Part of the preparation phase is also to get to know your team mates. For that we got some exercises which should be solved in small subteams. In my point of view the challenge was however not the different professional or cultural background of the other team members or the workload... it was rather difficult to find a proper time in which IBMers from America, Europe and Asia could find a time for a meeting which is not at 3 A.M. in one time zone or 11 P.M. in another one... and also free from other tasks.

A bit of help was <a href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html" target="_blank">The World Clock Meeting Planner</a>, but it still required many mails and replannings. <a title="Doodle" href="http://doodle.com" target="_blank">Doodle</a> supports meetings in different time zones to a certain degree... but I haven't used it before and didn't want to send invitation suggestions for midnight to my new colleagues. ;-)

<a href="http://morocco.chickenfactory.ch/wp-content/uploads/articles/worldclock_meeting_scheduler_421.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-85" src="http://morocco.chickenfactory.ch/wp-content/uploads/articles/worldclock_meeting_scheduler_421.png" alt="World Clock Meeting Scheduler" width="421" height="350" /></a>

We managed it at the end, and I now also have an AT&amp;T TeleConference account. Nevertheless, collaboration will be much easier when we are all in Casablanca. :-)
<p style="text-align: right; font-size: x-small; color: #808080;">#ibmcsc morocco</p>