It requires adaption by management and staff in developing
the necessary skills and vision.
This chapter starts with how to use the networks to manage projects. Next, it treats how to monitor competitors, prospects, suppliers, markets, technologies, and trends. It winds down with marketing and sales by modem.
Project coordination —————————— So far we have mainly been looking at sources of information. Let us start this chapter with some words about 'online conference rooms' for project coordination. Several services offer rental of private conference areas to businesses. Corporations have discovered them to be an efficient way of coordinating a group of people, who are far apart from each other geographically. They are also useful when team members are constantly on the move and hard to gather face to face. Many international companies use such services regularly. The applications are different. They range from tight coordination with suppliers and subcontractors, to development of company strategies and new organizational structures. Renting an online conference room has advantages over doing it in-house. The company does not have to buy software, hardware, expensive equipment for communications, and hire people for to run and maintain a conferencing system. The more international the business, the better. For ideas about how to set up and operate a coordination conference. Study how volunteer organizations do it. One place to check out is KIDPLAN, one of several coordination conferences used by KIDLINK (see Chapter 2 and 5). KIDPLAN is usually most active during April and May each year. This is when their annual projects are being closed down, and new projects are started. Read the dialog between coordinators to get an idea of how the medium is being used. Old conference messages are stored in notebook files. You can therefore have the full coordination dialogs sent you by email. Send all requests for notebook files to
LISTSERV@VM1.NODAK.EDU
Getting notebook files is a two-step process. In your first message to the LISTSERV, ask for a list of available files. Do this by using the following command in your email:
INDEX KIDPLAN
The LISTSERV will return a list of files. The following part is of particular interest:
101/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105B ALL OWN V 80 2397 91/05/14
23:40:22 Started on Wed, 8 May 91 00:11:09 CDT
102/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105C ALL OWN V 80 3141 91/05/21
20:44:16 Started on Wed, 15 May 91 01:24:51 CDT
104/2/ KIDPLAN LOG9105D ALL OWN V 80 2685 91/05/28
22:34:31 Started on Wed, 22 May 91 17:01:21 +0200
Don't bother about the details. You just want file names, and
dates. The file LOG9105B contains all messages from 8 May 1991
until 15 May.
If you want all these three files, send another message to
LISTSERV with the following lines: