The latest report (September 2011) on Virtual Teams, Virtual Work Environments in the Post-Recession Era, from Brandman University, includes very interesting results of a survey commissioned from Forrester in 2010 on Virtual Teams.

As a festive treat I am making available, totally free to Bioteams readers, my Virtual Teams and Communities Training Manual (155 pages) which I have used on a number of occasions as a comprehensive full-day workshop on this very important topic.

Techtarget report on a June Dice Holdings survey of over 1,500 tech professionals, which found that 37% of them would accept a pay cut of up to 10% in exchange for the opportunity to work from home (telecommute).

What do Ants, Termites, Graffiti Artists, Cavemen, Teenagers and Town Planners all have in common? They understand the power of Stigmergy to leave marks in their environment as important sign-posts to friends (or foes). Even more importantly they all know the difference between sign-posting and dialogue.

One of the biggest problems in teams, communities and networks, whether co-located or virtual, is freeriding (aka freeloading or lurking or loafing) where certain team members do not pull their weight. Here are 5 things you can do about it.

Major Oil Company, Schlumberger, exploits self-organizing virtual communities.

Using Far-Flung Virtual Teams for Managing Knowledge in Global Companies, reports on research into 54 far-flung teams in 31 different companies, including Intel, Textronic and Royal Dutch Shell

Some of the approaches applied to conflict resolution apply equally well to the development of on-line and virtual communities, teams and networks. One of the most interesting is "The Flight of the Flamingos" scenario.

We can learn the secret of rapid evolution from the most evolved non-human species on the planet – but it is not who you think it is!

In 1964 psychiatrist Dr.Eric Berne published a now famous book Games people play in which he identified the different games people play, often unwittingly, in social situations based on his concept of transaction analysis. The advent of the virtual team has created a whole new set of games including Freeloader, Pseudo-engager, Chase-me, Senior Partner, Inquisitor, Stop-Starter, Overcommunicator, Email Fixater and Attachmentitis.