Working in the Cloud Challenge: Communication

Personalities, life stages, experience all make it challenging to work together as a team even when you’re in the same room.

The distance that comes from working in the cloud adds another set of challenges in communication, collaboration and community.

Here are some tools we use at Timbuktoons to overcome communication challenges…

We really dislike e-mail. We still use it when we have to but it has several drawbacks:

• It’s hard to dig through and pull out action items or next steps
• It’s easy to misunderstand tone and intent
• There’s no accountability making it harder to organize who’s doing what
• It’s easy to leave people out of the loop
• E-mail archives stink for keeping a record of who said and did what

Basecamp
For about 5 years we’ve used Basecamp from 37Signals as our online project and communication hub. Frankly, there are a ton of similar options now…many are good variations on what 37Signals started. But we stick with it for it’s simplicity…our team and clients get up-to-speed with it pretty quick.

Plus it’s one cost for unlimited users and companies. Many other options have gone the way of a fee per user/per month. For a small studio constantly scaling up and down team and has many clients that’s just not feasible.

We’re able to track time on jobs, track milestones and to-dos, keep records of back and forth communication and send files for approval steps. You can access it through mobile, web and e-mail.

Nozbe
I’m a big fan of the Getting Things Done system by David Allen and the variation Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky since they’re easily applied to the creative workflow. But a personal management system isn’t something you can force on people.

So we allow flexibility for the team to use their own methods to track work, expectations and deadlines. Todd and I use a product called Nozbe that’s built off the GTD methods. It synchs in the cloud between computers, iPhone and iPad plus it’s accessible online.

Finally a way to keep track of personal and work stuff together with one tool. It also allows Dropbox and Evernote access within projects you setup.

At Timbuktoons we try to overcome these challenges with technology…

But we’re still in the “wait and see” mode in several areas. Different tools have elements we like but none of them are an all-in-one solution for us yet. That’s why we keep trying new things to make working in the cloud as efficient as possible!

Other posts in this series:
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Collaboration
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Community
Working in the Cloud: Benefits