Virtual Team Links

This quarter I have been taking a class on using technology for leading teams. While in theatre most of the team tends to be in the same location - there is always a part of the team, the designer, or director prior to the rehearsal period that is not usually local. Thus the blending between an in house team and a virtual "show" team is an interesting topic to me. It has been interesting so far, and I am sure it will be the fodder for a series of blog posts. However, since there is a lot of information that I am locating out there on the internet, I thought I might do a list of links for further reading for now. Work 3.0 is the class blog. Since participation is a requirement it is fairly active. Leading Virtually has alot of information. The particular link I noted was about virtual worlds and building commitment. I never really got into second life - mostly because I thought I might like it too much. It seems like from what I have been reading that it isn't "as cool" as it used to be, but it does seem like an interesting concept. Regardless, many of the points they discuss are easily transferable to other virtual communication and teamwork. Ganthead.com is more of a project management resource, but does have some information on the subject. The specific blog linked to is actually about the Mann Gulch Incident, something not exactly related to virtual teams, but roles within a team & something that merits further exploration in its own right. Collaborative Strategies is a commercial site, but they do have some interesting information out there & a blog list of their own. Of course there are also lists of collaboration tools and technologies - from Basecamp to Podio to Google docs and much more out there as well. Its a large topic with a lot of different points of view. From an IT standpoint, or an outsource view point, this type of collaboration has been happening for year. For other, even though we may be meeting by phone and trading email for years, we aren't really using all of the technological options out there very effectively. Finally when you start looking at how all of this affects the team, group dynamics, trust and leadership, there is much more information out there.

Teamwork

When I first started in theatre in high school, playing theatre games was a common past time. Some of those games had a pretty clear intent, others were fun, but the intent was more ambiguous. Once in the technical side of theatre it seems like only actors get the fun of doing any theatre games or team building activities. I never quite agreed with that. While doing some research on team building activities I came across one called egg drop. In this activity a team has a couple hours to design and build a container that will allow them to drop an egg from 8' and not break. It made me think that a good technical team would surely have some great ideas on how to accomplish this.

Mortite

I was introduced to mortite rope caulk many (many) years ago for securing props to the set. What is surprising to me about the above photos is that I took them in a hotel - in Costa Rica.