Birds view of the whole marina beach enviroment with hydroplis terrain added. Thanks to Gorden from team Urbans who helped me to solve the problem of texture imported to be too bright from last modification.
Another view of the island from real time play mode. Noticed the terrain colour to be much more realistic.
“It is not a question of how well each process works; the question is how well they all work together.” – Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason, Think about quality
Gathering applications
Primarily include surveys, project management, feedback, and time tracking. While these applications might be included in some wikis and blogs, e.g wetpaint.
Wikis
They are either stand-alone (such as MediaWiki) or part of a suite (such as TikiWiki) or as a web based such as Wetpaint. Wikis might include workflow management, blogs, image and file galleries, chat, a calendar, surveys and more.
Blogger
It lets you create a blog for yourself or for your team, letting all team members post on individual blogs. You can post photos, customize the layout, and set the options for syndication (RSS feeds). You can also specify whether your blog is public or is only available to those readers you have chosen.
Google calendar
It lets you create multiple calendars, which you can view individually or as a group. You specify the name of the event, when it is (and if it is and all-day or limited-time event, and if it repeats), where it is, which of your calendar it belongs to (if you have multiple calendars), and a description.
References:
M.Katerine (kit) Brown, Brenda Huetture, and Char James-Tanny (2007), Managing Virtual Teams, Worldware Publishing, Plano.
Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, (2007), Emerging Informationo Resources Management and Technologies, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey
Axel Bruns, (2008), Blogs, Ekipedia, Second Life, and Beyond, Peter Publishing, New York.
The word intent or intention is usually connected with desire and determination but in a less powerful meaning.
A working definition for intention is: “to have in mind a purpose or plan, to direct the mind, to aim.” Lacking intention, we sometimes stray without meaning or direction. “Only a few things about teams are sure, and one is this: successful teams have clear goals.” quoted from Glenn Parker’s book, Cross-Functional Teams. Without a shared vision, intention and goals to support a teams main vision which in our case the desire of high achievement, teams will fracture along personal views and functional lines and the project will fail.
Purpose
Why are you doing this project? What will be different when you finish the project successfully? Without a clear purpose, you will not be able to tell if the project is successful or not. For example, a project purpose might be “to shorten the customer’s learning curve.”
Goal
What are you going to do in order to accomplish the purpose? A project with the purpose of shortening the c ustomer learning curve might have a goal of “ simplify the user interface: or “ improve available training material.: Note that purpose and goals are not the same.
Major milestones
How are you going to accomplish the goals, and by when? You do not need to duplicate the task or schedule sections (those come later in the plan); just summarize them at this point.
M.Katerine (kit) Brown, Brenda Huetture, and Char James-Tanny (2007), Managing Virtual Teams, Worldware Publishing, Plano.
Kurt Verweire and Lutgart Van Ben Berghe (2004), Integrated Performance Management, Sage Publication, London.
http://healing.about.com/od/marciawieder/a/powerintention.htm. Accessed on 21st of April
Context
From Word Power Dictionary of Readers Digest, the word context meaning the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea. Context may be one of the most important cultural variables for virtual teams.
In high-context cultures, messages have little meaning without an understanding of the surrounding context. People from high-context cultures prefer more historical information and more subjective personal opinions. People from low-context cultures prefer more objective and “fact-based” information.
Members from high-context cultures may prefer communicatons that are able to carry a great deal of contextual information. This implies that information-rich technologies that convey a number of clues regarding meaning may be modre suited to a team with a number of members from high-context cultures. High-context cultures include China, Japan, Greece, Mexico etc. Moderate-context cultures include Italy, France, Britain etc. Low context cultures include English Canada, USA, Germany.
The collaborative context
Collaborative technologies have changed the context of interaction completely. Many conversations can take place at the same time. Ideas generated by different people on a shared screen for all to see inspire conversations within the group. Ideas are both external and manipulable. People can create icons to represent ideas and concepts, which others can modify or manipulate until they become both community property and a visual part of the conversation.
Electronic collaboration is the use of networking and collaborative technologies to support groups in the creation of shared understanding. Electronic collaboration fosters new kinds of collective work made possible with advanced collaboration technologies. The use of collaborative technologies enables conversations with new kinds of prosperities.
References
Vlatka Hlupic, (2002), Knowledge and business process management, Idea Group Inc (IGI), Hershey
Deborah L. Duarte, Nancy Tennant Snyder (2006), Mastering virtual teams: strategies, tools, and techniques that succeed, John Wiley and Sons. Stafford BC
My category is shared Repositories such as Youtube, Google 3d Warehouse, Filefront or Fileplanet.
As shared repositories such as Youtube, Google 3D Warehouse and Filefront are widely used throughout all phases of the project, collaborative team building will form naturally by all team members. The purpose of using multidisciplinary shared repositories not only helps to develop better team culture but also emphasizes on the quality and efficiency of the project.
Our team could use Youtube for online video sharing which shows our work to everyone. Youtube allows our team mate to work seamlessly with each other throughout the whole project. Youtube videos set as a centralized sharing point for what we should achieve.
Google 3D Warehouse merges with Sketchup effortlessly since it is one of Sketchup’s supporting website for 3D model sharing online. Our team member couldl share their part of model via Google 3D Warehouse which improves work efficiency.
Filefront and Fileplanet allow us to share the actual model and map file for our project for supporting what each of us is doing despite differences in the progress of the final project which saves time for meeting up and pass over the models to team mates.
By providing a centralized shared repository for project information, team members won’t have to meet face to face in order to work their part of job. If we have team members in Asia, , Australia, North America or any other places that the whole team can’t not meet together, place project-related information on shared repositories will allow everyone to access what they needed 24/7. Incorporate other collaboration technologies, such as instant messaging, online chat room. This whole collaborative process throughout shared repositories will ultimately improve work efficiency of all team members.
