Digital nomads have several distinct methods of communication with remote colleagues and partners:

1. Email is best for organizing complex ideas and communicating them to one or more parties, such as a strategy outline. Email is also ideal for sharing documents as attachments.
2. Skype IM is great for quick exchanges at random intervals throughout the workday, such as sending a URL.
3. Phone (or Skype Call) is best for brainstorming ideas and engaging in real-time dialogue, such as a strategy meeting. Skype Call is also great for conference calls among several parties.
4. SMS is good for brief exchanges when away from a computer, such as at a luncheon.
5. Wikis (such as PB Wiki, which I like) are great for long-term brainstorms and managing task lists. These are also useful to keep a group informed on evolving plans. Most offer a handy ‘alert’ function that emails everyone on the list when any changes have been made.

One of the challenges I have faced with email is that sometimes good ideas get buried among old email and lots of junk mail. A good solution to this problem was to use the wiki for ongoing strategizing, as well as product testing and reporting.

Mobile phone usage costs money, so Skype has been great as a free alternative for voice calls. I would recommend using a hands-free headset to reduce feedback/ echoes. International calls on Skype cost some money, but very little compared to international telephony.

One of the biggest challenges a digital nomad faces is keeping in touch with coworkers, team members or partners, when the group is not in the same physical space most of the time.  These days, many rely on tools like instant messaging, wikis, collaborative workspaces, email and other tools to keep everyone on the same page.  What are some tips and tricks that you’ve found for keeping a group of digital nomads working together well?  What were some of the downsides and challenges?  How were those overcome or minimized?

The rules for keeping in touch with coworkers, IMHO, are the same as running your own business. I had my own business for five years, and was a digital nomad for more than three years.

1. Remember, TO THE MIDDLE! Don’t be too close to coworkers (there are exceptions, but very rarely), and don’t be remote. If you are too close, it will nearly always degenerate to an “us versus them” situation, as your coworkers (or you) experience/imagine some “situation”. DON’T BE INVOLVED! And, even if you don’t like the person, don’t be remote – you may have to work with them at some time, and you don’t need tension in the relationship.

2. Email, IM, wiki, whatever. You want people to know you exist. If possible, learn and remember “little things”, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Leave out vacations and other overly time-consuming matters, except for a “hope you had a good time!”. With any contact, develop the ability to end the conversation on a positive note when it is taking too much time.

3. MAKE A POINT to meet at the office or at a “neutral” common point – NOT the home, or other “personal” space; work is not for socializing (once again, it degenerates into an “us versus them” problem.

4. Most of all, remember that you are at the disadvantage of not being fully visible. Don’t resent it, you would act the same way in “their” situation, but take it into account, and try a little harder.

Presence is a stream of signals you give off. You’ve seen simple availability presence signals in instant messaging: I’m online, I’m offline, Do Not Disturb. Some of us lifestream what we’re doing during the day: I’m in this meeting, I’m catching up on email, I’m making soup. We also give off contextual presence signals: I’m available for lunch on Tuesday if you’re a recruiter, my dream date, or someone I know.

Disclosure like this feels strange. At first. And then something unusual happens. We get used to it. It starts to feel familiar. Like being in an open plan office where you overhear smalltalk, see people come and go. Or having a break room where you catch up with people a little bit here and there.

And then presence becomes useful.

People use our signals. Strangers decide if they should introduce themselves. Colleagues decide when they should interrupt, and for what. And that makes your life better, because the people around you are making better choices about when and how to engage with you.

We use many tools to broadcast our presence. Twitter, blogs, public calendars, job sites, project status systems, IM mood messages. Even simple things like IM and email. So long as the people in your world can easily see and update, which tools don’t matter too much.

Because presence is a social interaction. You share yours. You consume others’. And through this, you get to know each other in ways that may be more intimate and current than if you were in the same physical office.

Collective presence is what it sounds like. A stream or a place where you can see what a group of people are doing. Where you aggregate your group’s presence signals.

Collective presence is a mix of informal, unstructured, casual talk and structured messages. The Europeans in our team are coming online now. The programmers are working through a pre-release checklist. Someone’s dealing with a problem today.

Members of a team experience this collective presence through group chats, like IRC’s or Skype’s persistent chat rooms, or a listserve. At Skype Journal, we augment group chats with RSS aggregators and other software that pull in team member blogs, twitter updates, public calendars, public bookmarks, new photos and illustrations. So all through the day we keep in touch.

So I have a few lessons to share.

First, social media and presence tools sustain bonds that help a team know and trust each other.

Second, collective presence cultivates situational awareness. So people make better choices about what is important, what is urgent and what needs resources.

Third, collective presence means you are not alone. When those feelings of isolation kick in, it’s easy to drop into the group chat and see what everyone has been up to.

The essence of productivity is choosing the right things to do and doing them. Collective presence makes remote team productivity easier and more immediate.

My toolkit:

• Skype public chats, Skype contact groups
• iGoogle and Google Reader (aggregating news and blog feeds)
• twitter, TwitterBar (so I can post from Firefox), TweetDeck (aggregating tweets), Twype (putting my latest twitter into my Skype mood),
• Yahoo!’s flickr (images), delicious (bookmarks), upcoming (events)
• Google Groups for email lists

We have offices in 3 different geographic regions. Our principals alternate every 2-3 days between each of them. In addition our sales and tech staff are frequently on the road traveling.

I like many of the technological suggestions included here, we also use VOIP, a variety of instant message tools, a company tikiwiki website, the forums included therein, and Google calendar. The only other technological tool I would suggest is that we record our video conferenced meetings and training sessions.

We store these recordings on our website to allow people that were unable to attend, or people that were not even employees at the time to be able to catch up on the give and take in the discussion that has formed our standards and practices.

It is critical for everyone in the organization to not only understand what we are doing but what forces and facts went in to the decision to do things a particular way.

I think another of the things we do differently that helps us operate as a cohesive unit, is at least three times a year we take a couple days off as a group and get together with the employees and families to celebrate and have fun.

Obviously there are a lot of business discussions that go on during these events but this is not the focus, there is a significant cost for the travel and lodging, but we feel that it really helps us connect as a group.

We are an ESOP company and we work hard to make sure that everyone is doing the work that they want to and that we are providing all of the tools that we each need to succeed.

Mobile Productivity Today Means E-Mail

It’s a given that mobility, and access to wireless networks has already enhanced the productivity of the workforce, but we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. The productivity gains we experience pre-2009 are mostly on the back of a single, vertical mobile application – wireless e-mail.

E-mail became the life-blood of corporate communication through the 90s. But key decision makers are often away from their desks, traveling, or in meetings. Thus, there were clots in the arteries which often slowed the flow of decisions. The seminal Blackberry, released in 1999, revolutionized the “speed of information” and empowered a “real time” workforce. This is exemplified by a case such as where workers need to bounce an idea off their manager before they can complete a subsequent step. The manager, who is often mobile and out of office, is able to handle such requests, via mobile email, in whatever tiny slices of available time. This is just one example, and there are multiple other ways in which e-mail can accelerate results beyond just staff-manager communication.

• Logistics
• Group communication, team management
• Vendor management
• HR, accounting, expense
• Urgent news
• Approvals

The list above is hardly exhaustive.

Mobile Productivity Beyond The BlackBerry

But mobile e-mail, while being very powerful because it is a horizontal app that is useful at many levels in in all industries, is still only really good for “bite sized communications”. You don’t often see someone actually do “Work” with a capital ‘W’ using a smartphone. Editing of documents, creating spreadsheets, powerpoints, reviewing CAD drawings, etc. All of these functions call for a more powerful computer, a better UI, and a different set of applications. Now I know some will say “I edit documents on my …” Good for you. But you are not very efficient when you do it, and you are in the minority. This lack of actual productive horsepower is where the next revolution in mobile productivity will come.

The NetBook

A new range of hardware choices is bridging the gap between smartphones and ultra-portable laptops. MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices) are coming up from the phone side, while NetBooks are shrinking down from the PC side. These devices, unlike “desktop replacement” laptops, are assumed to be used in a mobile context almost all of the time. They are thus designed with mobile Internet connections built-in. New models from ASUS, Dell, and HP all ship with a Windows OS, and are small, but as powerful as the best of laptops in 2005. This means they are well suited for “mobile productivity”.

With this new class of devices, we start to see the difference between “mobile responding” which is what e-mail gives us versus “mobile productivity”. With the latter, not only can you read a word attachment, but you can add a few paragraphs, move some sections around, format, move it onto company letterhead, and send it out to clients. Not only can you read your email, but you can reply with an attachment, sort it, and mark it for follow up.

What makes these devices different than our existing laptops is that they have:

• “always on” wireless Internet built in, with less hassle to figure out
• short boot times, fast sleep and wake
• compact, easy to carry size and weight
• often no moving hard drive parts, using Flash memory instead

Because of this, users are more likely to “boot up” and take advantage of chunks of their time that might otherwise be lost. You could write a letter to a client, fix up a document, start a presentation, do your taxes, update your LinkedIn. Even email is better this way: if you have 2 minutes, sure, check your Blackberry, but if you have 10, why not open up your netbook and really plow through your mail. If you’re a Blackberry user, you know what I mean. Sure, most of us delete some email while mobile, but almost all of us end up re-handling and sorting the same messages when we finally get to our PC. Some people don’t want to work so much all the time. Netbooks aren’t for everyone. Of course, neither was the Blackberry in 1999.

Will Digital Nomads Be Motivated To Use NetBooks?

I think many digital nomads will choose to use this new class of laptop. The reason is that productivity is rewarded. You can do more work overall and move ahead, or you can re-allocate your time. Every job you get done on the road, in downtime, on trains, etc. is work you don’t have to do when you get back to your office. Most professionals I know “work from home” once in a while, which is code for go golfing or hang out with the kids. This kind of time flexibility and autonomy is generally available to the people who prove that they are also willing to work when duty calls.

Digital nomads, and people in general, are motivated when they are in control of their lives, and are offered that autonomy over when they work, and when they don’t. Mobile devices of all classes are bringing that power to more and more people. Employers who manage these mobile staff must not focus on how much time staff spend parked in their desk, but instead focus on results.

Managing By Managing

In fact, mobility of staff ”pulls back the curtain” to expose good and bad management. Managers who focus on butts in seats never really were managing. They forced attendance, and results were just a byproduct. For these poor leaders, less seat time = less product. Managers who have always focused instead on results (i.e. who actually managed) will see higher productivity from empowered, flexible, and mobile employees, whether they wear down their Herman Miller or not.

Late-breaking research from ABI (cited from Fiercewireless) to support my above claims:

“ABI Research says shipments of ultra-mobile devices, which include ultra-mobile PCs, networks and mobile Internet devices (MIDs), will exceed 200 million units in 2013. MIDs will make up the bulk of the shipments, taking 68 percent of the market, while netbooks will take up most of the rest. Ultra-mobile PCs will have a niche role in the market.”