design.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>Web Design>Collaboration

When the Show Must Go On, It’s Time to Collaborate Or Die

No one knew what to do. But there was a deadline, and the reviewers were coming. As a team, we walked through the schedule again and again until we had a plan. The next day, the video was edited, the shop finished the screens, and the production crew walked through the critical paths.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

When Things Go Wrong: Working Toward Perfection While Accepting Imperfection  

Come to terms with unavoidable human errors by freeing yourself of panic, discovering new ways to solve the problems caused, and devising new procedures to prevent future mistakes.

Medved, Jane E., Lynne M. Brooks, Dayna A. Darby and Renee Ratner Lucas. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Collaboration>Project Management

Where in the World Is Second Life?

Like most corporations, computer maker Dell offers a pop-up list of countries and regions on its web site. But, look closely between Saudi Arabia and Senegal, and you'll find a country called "Second Life." Click on it and you'll find that it's not a country but a world—of the virtual kind.

Gronstedt, Anders. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>Social Networking

Where the Visual Meets the Verbal: Collaboration as Conversation  

If words follow pictures, as when a poet creates a poem in response to a work of art, then words become a way of seeing. Collaborations between verbal and visual artists produce such insights, regardless of whether the poet responds to the painter or the painter to the poet, since each is speaking in turn in the artistic dialogue which collaboration produces. Yet "Artistic practice and art history have not always looked favorably upon collaborations.

Miltner, Robert. Enculturation (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Visual Rhetoric

Whikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Quickness

The fact that a Workplace could be considered 'quick' is not properly linked with the easiness to find information or with the speedy level of the communications: in this context it is linked to the Wiki feature of assuring a real-time updating access to contents and resources (data, information or knowledge and physical resources).

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2007). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis

“Whose Brochure is This, Anyhow?”—An In-House Writer’s Guide to Working with an Ad Agency  

Even if you’re part of a strong “in-house” marketing communications group, sooner or later your company is likely to hire an advertising agency. Whether they’re brought on board for a specific project or to provide ongoing services, the idea of working with these flashy, high-dollar outsiders can make you feel threatened, frustrated, or jealous. It doesn’t have to be that way. With a little time, understanding, and effort, you can come to see the ad agency’s team as allies in getting your work done—and advancing your own career.

Sutherland, Sam. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>Collaboration>Marketing

Whose Team? Managing and Participating in Non-Traditional Work Teams  

The non-traditional team environment is an evolution in our way of doing things. Virtual, blended, and multi-located team structures provide solutions to a myriad of complications that arise from traditional teaming—such as economic feasibility and skill-set cause and demand. It allows clients access to talent and skills they would not otherwise have, and enables specialists greater flexibility and availability. Professionalism and integrity are key in the non-traditional environment. Team members must be able to work isolated and/or with individuals who represent other companies. Managers must be equitable and be able to maintain strong lines of communication.

D'Larenti, Chantal, Connie Davis, Alan Cross, Everett Puckett. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

The Why and How of an Effective Workshop

I've held several workshops for my company and I've done a mess of workshops at CHI and UPA. Workshops are a uniformly great experience: Put a bunch of usability professionals in the room, propose a topic, and magic always happens. The major benefit of a good workshop is, of course, the training opportunity. In a year when we won't be able to get everyone to the UPA conference, workshops provide us with a low-cost alternative. But that's only the most obvious benefit.

Rettger, Mary Beth. Usability Professionals Association (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Usability

"Why Do We Need Editors Anyway?" Overcoming the Obstacles Facing a New Editing Group  

In the corporate arena, an editing group (particularly a newly formed one) sometimes finds it difficult to be accepted as part of a communications team and may spend an inordinate amount of its energy seeking to justify its existence. Barriers to acceptance and credibility include lack of trust and misunderstanding about what editors do or what value editing imparts. Editors can overcome these obstacles, however, through a combination of consistent work practices, clear and frequent communication with writers, and an ongoing program aimed at demonstrating the practical value of editing.

Collins, William L. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Editing>Collaboration

Why is it so Hard to Make Products that People Love?

Why do so many good designs get trampled during the product development process? If everyone is trying to create something good for their customers, why is the development process so rife with disagreements and compromises that actually hurt businesses in the long run? If everyone has the same good intentions, can't the business people just make up their minds about what kind of product they want to create and let design create the right solution?

Adlin, Tamara and John Pruitt. Gain: AIGA Journal of Business and Design (2006). Design>User Interface>Collaboration

Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas

We all know someone that's intelligent, but who occasionally defends obviously bad ideas. Why does this happen? How can smart people take up positions that defy any reasonable logic? Having spent many years working with smart people I’ve catalogued many of the ways this happens, and I have advice on what to do about it. I feel qualified to write this essay as I’m a recovering smart person myself and I’ve defended several very bad ideas.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Why You Must Lead or Follow

Something curious happens when we confront things we don’t like. Instead of the useful choices of taking action to improve things or accepting things as they are, we often just sit on our asses, point fingers and complain. We’ve developed the passive habits of spectators, rather than the active roles of creators and supporters.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Management

Wikibility Cultural Key Drivers: Collaboration

The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this 'together' learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge.

Cammarata, Vincenzo. Grow Your Wiki (2008). Articles>Content Management>Collaboration>Wikis