Have you tried Ryver?

Have you tried Ryver?

In 2014, the team behind Ryver set out to solve the world’s “email problem” – the outdated way many teams collaborate, which is slow, difficult to manage, and filled with time-wasting junk mail.

Ryver was the result – the best platform for teams to communicate, manage tasks, and automate business processes all in one app.

Ryver’s goal is to help teams get more done through seamless collaboration. This software features custom conversation channels including forums, private teams, and a “people” feature for one-on-one collaboration. Some other features that Ryver offers include:

  • Single sign-on (SSO) through various apps, reducing password resets and lockouts
  • Integration with thousands of apps via plug-ins or API
  • News streaming for social media posts, RSS feeds, and more

In addition to these features, Ryver offers unlimited chat, video and voice calls, and forums. It also includes unlimited file sharing, searching, and integration for more value.

Ryver’s starter plan is just $49 per month for up to 12 users, and the enterprise plan is $149 per month. The most popular plan is $79 per month for unlimited users, and it also offers a free 14-day trial.

https://ryver.com/

Powerful Communication Tools for Entrepreneurs: Connecting
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Powerful Communication Tools for Entrepreneurs: Connecting

We all know how important connecting is in our everyday life. Especially now, facing COVID-19 challenges, we appreciate every chance to interact with other people.  But what role does connecting play when it comes to entrepreneurship?

We recommend you to read this article by Joanne Bond, executive leadership coach, discussing the importance and practice of connecting as a powerful communication tool for entrepreneurial success.

Powerful Communication Tools for Entrepreneurs: Connecting

by Joanne Bond

Connecting is About Relationships

Connecting is about relationships. Relationships you form today can help your business far into the future, often in unexpected ways. To establish relationships and build your network, it can be helpful to think of all those who are related to your business in some way. These are your “stakeholders.” Entrepreneurs have many actual and potential stakeholders.

Who Are Your Stakeholders?

As a first step you need to identify your stakeholders. To simplify, think of your stakeholders in different roles with different purposes:

  

Role People in Role Purpose of Role
Entrepreneur You You are the primary stakeholder in your network. You need to stay focused on your entrepreneurial offering.
Support Network Family, friends, mentors, experts, etc. These stakeholders help you stay focused, encourage you through the ups and downs, link you to their relationships and resources, etc.
Investors People who are invested in you and your success (financially, emotionally, etc.) These stakeholders provide funding, they ensure you track financials and stay focused on the bottom line. They connect you to other investors or resources.
Staff Your employees These stakeholders work for you. They help you actualize your offering and implement the processes that will support your business emergence, development, and growth. These stakeholders care about the success of your business as it relates to their career opportunities, salary, and work-life balance.
Customers Past, current, and future customers These stakeholders provide revenue to keep your business going. They help you understand what they need and how your offering can meet these needs. They can help you connect with other consumers, referral networks, etc. Customers are a top priority for any business.
Service Providers Companies or individuals with whom you contract services These are stakeholders you hire to provide services and resources to run your business. These can be critical to your business, so relationships and contracts should be closely managed.
Others Not yet determined Be open and curious about the connections you have not yet made, help you don’t know you need, and new ideas that can take your business in unexpected directions.
     

If you mapped these relationships, there would undoubtedly be overlap, with some people acting in more than one role. For example, a family member may be part of your support network, an investor, and a staff member.

Stakeholder Roles and Needs

As a second step, think about the key needs of your stakeholders. You will likely communicate in different ways with different stakeholders to meet these needs. For example, your staff has different needs than your investors. Your staff may see you every day, so they have the advantage of frequent updates. However, are these updates organized, and do they provide the information employees need? On the other hand, your investors may work in many different locations and rely on meetings, phone conversations, or email for information. This information may be well organized and completely different from the information you provide staff. These two stakeholders require different methods of communication and different topics. As another example, you may have one mentor who is a business development expert and another who specializes in operations. The business development expert may only be interested in your marketing efforts, while the operations mentor is interested in areas such as manufacturing, business processes, and supply chain management. These two stakeholders also require different methods of communication on different topics.

Connecting with Your Stakeholders

Your third step in connecting is to communicate in meaningful ways to each stakeholder. For your staff, communication efforts might include regular meetings, employee badges printed with the mission statement, and/or publicly posted company policies and job descriptions. For your investors, communication may include regular financial updates, reports, and meetings. For your business development and operations mentors, perhaps more direct communication and one-on-one meetings are the best way to seek guidance and exchange ideas.

By communicating in a specific way with each stakeholder you demonstrate empathy and build connection and trust. You are showing that you understand, value, and respect their point-of-view. This is the best way to build long-term relationships. Stakeholders will be much more likely to open their resource and relationship networks to you and provide assistance and support to your business when they feel they are a valued collaborator. You can foster these relationships by connecting, communicating with your stakeholders in ways that are meaningful to them.

Summing Up

Connecting is a powerful communication tool for entrepreneurs. There are many potential and actual stakeholders in any business venture, each with a different role and different purpose, yet some overlap. By connecting directly with each of your business stakeholders, you can create lasting relationships that will support your business long into the future. These connections will remain strong even while the roles and purposes of your stakeholders shift and evolve over time. Always be open to new connections and new relationships. You never know how a person might impact your business with a new idea or perspective. In your map of stakeholders, keep a place for “Others” to remain mindful of the opportunity and power of connecting with new people.

Source: https://www.scu.edu/mobi/resources–tools/blog-posts/powerful-communication-tools-for-entrepreneurs-connecting/powerful-communication-tools-for-entrepreneurs-connecting.html

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This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.

15 collaboration tools for productive teams
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15 collaboration tools for productive teams

In these time during the COVID-19 epidemic alot of social enterprise teams are working from home. To stay on top of their game they’re looking to enhance, now more than ever, ways to collaborate online. Here is a list of some collaborations tools to help your teams.

Communicate with your team: Flowdock, GoToMeeting, Slack, WebEx to keep the communication channels open with your teams from instant messaging to video calls.

Managing your projects and tasks: Asana, Dapulse, ProofHub, Redbooth, Trello, Wimi, Mialnote are critical project management tools to help coordinate effectively and monitor task progress or keep track of objectives.

Create together: CodingTeam, Igloo, Google Doc, Quip assist where at times a task requires more than one person and collaboration is needed.

How do you choose between the different online tools available? Read the full article for details and tips.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Social collaboration software (SCS) – new collaboration tool
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Social collaboration software (SCS) – new collaboration tool

Read about the newest collaboration tool from the https://technologyadvice.com/social-collaboration-software/

 

TechnologyAdvice Buyer’s Guide to Social Collaboration Software

Updated: Jan. 2nd, 2020

Introduction

Social collaboration software (SCS) is a vast marketplace of platforms designed to handle everything from knowledge management to enterprise application development. Businesses looking for an enterprise collaboration solution are faced with a daunting task: they must compare innumerable vendors and products, but also decide what social collaboration software means.

This buyer’s guide to social collaboration tools will arm you with the information necessary to navigate the marketplace and begin narrowing your search.

First, we’ll attempt to define social collaboration software, including some analogous terms and common features. We’ll provide an outline of major categories for social collaboration and example solutions within each. Finally, we’ll discuss social collaboration software market trends and provide a case study of a leading vendor.

What Is Social Collaboration Software?

Defining social collaboration is like battling the mythic hydra; as one category is defined, two more grow in its place. Enterprise social networking, business collaboration, enterprise collaboration, enterprise messaging, social intranet, enterprise social and on — you get the picture. We’ve not even mentioned the sheer redundancy of the using both “social” and “collaboration” to describe a software platform.

According to Wikipedia, social collaboration “refers to processes that help multiple people or groups interact and share information to achieve common goals.” They further qualify social collaboration by saying its “natural” environment is on the Internet, and that it is “group-centric.”1

By that definition, any community working online towards a common goal is engaging in social collaboration. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll define social collaboration software as web-based tools that encourage the sharing of ideas, division of effort, and group-wide accountability.

Companies can even use social collaboration tools to communicate one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-one, when threaded, forum-style discussions or wikis are used. They can be project or process-focused, customer-focused, messaging-focused, or any combination of these.

Social collaboration software can be a single platform that serves an entire enterprise, department, or team, or it may be an amalgamation of solutions that together form a collaborative, virtual work environment.

Despite the many-headed nature of the social collaboration beast, for the purposes of this guide, we’ll use four main subcategories:

I. Enterprise Communication

Probably the most recognized social collaboration category, enterprise communication platforms are essential in a world where widely-distributed, remote teams are becoming more common than co-located teams.

Whether it’s via an internal social network with threaded discussions and newsfeeds, such as Yammer or Jive, or through an instant messaging-centered platform like Slack, this category of social collaboration tools focuses on the exchange of knowledge, usually in an indexed, searchable database with unique user logins and options to communicate one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-one.

Of course, these solutions are not necessarily limited to the above functions. Many have a file sharing component, employee engagement tools such as pulse surveys, a public calendar, video conferencing, wiki/knowledgebase, etc. Some even offer telephony, either built-in, or via integrations with VoIP providers.

In some cases, enterprise social tools can be used to communicate with external users as well as within your own company. One example would be a product knowledgebase where employees collaborate with customer “power users” to ask and answer support questions, or elicit consumer feedback for product design.

**Leading Vendors: **Slack, Zinc, Jabber
Read More:

Note: Some may classify mobile device management (MDM) or bring-your-own-device (BYOD) tools under the umbrella of enterprise communication, however, for the purposes of this guide, we’ll focus instead on instant messaging or social network-style platforms. If you’re looking for these types of solutions, we invite you to visit our MDM/BYOD Product Selection Tool and Guide.

II. Enterprise Content Management

Another common type of social collaboration platform, enterprise content management systems are quickly gaining traction among business users. This is especially true for sales and marketing teams, as content marketing and sales enablement become increasingly important functions.

Of course, collaborative content management platforms are important to departments beyond sales and marketing. IT may rely on a collaborative content management solution to distribute reports, warehouse data for ETL, or provide the backbone of an internal helpdesk system or corporate intranet. HR can utilize enterprise content management platforms to distribute and collect new hire documents.

Solutions in this subcategory provide a collaborative sandbox where employees can work together on documents or multimedia. They may also include a development environment for platform-hosted systems (such as Microsoft SharePoint), a text editor and publishing platform (such as WordPress), an automatic backup component (such as Box or Dropbox), and other collaborative, content-centered functionality.

Irrespective of type, most content-focused collaboration solutions will offer user and/or role-based permissions, a search function, file versioning, synchronization, audit control, and a method of commenting/reviewing individual pieces of content.

**Leading Vendors: **Box, Dropbox, SharePoint
Read More:

III. Embedded Social Collaboration

Collaborative functions are being embedded into an ever-increasing number of software solutions. Whether project management software, customer relationship management platforms, service management tools, HR systems, or the never-ending parade of new marketing tools — nearly all of these categories were conceived to reduce reliance on communication via third-party platforms and provide a single version-of-truth.

Most of the categories on TechnologyAdvice.com contain solutions that offer some form of embedded social collaboration. In the interest of brevity and clarity, we won’t delve further into embedded social collaboration tools, save to direct you to the various Product Selection Tools we offer for solutions in these categories.

IV. Social Collaboration Suites

Last but certainly not least, the rise of collaboration suites — platforms with functionality from all three categories we’ve outlined — is not to be ignored.

Google for Work (Hangouts, Docs, Sheets, Drive, Slides, etc.), Microsoft Office 365 (Word, Excel, OneDrive, Lync, PowerPoint, etc.), and similar solutions offer an end-to-end solution with ubiquitous access for the whole enterprise. You can implement communication, sharing, productivity, networking, and collaboration solutions as part of a single platform, at an affordable, per-user price.

**Leading Vendors: **Google for Work, Office365, IBM Connections

Businesses are turning to collaborative tools for myriad reasons — to consolidate and distribute knowledge from veteran employees to new hires, to improve workflows across departments, or simply to reduce the number of “Reply All” emails. Collaborative software systems can increase operational efficiency, decrease errors, and improve consistency in communications and delivery.

As workforces become more widely distributed, and as your employees interact with one another across different geographies, the necessity of social collaboration software will only increase.

With the best social collaboration tools, your headquarters can be located in New York, your customer support team can be in the Midwest, and your development team can be located overseas. All the while, you maintain an accessible location for your clients and enjoy the benefits of lower cost-of-living for the rest of your business.

The social collaboration software market is still relatively young, and some major players have yet to make their debut. I.e. the oft-delayed Facebook for Work. Mergers and acquisitions, product consolidation, and the rise of middleware such as Zapier and IFTTT are other factors that should speed development and adoption.

Will social collaboration tools replace your corporate intranet, email, or telephone? Yes and no — some businesses are better suited for these solutions than others.

Read More:

Social Collaboration Case Study

Organization: Rural Health Network of Oklahoma2

Solution: Zinc

Established in 2008 through a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Rural Health Network (RHN) of Oklahoma focuses on improving quality access to healthcare for people living in rural Oklahoma. With 16 member healthcare organizations, spanning thousands of employees, Rural Health Network provides timely support and consultation to ensure continuous, high-quality care delivery across each location.

The Problem: How Can We Communicate Quickly While Staying HIPAA-Compliant?

With members spread across a dispersed geographic region — some working at desks, on the move in hospitals, and others on the go between locations — fast and efficient communication was essential to keeping everyone on the same page.

The RHN team identified the need for a mobile communication solution to keep their partners and providers connected.

“Given the nature of our work, having a secure, HIPAA-compliant communication channel is critical. We were interested in finding a solution that was faster than email, works across devices, and meets the security needs of the healthcare environment.”
— Josh Braziel, Health Technology Coordinator, RHN

Josh and his team are constantly exploring new tools and solutions that could improve communication, collaboration, and efficiency. He started exploring a variety of HIPAA-compliant messaging solutions and then discovered Zinc.

He began to introduce Zinc to an initial portion of the staff and providers and encourage coordination through the app.

“Our staff liked that Zinc combined the familiar experience of texting with additional features to enhance their workflow such as voice memos, location sharing, and the ability to stay connected regardless if they were using a smartphone or desktop,” Braziel said. Based on their initial successes, RHN decided to expand usage across their network.

The Results: Faster Coordination and Cohesion Across the Network
  • Personal and work messages naturally separated between apps
  • Secure, HIPAA-compliant communication for a dispersed workforce
  • Give network members faster, easier access to each other
  • On-demand support and coordination throughout care operations

“We chose Zinc because it was clear this tool was built for teams like ours. We could securely collaborate no matter where we are, enabling us [to] deliver quality service to our network,” Braziel said.

Since introducing Zinc, Josh and his team have noticed they have been able to get things done faster. Whether they’re resolving a hospital IT issue, consulting a member on electronic health records (EHR), or putting together a network-wide educational workshop, it’s simple to coordinate on Zinc. Josh and team are continuing to expand Zinc to additional use cases and members across the network.

Choosing the Best Social Collaboration Software

You’re probably reading this guide because you need to know how to select the best social collaboration tool for your business. We’ve assembled user reviews, product comparisons, review videos and guides (like this one) to help with your decision.

To narrow your options and get a custom software recommendation based on your needs, use our Product Selection Tool. If you’d prefer human assistance, our unbiased Technology Advisors are available for a free consultation. Call, click, or email.

Have Questions?

Our team of experts is ready to help! 877.824.6745

Sources
  1. “Social Collaboration,” _Wikipedia, _https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_collaboration&oldid=733505164. Accessed August 15, 2016.
  2. “Case Study: Rural Health Network,” Zinc, http://content.zinc.it/CaseStudy_RuralHealthNetwork.pdf. Accessed August 15, 2016.
Estonian residents see entrepreneurship as an attractive career choice!  

Estonian residents see entrepreneurship as an attractive career choice!  

There is an important increase in the number of Estonians who think that the conditions in Estonia favour setting up a business, while fear of failure has decreased. (by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study)

There is an important increase in the number of Estonians who think that the conditions in Estonia favour setting up a business, while fear of failure has decreased. (by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor study)

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is a study that analyses entrepreneurship in different countries and regions; the latest study shows increased entrepreneurial activity around the world. “The crucial motivation in starting a business is personal example, such as personally knowing an entrepreneur. Other important factors include faith in one’s knowledge and skills to make it as an entrepreneur, and an identified business opportunity or idea. Less important factors include the improved social status as an entrepreneur, and the attention given to entrepreneurship in the society,” said Head of the Foresight Centre Tea Danilov, commenting the conclusions of the study

Over the last five years, the early-stage entrepreneurship activity (TEA) rate (the prevalence rate of individuals who have taken steps to start a new company, or have been entrepreneurs for up to 42 months) has increased from 14 % to 19 % in Estonia. Among the innovation-based countries – as the study classifies Estonia – this is a very high rate. Last year, the European TEA index was 8.1 %, and has remained around this mark for the past five years. The TEA index is 14.2 % in Latvia, 7.3 % in Sweden, and 5.3 % in Germany. Early-stage entrepreneurship has grown fairly equally among men and women, which is why the percentage of women has not changed over the past three years.

A typical early-stage entrepreneur in Estonia is a male under 45 years of age who identifies a business opportunity and considers his knowledge and skills good enough to become an entrepreneur. “We could ask whether men are actually more business savvy, or just more confident. It is a positive sign that most companies are founded in Estonia on the basis of business opportunities (76 %); only around one in four (24 %) entrepreneurs are forced to start a business to earn a living. This pattern favours innovation and ambition to grow,” Danilov summarised.

GRM_2018_2019

The study shows that entrepreneurship activity in Estonia would benefit further if the 45+ age group would be encouraged to become entrepreneurs, people would be prompted to share their personal entrepreneurship experiences, young people would be taught entrepreneurial skills, and entrepreneurship would be emphasised as a positive career choice.

All budding entrepreneurs fear failure, but the last five years have shown a change in the attitude of the Estonians in this respect. “The change in the entrepreneurship culture is characterised by indicators such as seeing entrepreneurship as a successful career choice, the high status of entrepreneurs in the society, and the high media attention to entrepreneurship,” Danilov explained.

The main drawback highlighted by the analysts is that the starting entrepreneurs are not planning to create as many jobs as earlier. Although the global report underlines this as a problem, Estonia has not seen the negative effects so far; however, in light of the trends in the labour market, the number of jobs may still fall because the number of self-employed individuals is growing.

The study shows that an increasing number of Estonians personally know an entrepreneur – this percentage has grown from 31% to 39% over the last five years. The number of people who feel that they do not have the knowledge and skills necessary for entrepreneurship is falling; however, self-doubters still make up 50 % of the population.

Over the last five years, people are increasingly viewing entrepreneurship as a positive career choice – in 2017, half of the 18–64 year olds felt that. The percentage of those who consider entrepreneurs as high status members of the society has remained around 60–65 %.

Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) is an annual study that analyses and compares entrepreneurship activity and attitudes. The study involves over 50 countries around the world; Estonia has been included since 2012.

Facts about early-stage entrepreneurial activity in Estonia in 2012–2017 according to GEM study (PDF, 81 kB)

GMS 2017/2018

See more on GEM 2018 / 2019 Global Report

References

Parliament of Estonia site

Photo by Global Entrepreneur Monitor on GEM GLOBAL REPORT

Online collaboration tool – Monday.com
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Online collaboration tool – Monday.com

This article is an excerpt from the full article on picksaa.com. To read the full article go here.

Business world changes along with technological progress. It’s inevitable as the two are closely correlated. Business stimulates innovation and innovation contributes to the reshaping of work. One drives the other.

And only over the last decades, the increase in the use of technology in the workplace has significantly increased. It’s visible in various areas and one of them is the implementation of business software. Project management software is one of them.

Using project management software is mandatory for most of the organizations. But it’s willingly used also by small businesses, non-profit organizations, startups or even individuals. No wonder since it helps to optimize and automize processes, make communication and collaboration easier, and increase employees’ efficiency. 

In our article on best project management software we described 8 tools helpful in growing a business. One of them was monday.com. And in this article, I will show you and lead you through the software step by step to help you better understand it and how it can help you become a better project manager, no matter where and how you work. Let’s go!

What is monday and how to use it?

Monday was founded in 2012 and launched as an independent startup in February 2014. The company’s mission is “creating a workplace environment of transparency, ownership, and accountability, to empower managers and their teams.”  Today the software is used by 350,000 people, from 76 countries, in 40,000 teams.

Monday.com-review

monday is categorized as a project management software that can be used by any type of team operating in any industry. There are no limits as to who and how can use it. Among organizations who use it you can find Discovery Channel, wix.com, or wework. It’s suitable for small and large teams. The pricing largely varies depending on the number of people in your team. You can choose from 4 variants:

  • Basic, starting from $25/month
  • Standard, starting from $39/month
  • Pro, starting from $59/month
  • Enterprise, starting from $118/month

You can upgrade, downgrade or cancel your plan any time you want without any consequences. And if you’re not sure which plan to choose, you can simply contact monday Support Team. And to get the most out of the tool, monday has a knowledge base full of helpful articles. You will find all information on the basics to the most advanced features offered by monday. You can also check their video tutorials if you prefer a guide in the visual form.

They even offer the assistance of their local partner to help you onboard your team (which in my opinion is not necessary, monday is really easy-in-use). You can choose from various locations in North America, South and Central America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. They allow you to get help all over the globe. That’s something not many software providers offer.

The software is a cloud-based platform which may concern some in terms of privacy. But monday assures that your data is safe with them. They are GDPR compliant, have ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and ISO/IEC 27018:2014 certifications, and SOC2 Type II security certification. Therefore, you can be sure that your data is protected on the highest level.

That’s monday, project management, collaboration, team management software. Let’s see what you can do with it.

How does it all work?

Setting up an account on monday is as easy as pie. You simply have to provide an email and a password. Then you receive a confirmation code (security on the highest level indeed!) and can begin the full process of creating an account. I’m going to show you what you can do with monday step by step.

Monday.com-registration-1024x460

I decided to choose a free trial to see how monday works and whether it meets my expectations. I am asked how large my team is (for now I am choosing ‘only me’) and what I want to manage. From the available options, I’m opting for ‘to-do’s & lists.’  You can also choose projects for clients, internal projects, sales & CRM, product roadmap & backlog, agile development, orders & production, HR & recruiting, and others which you can specify.

This is useful as it helps to orient you on what exactly you want to do with the software. However, at this stage, you cannot choose several options which is a slight disadvantage for those who want to use monday to manage a wide scope of areas in an organization.

Now that I have decided what I want to manage, I can invite team members. But I’ll do it later as I want to discover the secrets of monday and all its features before I onboard my team, simply to help them get accustomed to the app.

This article is an excerpt from the full article on picksaa.com. To read the full article go here.

Full credit and pictures for this excerpt of the article goes to picksaa.com

-> Try out monday.com for 14-days free

WeTransfer: File Sharing Tool with a Heart of a Social Entrepreneur

WeTransfer: File Sharing Tool with a Heart of a Social Entrepreneur

WeTransfer is not only a very simple-to-use tool for sharing files, but as it turns out – it’s almost a social entrepreneur.

WeTransfer was founded in 2009 as the simplest way to send big files around the world. Today they have a set of nice tools which they call The WeTransfer Family with a motto – bring your ideas to life:

  • WeTransfer – for sending ideas
  • WeTransfer Plus – for sending bigger ideas
  • WePresent – for sparking ideas
  • Paste – for presenting ideas
  • Collect – for grouping ideas
  • Paper – for capturing ideas

WeTransfer interface is very simple, which makes transferring files incredibly easy. Since you don’t need to sign up if the size of your files doesn’t exceed 2 GB, you can just go to WeTransfer and start the transfer process – add files, enter a recipient’s e-mail address, your e-mail address and an optional message. As soon as the file gets uploaded, you can send it to the addressee. You receive two e-mails after sending data through WeTransfer. The first e-mail includes a confirmation that your file has been sent, and the second one comes when the recipient downloads the submitted file. If you want, you can choose an option to send files via download link instead of using an e-mail address.

If you need to transfer bigger files and want to explore other features, you might consider WeTransfer Plus. A Plus account lets you transfer up to 20 GB at a time, whether that’s lots of small files, or one massive one. With WeTransfer Plus, files are not deleted after a set period of time. It is simple to manage your transfers, see what you have sent and when, and easily forward, resend or delete transfers. WeTransfer Plus users have the option to protect their transfers with a password.

WeTransfer Paste syncs to the cloud, so you always have your team’s latest thinking at your fingertips. Browse, zoom in and download every image, file, and video in full resolution. When you’re ready, present your deck in a link, onscreen, or as a PDF.

WeTransfer Collect is the best way to organize your ideas. Save content from across your apps and bring it together for your friends, your team, or just for yourself. Organize your ideas as beautiful boards that are perfect for visual thinkers. Invite anyone to add to your board so you can collaborate and create together. Then share it with a simple link to send your ideas out into the world.

Since 2009, WeTransfer has given away 30% of its ad inventory to support artists, photographers, musicians and more. They’re committed to diversity in their storytelling to help spark different kinds of ideas for their readers. This is the part of WeTransfer where you can sense the spirit of a social entrepreneurship. WeTransfer supports many creative projects which raise awareness of different problems, for example, bringing together world-renowned photographers to highlight key issues in climate change.

Would you like to know more about WeTransfer or try it? Click here – https://wetransfer.com!

Files.fm: Store, Share and Sell files

Files.fm: Store, Share and Sell files

Almost everyone knows such filesharing platforms as Google Drive and Dropbox, but how many of you have heard of Files.fm? Files.fm is an IT company founded in Latvia, that builds easy to use, modern and innovative software products for file storage applications since 2007.

The most popular feature of Files.fm is file storing and sharing. How it works? Pretty simple. Once a user uploads files to the server, they obtain a unique link, which then can be shared to all users who need access to the files. If you want to quickly upload up to 2 GB files and send them to someone without storing them more than 60 days, you don’t even need to be an authorized user – go to Files.fm, upload your files, obtain a link and share it!

filesfmAfter storing one or more files, the user receives a unique link. By opening this link, you will see a list of stored files. The user can see the file name, size, description and choose to download or view his or her files. Each individual file also has a unique download link. You can store documents, photos, video, audio or any other file type. You can simultaneously select and upload multiple files. Maximum upload size is 2GB at one time for free users. Pro and Business users can upload files without size limit.

File storing and sharing is not the only feature provided by Files.fm. They offer inserting a file upload form in your website even you don’t have any programming skills. You can use Files.fm as a virtual server hosting. Files.fm provides a handy file synchronization tool for content sharing and copying. There is even such an option as creating your public file catalogue and exchange channel. And, yes, Files.fm is a platform for selling digital downloads as well.

Are you intrigued enough and want to try Files.fm by yourself? Go for it – https://files.fm!

The Platform Design Toolkit 2.0
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The Platform Design Toolkit 2.0

The new tool has been published to assist entrepreneurs and organizations to look at business and activities, to design strategies, products and organizations “as a platform.”

As a synthesis of different definitions, developers say that platforms are scalable collaboration agreements powered by technologies: it’s not easy to differentiate between a technology, a strategy or an organization itself; at the end, everything shapes into seeing platform thinking a way to organize value creation in a particular ecosystem.

Platform thinking is a whole new way to look at organizations or processes or even a way to think how a place or a community should work — as applying platform thinking to cities or towns policies and services.

Platforms are winning because two critical technological shifts are happening: first, there is a growing potential in every individual or small enterprise, second – now it much more easy to connect and coordinate. These changes transformed the optimal shape of a company, product or strategy from the industrial “pipeline” (and bureaucracy) to the network.

It’s made of:

  • the Ecosystem Canvas for mapping all entities and roles in the ecosystem you are trying to mobilize;
  • the Entity Portrait for analyzing the entities individual context (potential, performance pressures, goals and gains sought);
  • the Motivations Matrix and Transactions Board to first let emerge and then consolidate the transactions engine (interactive marketplace);
  • the Learning Engine canvas (formerly Experience Learning canvas) to design the learning engine (the core of the platform proposition);
  • the Platform Experience canvas to design ecosystem journeys and business models featured in your strategy;
  • the Minimum Viable Platform canvas to help you design, and prototype your validation strategy.

The Platform Design Toolkit is based on the tradition of Business Modeling, Service Design Thinking and Lean Thinking (including concepts from Customer Development, the Lean Startup, the work of Lean Startup Machine on validation, etc…) and provides a unified view, optimized for Platforms and Ecosystems, of all these relevant tools and approaches.

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Organising Webinars: Tools and Use
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Organising Webinars: Tools and Use

Digital collaboration tools in general are characterised with huge variety of uses that helps enterprises, NGOs and public bodies, as well as teams to communicate effectively. Another part of success hides in ability to connect to the audience of entity, and the biggest challenge on the market of literary everything is choosing the right way to do so. Unfortunately, there is no formula for success, the only thing clear is that one must search, innovate, use creativity, diversity and follow the trends in effective communication with customers and stakeholders, which in particular have to be convenient for recipients.

In a time when every minute matters, webinars have become extremely popular, as they save money on travel, catering and venues by transforming informative events into online sessions – live or/and recorded. Webinars are web-based seminars that usually include over 30 participants and are used to conduct presentations, trainings, workshops, lectures and large-scale meetings that are cost effective comparing to face-to-face events. The biggest advantage of webinars is accessibility, and depending on the size and purpose of the event – different features are now available for organisers and users to make an event more representable, as well as convenient, accessible and cheaper for stakeholders and customers.

“How to Organize and Host a Webinar”, publication written by Gabriela Warrent, gives you some tips on how to organise and host a web-based event, as well as help you to check if you are doing well if you have already started to practice webinars. Some more assumptions are covered in “12 Webinar Statistics You Need to Know” article that provides more specific guidelines on what to follow and what to avoid.

Those articles cover necessary information to take into account before planning the webinar, while this specific article is dedicated to present some handy digital tools to broadcast the event and thereby get more engaged stakeholders. The most functional and therefore popular tools are considered to be Google+ Hangouts, YouTube Live, Webinars OnAir, Skype and GoToWebinar.

Google+ Hangouts and YouTube Live

1492616989-14-hangouts-social-media-chatting-service-google_83396To use Google+ Hangouts for free one must hold a Google account. Video calling/chat feature has been integrated into Google Chat, Gmail and the standard Google+ Profile to use it with up to 9 persons in a single video (or audio) call, which can be private or public. Screen sharing and chat messaging (including emojis and files) are also possible, however this is still a video-conferencing tool that cannot be broadcasted and recorded within the software.

unnamedTherefore Google+ Hangouts on Air has been launched as an alternative for those, who only host webinars occasionally. Now this feature is moved to YouTube Live and allows to broadcast live video presentations (webinars, lectures, seminars etc.) from your computer to a public audience through YouTube channel. It can be public (anyone can access the event), unlisted (everyone with the link can join, the same as it was with Hangouts on Air) or private event (only invited people can join). YouTube Live has built-in events scheduling that lets to schedule the event for a future date and time. The content can also be recorded and saved for stakeholders, what will be able to watch the webinar after it has finished – on YouTube, own website, blog or other platform. To know how to activate YouTube Live streaming, follow the relevant page.

Business Hangouts

uLcgU-oi_400x400No special software has to be downloaded by users. Business Hangouts works on all devices and platforms, which makes it most convenient and simple-to-use tool for barely everyone. Webinar can be accessed in various ways: through Gmail, desktop app, browser plugin, the mobile app, Hangouts website or social media network Google+. Additional service includes the Hangouts on Air service for live-streaming and recording video meetings. More about the settings and offers can be found in video and here.

Webinars OnAir

webinars-onairWebinars OnAir is also a product offered by Google+, which outstands with its special focus on webinars, comparing to the previous options. The platform is built on the basis of Google+ Hangout and improved to deliver the most advanced webinar features on the market. Platform offers such features, as webinar recording, desktop sharing, Google calendars, building personal lists, switching between up to 10 moderators, private labelling, e-mail interactions, attendee tracking etc.

With this digital tool participants can also be charged for joining organised webinar, which is another distinction of Webinars OnAir. Additionally registration page is available to create the webinar as attractive and accessible as possible, as presented on the webpage. Webinars OnAir is the option for private businesses, as long as participants are directed straight to the seller’s website.

To make user experience even better, the platform runs an improvements, so joining is not impossible at the moment. To follow the updates, leave your email on the website.)

Skype Business Meeting Broadcast

Skype+for+BusinessWhile Skype remains being the most popular online communication tool in the world with its group voice and video calls, screen sharing, filesharing, as well as contact sending, even more features and plans are present in Skype Business Meeting Broadcast for more advanced business options. It is a feature of Skype for Business Online and Office 365 that enables to schedule, produce, broadcast and record meetings or events to online audiences with up to 10 000 attendees. Collaborative work during the meeting in turn is enabled for up to 250 people, using whiteboards, polls, Q&A, instant messaging, screensharing and other tools. Participants can be invited to “listed” or “public” webinar, but the tracking option allows to follow participants during the webinar. Search for more on the website.

GoToWebinar

9UvK0gMTSimilar to GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar offers to interact with partners, customers and other stakeholders via video-conferencing and screen sharing application. GoToWebinar are specifically developed for webinar organisers and participants, offering full service attendee registration, HD Video recording, Polls and Surveys, Handouts, Q&A, reporting and analytics, archive of recordings, automated emails, custom branding, channel pages and many more. This basic set of features cost only 89$ per year and can host up to 100 participants, however more advanced plans offer webinars for 500 and 2000 participants with video sharing option during the webinar, pre-recorded webinars and more options. More to explore on the website.

 

More webinar tools like WebinarJam, Everwebinar, Zoom, Getresponse and others can be explored on “The Best Webinar Software For Every Business: Top 12 Webinars”.

P.S. If you use the software, that does not include recording options, you can also download and run screen recording softwares on your computer separately. There are some free video recorders and screen captures like Ekiga, Open Meetings, Mikogo, as well as more professional paid tools described here.