In this episode I highlight:
- Personify – A 3D webcam projects your image onto your monitor. If you’re giving webinars, online presentations or trainings, this is a MUST HAVE (check out the interview).
- Jabra Speak 410 – portable USB conference speakerphone.
- Mindful.team – “monitor and improve the health of your company culture” (check out the interview).
- Huddlewall – A scalable display of collaboration boards (link to video).
- Be Live – Engage your audience on Facebook live with live broadcast.
- More great tools for remote teams.
Please note, I do not have an affiliate program with any of these tools. Please tell them Collaboration Superpowers sent you!
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Almost daily, people send me links to great tools for remote teams. So I started a new series in the Collaboration Superpowers podcast called “Up & Coming Virtual Tools” where I highlight some of the more interesting and useful tools I see come across my screen. I hope you find it useful – don’t forget to report back on your experiences!
Podcast production by Podcast Monster
Graphic design by Alfred Boland
Original transcript
Welcome to the Collaboration Superpowers podcast. My name is Lisette and I’m interviewing people and companies doing great things remotely. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode number 146. Again, I’m going to try something new today, a new series of podcasts called up-and-coming virtual tools. And today will be the first addition.
Now I thought of this because so many people ask me questions about hey, do you know a tool for this? Or do you know a tool for that? And of course I do. I’m a tool junkie. And I have a fantastic list on my website, collaborationsuperpowers.com/remote. You will find a list of great tools for remote teams. And if you know a great tool that needs to be added to the list, just get in touch. But today what I wanted to do was introduce you to five new tools that have come across my path that kind of got me going, “Oh, that looks really good.” And upon further investigation, I have heard really good things from other people as well. So I thought let’s just pass on the love. Now I don’t have any affiliate program set up with any of these tools today. These are just great things that came across my path that I thought the remote community needed to know about.
The first one on the list is a tool that people have kind of heard of before because it’s created by personify, one of my tools that I’ve talked about many times on this podcast. It takes the background out and projects you on your screen in front of your slides. So if you’re giving a webinar, you can sort of have that Vanna White Effect where you’re speaking in front of your slides. It’s really awesome.
But what they’ve now come up with is something called ChromaCam, which just uses the video camera that’s built into your PC. It doesn’t work on a Mac yet. It’s just built into your PC. And it takes the background out and replaces it with whatever you want. So you could be in space. You could be in the mountains. You could be on the beach. You could be anywhere. Whatever background you want, it just places it behind you. And one advantage of this is if you’re working in a really busy office, then it’s nice to be able to take the background out so that it’s not distracting for other people on the video call. So that’s one, great reason to do it. And the other thing is it’s just super fun. You could have any background you want, of course. So I urge people to check it out. Simply go to chromacam.me. And of course I’ll put all of this in the show notes.
The next tool on the list came to me by one of my workshop participants who said that he was driving somewhere with a few people and had to have a conference call on the go. So he used his Jabra 510 Bluetooth portable speaker and was able to set up a conference call where the sound was crystal clear and people were able to hear each other really well, all from cellphones and this Jabra speaker. Now I posted this on social media and got so many responses from people saying, “Oh, I love the Jabra. It’s a fantastic speaker. I mean really, I haven’t got a response like that in a long time.” It’s called the Jabra Speak 510 or the 410, I’ve heard. And if you just Google it or go to the Jabra website, you’ll totally find all the information you need for it.
Okay, the next tool that I was introduced to was recently on this pocast when I interviewed mindful team back in episode 140. Mindful.team is a retrospectives tool that helps you gauge the health of your team and then decide what actions to take based on those results. Now I haven’t tried it yet but I’m about to try it on the Happy Melly team and I will definitely report the results back. But the girls that I interviewed, Edana and Emma, were so charming and so lovely. And their tool looks great. It’s currently in beta, so you actually have to ask for an invitation. But just tell them Collaboration Superpowers sent you, and I’m sure they’ll get you set up. So if you’re looking for a way to collect insights from your team about how they’re feeling in between retrospectives or just on a regular basis seems like a good idea, especially on a virtual team. Then definitely go check out mindful.team.
Okay, the next tool on the list is called huddle wall. And I came across this randomly on LinkedIn. So I haven’t used this yet and I don’t know anybody who has used it. But it looks so interesting. I couldn’t help but introduce you guys to it. Huddle wall is basically a large-scale, digital display, like really large-scale, like 25 feet wide large-scale, where teams can actually step up to the digital display, write things down as if they were writing it on paper, and have it all captured digitally. The video looks cool, and if you want to find more about it online, look at scalabledisplay.com and search for huddle wall.
Okay, so the last tool on the list for today is something that probably a lot of people know about because it’s pretty popular because it’s a Facebook thing. But since I’ve been doing interviews for so long and I used to use Hangouts and try to broadcast it publicly, and now I use Zoom so that I’m able to easily record it, the last tool I want to introduce you to is called BeLive. And the website is belive.tv. And what it allows you to do is host a live interview with a remote participant and then broadcast that interview live on Facebook where you can even take the audience questions and get people to participate. I cannot wait to start using this for interviews in the future, BeLive.tv.
Okay, those were the five up-and-coming, virtual tools that have crossed my path very recently. I wanted to share them with you. If you have additional tools that you would like broadcast on this podcast, just let me know. I’m always looking for awesome tools to help remote teams do great things. You can find a list of other great tools at collaborationsuperpowers.com/remote. You can also get best practices, tips, and tools delivered straight to your inbox every other week on the Collaboration Superpowers newsletter. So definitely go to website and sign up there, collaborationsuperpowers.com/newsletter. A huge thanks to our awesome, professional podcast producer, Nick Jaworski. You can hire him to make you a star at podcastmonster.com.
And another big thanks to our dazzling designer, Alfred Boland. You can hire him to make you look cool at bolanden.nl. All right, everybody, until next week, let’s go check out some new tools and be powerful.
