First entry

Finally finished assembling my new team at Intuit. I am now managing the QuickBooks Online Community team. We live in six states and two countries. The challenge now will be managing people from different disciplines and backgrounds. In setting up the team, I have encountered some interesting challenges. The first cultural difference is what instant messaging software to use. Some of the hosts on the team — old internet diehards who have been hosting/moderating communities for over 6 years, use AOL’s AIM technology. Then there are the tech support folks which tend to be new to community, fairly new to the web and come from the call center. They prefer to use Yahoo Messanger. One member of the team, who is blind, wants to use Vayusphere Instant Messenging because his speech software doesn’t work well with AIM or YIM. I pride myself on knowing about the latest and greatest web technologies, but never heard of Vayusphere. I need to research it futher.

Other tools for the team include setting up a private discussion board and a WIKI for the team to use. We will probably use video conferencing and WebX as well. It will be interesting to see how I can get folks in multiple cities to work well together. One idea I had was to take 1 person from Tucson, Arizona (where we have 5 employees) and pair them with 1 employee from Mt. View, which is the home office. Historically, the satalite offices have not felt appreciated by the corporate office. Hopefully this tactic will make it easier for the two groups to work together.