You’re Invited to Join the Virtual Working Summit 2012, and any replays until then
Do you need to work effectively when you can’t be face to face?
Do you want to have the satisfaction of working in a way that massively reduces your travel costs and helps the environment? What about slashing the time, cost and frustration of too much travel? Do you want to avoid misunderstandings with your team and stop wasting time on ineffective conference calls? What about being able to do all this while keeping others interested and engaged even when they’re miles away?
Join us for the Virtual Working Summit in June 2012. Featuring short audio interviews with world-class experts, one per day, it also gives you the chance to interact with the other participants online. This is a unique way for you to develop your skills without travelling. There is no charge to register to listen in to each speaker via the web each day.
Sign up now to book your place at the 2012 Summit.
Who should attend? People who manage a team or projects across countries or continents. People who need to work across more than one site. Professionals who work with clients, or sell to them, remotely. People facing budget cuts. People who need to build trust and engage others. Teleworkers. People who need to do more with less. If that’s you, then:
Sign up now to make sure you don’t miss out:
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Virtual working? For some, it’s a nightmare of bad lines, inaudible voices and technology that only works some of the time. On top of that, it can be really tough to keep engaged and focused when you can’t see people’s faces and you don’t know the people on the other end of the line. And we haven’t even mentioned the misunderstandings that happen across cultures! This photo sums up what these calls can feel like:
But it doesn’t need to be like this!
Take your virtual meetings from frustrating timewasters to effective ways to reduce travel and carbon emissions while saving time and money. Learn how to work with your team when you can’t be with them face to face.
How? You’re in the right place! Sign up now for the Virtual Working Summit 2012. In 2011, we focused on how you can keep people engaged, involved and taking action, even when they’re miles away.
Our team of experts shared their thoughts, ideas, and experience with you, so you can:
- Understand the styles and behaviours that get the most out of virtual teams
- Tap into age-old wisdom to make what happens in your virtual meetings memorable
- Build strong relationships with people who you don’t meet face to face
- Find out which new technologies can support us to be even more effective virtually (by the way, some can hinder engagement)
- Learn about how to add the power of visuals to your virtual meetings
- Find out how being productively lazy can make your life easier and less stressful, even when working virtually
and more!
On top of this, we had short interviews with a variety of people who grapple with virtual working every day and heard what works for them, and what doesn’t!
Meet the 2011 World-Class Virtual Working Mentors:
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Penny Pullan: Keeping People Interested and Engaged from Afar Monday 20th JunePenny Pullan PhD PMP CPF, your Summit Host, introduces this year’s Virtual Working Summit. She’ll talk about the ways of working that are most effective when you can’t be face to face and what behaviours to avoid completely! Feedback on Penny’s sessions tells us to expect practical and useful suggestions that we can implement straight away. Penny is Director of Making Projects Work Ltd. and supports people who are grappling with tricky projects: be that virtual, risky, ambiguous or with complex stakeholder arrangements (or more likely, all four!) Gower are just publishing her first book: ‘A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management’ which is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and elsewhere. Penny created the Virtual Working Summit as a result of her work with financial services, utilities, pharmaceutical and consultancy clients, as well as international charities. She saw the need for this forum and filled the gap. |
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Dr Stephen Thorpe: Better Online Relationships Tuesday 21st JuneDr. Stephen Thorpe is a Director of Zenergy in New Zealand. He’s an academic, facilitator, trainer, and educator who specialises in group work in the online world. He is passionate about assisting people to collaborate using a range of online technologies and trains people around the world in online facilitation skills. Stephen loves researching ways to enhance the effectiveness of online groups and his Ph.D. explored the use of storytelling in the facilitation of online relationship development. The results were pretty clear and we can use them to our advantage. In his talk, he’ll explain how. |
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Peter Taylor: The Lazy Guide to Virtual Working Wednesday 22nd JunePeter Taylor has become known as ‘The Lazy Project Manager’ since his bestselling book of the same name was published a couple of years ago. It focuses on productive laziness and draws on his experiences of getting things done through projects in international companies. As you can imagine, Peter has been using virtual working for many years. He’ll talk about how the same productive laziness and applying the 80:20 rule appropriately can help to get things done virtually. |
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Rachel Smith and David Sibbet: Virtual Visual Meetings Thursday 23rd JuneJust as social networking has reclaimed the Internet for human interactivity and co-creation, the visual meetings movement is reclaiming creativity, productivity, and playful exchange for serious work in groups. Anyone can implement powerful visual tools like graphic recording, visual planning, storyboarding, graphic templates, and idea mapping in meetings that are face-to-face, entirely online, or a blending of both. In this call, David Sibbet and Rachel Smith of The Grove Consultants International will introduce the concept of visual meetings, discuss ways to bring visual tools into meetings of all kinds, and share tips from their own experiences with virtual visual facilitation. Be sure to take a look at the visual recording created during the call, too! Founded in 1977 by David Sibbet, their President and Founder, the Grove has helped a range of clients, from Fortune 500 businesses to nonprofit organizations, meet a diverse set of organizational challenges and achieve their goals. Learn more at here. David Sibbet (now confirmed) is a master facilitator, author of ‘Visual Meetings’ and ‘Visual Teams’ as well as many of The Grove’s tools and models for facilitation, team leadership and organizational transformation. He has appeared on TED to demonstrate his ideas and how they make such a difference to people and groups. Within the Grove, Rachel is Director of Digital Facilitation Services and, as such, develops ways to integrate technology into visual meetings. She is a skilled visual facilitator and works with groups both online and in person. She is recognized for her work in making new technologies approachable through talks, trainings, and written materials. She blogs at ninmah.be |
Real People using Virtual Working Everyday June 24thOn this day, we’ll hear from a range of people who work virtually every day. They range from a global teleworker based at her desk in a rural farmhouse to the frequent traveller to four continents, who uses virtual means in between and during trips. |
Just type in your Name, primary Email Address and the country where you’re located then click the “Register Me Now!” button to register for the Summit. If you have ask a question for us to answer during the 2012 summit, please enter it too.
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How did people find the 2010 Virtual Working Summit? Here are some extracts from the feedback:
Great presenters
The Virtual Working Summit was a wonderful learning and networking experience. The speakers were so very knowledgeable. I looked forward each day to listening to the sessions! The summit was an excellent way to learn and connect with other professionals in a convenient and flexible way. Thank you Penny for a great program.
Hard to think of what could make this experience better. Penny’s efforts were outstanding and this summit was more than what I expected.
To be honest, I can’t think of anything to improve for next year! I thought the summit was extremely well organised and the different sessions covered the topic very well. Thank you!
a great start – looking forward to the next one
The summit sessions were excellent. All topics are relevant. For next year, continue to do a great job on selected relevant topics
Great summit sessions !! Speakers are knowledgeable on the topics which makes the session valuable
Excellent concept Penny, and executed perfectly. A significant contribution to raising the profile of virtual working and use of applicable tools. Looking forward to next year already! Dr. Edward Wallington, Programme and Project Manager
Thank you for an engaging set of discussions. John Greenwood PMP. Senior Project Manager.
What went well? Pretty much everything!
Thank you for hosting the Summit. I enjoyed it very much. Carl Sands, PMP – Global Delivery Framework Implementation Team Associate
Excellent idea please make it an annual event. Simon Neale – Project Manager
All the calls I listened to were good. I only didn’t listen to calls if I physically couldn’t make time to listen that day – I would have listened to them all if I could. Very interesting, well co-ordinated and smoothly executed, thank you! Dee Henderson-Small, Consulting Partner, Inspired Partners Ltd.
I liked everyone
The summit was brilliant idea! Hugely useful and encouraging to be able to hear experts on subjects that affect my virtual daily working life. Thank you Penny for organising it all. Peter Sargent, Financial Management Consultant
I liked the speakers – good topics and good coverage of the topics by the speakers. Connie Hayes, PMI-SP
The topics was just what we needed, because we have just started to Work in a new virtual organisation with 17 countries. What went well? The good questions and answers. That the summit was available the whole day and not just the specific time. Jeanette Prang, Learning and Change management consultant
Good event – stimulating idea.
I thought the telephone interviews were very professional, sound quality was excellent and good to be able to listen at any time. A great idea, wonderfully implemented. Carol Sherriff, director and facilitator, Wilson Sherriff
Audio format combined with LinkedIn discussions. Interview topics, practical advice.
I enjoyed ALL of the topics that were presented. I liked the fact that I could dial in at my own convenience. I actually heard my question asked during the summit so I thought that was very cool. I liked that the speakers were from a variety of countries and expertise, but it all tied in together nicely. Penny, this was a fantastic experience for me. Thank you for pulling all of the resources together and for offering us such a fantastic and FREE summit. I am already looking forward to participating next year and hope that since I registered I will be automatically on your email list for notices of same. THANKS SO MUCH! Cheryl D. Oberg, PMP [USA]
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Making Projects Work Ltd is registered under the UK Data Protection Act 1998 and chooses to comply with the US Federal CAN-SPAM legislation. We’re based at Ludlow House, 1 Cumberland Road, Loughborough LE11 5DE, UK. Our Company Number is 6067751 and we’re registered in England.