Here at Diligex we handle 98% of our clients issues remotely, and for them that’s great, because in most cases that means minimum interruption to their work day!  What most people don’t know is that although we have an office in NYC, most of the time we are working from home. This has an incredible amount of benefits both personally and commercially, but the one caveat I couldn’t deal with was not being around people. I loved being in the office and being able to catch up with people, or having that sense of team you get when working on a project together. To be fair, there are some pretty serious disadvantages to working in an office especially if the office is an open concept design, but that’s for another discussion. And sure electronic forms of communication were developed to bring us closer together faster and across distances. However they lack important elements (tone, eye contact, facial expressions, behavior, etc..) that make communicating in person easier and more personal. The problem is: how do you get that when your working from home and your teammates are “only” an email, phone call, or instant message away?

Video conferencing was developed to make electronic communications more personal, however having your Web Cam active all the time isn’t realistic and would eventually become a large distraction. Despite that I knew video was going to be key to bridging the gap so to speak when it came to building a team electronically. So I spent a good amount of time researching different video conferencing and team building tools. I tried team building methods such as games, quarterly meetings at the office, weekly calls to “catch up”, and even some tools designed to help you get to know people better. The problem I found was that all of those are good but required commitment outside (for the most part) of our normal daily tasks and would take developing or changing habits for them to be effective. So I needed, no scratch that, “WE”needed something we could use on a daily basis.

So after a ton of Googling, I came across a company called Sqwiggle.  Sqwiggle is video presence, video conferencing, and instant messaging all in one package. The part that interested me the most was what I refer to as the cousin to telepresence, video presence. What does video presence mean? Well it’s basically using your Web Cam to say “Hey I’m here”, but it’s so much more then that. Let me explain it by telling you how Sqwiggle works. When you sign up for Sqwiggle you first start by creating a virtual room. In these rooms people can join you via their Web Cams but instead of it being a constant stream Sqwiggle takes a snapshot every five seconds. This way your still “there” but without any of the distractions or feeling it necessary to be in a stream of constant communication. If you want to chat with someone you can use the side bar to send an instant message to the people in the room, or you can click on their static video feed image and have a quick video chat.

Yes Diligex is now using Sqwiggle to keep our remote team connected, but how has it improved things. For starters I think it added an element of accountability that wasn’t there.  Now, I know who’s at their desk and who isn’t.  It also made it easier for us to talk as a team.  Instead of sending an instant message or email to an individual teammate you have the whole team in the virtual room.  Communication instantly became more team focused and no one was left out of the loop. My favorite part has been being able to see and talk to my teammates as needed and not have to worry about whether or not I conveyed my message clearly over Instant message or email.  Even when I’m not using the video chat people can still see your face so your mood is hard to hide. That brings me to something I’ve found Sqwiggle helps with even though I wasn’t looking for it; I’m much more conscious of my attitude and how it affects myself and my teammates because I’m always there.

So if you’re working remotely and you’re looking for a cost effective tool to keep you connected, I’d highly recommend you take the 14 day challenge and see how it benefits your team. After you’ve tried it why not post a comment on our blog and let us know how you liked it, and we’d love to hear some of the ways you’ve developed camaraderie remotely.