A week or two back, I teased Jennifer Fleming (our content maven) with the title of this blog by starting a draft in our WordPress admin. She simply *had* to know more about it! This incident tells you two things about my blogging process:

The best part of my blogs are the titles.
It takes me a week or two to go from title to actual blog post!

I rarely divulge customer interactions on this blog, but a few weeks back I had a pretty memorable conference call and it definitely deserved a little analysis. The situation was thus: our fabulous print designer Meg Fentzloff was working with me and a new client to update a slew of branding materials, including a new PowerPoint template. After a few frustrating rounds back and forth via email, we all decided to get on the phone (gasp) and do a screenshare so we could resolve the remaining issues.

I set up a GoToMeeting and we all hopped on. Meg lives in Omaha and I’m in Philadelphia. The client, normally in Florida, was somewhere other than his office. In fact, he was driving down the highway talking on speakerphone while viewing our screenshare on his iPad.

The scary part was the client was inordinately facile at this skill. We quickly and easily walked through six or seven slides, outlining revisions and needs to wrap up the project (only once did he have to take a break – there was some traffic and maybe a police car…!).

I’ve worked virtually with many of my designers and developers for years (just ask Felix how many nightly creative notes I have delivered to him in the past 5 years). But sometimes, I forget that virtual communication is a pretty sophisticated process. Differences in communication, language, innuendo, instinct, and process can doom a project – even one as “simple” as a newly branded PowerPoint template.

Sometimes the best communication method, especially for a design process, is a purely visual one. I have to say, it was fun to have a bit of a dangerous conference call, even if I was tucked safely away behind my desk and headset. Thanks Ray.

Ed: Dinkum is an advocate of safe driving and doesn’t endorse iPad conference calls in your car.

Photo Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/151659