Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

21st Century Work Life and leading remote teams


Brought to you by Virtual not Distant, the 21st Century Work Life podcast looks at leading remote teams, online collaboration and working in distributed organisations.

Join Pilar Orti, guests & co-hosts as they shine the spotlight on the most relevant themes and news relevant to the modern knowledge worker.

For more on our services, check out www.virtualnotdistant.com

Nov 21, 2019

This podcast is brought to you by Virtual Not Distant, where we help teams transition to office-optional work lifestyles - find us at https://virtualnotdistant.com

For full shownotes to this episode please see https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/podcasts/artificial-intelligence,

For now here's our list of 'what's going on' (recorded 30/10/19)

  • Zoom is incorporating chat - and reflecting the trend of platform convergence, whereby everything wants to do everything. Do we need this? Or is there room for more differentiation - which has to be good for consumer choice.
  • You can now email from within Teams client and Teams mobile… Why..? Slack also tells admins they can welcome people by email - but surely the whole point of these platforms is to move us away from email?
  • IT managers thoughts on workplace messaging - new research indicates Slack is still most
  • preferred, and most workplaces use more than one. Different functionality, shadow IT, or an experimental mindset… what do you think?
  • Banning ‘out of hours’ email - surely this is treating the symptom not the cause? Reducing autonomy can surely only increase stress. But reminds us how important email still is...(Thanks for this link Teresa)
  • Judy Rees (episode 60) has curated a great set of articles about online meetings, now published at InfoQ. Bad meetings get in the way of the work being done, but not for the reasons first thought of: ‘technology is no longer the problem, the problem is the people’  InfoQ recognised their own needs in this area and were glad to support this extended publication, to really help teams of any size and composition manage their online meetings better. From the tech to the culture to relationship buildings, this guide covers a great deal, so do check it out, and as well as Pilar you’ll recognise contributions from many of our podcast guests.  Judy has training coming up too which will interest listeners judyrees.co.uk @judyrees 
  • Listener question, from Brigitte: Should she pre-screen job applicants by email, for an online role? Well, if writing email is going to be a key part of their job then you need to know if they can write a good email… Otherwise, or additionally, it makes more sense to use selection tools which will reflect the demands of the job they’re seeking. Please send us your questions!
  • Maya is multitasking… and listening to more and more audiobooks, as a way to learn and do research while getting away from the screen. You can exercise your body while resting your eyes, and still enjoy books!