Our current idea for training deliverables is: Reference cards - Concise documents explaining how to perform tasks. We're going with this rather than with a training manual because we will not have time to create such a detailed book before Go Live. Also, as TheApp continues to be developed, we think it will be easier to change the reference cards and republish them as needed, rather than having to republish an entire book for each iteration. For us, "publish" means to put on our web site and to print for classes. We don't know yet if the reference cards will by system/module-based or role based.Demos - Captivate demos of certain tasks. We'll start out with just a few, whatever we can manage before Go Live. We'll need the help of the business team to determine priority, considering the task's complexity and frequency.Trainer's outline. The sequence in the classroom may be different from the sequence in the reference cards. The senior trainers will help create this.There are still question about the deliverables. Working with TheApp will help. But I think I need to start drafting using the task list that the Product Owners helped complete. I'd like to draft an outline.What's Agile about all this?Sticking with concise reference cards to make iterative changes later easier.Creating demos for only the topics that really need them, rather than treating all topics uniformly. Creating demos topic by topic, rather than creating a whole course, will also make iterative changes easier.

We understand that these days, work takes place anytime, anywhere - not just 9 to 5, and not just inside an office. It can feel like you’re working all the time. And it can get a little crazy. But it can also be wonderfully liberating, if you have the right tools and you know how to use them. That’s what this blog is for: to help you stay on top of an "always on" business world without losing hold of what matters most. We’re elated to launch this blog as a way to keep you up to date on the latest industry research, GoTo product how-tos and company news. In the blog you’ll find best practices for today’s way of working, including advice on managing teams, collaboration, video conferencing, mobile productivity and the workshifting lifestyle. We’ll also have focused information for professionals in various fields, such as sales, marketing, business management, IT and support, human resources and more. But it won’t just be us talking. This is not just another company blog. We’ll provide guest posts from industry experts and thought leaders - people we trust to provide useful information that can help our readers to work more effectively and lead happier, more fulfilling lives. Kinds of content you can expect: Best practices advice from experts Highlights from our latest resources (How-tos, guidelines, toolkits, videos, you name it!) Tips and tricks for using our products• Invitations to live and on-demand webinars Use cases from our customers and employees News and announcements Our contributors have a wealth of knowledge and insights to share with you to help make your work - and your life - better. To make sure you don’t miss anything, you can subscribe via RSS and get updates sent to your inbox. Plus, if you like you can follow us on social channels like Twitter and Facebook. Hopefully you’re as excited as we are! Please let us know your thoughts in the Comments section below. And by all means, feel free to share GoTo blog content with your friends and colleagues. The goal is to empower the new way of work for everyone. Enjoy! - The Citrix GoTo team

CC production on Act 3 is starting to wrap up. Just 4 more shots that need to be completed at this point. Most of the assets for those shots have been put in and colored and all that's left are some animated effects I have to draw in.In other words, Cosmic Chase production will be finished this week. In the remaining time between now and the release, I'll be doing tweaks to Act 1 to fix the pacing and overall flow to match it with the rest of the movie.Sonic X: Cosmic Chase will premiere August 9, 2010. Mark your calendars. The 7 year long epic journey will finally come to an end. I've learned a lot during this period and I'm glad it's almost over. Not having CC hanging over my head will be a wonderful feeling. There were times where I loved working on it and other times where I loathed it. It's been a long ride and I thank all of my fans for sticking by me.It feels real.8.9.10

Today, we announced the acquisition of Podio, an innovative collaborative work platform that empowers teams to work the way they want to work. What’s Podio, you ask? Podio enables small and medium-sized businesses and teams within larger organizations to manage all types of business processes and associated workflows using purpose-built apps and configurable workspaces. With Podio, teams can also modify apps or create their own, enabling workgroups to tailor their workflows and collaboration activities to their projects and the way they want to work. Podio also integrates easily with traditional business solutions, plus data storage, online collaboration and content tools, including Dropbox, Box, Google Apps, Google Docs, Google Alerts, Evernote, Zendesk, FreshBooks, Instapaper and Campaign Monitor. What does Podio bring to Citrix? We’re very excited to have Podio join the Citrix team. It’s a natural fit with our collaboration line of business. Our cloud-based services power today’s way of working - enabling people to connect, share and collaborate regardless of location or device. Podio adds a collaborative work platform, a robust, free app market and the means to modify or create apps to support contemporary workflows. Along with this wonderful technology, Podio brings to Citrix a talented team whose values and passion for improving the way work is done in the cloud era line up perfectly with ours. Plus, they have an office in Copenhagen that we can visit! We’ll be sharing more about the Podio team in the days to come. We’ll also be revealing more of our plans for Podio at Citrix Synergy™ San Francisco, May 9-11, 2012. To learn more about the acquisition, read the official press release.

In just 2 short weeks, Cosmic Chase will be making its long awaited and well-overdue premiere. I am very excited to be able to release this movie as it serves as a visual journal documenting the past 7 years of my life regarding the journey of learning, practicing, and improving my skills.The project was originally started to give me something to practice with in my spare time. The more I drew and animated, the better I became. I started in Flash MX2004 (v7) and will be ending with Flash CS4 (v10). My skills have greatly improved because of this project which has shown up in my schoolwork and the stuff I learned in school has been applied to CC.I won't deny it: there is a quality difference stemming from the beginning of the movie and lasts until the very end. This is not a bad thing. It was already light years ahead of Chaotic Battle when I started the first shot. Each shot improves upon the last, adding new elements and techniques to make it even better. It'd be kinda hard not to improve upon the formula over a span of 7 years.I've got 2 weeks left before showtime, where's CC at right now? I've been putting in 8-12 hour days tying up loose ends, making tweaks, compositing, editing, and even putting on my old developer's hat and doing some coding for movie functionality. I'm retiming Act 1 right now to speed up the pacing, Act 2 and 3 are pretty much complete, but I make changes as I see fit. I just need to finish timing and a single outstanding shot that I might actually redo from scratch *gasp*, do the credits and call it a wrap. No final file size or running time as of yet. It's a little over 10MB right now so I'll have to send my buddy Tom Fulp a little email over at Newgrounds.That's basically all the ranting I've got for now. Post production will likely wrap up by the end of this week and I'll have a finished product by this time next week.

Earlier today we shared some very exciting news with you about Citrix’s acquisition of Podio, an innovative, fast-growing cloud-based, collaborative work platform that empowers teams to build their own apps to manage just about any business process. Podio is now part of the Online Services Division of Citrix and will be led by Tommy Ahlers, former Podio CEO, now Vice President, Social Collaboration. Podio is a fantastic addition to Citrix’s collaboration business, giving today’s mobile and distributed workforce an easy, secure and intrinsically social way to come together and work in teams. To give you some insight into Podio’s offering, history and capable team of developers, designers and user advocates, we sat down with Tommy Ahlers for a one-on-one discussion. Who is behind Podio? Podio is a Danish startup with a new take on how everyday work gets done. We’re a team of 27 passionate people, revolutionizing the way people work, through social, customizable and easy-to-use software that fits the changing nature of work. Like most startups, we started out small with just four guys in a cozy Copenhagen basement and an idea to build something completely different from anything else on the market. Jon Froda, Kasper Hulthin, Anders Pollas and founding developer Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen built and launched the product in private beta in 2009; I joined in August 2010 as CEO and investor and we launched publicly in March 2011. What does Podio offer? Podio is all about empowering people to work the way they want to. We offer a collaborative work platform that’s social at its core, where small and medium-sized businesses and teams within larger organizations can manage all types of business processes and associated workflows using purpose-built apps and configurable workspaces. Because Podio is such a flexible tool, teams can determine and structure their preferred workflows and collaboration activities to best suit whatever they’re working on. All types of organizations use Podio, from Twitter, who uses Podio for corporate development, to Atlas Blue, a swimming pool maintenance company in Kuwait. What makes Podio so different from existing collaboration tools? What makes Podio really unique is our app-centric approach to productivity. Not only do we provide a social and collaborative environment for teams, we also offer hundreds of free ready-made apps to help users to manage everything from recruiting to product development and project management. Podio’s innovative platform also enables teams to create their own tailored apps, using a simple but powerful app-builder. These apps live inside Podio’s social workspaces, which can be created for special teams, ad hoc projects or groups of internal and external workers in an organization. Importantly, Podio’s mobile apps bring the entire platform into the palm of your hand, to support the fast emerging mobile workforce. What are the benefits of using Podio? Besides cutting down internal email, which makes everyone happy, there are so many ways Podio can improve the way companies get work done. The first thing we usually hear from our customers is how communication and team connectivity start to change for the better, leading to increased productivity, streamlined processes and better overall structure around workflows. Rather than using a social tool where people simply "talk" about their work and deliverables, Podio users are actually completing work and managing all types of business processes using Podio’s apps and workspaces. What we see every day in our user base is that Podio truly works for everyone in an organization; it doesn’t burden IT with another service to manage and administer; it puts people in control of their work tools rather than the other way around and it allows teams to be fast, agile, flexible and far more connected to each other’s work. It’s also really fun to use, delivering a meticulously well-designed (we’re a Danish company after all) consumer experience that modern workers now expect from their work tools. What does becoming part of Citrix mean for Podio and its community? We see an unmatched opportunity for Podio to reach as many people, teams and organizations as possible and bring the future of work to everyday workers, today. With the combined strengths of both companies, we now have the resources and a common strategic vision to take Podio to the next level. What’s so fantastic about this development is that ultimately our community of customers and users win. We’ll be able to accelerate development, expand support services, tap existing business units within Citrix, exchange big ideas and implement our product roadmap and vision for growth much more aggressively. We going to keep everything that’s great about Podio in place, but seriously turn up the volume.

I'm sitting here typing this with a 100% completed version of Sonic X: Cosmic Chase on my desktop. The final stats clock in at 1600 hours of working on the project, 10.3MB file size with a running time of 8 minutes 20 seconds. Don't worry, it's a fast 8 minutes.For the rest of the time being, I'm working on optimizing the movie to make it run properly. I've encountered some slowdown issues that were not prevalent before and must be fixed. One of my goals this summer has been met and I'm very proud of that fact. The other 2 are still pending and will take the rest of August to complete, but they will be done in the next 30 days.Nine days to go. Who's excited?

Desktop video conferencing has finally hit the tipping point thanks to recent improvements in quality, cost, bandwidth and compatibility. Gone are the days of expensive, proprietary equipment anchored to a room or a big mobile cart. Now the necessary hardware and software are built into standard laptops or available on your desktop for cheap. In addition, smart detection of computer horsepower, bandwidth and mature compression means great quality without an overloaded Internet connection. In the video below, I dispel these common myths about video conferencing: Myth #1: Video conferencing is expensive and difficult to set up Myth #2: Social/free video conferencing is usable for business Myth #3: Video conferencing devours bandwidth and offers poor quality IT has always been and will forever be a quickly changing industry. Improve your company by learning how to embrace these transformations and harness the power of new technology to break through old technology myths. Photo Credit: Yael Beeri

Tomorrow Sonic X: Cosmic Chase will release during the afternoon around 3pm EST.One more day. I think you guys can handle the wait. I've trained you good.

Last Sunday was Earth Day, and it got me thinking: Do people really understand the purpose of Earth Day? It’s not just about celebrating nature for a day. It’s about educating people to care for the Earth every day, all year long. It’s about promoting personal and organizational change to protect the environment. Earth Day was started in 1970 as a "teach-in" to raise awareness of the need to preserve the environment and build support for legislative change. According to the official Earth Day website, "The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts." Those are some pretty big changes. Small changes can make a difference But Earth Day promotes small changes that can make a difference as well. I liked how last week, the Huffington Post set daily challenges for people to practice Earth-friendly lifestyle changes. They asked people to do simple things like go meatless for a day, waste less power, paper and water, and reuse containers, clothing and other items. So in the true spirit of Earth Day, I’d like to propose another change that people and organizations can make to help our environment: work from home. Check the data Data from the Telework Research Network show that working remotely just one day a week can make a significant environmental impact. A whole week of workshifting can make an even bigger difference. Green Technology World estimates that this year’s National Telework Week, held the week of March 16, "resulted in $5.5 million saved and 3,358 tons of pollutants removed." That’s what can happen when people get together to commit to change. I’m pleased to note that when people use our GoToMyPC remote access tool to work from home, they aren’t just increasing productivity and flexibility, but also reducing their carbon footprint. Want to see how much of a difference you can make? Check out our GoToCleanAir carbon calculator to learn how working remotely can help you preserve our environment and celebrate Earth Day all year long.