We live in a digital age in a globalized world. It is a time and place full of potential and new opportunities for collaboration and coworking. Since in contrast to the past, we are no longer bound by our geographical location, we can literally connect with anyone with access to a smartphone. This opens up to a whole range of new possibilities in terms of teamwork and global collaboration. At Moonshot Pirates we absolutely celebrate this. Only by working together on a truly international scale can global challenges be solved and the SDGs be reached.
Global collaboration requires a certain set of skills and tools though. In our last article, we discussed how best to teamwork. The tips and tricks included there also matter in a virtual context. However, global collaboration obviously has its foundation in an array of online work tools that help you connect with each other. Here is a run-through of the most important ones you will need.
Video call
Whether you’re more into Zoom, Teams or Google Meet hardly matters, but a video call service is needed if you want to collaborate globally. A team is not just a group of people working together. A team is a group of personalities who understand, respect, and trust each other. Creating such an atmosphere is a lot easier if you see each other.
Which video call tool you want to use, depends on your preferences:
- Zoom: it’s easy to set up and invite team members as well as external collaborators. You send out a link, and you’re ready to go.
Zoom allows for screen sharing, chat, multiple participants, call recording, and breakout rooms. - Meet: is a pure video call tool. It’s as easy to set up and join as a zoom call. Meet also allows for screen sharing, chat, multiple participants.
- Whereby: Whereby is made to work straight in the browser on your phone or laptop – no downloads needed. Perfect for inviting internal and external participants. You can also make your meeting and waiting rooms a part of your company by branding them with your logo and colors. Whereby allows recording, screen sharing, YouTube, and Google integrations, and many more.
- Wonder.me: It’s a virtual space where people choose their conversation partners and navigate freely between people or conversations of interest – just like in real life. All guests can see who is speaking to whom, and they move their own avatars around with their mouse. Participants may interact through video, audio-only, or written chat, and they can share content with all guests, or just those in a certain area. Wonder rooms run on any browser (desktop & mobile) – there is no need to download anything.
- Teams: has the same features as Zoom, but is more than a video call tool. You can also share files, have different channels, and connect to many other Microsoft tools. This can be useful or confusing, depending on how well you know those tools.
Brainstorming
In any teamwork constellation, at one point you will probably need to brainstorm on an idea together. For that, you need a tool that’s easy to use and includes all the post-its you can think of.
These two tools are basically the same: whimsical.com and miro.com are online brainstorming services with a free as well as a paid version. You set up a team workspace where you can create a number of boards for various types of brainstorms – mindmaps, flowcharts, sticky notes, etc. Regardless of where you’re located in the world, you can bounce ideas off each other and keep a visual overview of where your products are headed.
Chat tools
Your team also has to stay in regular touch with each other. Of course, you can use social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook for that, but it’s easy to get sucked into an unproductive whirlpool of procrastination on those platforms. For that reason, we recommend using a separate chat service for work-related communication.
- Slack: is probably the chat tool for companies and organizations. It’s easy to use, is integrated into many other tools such as zoom, google drive, creative cloud, etc., and is available for desktop and phone.
- Moonshot Pirates Community Platform: Of course! That’s why we have created this space for you, pirates! 😉 So you can create your team spaces aka Moonshots and communicate with your crew all day long either on the activity feed or in a private chat!
Additional tools
Here is a selection of other tools that can be useful for your teamwork.
- Google Drive: We probably don’t need to mention this one. It provides you and your team with documents, sheets, presentations, and a space for files.
- Trello: This application is an organizing tool for to-do lists, task assignments, and prioritization.
- Monday: Much like Trello, this platform helps organize and prioritize work tasks. You can keep track of what everyone is doing as well as deadlines.
The cool thing is that these tools not only work for when you’re working in an international setting but also if you’re doing schoolwork with your classmates, if you work on a project with colleagues or if you have a collaborative hobby. And should you decide to participate in any of our online programs, then these tools will set you up for success. That’s for sure!
