Laura’s Winning Ideas

I would normally wait until I have several cool tools to mention, but this one is too hot to wait.

How about YouTube behind your firewall? Google Apps is offering a free video service, allowing you to upload videos for internal use with the same ease as 13 year-olds are uploading stupid dog tricks to YouTube.

• Announce a major contract win corporate-wide, interviewing the Project Manager live, for everyone to see when they get to their desk in the morning. . .no matter what time zone they work in!
• On-line proposal training can include video.
• Oral Presentation rehearsals can have the Red Team Review on-line.
• Teams can video-tape field work so the proposal writers can see how that gizmo is used in Bangkok to describe for the World Bank proposal.
• Proposal software tricks can be demonstrated so your remote coordinators learn the latest tips and tricks without waiting for a training session.
• Make your next plea for that resume update Up Close and Personal.
• Include your partners around the globe in your celebration of a proposal shipped.
• etc. etc. etc.

And the price is my favorite price to try out new technology: FREE for the next 30 days, and $50/year after that. (just launched September 2,2008)

Your IT department doesn’t have to host the video, and you aren’t shipping video files around (Yikes! Can you say mail server crash?!?).

Be a hero and pass this tip along to someone at your organization who has a need, or try it out by video taping your next team meeting and posting for your group to play with the technology.

This Google service pairs beautifully with the flip video camera reviewed here:

The flip video cameras are available for just over $100.

Here’s an even better idea!

1. Get one flip camera, video tape a cool proposal tip and post.
2. Mail the flip camera to a proposal person in another office for them to do the same, and
3. continue shipping the camera around until everyone has a chance to be the star of their own video.

Lots of fun seeing each other in action when you don’t usually get to meet each other. Everyone has some special nugget the others don’t know about, and it’s a great way to share the wealth and have some fun along the way.

(Tip of my hat to Agile Mind, the Virtual Government Blogger who first posted about Google Video.)

In the latest issue of Government Executive, Alyssa Rosenberg writes about telework among government agencies. The US Army is cited as one of the agencies ahead of the power curve on using technology to link in teleworkers.

Telework involves workers setting up to work from home, usually for a few days each week. It is a virtual management challenge we’ll see more of over the next decade.

Incoming workers value greater flexibility and see telework as one way to answer this desire. According to the article, this can be a key draw for a generation that places value on workplace freedoms.

Telework saves time and money because the worker avoids the time of commuting and the expense of commuting. This is an attractive feature for many candidates.

Plus, friendly environmental awareness is an attractive recruiting tool. According to a recent survey, 92 percoent of young professionals are interested in environmentally friendly employers. Eighty percent are interested in jobs that have “a direct positive impact on the environment.” Telework supports this interest as well.

Management concerns include:

“A tournament for computer programmers crowned a champion Thursday. The winner’s secret: avoiding bells and whistles, and asking questions until he knew exactly what the judges wanted his software to do.

From Best of the Business Tech Blog, The Wall Street Journal
By Ben Worthen

Tim Roberts was the winner of $25,000 for his dedication to avoid the usual pitfalls of technical projects: late delivery and/or failure to meet expectations. Poor communication is usually the culprit, sometimes paired with project creep, when new features are added along the way.

Same goes for most projects I can think of. Proposals, projects of all kinds benefit from a clear understanding of the requirements. The winner in this competition spent one hour reading the requirements and then asked “at least 30 questions” before designing his response.

I remember showing a winning proposal to a manager who exclaimed that the proposal seemed
too plain for his oh-so-complicated projects. Actually, the “black box” approach fails more and more often as competitors figure out the wisdom of “making the complex simple to understand.”

Would it help if you could have proposal images and/or audio available to the customer at their convenience?

Below, you can watch a PowerPoint presentation I created for an SMPS meeting several years ago. I can restrict access to the folks whose email addresses I provide, or leave the file open to the public.

The service I’m using here is authorSTREAM. The service is free, so its a good thing to tuck away in your bookmarks.