Likes in the time of Corona
Blog
If only we could get our Cleric to cast Guardian of Faith and have it destroy the coronavirus for you.
But we will have to work with what we have.
Web conference mastery
At team Niche, we already run a flexible working environment, and with a lot of our clients getting on the remote work train, we thought we could help share some tips.
Accessorise
Headsets are a must, whether it is your AirPods or the headphones that came with your phone, you need to use one. You can also get great Bluetooth conferencing speakers, unless people have bought them all from Officeworks by now (they have).
Plan B is to use your phone. It is still better in every way to your computer speakers. Also, mute your microphone as much as possible when you aren’t talking to keep the background noise down.
Have you met meet?
Google Hangouts Meet, is great these days and free for anyone with GSuite and free for everyone else until the first of July. If you use Google Calendar, it can make Meet links automatically. Meet can scale up to 250 participants and live stream.
We are also fans of Zoom.
Three’s a crowd
This is a tip from the gamers: If there are two of you in the same room, you can both dial-in separately and use your own headsets, but mute one of the microphones and the other will pick up both voices.
Remote teamwork
Group chat time
If you are new to Slack or Microsoft Teams, welcome to the party. We love that these tools because they let you organise conversations around topics and projects, rather than in long, tortured email chains. Remember that you can control your notifications so you only see what’s relevant.
Death to internal email
If you can get all your internal communication into Teams or Slack, email can become a tool just for engaging externally with clients and suppliers, and you can cut through the noise.
Try a stand up
To avoid silos and keep our team on track, we do daily stand up meetings. These are tight, (mostly) to the point and fast. In a stand up, everyone takes turns and answers just three questions:
What I did yesterday/last
What I’m doing today/next
What I need help with
Only one person talks at a time, and everyone contributes. The “I need help with” question is the most powerful to help team knowledge-sharing and problem-solving. Any in-depth discussions get parked for discussion after the stand-up.
Remote stand ups work great too.
How we are protecting ourselves
Like all nerds, we are already great at social isolation, and there will be minimal disruption to our projects. We will work remotely until things are back to normal or we use our D&D knowledge and pivot to being a group of sellswords/baristas in a new dark age.
As we are working remotely, we are lonely and available for web conferences and phone meetings as needed. You can get us on Trello, Email, our Mobiles and even our stinky landline. Yay voip.
Likes in the time of Corona
These crazy times will bring challenges and opportunities to all businesses. Here are some ways we can help.
Get your tools to talk to each other
There are many smart ways we can integrate different systems so you can have accurate info without additional effort.
Keep an eye on what’s important
Get the flexibility of spreadsheets without the manual work. We can create up-to-date business intelligence reports that give indicators on how you are doing and what needs attention via both automatic emails and online dashboards.
Forms and workflows
Tame and automate internal and external processes with tools that make you more collaborative and more competitive.
eCommerce and quoting
Get new opportunities by changing how people can buy your services without them coming near you.
Data migrations
Use our secret nerd skills to help you get your data moved between systems, either as a one-off or on an ongoing basis.
Independent advice
We deal with a lot of tools and services and can recommend the best options to help your business.
We’ve got your back
We love finding smart solutions to business and technical problems. If you have an impossible challenge or a quick question, get in touch.
We want you to succeed.
