C360 View on Virtual Teams and Collaboration

Tactics and technology are good for limited tactical situations. The question is ... how does a virtual team (Geographically Dispersed Team (GDT) collaborate anywhere as a team regardless of the technology, the distance and the project culture?

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Tactical Tips for Virtual Teams

Andrew Makar, PMP

May 27, 2008

Less than five years ago, the typical system implementation required the project team to be onsite at the client’s location. With the increased use of outsourcing, Software As A Service (SAAS) and the improvement in collaboration technologies like Cisco’s WebEx conferencing and Microsoft Sharepoint, system implementations can be supported with virtual teams. A virtual team is composed of geographically dispersed team members who primarily interact and collaborate with the collaboration software and telecommunications technology.

Performing tasks offsite provides companies with the flexibility to leverage remote resources without incurring travel expenses. However, according to the December 2007 Black Enterprise magazine, “virtual teams also provide challenges including miscommunication, breaches in security, and lack of worker productivity.” The challenges with virtual teams need to be balanced with their benefits.

/// When a Compass team builds a Tangible Vision, they decide on the specific wording of the goals and objectives. Mutual agreement of specific terms prevents miscommunication.

In 2007, I had the opportunity to manage three virtual software implementations including a compensation planning tool, an incident management system and a new suite of HR applications. The first two projects were comprised entirely of virtual teams, while the third implementation consisted of a hybrid approach of onsite and virtual resources.

During these implementations, the interactions with the project teams for the compensation and incident management systems were conducted through teleconferences and Web conferencing. The larger HR project consisted of onsite and remote teams. I only met the infrastructure manager responsible architecture once, but had consistent contact with him every day during the eight-month system implementation. These experiences yielded several tactical tips to remember when working with virtual teams:

Tactical Tip No. 1: Define the management processes and project guidelines upfront.

The project control and execution processes used to manage virtual teams are no different than with onsite teams. The execution of issue management, schedule management or change management may be supported with project portfolio management software or collaboration solutions. Effective projects, both virtual and onsite, ensure the project management expectations are communicated early and project teams understand how to follow the processes.

In the HR systems implementation, the PMO conducted project orientation sessions with each vendor so they understood the project expectations, status reporting procedures, meeting cadence and project norms.

/// With the Tangible Vision, the Compass team knows the specific priorities, the specific approaches and the circumstances for each milestone.

Tactical Tip No. 2: Establish and communicate the project’s meeting cadence.

Even though status reports, issue tracking and generating project metrics are viewed as mundane administrative procedures, they are critical to managing and controlling virtual projects. A meeting cadence needs to be communicated to each virtual team so they understand the process to review status on a weekly basis. Managing projects with virtual teams runs a risk that key team members may not attend status meetings or communicate as frequently. Just like an onsite project, if key team members are not attending or communicating, follow the appropriate escalation path to include the reluctant team members.

/// With the Tangible Vision, the Compass team knows when to meet and how to communicate.

The HR implementation had multiple vendors located throughout the Europe, North America, South America and Asia. The project had multiple work streams and a common project calendar was implemented to communicate key meetings to effectively control the project and communicate status. Project teams leveraged a calendar built in Microsoft Sharepoint to keep informed of schedule and meeting changes.

Establishing these procedures upfront ensured the project team reported status by close of business on Friday and submitted a weekly status report to the PMO on Monday. Status calls were held virtually with team members representing the various countries and business units. Regardless of the presence of virtual or onsite teams, projects need to communicate the meeting cadence to ensure smooth execution.

Tactical Tip No. 3: Leverage Web-based conferencing to avoid dial-in dysfunction.

If project teams are collaborating virtually, leverage Web conferencing tools as much as possible to avoid confusion. Even if the presentation is distributed before the meeting, it helps to see the slides presented with a Webex, GoToMeeting or similar Web conferencing solution.

In the compensation implementation, every requirement session, configuration, system testing and project status leveraged a Web conference solution. The business customer liked this approach since they were able to see the solution evolve weekly, despite having the development and project management staff located in California and Florida. Without effective collaboration technologies, dial-in dysfunction can set in as virtual team members lose track of the meeting and they focus on something else until they are called back into the conference call.

Tactical Tip No. 4: Initiate in-person and manage virtually.

The global nature of projects today requires project teams to collaborate over phone, e-mail and the Internet. Before starting a project with virtual teams, project managers should encourage a project kickoff with representatives from each team attending in person. By initiating the project with representation in the room, the project team members will meet the key people who will be delivering the project over phone lines over the next few months or years. Depending on the scope and complexity of the project, additional in-person meetings may be required.

Don’t underestimate the power of looking someone in the eye and establishing that bond of trust.

Large IT implementations often involve implementing a solution in multiple countries. Visiting each country and meeting with the team members affected by the new solution will help with communication barriers and put a face on the project team that is often heard through conference calls. Once the project is initiated with in-person contact, it becomes easier to manage virtually. However, when in doubt, fly on out.

/// When a new Compass team builds their Tangible Vision, they get the opportunity to learn about each other. Trust must be established with each other before they can connect to the Tangible Vision as a team

Andrew Makar is an IT program manager who is focused on effectively translating project management theory into actual practice. Additional articles and musings on project management technique can be found on his website at http://www.amakar.com.
Copyright © 2008 gantthead.com All rights reserved. http://www.gantthead.com/article.cfm?ID=241690

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Definition of Collaboration
1. the act or process of collaborating.
2. a product resulting from collaboration: This dictionary is a collaboration of many minds.

As a noun, collaboration means that it is an "act of working jointly; "they worked either in collaboration or independently"

As a "intransitive verb", it means "... To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort. ..."

Our C360 view on Collaboration
Collaboration is about cooperative teamwork toward the completion of the goal. It is not about technology that enables the sharing of resources and data.

Everyone wants the silver bullet or the golden ring that enables a team to collaborate. But most people are not willing to work for it or pay for it.

Collaboration is a team interaction. How does one get a group of people to collaborate as a team? The answer is a strategic process first, not technology. Technology is not the answer. It is a tool with limitations.

The future is having a project team using a strategic process that enables them to collaborate anywhere as a team regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

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Collabortion Is Still a Singular, Personal Experience By David Strom 2008-05-27

Collaboration technologies would seem to be all the rage over the years, but the personal aspects of computing continue to dominate. Sharing is for sissies.

What makes the PC successful as a personal productivity tool has also been its biggest obstacle toward better collaboration: the fact that it is personal. And the more powerful PCs become, the more difficult it is to collaborate with them.

The primary collaboration tool today is still what it was 10 years ago: sending an e-mail attachment with a PowerPoint deck or Word document back and forth between two or more parties. It is a serial form of collaboration: I put together my work product, send it to you, and you send back your thoughts or changes. It is fraught with problems: I have to wait to receive your revisions before adding my own, and if I don’t agree with them, we pretty much have to start the process from scratch. I have seen documents that had more changes and comments than the original text.

Weren’t local area networks supposed to help us share our documents, at least around the office? Now the hard disks on the average computer can contain hundreds of gigabytes, so we can carry around our entire work output for the last decade and still have room to digitize our movies, music and pictures. And just in case we don’t carry our PCs around, we all have iPods and can shut out the rest of the world by booting them up. Our electronic cocoon has become more potent.

Wasn’t a constant Internet connection supposed to make it easier to connect distributed work teams? Well, it has made e-mail even more powerful, and now most of us feel bereft when we are offline for a few hours. Organizations such as CA that turned off their corporate e-mail system for several hours a day (which it did in the early ’90s to get people to actually move around and talk to each other) seem so quaint now.

What about blogs and wikis, putting the power of communication in the hands of the common folk? Still, e-mail is the main system to notify users when this content changes. And while Google Docs and all those nifty Web 2.0 mashups have made it easier to build collaborative applications, someone still needs to collect the data sources and do the heavy lifting. And social networks, which are great at grabbing and spamming your contact list, aren’t really all about collaboration, but more about who can collect the most names fastest. I didn’t do well at popularity contests in junior high, and I still feel somewhat deficient today.

There have been some notable attempts at collaboration, but all have been abject failures. Look at Lotus Notes, which is nearly 20 years old. It is still 95 percent used as an e-mail system. Yes, it has some wonderful collaborative features, particularly with its Sametime messaging and telecommunications add-ons, but most people don’t know how to build their own Notes apps or don’t have these add-ons installed.

The inventor of Notes is now at Microsoft with his Groove product, which is also a great idea that has hasn’t gotten much traction. To get any real collaborative benefit from Groove, you have to change the way you think about your data. SharePoint isn’t much better, but to leverage that you need a lot of Microsoft infrastructure, and many organizations are just getting started with understanding how to use it for something besides running a simple Web bulletin board.

... Call this the Jurassic period of collaboration: We still have a ways to go up the evolutionary chain. Salesforce.com is another good case in point, where multiple people can share contacts and client information, provided they are religious about doing the updates. And a third area that is also promising consists of shared calendars, which at least make scheduling meetings easier.

So, as PC processors get faster, disks get bigger and our social networks get larger, we still don’t have the perfect collaboration solution. We still think of the data on our hard disks as our own, not our employer’s. Sharing is still for sissies. Until that attitude changes, the headphones will stay firmly stuck in our ears, blocking out the rest of the world around us.

http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Collabortion-Is-Still-a-Singular-Personal-Experience/

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By using our Compass AE process, you and your project team are able to out-do your competition in terms of faster execution, minimize costs, mitigate risks, etc. We will touch on these important points later.

If you are interested in the specifics in using Compass AE, please contact us at contactus(aatt)collaboration360(ddott)com.

Collaborating in the Global Economy: [The Ripple from High Gas Prices]

Rising oil prices mean less traveling. In the future, there will be more web conferencing, more virtual teams (on the high end side) and project teams learning how to collaborate as a team.

Those who travel, will not be performing at 100%.

Since most teams have problems operating from a close distance. What makes the management believe that they can get a virtual project team operating efficiently well!?.

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From BusinessWeek.com (April 24)
Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

Why is suburbia now threatened?

Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages. As we get into trouble with these supplies, our economy will suffer. Major instabilities in the system will present themselves much sooner than we are led to believe. And by that I mean the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around.

When will all that happen?
The rise and fall of oil production is asymmetrical. In other words, it'll be a steeper, rockier tumble down than the steady increase going up. My own sense of things is that we will be in very serious trouble inside of five years.

How will the U.S. have to adapt?
Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble—government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools. Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_18/b4082056979063.htm

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The Collaboration 360 solution to this dilemma is having a strategic project collaborative process that enables a team to collaborate regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

You can find out more about our approach on solving this challenge of collaborating without borders by contacting us at service[aatt]collaboration[dott]com.

Compass AE + Video Conferencing = A Team Collaborating Without Borders

Traveling costs are going up.

Video conferencing is on the rise

Your virtual team of project implementers are located at
different remotes. How do you get them to collaborate as a team?

If some teams cannot collaborate in close quarters,

what are the chances that they will collaborate
efficiently well at remote locales?

How do you get them to collaborate as a team?

While technology connects people,
a good strategic team collaborative process is
the key to a project success.
Do you have a process that can get people to
collaborate as a team?

Our Compass AE methodology is a team collaborative approach that.emphasizes on advanced planning. It enables the project team to use our Tangible Vision component to plan their goal and strategic overview. They are always collaboratively prepared for all situations. The team understands what are the specific priorities, the particular approaches and the different circumstances that could occur.

A properly-built team collaborative process enables the project implementors to effectively utilize their technology in specific situations. Without a process, technology is only effective in limited situations.

Our Compass AE process also allows them to collaborate regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

In future entries, the beneficial values of Compass AE will be explained.

If you are interested in knowing more about Compass AE as a strategic collaborative tool. please e-mail us at Service[aatt]collaboration360[ddott]com


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Pleased to meet you, virtually

13.03.2008 - Videoconferencing is coming into view for more and more businesses as prices fall and quality improves. Recently, 240 employees of the Revenue Commissioners from 11 regional offices attended a seminar on VAT. In the past, this would have involved a mass exodus of staff to a central location such as Dublin, an administrative hassle trying to accommodate the numbers in one room and thousands of man-hours lost as workers made the journey.

Upon finishing the recent seminar, however, employees were back at their desks in minutes. Videoconferencing technology enabled the workers to link in from the meeting rooms in their offices and partake in the information seminar with minimum disruption to productivity.

Last year, the Revenue Commissioners embarked on a six-figure rollout of videoconferencing. So far, 25 offices in major towns around the country have had a room kitted out with a video screen, audio equipment and network connection, with five more offices due to come on stream shortly.

On top of that, about 115 senior managers have been supplied with desktop webcams to enable live, one-on-one video meetings. The upgrade of the videoconferencing technology is providing tangible benefits for Revenue, says Paul McDonald, business operations manager, Revenue.

"The new system can link up to 12 sites at the moment to deliver seminars and we will be extending this in the future. Previously, we could only link two sites at a time.

"If necessary, we can cram dozens of people in the videoconferencing room. If you're using it for something like a training session all staff members don't need to be visible to the trainer on the other end. They can hear what's being said and get their chance to ask questions."


Cutting costs is not the chief driver for Revenue, says McDonald. "There are benefits vis-à-vis savings in travel costs and at some stage we'd be looking to reduce carbon emissions, but better communication is the main driver."

/// *** Better communication creates efficiency

A lot of Revenue's work is based on legislation so any changes to the law and the knock-on effects for the tax system have to be communicated to all staff at the same time to avoid regional discrepancies. Videoconferencing smooths the passage of this information through to those at the coalface.

For Icon Clinical Research, improving productivity and keeping on top of vital relationships are the benefits of videoconferencing. "One of our drivers for using videoconferencing technology is to ensure we maintain necessary relations with staff, peers and customers without travelling all the time to do so," says Joe Daly, IT director, EU and rest of world, Icon Clinical Research.

/// Think of the time and money that can be saved from not traveling all of the time. Time is money.

The biopharma multinational has offices in 40 countries, many of which utilise dispersed workforces. All the main offices use videoconferencing to keep in contact with each other and also to help manage remote workforces.

It's a development jetlag-weary executives of the 5,500-strong multinational are very glad of.

"We're a global company and we do have quite high travel costs, particularly for client visits and general meetings," explains Daly. Videoconferencing has reduced the number of trips executives make, freeing up time and curbing expenses.

When traveling, the anxiety of waiting for the uncertainty can be overwhelming.
This stress causes the traveling professionals to be unproductive.
The question is ... do you want your people to perform and produce
below their norm?

Cutting down on trans-Atlantic crossings was also a key driver in NTR Group's adoption of the technology. The company's head office in Dublin had Digicom install a Polycom VX7000 videoconferencing system in its boardroom last year.

As a large global company with a number of subsidiaries, including Greenstar, Bioverda and National Toll Roads, NTR sees videoconferencing as instrumental to how it conducts its business.

"About 40 to 50 staff members in the Dublin office, primarily senior management, use it, as do other members of staff on occasions," says Gareth Delahunt, network administrator, NTR.

He says the decision to deploy videoconferencing was less of a money issue and more to ease the pressures on the diaries of senior executives.

"You can't be in two places at once. It facilitated getting a lot of work done," he quips.

Improvements in the quality of non-proprietary videoconferencing systems that can 'talk' to other systems is also driving uptake of the technology. For example, NTR's videoconferencing system is used both internally for company business and externally for contacting other organisations.

One of the main developments spurring the onset of videoconferencing is the wider bandwidths made available through broadband internet.

Previously, videoconferencing was done over ISDN lines, which was more expensive and awkward to implement. Now, companies use their IP (internet protocol) networks to facilitate internal video communication.

"ISDN was used in the past and it involved getting three lines brought into your building," explains Jared Huet, audiovisual consultant, Digicom. "Nowadays, companies are joining their networks together so they can make video calls over the internet."

The benefits of IP video is there's no cost per minute, whereas with ISDN you're paying per minute, per line. Utilising the three ISDN lines needed for videoconferencing means you're making three international calls and being charged per minute. With IP video there's zero call costs; it's an add-on to your existing network charge.

However, there are challenges around installing videoconferencing, both technical and cultural.

"Typically you use your network to transfer data from one server to another or to send email internally. It doesn't have to get there immediately. In real-time communication, however, a one- or two-second delay would make a conversation unworkable," says Daly.

"Because of that you have to give videoconferencing a higher quality of service on the network. Typically you use up 384Kbps of bandwidth for a two-way conversation between two videoconferencing units. You have to make sure you've enough bandwidth and that you've prioritised that type of traffic so it goes quicker than anything else."

Changing people's habits is perhaps the most challenging aspect, Daly believes. "In all the companies I've worked for, people think it's great initially but the novelty does tend to wear off after a bit."

"Our challenge now is to sell this to our people," says McDonald. "But anyone who has used it is quite impressed. The quality we have now is far better."

A high-definition future for videoconferencing in Ireland

The number of videoconferencing units sold in Ireland has grown about 100pc in the past three years, according to specialist reseller Videnda.

The yearly growth rate of around 33pc is down to three factors, says head of finance and operations, Liam Fahy. The equipment has got better; there's more bandwidth available due to broadband rollouts; and there's growing concern to reduce carbon emissions.

It's also due to people tired of trawling through airports and hotels. "Going over to London or down to Cork from Dublin for a one-hour meeting takes a full day. People are sick of it."

Sales of videoconferencing units are rising and customers are increasingly opting for high-definition (HD) units, says Fahy.

"One of our major suppliers went from shipping no HD units to it being 40pc of what they shipped in the space of six to nine months."

Fahy estimates over 1,000 Irish companies use videoconferencing, with the ratio of standard-definition to HD around 70:30.

Prices range from €3K for entry-level standard-definition units up to €25K for top-of-the-range HD units.

By Niall Byrne

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single10506

The Growing Trend of the Virtual Office

There is a slow inclining trend of virtual offices and large empty office buildings. ...
Our research tells us that the era of working in one central office is on a decline. The era of the virtual office began in the early 1990's and will continue to grow exponentially.

The question is how do you get your team to strategically collaborate as a team?



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March 2, 2008
The Office as Architectural Touchstone
By DAVID W. DUNLAP

IT will be either one of the most challenging fixer-uppers in the history of modern architecture or one of the most significant tear-downs. In any case, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs in Holmdel, N.J., is for sale.

A decade ago, as many as 6,500 people worked in the low-slung complex, whose pioneering mirrored-glass facade reflects a gleaming three-legged water tower that looks like a giant Bell Laboratories transistor and pond-speckled landscapes where waterfowl outnumber humans. Today, it is empty but for a few caretakers.

On a winter day, its vast atriums shudder with the sound of wind buffeting the sawtooth skylights. The only things moving along the miles of corridors are shadows. And a prospective owner — probably more attracted by a contiguous 473-acre parcel near the Garden State Parkway in Monmouth County than by a vast, unwieldy monument — could demolish every bit of it. Designed in 1957 for Bell Laboratories, part of the former Bell System, by the architectural giant Eero Saarinen and the landscape firm Sasaki, Walker & Associates, the complex no longer suits today’s much smaller Bell Labs or its corporate parent, Alcatel-Lucent.

The property is on the market, but it is hard to imagine finding a new occupant for a structure custom-built two generations ago for physical lab work by a giant monopoly that no longer exists. The main building, with 1.675 million square feet of space, is organized into four pavilions set among atriums and linked by sky bridges. The perimeter circulation pattern leaves few offices with their own windows. Concrete walls divide many spaces. While the fate of the Holmdel building is the most compelling preservation drama of the moment, it is not the only suburban corporate campus confronting 21st-century realities.

Mr. Saarinen’s research center for I.B.M. in Yorktown Heights, and Edward Durell Stone’s PepsiCo World Headquarters in Purchase, both in Westchester County, are among those that have been immaculately kept by their corporate occupants. But Union Carbide’s former headquarters in Danbury, Conn., has been in a state of flux almost since it opened. Others, like the General Foods headquarters in White Plains, have shed their original use and identity. I.B.M. kept its headquarters in Armonk, but in a newer and much smaller building.

“The less-centralized business model that I.B.M. has moved to can be done without the massive physical headquarters of past business eras,” said Fred P. McNeese, director of I.B.M.’s corporate media relations. “There is also a different way of working, caused by advances in technology, that provides persons the ability to work remotely, doing the things that would have required them to come into a headquarters building in the past.”

/// Project implementors operate remotely is the growing trend.

How much longer can any of these postwar corporate centers — perfect embodiments of a moment in history when cities began to feel pestilential, when suburban flight grew easier on the interstates and when faith in America’s corporate power was unshakable — maintain the architecture and landscaping that made them such landmarks?

... ... Precisely because of those changes, solitary corporate campuses are regarded as “an evolutionary dead end” by Robert D. Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit planning group concerned with New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. “They don’t provide the adaptable, flexible space that companies need,” he said. “They’re great architecture, but they act as a kind of straitjacket.”

... “Driving a long distance to a sylvan location is less appealing than it used to be,” Mr. Yaro said. In the tumultuous wake of World War II, the stand-alone corporate center in a verdant setting seemed like the wave of the future. The prospect of World War III loomed large enough that when the General Foods Corporation announced it was trading Park Avenue for Westchester Avenue in 1951, it took pains to say that “the possibility of an atomic attack on New York was not a factor.”

/// The emergence of the global economy and information technology has changed the rules of the global marketplace. ... The ease of communications and absolute privacy are essential to the remote project team. It is also important to collaborate as a team. Does your team know how to collaborate anywhere as a team?

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/02Rlandmark.html?

Compass AE: A Solution for Telecommuting

Many people are currently living in the suburbs. traveling many miles to get to work. The amount of time it takes to travel from home to the office (and vice-versa) has become so unproductive to the company and their family. That the negative effects have started to affect the worker in many ways.

People asked me, "Is there a better way to use their time?"

Instead of wasting their time traveling from place to place, a project team trained under Compass AE, can spend their time productively, working on their projects at home or anywhere.

With our Compass AE process, the team collaborates without borders. In other words, they can collaborate anywhere regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

If you are interested in learning more, please email us at contactus [aa_tt] collaboration360 [d_ott]com


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Sunday, February 3, 2008 (SF Chronicle)
Riding That Train/Meet the people who seem to travel as many hours as they work on a long commute to Sacramento
Sam Whiting

At 6 on a Wednesday morning, Jim Bourgart is already 15 minutes into a 175-minute commute by foot, bus, train and foot again. From downtown San Francisco he'll catch an Amtrak motor coach to the Emeryville station, where he'll sit 20 minutes on a hard plastic bench waiting for the 6:40 to Sacramento.

He doesn't mind as long as he is moving. It is the lost sleep time in the waiting room that hurts. Since the Capitol Corridor runs both the bus and the train, you'd think it could tighten the time-cushion allowed for traffic that never appears on the eastbound bridge.

"I could use those extra 20 minutes, or even 10 or 5," says Bourgart, who starts his day with a 12-minute walk in the dark from his SoMa condo to the bus stop at the Market Street entrance to Bloomingdale's. "Every minute counts, especially in the morning."

The Capitol Corridor is a line made possible by the voters, who in 1990 approved Prop. 116 to provide state funding for intercity passenger rail service. Until 1998, there were only four trains each direction per day and the morning commute was essentially westbound only. Now there are 16 roundtrips. The State of California owns the rolling stock, Union Pacific owns the tracks, BART supplies administration, Amtrak staffs the trains and stations and a joint powers authority oversees it. The Capitol Corridor is like Caltrain with more layers of agencies.

Between four morning trains, 1,000 passengers ride from the Bay Area to Sacramento daily. Emeryville is by far the busiest station, with 135 daily commuters. They may be unhappy about spending four hours a day on a train, but they are less unhappy than they would be spending three hours a day in a car. By either mode of transit they are less unhappy than they would be living in the great Central Valley. That goes for patent attorney John O'Banion, who upped and moved with his wife to San Francisco after 35 years in the state capital.

"We're blessed with this beautiful city, and you don't have that in Sacramento," says O'Banion, who walks down California Street from Nob Hill to meet his bus. "So you give up a little bit."

Most of what you give up is sleep. O'Banion, 54, gets by on 5 1/2 hours. He looks fresh in the Emeryville waiting room, though he won't get his cup of coffee until the train leaves the Suisun/Fairfield stop, an hour away.

(Among other things you learn from the conductors is that the proper pronunciation is "Sue-son.")

The 6:40 is the most popular morning run and the San Franciscans can't get off those plastic chairs and out of that bright waiting room fast enough. A few minutes before the boarding call, they blow right by the sign that reads "Warning: Please remain behind this sign until the train stops," cross the tracks and are on the platform.

Of the 135 riders who board here, 80 are bound for Sacramento and 55 for Davis. Those going to Sacramento on the 6:40 are mostly lawyers and policymakers. The Davis riders are shabby graduate students and earthy faculty with bicycles heading to the UC campus. The students stash their bikes in the rear and climb upstairs into the quiet car, which is kept dark so they can curl up in a double seat and get another hour of sleep.

The Capitolists are one car up. Because the train originates in Oakland, as opposed to San Jose, it is still on time and empty when it reaches Emeryville. Not as empty as the Amtrak bus coming over from the city, but empty enough that everyone gets a two seater, and some get a four seat
booth with a table in the middle.

"I've got two offices," says O'Banion, unsnapping his briefcase. "I've got Amtrak and I've got Sacramento." Seated in the immediate vicinity, like the traveling salesmen in "the
Music Man" are Bourgart, Deputy Secretary for Transportation and Infrastructure; David Crane, Special Advisor to the Governor for Jobs and Economic Growth; Preston DuFauchard, California Corporations Commissioner; and John Rea, General Counsel for the California Labor & Workforce Development Agency.

They spread out, put their 10-ride tickets on the edge of their tables - so as not to be interrupted by the conductor - and begin their efficiencies. Three minutes into it, Crane has his laptop open and his BlackBerry working, his breakfast set out and his hard-boiled egg peeled.

"Without wireless, this would be a much less productive run," says Crane, who is on the intense end. He went to law school, just for the fun of taking the bar exam. He never intended to practice. When Schwarzenegger was elected, Crane started by driving to the Capitol, but switched to the train four years ago. Sometimes he returns on the 7:40 p.m., which gets in
at 9:20, getting him home at 10 to get up at 4:30 or 5 and start over.

"Because you can work so pleasantly in the train, it's delightful," he says, "as long as you like to work."

The fare from San Francisco is $24 one-way. Half the passengers buy blocks of tickets, bringing it down to $14 one-way. Unlike Amtrak lines, there is no federal money involved in the Capitol Corridor. Its $40 million budget comes from passenger fares and the state, on a 50-50 split.
At least two of the regulars on the 6:40 have some indirect connection to funding - Bourgart, 62, whose agency oversees Caltrans, a major funding source of the Capitol Corridor, and Crane, 54, who serves on the high-speed rail authority.

To be sure everything goes smoothly, Gene Skoropowski, managing director of the Capitol Corridor, boards the train in Martinez.

Skoropowski is quick to point out that the Capitol Corridor is one of only two lines in the country to still put fresh paper headrests on each seat.

"They're changed at least every day and oftentimes twice a day," brags Skoropowski, 63, a former architect who used to commute on the Boston line. His mother got tired of hearing him gripe about it. "She said 'If you want to change it you've got to get involved." So he did. That was 41 years ago. "I've been doing trains ever since."

It doesn't take too long before the topic of the 20-minute lag time between the arrival of the San Francisco bus and the departure of the 6:40 works its way into the conversation. "It's the closest to a guaranteed connection that we can make," says Skoropowski, who promises to look into
it. He's heard a few complaints on this, but nothing like when the bar car dropped Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Now that was a problem. He fielded 250 e-mails on that before he had a chance to restock it.

"It's whatever the riders want," he says. There is some debate as to whether riders want the seats to face forward or backward. People who are accustomed to riding Muni are used to facing forward so they can read without getting carsick. People who are wary of a train wreck like to face backward because the neck is protected from whiplash.

Then there is the debate over sitting on the east side facing the hills, versus the west side, facing the bay. On the 6:40, east side seats facing backward have the benefit of the sunrise. When it pases the oil refineries of Richmond, all the lights are still on, giving it the effect of a theme
park ride.

Riding on the west side, it feels like the train is out over the water. Plus you get to see remnants of the old working bayfront of junk yards and boat docks and dilapidated fishing clubs on stilts. One looks to be sinking into the bay, carrying its "for sale" sign with it. The train bends with the shoreline, up against the hills, barely wide enough for the tracks. Then it runs under the Carquinez Bridge, old span and new.

"The interesting thing about the train is you really take a ride through California's history," says DuFauchard as the train passes by the C&H Sugar plant. "There's manufacturing history, there's agricultural history. It's like that book 'Angle of Repose.' "

At Martinez it turns left and crosses the Carquinez Strait on an 80-year-old truss bridge between the two spans of the auto bridge. Then it bisects across farming and duck-hunting country, where you can see the elaborate blinds built to keep hunters camouflaged yet comfortable while waiting for the birds to come in.

The train passes under I-80 and cuts through cow country as it approaches Dixon. Skoropowski likes to tell the story of escorting some East Coast transportation experts through here. "One of them looked out the window and said 'where the hell are all the people out here? All I see is cows
and open space. I keep hearing that everything in California is overrun and overbuilt.' Skoropowski took the measure of the man. "Well, you're not getting correct information, are you?"

Then again, maybe they were. As the 6:40 rolls out of Dixon you get to see the subprime mortgage meltdown in trackside housing tracts. As it rolls into Davis the students are lined up with their bikes at the door to disembark for their 8 o'clock classes, which started two minutes ago.

From here it is a straight 15 minutes to its final destination in Sacramento, with 10 minutes of padding on the schedule. It is past 8, so the cell phones are drawn out and flipped open. Back in the sleeping car, Jackie Valle, 27, wakes up in precisely the same spot every day and starts
to apply makeup for her job at the Department of Public Health.

"My body is accustomed to it," says Valle, who lives in the Lower Haight and starts her day with a 5:30 Muni ride to Powell Street, where she crosses Market to catch the 6 a.m. Amtrak bus.

The Sacramento station, built in the 1920s for the old Southern Pacific line, is the opposite of the sanitized Emeryville station, which opened 15 years ago. The terminus of the Capitol Corridor is a grand brick building with arched windows and ceiling, hanging chandeliers and wooden phone
booths. At one end is a mural depicting the triumph of the Iron Horse, with non-iron horses standing by and Leland Stanford orating.

The waiting room still has those curvy wooden benches with heat coming up through iron grates atop the backrests. A group of Amish - men in Abe Lincoln beards and bowler hats, plain wives in bonnets - seems to be enjoying this modernity while waiting for the train to carry them back to
Lancaster County, Pa., in the absence of the stagecoach that used to come through here.

Forty Amtrak trains come through here a day, and there is an air of excitement when two runs pull in at once. A volunteer station host is standing on the platform to make sure passengers don't get turned around and end up on the California Zephr for Chicago when they are ticketed for San Francisco.

Bourgart is a volunteer station host in his own right. Exiting the train, he takes hold of two blind men and slowly leads them off the platform so their white canes don't get caught in the tracks.

Most commuters are homeward bound on the 3:35 or 4:40, but Bourgart usually catches the 5:40. The train pulls into Emeryville at 7:20 and his bus is waiting, engine running, as he walks across the platform and through the station. The connection is timed to the minute, the way he
wishes the morning was.

If there is no bridge traffic, he is back at that lonely stop in front of Bloomingdale's before 8 p.m., and 12 minutes later he is home. There isn't time for exercise or sports on TV. Dinner with his wife is about it, because 9 1/2 hours after he walks in the door he's walking back out.

E-mail Sam Whiting at swhiting@ sfchronicle.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2008 SF Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/02/03/CMMLTSV10.DTL

Connect to Collaborate in a Global Economy

One problem with distance collaboration is getting the trust of your remotely located team

Collaboration360 Consultants believes that the best way to create team trust is to have the members collaboratively build a plan together. If they collaboratively believes in the plan and each other, the team will connect to it. This connection enables them to collaboratively lead with it from start to finish.

Through our Compass AE process, the team learns to collaboratively build and connect with their Tangible Vision. When they lead with their Tangible Vision, they collaborate regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.


[sidebar]
Q: What is the Tangible Vision?
A: The Tangible Vision is a goal, a plan that a Compass AE project team collaborates through. It also emphasizes a clearly-defined vision or mission statement that a team believes in.

###



How Email Brings You Closer to the Guy in the Next Cubicle

By Tim Harford 01.18.08 | 6:00 PM

As a columnist (which is fancy for "journalist in jammies"), I ought to personify th conventional wisdom that distance is dead: All I need to get my work done is a place to perch and a Wi-Fi signal. But if that's true, why do I still live in London, the second-most expensive city in the world?

If distance really didn't matter, rents in places like London, New York, Bangalore, and Shanghai would be converging with those in Hitchcock County, Nebraska (population 2,926 and falling). Yet, as far as we can tell through the noise of the real estate bust, they aren't. Wharton real estate professor Joseph Gyourko talks instead of "superstar cities," which have become the equivalent of luxury goods — highly coveted and ultra-expensive. If geography has died, nobody bothered to tell Hitchcock County.

Maybe it's because society hasn't wholeheartedly accepted the idea of working remotely. Or perhaps communications technology just isn't all it's hyped up to be. After all, the journalists and consultants who tell us that location is insignificant are biased. Like me, they're the people whose lives have been most transformed by the Internet and cell phones.

But I think the truth is more profound than either of those glib explanations: Technology makes it more fun and more profitable to live and work close to the people who matter most to your life and work. Harvard economist Ed Glaeser, an expert on city economies, argues that communications technology and face-to-face interactions are complements like salt and pepper, rather than substitutes like butter and margarine. Paradoxically, your cell phone, email, and Facebook networks are making it more attractive to meet people in the flesh.

The most obvious example is online dating. With sites like BBW (Big Beautiful Women) Datefinder and Senior People Meet, it's a lot easier to find like-minded flames. But that's not much use unless you live within driving range of your 98 percent-compatible love connection. The kind of contact that follows online winking is far from virtual.

It follows that matchmaking is most effective in densely populated areas, where there are plenty of fish but an awfully big sea. If you live in Los Angeles, online dating is the killer app. If you live in a small town, you've likely already met all your potential mates at church or a bar.

Of course, the rest of life isn't like courting. Or is it? In big cities, our communication tools are especially helpful because they keep us from getting lost in the crowd (which is not something you worry about in a one-street town). There are even services that tell you where your friends are by locating their cell signals.

New technologies can strengthen ties within your business, too. A 2007 study by economists Neil Gandal, Charles King, and Marshall Van Alstyne looked at the networks formed by 125,000 email messages from the staff of an executive-recruiting firm. It found that email's real value isn't in communicating with Kuala Lumpur but with Betsy in the next cubicle. The most productive workers have the densest intracompany email web.

This shouldn't surprise us. Email makes it quicker and easier to reach your colleagues — you don't have to interrupt them, and messages are easy to process. But email doesn't stop you from wanting facetime, too. Just the opposite: By enabling us to maintain productive business relationships with more people, it encourages more face-to-face contact. Have you noticed business travel dying out? Neither have I. Air travel is at record highs.

One day, perhaps, virtual communication will become so good we'll no longer feel the need to shake hands with a new collaborator or brainstorm in the same room. But for now, the world seems to be changing in a way that actually demands more meetings. Business is more innovative, and its processes more complex. That demands tacit knowledge, collaboration, and trust — all things that seem to follow best from person-to-person meetings. "Ideas are more important than ever," Glaeser says, "and the most important ideas are communicated face-to-face."

/// Compass AE process enables a team to build trust while building a project plan.

Which explains why the highest-tech industries are the most dependent on geography. In a study published in the American Economic Review, researchers examined 4,000 US-based commercial innovations and found that more than half came from just three areas: California, New York/New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Almost half of all US pharmaceutical innovations were invented in New Jersey, a state with less than 3 percent of the nation's population.

In theory, technology should allow new-economy firms to prosper as easily in Nebraska as in Silicon Valley. But far from killing distance, it has made proximity matter more than ever.

/// With the Compass AE process, the project team collaborates without borders. Distance, technology and project culture becomes irrelevant.

As for me, I've been finishing off this essay between a coffee date with my wife and some essential chitchat with my publishers at a central London restaurant. This old city isn't cheap, and it isn't easy. But with my cell phone and laptop to back me up, I can't afford to live anywhere else.

Tim Harford (undercovereconomist@gmail.com) is the author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/16-02/st_essay

###

If you want your team to collaborate without borders, please email us at contact us at contactus [tat]collaboration360[dott] com . [ Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]

The Growing Trend of Telecommuting

As telecommuting becomes a trend, many project team individuals will be working from remote sites.

The question is will they be able to collaborate as a team regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture?

In a future article, we will discuss some of the challenges relating to telecommuting and how Compass AE can be the solution.

#

A typical telecommuting challenge



#

If you have any questions on how to collaborate remotely as a team, please contact us through contactus[tat]collaboration[dott]com. Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." We will send you a white paper on our Compass AE methodology.

# # #

Good News for Professionals Who Want to Work at Home
By Sue Shellenbarger

Amid the numerous files I juggle on my desk, one has been growing steadily for years. It now contains a 3½-inch stack of missives from readers, all asking the same question: How can I get a good job working from home? After years with few answers, I have news at last:

A growing number of employers, from UnitedHealth Group and Safeco to Capgemini, IBM, American Express and Sun Microsystems, are hiring skilled new employees to telecommute right from the start. These aren't the piecework, independent-contractor gigs or commission-only sales jobs that have characterized at-home "employment" in the past. They are full-time corporate jobs with benefits, available without the prerequisite of working for the company for a few years first.

Before you rush to your email or phone to ask how to snag one of these jobs -- read on. These new work-at-home opportunities number only in the thousands, a speck on a vast U.S. labor-force landscape of 150 million workers. Landing one often requires a serendipitous confluence of sought-after skills, experience, personal attributes and timing, along with a measure of luck.

The Juggle

Nevertheless, the nascent trend is remarkable for the breadth of industries it encompasses, from financial services to health care, and for what it heralds for the future. The factors driving it -- the unmet need for skilled workers, improvements in mobile-office technology and a drive to cut real-estate costs -- are solid. All this suggests a new hole has opened in the dam of employer resistance to telecommuting.

"I don't see any downside" to expanding work-at-home hires, says Jeff Diana, senior vice president, human resources, for Safeco, a Seattle-based insurer. Safeco has hired 91 new home-based employees so far this year, including claims examiners, adjustors and managers; about 1,500 of its 7,000 employees now work away from corporate offices, dramatically expanding Safeco's talent pool. "With technology as good as it is," Mr. Diana says, "there aren't many jobs that can't be done remotely."

/// It is only a matter of time, companies would realize that they don't need to be invested in as much brick and mortar as they are right now. ///

Networking is among the best ways to land one of these jobs. That's how Steve Sisco became a telecommuting underwriter in Birmingham, Ala., for Phoenix Cos., an insurance and investment concern. A 25-year veteran of the insurance industry, Mr. Sisco sought a work-at-home position about three years ago. He likes knowing that "I could just pack up my computer and go anywhere."

Having a hot skill set is usually essential. Nurses, computer technicians, financial analysts, software engineers, project and marketing managers, programmers, recruiters and underwriters are among common targets at the moment. Delma Sweazey, Seminole, Fla., a nurse and clinical-care manager, was hired earlier this year by UnitedHealth, traveling to see patients in their homes and elsewhere several days a week and doing paperwork and phone calls from home; this gives her flexibility to see her two children off to school. Minnetonka, Minn.-based UnitedHealth expects to hire a total of 2,000 people into telecommuting jobs this year, says Tom Valerius, vice president, recruitment services.

Beyond that, candidates must persuade employers they're dependable. "If you say, 'I want to be a telecommuter because I have kids at home,' or, 'I need to let my dog out,' it's not going to work," Mr. Valerius says. Instead, prove that you can work unsupervised, be accountable for goals, and be available for meetings and training.

Some work-at-home wannabes get hired by living in an employer's target region. American Express has identified certain areas of the country for hiring at-home travel agents, including Nashville and parts of Texas, says Christine Anderson, a vice president, human resources, and plans to expand into other regions in 2008. Thus Monica Andrews, who formerly ran her own travel agency, was able to hire on with AmEx last year as a Cedar Park, Texas-based telecommuter.

Capgemini, a Paris-based consulting firm, sometimes hires telecommuters in areas where it has clients but no offices, such as Minneapolis, Denver and parts of Texas.

Email your comments to sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com.

www.careerjournal.com/columnists/workfamily/20071116-workfamily.html


#

A rephrase from Cao Cao, ancient Chinese strategist "If you wait long enough, opportunities appear. "

Current State of Telecommuters

Collaboration360's Compass AE training enables remote team members to be connected to their goal. They collaboratively build a Tangible Vision that delineates their goal, the objectives and how a team operates as a team. The Tangible Vision also includes the risks and rewards for working as a team.

When they finally connected with those specifics, they will stay connected as team regardless of the distance, the technology and the project culture.

If you have any questions or if you are interested in our white paper on telecommuting and distance collaboration, please email us at contactus [tat]collaboration360[dott] com .
[ Replace [tat] with "@" and [dot] with "." ]


###

Telecommuting not so great for those left in office
[ Reuters ]

Telecommuting may boost morale, and cut stress, but it can have the opposite effect on those left behind in the office, according to a new study.

When a number of their co-workers toil away from the office by using computers, cell phones, or other electronic equipment, those who do not telecommute are more likely to be dissatisfied with their job and leave the company, said Timothy Golden, a management professor at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Telecommuting has been a growing trend in the United States since about 2000. About 37 percent of U.S.-based and international companies now offer flexible work arrangements, with the number of those programs growing at a rate of 11 percent per year, according to the Society of Human Resource Management.

Several studies have touted the health and morale benefits for flexible workers, but Golden's research suggests that their co-workers tend to find the workplace less enjoyable, have fewer emotional ties to co-workers, and generally feel less obligated to the organization.

"While reasons for the adverse impact on non-teleworkers are varied, it possibly is due to co-workers' perceptions that they have decreased flexibility and a higher workload and the greater frustration that comes with coordinating in an environment with more extensive
telework," Golden said.

He added that with a greater prevalence of telecommuters in a work unit, non-telecommuters find it less personally fulfilling to do their work.

But by ensuring greater face-to-face contact between co-workers when all employees are in the office and granting greater job autonomy, employers may be able to counter these problems, according to the study published in the journal Human Relations.

"There's little doubt that work life impacts one's role in the family. However, organizational decision makers need to take into account the broader impact of telework on others in the office," Golden said.

He studied a sample of 240 professional employees from a medium-size company.

(c)2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CNET , CNET.com , and the CNET logo are registered trademarks of CNET Networks, Inc. Used by permission.

Story Copyright (c) 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6225684.html

Current Trend of Global Collaboration

It is only a matter of time that the old way of "traveling to collaborate" will decline. The amount of time that is being wasted in waiting and traveling is quite a lot.

There is a time and a place for traveling and there is a time and place for using video conferencing. Spending time waiting for an airplane can be used in other productive ways.

Are you tired of waiting?

With our Compass AE process, you and your team can collaborate anywhere. It does not matter what technology or what project methodology your team are using. It is all about connecting the team to the Tangible Vision.

The current dilemma is that most people do not know how to collaborate as a team, with or without the challenge of distance and individual culture

Another dilemma that we discovered is they do not know how to collaborate with the latest video collaboration technology.

In a future entry, we will talk about the importance of making a collaborative decision quickly in a global economy and how to integrate Compass AE and video conferencing as one collaborative protocol.

###

September 18, 2007
U.S. Working on Its Welcome
By SARA J. WELCH

In February, Eric Rozenberg, a Belgian travel executive, was en route to a convention in Cancún, Mexico, from Brussels when, he says, he experienced firsthand what other foreign travelers had told him about the problems of getting into the United States.

He said an official took him aside with no explanation as he went through immigration in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and sent him to a separate room.

After waiting there nearly 90 minutes, Mr. Rozenberg, who travels to the United States on business at least six times a year, said, he very politely asked another officer what was taking so long. The officer glanced at Mr. Rozenberg’s passport again, told him to wait another 10 minutes, then handed it back to him without explaining what had happened.

The officer asked if he had missed his connecting flight, Mr. Rozenberg recalled. When he replied that he had, he said casually: ‘Oh, sorry about that; just tell them you were detained at immigration,’ Mr. Rozenberg said.

Similar complaints from foreign business and leisure travelers have led the United States government to take steps to improve the treatment of travelers upon arrival. In February 2006, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security announced a program, called Secure Borders and Open Doors, aimed at balancing the increased need for security after the 2001 terrorist attacks with the desire to ease travel to the United States.

Last February, the Homeland Security Department started the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, or TRIP (trip.dhs.gov), which provides an online form travelers can use to file complaints electronically about any travel-related government entity. It offers more transparency and a one-stop location for travelers who feel, say, they weren’t treated properly or missed a flight because of a D.H.S. employee’s actions, said Kelly Klundt, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Homeland Security Department.

But while government officials say they are trying for change, there is no way to tell if progress has been made. Ms. Klundt said she did not know if the government kept statistics on complaints about poor treatment by customs and border officials.

Geoff Freeman is the executive director of the Discover America Partnership, a Washington lobbying group of leaders from the Travel Business Roundtable, Marriott International, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, the Travel Industry Association and other companies and organizations. Since the organization was formed last September to promote the United States abroad, it has received hundreds of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said, from foreign travelers complaining of poor treatment by customs and border officials.

But, Mr. Freeman said, while most people who’ve come here from overseas since 9/11 say the entry experience is poor, beyond the airport, their U.S. experience is good enough that they’ll probably come back.

The partnership also found, however, that if foreigners had not visited the United States since Sept. 11 or had never visited, the stories they’re reading or hearing about the poor entry experience are discouraging them from visiting, Mr. Freeman said.

He said statistics from the World Trade Organization showed a 17 percent increase in worldwide travel since Sept. 11, while data from the United States Office of Travel and Tourism Industries showed travel to the United States declining the same percentage over the same period.

Former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, who served as the first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is working with the Discover America Partnership to find ways to improve the entry experience. By and large, my former colleagues do a good job, Mr. Ridge said. But anecdotally, I’ve heard we have to be a lot more sensitive. If even one traveler in 10,000 has a bad experience, that ripple effect is harmful.

Prakton Mal, who was born in India, lives in Oslo and is a Norwegian citizen, said many of his colleagues would rather participate in a videoconference than travel to the United States and risk embarrassment and ill treatment.

/// *** The continuing trend of more people wanting to use video-conferencing tool.

In March, he said, while on a business trip, he was treated rudely by a very sour and impolite immigration official at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport because he had forgotten to sign and date his immigration form. It was a small incident, but it could have been avoided, Mr. Mal said. He said he takes 18 international business trips a year, and I sometimes feel that the United States stands out with their arrogant behavior toward innocent incoming businesspeople.

One executive, an American citizen who was born in France, said he presented his American passport to a customs official at Miami International Airport after returning from an overseas business trip. The official noticed he was also carrying a French passport.

He told me it was illegal to carry two passports, the executive recalled. He held both passports in front of me and asked, ‘Which one do you want me to destroy?’ like it was a game.

The executive, who did not want his name disclosed because he was concerned that might affect his business dealings, said he insisted he had the right to carry two passports because he was a dual citizen. (A State Department spokesman confirmed this; the law specifies only that American citizens must present their American passport when entering the United States.)

The official kept him waiting about half an hour, then returned both passports, the executive said. But he said he’d put a note in my file that I was breaking the law and I’d get stopped the next time I traveled. He said he filed a complaint electronically, but they didn’t even acknowledge receiving it.

Ms. Klundt said all customs officials were required to take an annual professionalism training course, which is updated every year. We’re concerned about these negative situations and want to address them, she said. But we also need to focus on our mission, which is keeping bad people and bad things out of the country.

Mr. Ridge said it was that occasional rude person who creates all these horror stories.

The welcome mat has a little dust on it right now, he added. We have to spruce it up a bit.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/18entry.html

# # #

September 17, 2007
Seeking Relief
By JOE SHARKEY

NOW what?

Usually, fall brings relief from summertime air traffic delays, cancellations and missed connections. But this year, some travelers are not betting on it.

I’m certainly not going to be happily whistling on my way to the airport, thinking the troubles of the summer are over, said Will A. Allen III, a management consultant from Raleigh, N.C., who is on the road or in the air more than he is home.

So far, this year in air travel merits a place in the record books. During the first eight months of 2007, a quarter of all domestic flights arrived late. Late flights also created a deluge of missed connections, and flight cancellations were higher than ever. In the three months ending Aug. 31, 52,840 domestic flights were canceled, according to FlightStats.com. That number compared with about 16,000 in the same period last year.

/// *** Ask yourself, do you want to spend your time waiting? ... With Compass AE, you and your team can "video-conference" as a team properly.

About the only flight that took off on time this summer was the space shuttle, said Joe Brancatelli, whose subscription business-travel Web site is Joesentme.com.

Airlines usually blame bad weather for problems, and given that the air traffic control system is stretched to its limits, weather can cause excessive delays, even in the fall, said David L. Beckerman, the director of consulting services at Back Aviation Solutions. In a system where carriers have cut domestic capacity and really need every aircraft in service to carry their high passenger loads, this is more problematic than it was a few years ago, he said.

Adding to the problems, the airlines say, is congestion caused by a surge in the use of corporate jets as business travelers try to avoid delays. The situation will only get worse as new four- to six-seat business aircraft, called very-light jets, come off the assembly line.

Shrewd business travelers usually pride themselves on having a backup plan. Given the current mess, how can people cope? Stay home, Mr. Brancatelli said, not entirely facetiously.

Avoiding crowded major-hub airports is one limited alternative. In recent years, some business travelers have been using smaller outlying airports — like Manchester International in New Hampshire, 50 miles from Boston, and Ontario International, 35 miles from downtown Los Angeles — with point-to-point routes that avoid frantic connections. Manchester’s passenger traffic, for instance, increased to more than 4.5 million last year from 1 million in 1997.

Traffic growth at such airports comes mostly from point-to-point travel, often in short-haul regional routes but also in longer ones by nimble carriers like Southwest Airlines.

For the first eight months of 2007, Southwest, whose national route network was built around point-to-point flying, had an 8.3 percent increase in passenger miles flown. On the other hand, American Airlines, which builds its system around major hubs, reported a 2.1 percent decline.

Still, American and the other major airlines carry by far the most passengers and offer the largest number of routes and frequencies, with operations firmly based at hub airports that in some cases, like O’Hare International in Chicago, are often unable to accept new traffic. Many outlying airports have also been operating near capacity, and are often unable to expand operations because of strong opposition from residents who live nearby, analysts say.

Rail alternatives, like Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor service, also operate near capacity. All of which is leading more drivers to another option: driving.

Mr. Allen, the consultant in Raleigh, saw the meltdown coming. Last spring, he began driving occasionally on trips that he used to fly.

My limit is about 400 to 450 miles, eight hours, which is how long you can spend getting to and from an airport and flying somewhere, he said. But not long ago, Mr. Allen drove 900 miles to a job. At least in the car you’re in charge of your own schedule, he said.

Doug Laubach, who owns an engineering business near Syracuse with eight employees, often uses the company Audi for trips. There is no reliability left in the air traffic system, he said. He often drives to avoid delays at the Syracuse airport and to get to a major hub like Chicago, where he then flies to jobs in places like Colorado. Mr. Laubach encourages employees who drive to add recreation to the trip, so the Audi may be loaded not only with laptops and luggage but also bicycles and other sports equipment. I want my people to feel they have a life, he said.

How did the airline schedules come to such a sorry state?

As airlines have reduced costs by cutting capacity, schedules and employees, planes have become fuller than ever. Some critics say that the airlines — now profitable after years of losses — have no motive to add passengers or improve service.

Airlines have also been criticized for clogging routes with more regional jets, which usually accommodate 50 passengers at most. But the airlines say that regional jets — which carry about one of every four passengers — are serving the smaller markets that large jets don’t. Instead, they point the finger at the corporate jets.

Pushed by consumer discontent with commercial airlines, business aviation has been growing rapidly. There are now more than 11,000 private jets in the United States, compared with about 7,000 in 2000, according to the National Business Aviation Association. The trade group argues that business jets mostly use smaller, noncommercial airports and are in the sky far less often than airliners.

Regardless, there will be more of them soon when the very-light jets take off. The short-range jets are relatively inexpensive, from about $1.4 million to more than $2.5 million. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that more than 350 of them will be flying next year, and that their numbers will grow by 400 to 500 a year for a decade.

We’re going to be filling in gaps where air service is inadequate, said Ed Iacobucci, the chief executive of DayJet in Boca Raton, Fla., a company that is buying hundreds of Eclipse 500 very-light jets to start an air-taxi business, selling seats on demand. The company plans to begin flying among Florida cities that many business travelers now reach by driving or by spending hours in commercial airports.

Some potential customers of air taxis say that saving time outweighs the extra cost, roughly equivalent to a first-class commercial fare. We all have families at home, said Eric Romano, a lawyer in a West Palm Beach, Fla., firm who has signed up to be a DayJet client. Some industry observers, like Michael Boyd of the Boyd Group Consultancy in Evergreen, Colo., say blame for the problems lies not so much with the airlines — big or small — or the weather as with the air traffic control system itself. Responding to that criticism, the F.A.A., which forecasts 768 million domestic passengers flying this year, up from 666 million in 2000, has pointed to future improvements like a $25 billion upgrade using G.P.S. technology to allow planes to fly closer together near hubs.

But Mr. Boyd said that because F.A.A. improvements in the past have been too little and too late, airlines now routinely pad their schedules, adding flight time to hide the extent of delays.

The problem isn’t the weather, it’s the air traffic control system’s inability to deal with the weather, he said.

Still, air traffic keeps growing. We’re assuming the skies are going to get a lot more crowded, said Robert E. Brown, the chief executive of CAE Inc., a company with a worldwide network of 24 pilot-training centers.

Passenger discontent is also increasing over the problem of aircraft stuck on airport aprons. This year, passengers have been stranded at dozens of airports, sometimes for 10 hours or more, as pilots waited for takeoff slots in inclement weather. Kate Hanni, a Napa, Calif., real estate agent, was among the passengers stranded on several dozen flights diverted from Dallas last December. Her plane was sent to Austin, Tex., where the passengers sat for more than nine hours as food ran out and cabin conditions deteriorated.

Since then, she has been advocating federal legislation, a Passengers’ Bill of Rights, specifying when airlines need to allow passengers to get off parked planes and ensuring enough food and water and basic sanitation. Ms. Hanni has marshaled a network of volunteers who keep records, including e-mail messages and phone numbers, from thousands of stranded passengers. The Web site is flyersrights.com.

Ms. Hanni plans a publicity campaign for Wednesday. We’re going to have a strand-in in Washington, she said, with a tent simulating conditions on a stranded plane.

But frequent fliers like Mr. Allen have no illusions that conditions will improve soon. In years past, he said, fliers sharing tales of woe at airport lounges could always find a fellow traveler who chided them for exaggerating the troubles.

I never run into those people anymore, he said.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/business/businessspecial2/17jam.html

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