Sometimes sharing your power point is not enough to feel connected with your distributed team. But a immersive environments such as OpenSim with avatars may be too much.
I love Sococo as a way to have that sense of place. I can infer what people are doing based on if they are in their office, or in a conference room. Yet it’s relatively simple to use.
But like most software, it’s still confusing for new users. Here are some tips that will help.
- If you have a headset w/ headphone and microphone that is ideal. There is an icon at the top left that looks like a microphone. Press it to speak. If you don’t have a headset w/ earphones, be SURE to turn it off when not speaking. This helps quality.
- The icons to the right show a folded ‘map’, which shows the layout of offices, or lets you pick someone’s screen to see if they are currently sharing. To share, they click on a screen in their office or conference room.
- All the way to the right, you can see icons that toggle the map view of the offices, a chat window, and a list of ‘contacts’. I use the term ‘contacts’ loosely. It is anyone you have been near who has spoken. This includes us brilliant coaches, but also the Sococo help folks (who wear caps, like Beth), but also random people from the Sococo help center!
- Click on a room to go there instantly. If I want to share my screen I could click the projection screen next to me.
- At the center bottom you will find the lobby. Your dot persona will arrive there by default. If you see someone in the lobby that looks like they are wearing headphones, it may just mean that they logged in automatically, but are not really paying attention to the program.
- Next is the chat window. It’s cool because both voice and text chat is limited to the room you are in. Text chat is saved too, so you can see it by hoping into the room.
- Note you each have your own office. You can have breakout talks in those, or in the conference rooms.
- Be ready with Skype or a dial in number for backup incase people have audio trouble.
Contact AgileBill for more help with any virtual environment.
