In recent years we’ve seen the rise in popularity of the "Paleo Diet" - a food regime based on the idea that we should eat like our hunter-gatherer ancestors thousands of years ago. In genetic terms, humans have hardly changed since cavemen discovered fire. Therefore, (the theory goes) an ideal diet for human health and wellbeing is one that conforms to their ancient liking for grains, wild plants and free-range animals. While perhaps more likely to be eaten or squashed by prehistoric megafauna, hunter-gatherers were apparently free of the chronic ailments that affect a high proportion of the population today, like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. Diet, without a doubt, has something to do with this. Well, that’s fine. But I’m surprised there hasn’t been a corresponding surge of interest in… Paleo Working. Hunter-gatherers, as you might guess, lived anything but sedentary lives. They - and we, if we follow the logic - were never designed to sit at a desk all day. We were meant to roam free. Nevertheless, the idea that we should structure our lives around a central, unchanging location - i.e. the office - has become deeply embedded in society, despite certain faint hereditary misgivings. Lately I’ve even seen one or two people using treadmill desks - a kind of 21st-century version of the rolling Palaeolithic grasslands at the dawn of time - as if impelled onward by the memory of their ancestors, even as they remain in the same place, typing emails. The vast majority of the rest of us remain seated, eating nuts and dried fruit. All I’m saying is that maybe we should ease up on the Paleo Diet (after all, it has its critics as well as advocates) and start Paleo Working. As I’ve argued elsewhere, we certainly have the technology to escape from our desks. The only thing holding us back is our relatively new, desk-centric working habits. What we need to do is embrace our inner caveman. Take the first step GoToMeeting is simple yet powerful, allowing you to collaborate face-to-face with anyone, anywhere in the world using your PC, Mac or mobile device. It’s easy to use and round-the-clock support is only ever a click away. Try it free here.   Photo credit: yaketyyakyak

We’re offering you and a friend or colleague the chance to win back the annual cost of your commute, up to the value of £5,000! Find out how to enter below. With rail fare hikes outpacing wage increases, getting to work can take a big bite out of your monthly income. And with an expected average rise of over four per cent looming this year, it’s not getting any easier. So, we thought we’d lend a helping hand, to the tune of £5000! Here’s how to enter the competition: If you’re not already a user, sign up for our free trial of GoToMeeting - no credit card needed. Tweet a screenshot of you holding an online meeting to @GoToMeetingUK (If you’re unsure how to take a screenshot, check out this simple guide). That’s it! The winner will be announced via Twitter on Monday 2 December. Have fun with your pic The beauty of online meetings is not just that you can attend meetings everywhere without going anywhere (although that’s pretty cool), you also get to see the other people in the meeting in high definition. So we’d love to see some eye-catching entries! Here are a few ideas: Wear an awesome hat Hold up a sign with your favourite inspiring quote OR the cost of your annual commute Hold a meeting somewhere interesting We can’t wait to see your entries. Ready? Go! #winyourcommute Terms and conditions   Photo Credit: icopythat via Compfight cc

120,000 people are headed to SOMA in San Francisco this week for Dreamforce, including a tow of our colleagues who are ready to listen, present and network - in addition to drinking all the San Francisco coffee they can get their hands on. Here’s how to join in our Citrix-at-Dreamforce fun. Stop by our booth (number N2219 in the North Hall) and show us your business card or a Citrix mobile app that’s downloaded to your phone for your chance to win the iPad Air. Already have an iPad? We’re giving away iPad sleeves too. Join our colleagues at one of these sessions: Monday, 10 AM - 11 AM Press 1 for CTI Success Palace Hotel, Ralston Room Erik Coll, Manager Siebel and Avaya CTI CitrixCTI is fast becoming standard for Salesforce deployments. And why not? Telephony continues to be the largest service channel even in today’s social world. Voice provides both the last line of defense to keep a defecting customer and the white glove service for your most important ones. Join us as we discuss how Open CTI has made CTI integrations easier than ever. Our customer speakers will discuss their experience and motivations, and their stories will show how CTI is more accessible and powerful than ever. Monday, 11:30 AM - 12 PM Cross Filters, Joined Reports and Bucketing Make Workarounds a Thing of the Past The Westin St. Francis San Francisco, Grand Ballroom: Westin Carrie Schoenvogel, Salesforce.com Administrator, Citrix Why use a workaround when you can build a real solution using the advanced Enterprise Analytics features? Join us to hear customer stories about implementations using Enterprise Analytics features (joined reports, cross-object filters, and bucketing) that make workarounds a thing of past. Monday, November 18: 2 PM - 2:30 PM Marketing Cloud: Generating Leads and Sales on Social Channels The Westin St. Francis, Tower Salon A Justin Levy, Director, Social Marketing, CitrixHow do you generate leads and interest on social without scaring off prospects? How do you promote your brand or products without seeming pushy? Join our panel of experts as they share tips and best practices on how to effectively use social for lead generation. Monday, 2:30 PM - 3 PM Shorten Your Development Time with an Extensible Design for Apex Moscone Center West, Developer Theater With Robert Nunemaker, Senior Salesforce.com Systems Development Manager, Citrix Throwing hundreds (or thousands) of lines in a trigger or class will quickly get out of hand. How do you reverse engineer it? How do you see what the trigger is doing? How do you scale and make enhancements without impacting existing code? Join us to learn about a customized coding pattern: EDA - Event, Distpatch, Action. EDA will address all of this and make your code scalable, efficient and very maintainable. Tuesday, November 19: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM Citizen Developers: The Future of Business Applications San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Yerba Buena - Salons 10, 11, 12 With Sebastian Barnes, Senior Salesforce.com Manager, Citrix By 2014, Gartner estimates that 25% of new business applications will be delivered by "citizen developers." A citizen what?!? Join us to learn all about citizen developers and why they are becoming so important to the large enterprise. Hear direct from our customers, who are building great new front-office apps through citizen-developer programs while simultaneously adhering to IT governance policies, delivering value to end users and freeing up enterprise IT to focus on more strategic transformational initiatives. Your IT back log will soon be a thing of the past! Wednesday, November 20: 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Marketing Cloud: Moving Your Enterprise Through Social Maturity The Westin St. Francis San Francisco, Colonial Room With Justin Levy, Director, Social Marketing, Citrix Moving up the social maturity curve involves strategy, solutions and governance. Join us to learn the playbook for moving through the various stages with our guests Citrix, Nissan and JetBlue. Connect with @gotomeeting on Twitter. Not all of us can be at Dreamforce this week, so those of us at the office will be following the Dreamforce happenings at #DF13 and updates from our colleagues inside Moscone from @gotomeeting. If you are there, make it a digital party and send a pic of the fun you’re having to the @gotomeeting team on Twitter.

"This year I am thankful that Mom didn’t make me listen to Twilight on tape during our drive up here." Yep, that was my sister’s contribution one year to our family’s tradition of listing what we’re thankful for aloud at the holidays. We (and many other families around the world) like to sit as a group and name something (or things) that we are thankful for. Sometimes they are funny - like my sister’s - and sometimes they’re more serious, but taking a moment to spell out what we appreciate about each other makes us all feel special. Staying both appreciative and productive during the holidays can be difficult, even though we’re supposedly surrounded by cheer. More realistically, you’re running errands non-stop, cooking meals, planning parties and outfits, thinking of your New Year’s resolutions, decorating the house, cleaning for guests, shopping for the perfect gifts and, oh yeah, working. It sounds like a lot, and, trust me, I’ve had a few near-meltdown moments during the holidays. However, have you ever noticed that when someone takes a moment to say "Thank you" for your work - be it organizing Thanksgiving dinner or getting your year-end progress report in on time - it renews your spirit and turns that frown upside down? Feeling valued is a productivity instigator. A recent Forbes article by corporate HR and talent analyst Josh Bersin notes that while it’s not exactly rocket science that people who feel valued tend to get more done, employee-recognition programs can make your team more productive year-round. In fact, employee happiness is becoming a hot topic among CEOs and boardrooms alike. Bersin writes: "When your company embraces a modern recognition program and people start thanking each other, trust and engagement go up - improving employee morale, quality and customer service." But this isn’t just a management parable. This should be a company-wide initiative in order to really see success. Leading by example is a great way to foster a recognition-rich work culture throughout 2014. Bersin provides a few tips to get the ball rolling: Include specific results or behaviors in your message of recognition and appreciation. Tie the results and behaviors to your company’s goals. Encourage both formal and informal peer-to-peer recognition. Recognize and share stories of internal and external success whenever possible. Check out the rest of the article. Then tell someone "Thank you." Photo Credit: vernhart via Compfight cc

‘Tis the season to get shopping! If you’re like me, you are going to be watching the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals like a hawk. Getting everything on your list isn’t as tricky as it sounds. Just treat your cyber shopping strategy as you would a big presentation to the CEO. There’s setup and planning involved, and you need to have clear goals prepared in order to get what you need. Here are 5 top tips for tackling the cyber sale shopping like you would a presentation to the CEO: Have a plan. Organizing your approach and knowing what you need to accomplish is your first priority. You don’t want to waste your CEO’s time and you don’t want to miss out on great deals because you forgot something on your list. Having an agenda or itemized list of shopping goals is an easy way to keep your holiday shopping on target. Flattery goes a long way. Chatting up your CEO about their interests or hobbies can go a long way towards building a personal rapport - much like connecting with larger retailers via their social channels, which can score you exclusive promotions. Get there early. Just like with your presentation, the earlier you get started, the more successful you’ll be, So arrive early to the mall or get online at an ungodly hour. Read the fine print. A lot of retailers have limitations on quantity per customer or crazy return policies for items bought on sale during the holidays. Holiday retailers expect you to know the rules, just like your CEO expects your presentation to align with his or her high-level view. Stick to the plan. Your agenda is your roadmap to getting what you need out of your presentation and your shopping list. Since you probably have a set number of people to buy for and/or a limited budget, don’t stray from your plan. It will only distract you from your core tasks and you might end up not getting everything you planned for. Do you have any suggestions for Cyber Monday or Black Friday holiday sale shopping strategies? We’d love to hear them! Photo Credit: Stéfan via Compfight cc

UK commuters are feeling the pain of rail costs, which are set to rise above the rate of inflation for the eleventh consecutive year. But what are the implications for UK businesses? We quizzed over 500 London commuters to find out. Check out our findings in this infographic . Light at the end of the tunnel There’s good news for those whose wallets are feeling the pressure — Working remotely has never been easier or more productive. Andrew Millard, senior director marketing, Citrix, detailed the significant issues for companies and commuters from their increasingly onerous daily trip to work: "The pressures of commuting on families, work-life balance and productivity are well documented, but this snapshot of commuters’ attitudes highlights the potential risk businesses are facing as London workers consider a move out of the capital to avoid the daily commute. Any significant reduction in this considerable skills base could have a damaging effect on business growth. To prevent any loss of talent, businesses need to take practical steps to offer flexible working to their staff." What do you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts! Let us know on Twitter! #winyourcommute with GoToMeeting and take home £5k! To lend commuters a hand, we’re offering one lucky person in the UK the chance to win £5,000 for their commute. To enter, all you have to do is hold an online meeting. Simple, right? You can enter right here. Good luck! Photo Credit: .aditya. via Compfight cc

December 24 is undeniably a pretty big night for Old Saint Nick. Going by the numbers, Santa has to deliver gifts to almost 528 millions kids worldwide (that’s about 365,000 kids per second.) Now you’re probably not making toys for millions of kids, but you too might be feeling the pressure that comes with trying to get everything done before the close of another year. After reading Maria Popova’s article about the history of the to-do list and the psychology of its success, I realized that my lists were good - but could be better. Turns out, I wasn’t making to-do lists that work for me. Even jolly Mr. Clause must use something to organize his tasks to ensure everything gets done by Christmas Eve. (An iMerry, perhaps?) So before your end-of-the-year task management makes you Claus-trophobic, here are some tips to channel the big guy himself and create a to-do list that will actually help you get things done: Break larger projects into smaller tasks. Santa’s to-do list for December 24 would never read "Make all the toys." He and the elves work and plan year-round to get everything made by Christmas Eve. The process of breaking down much larger projects into more elf-sized next steps will make completing action items on your list feel doable. Make list items actionable and specific. After you’ve made your list, be sure to check it twice to make sure it’s detailed as possible. It’s easier to follow through on descriptive and prescriptive tasks rather than vague generalizations. Prioritize your list. Saint Nick isn’t just winging it. It’s rumored that the man delivers by time zone to get his work done all in one night. Having a list hierarchy will help you complete the most time-sensitive items and train you in the powerful skill of saying "no" to the tasks that aren’t necessary. Be realistic. Unlike Santa, you don’t have elves and magic to help you complete your to-do list. Be honest with yourself and make sure to schedule tasks realistically within the timeframe that you have. Plan ahead. Santa works year round to ensure children worldwide get their toys on time. Once you’ve made your list and broken it down into prioritized tasks, make sure you plan your workday accordingly to accommodate what you need to get done. Do you have any productivity tips for to-do lists or groan-worthy Santa word puns? Send ‘em our way!   Photo credit: aheram

Did you know that small businesses employ over half the U.S. workforce? They play a big role, but their successes often go unheard. We thought some extra exposure was in order, so we’re launching a new series here on the GoTo Blog called Small Business Stories. It’ll be a regular feature highlighting small business owners who’ve used Citrix solutions to great effect, and we’re starting with GoToMyPC customers picked from our video submission gallery. For each post, we’ll give a little background and then share the video the owner recorded so you can hear from him or her directly. Kicking off the series for us, Kaydee Peterson is the owner of Peterson Business Services, based in Vancouver, WA. Kaydee runs a consultancy that uses technology to provide accounting services to businesses. In the process, Kaydee and her team help clients to balance their own work and family lives. That’s a benefit Kaydee can appreciate, because she’s often just as busy. "I always knew that I would be a business owner, but now as a parent myself, I truly understand the value of business and family time," said Kaydee. She wanted a way for employees to leave the office behind without having to close everything up. So, she turned to remote access as a solution. After trying a few "less than awesome" remote access methods, Kaydee settled on GoToMyPC as the way to a healthy work-life balance. The trusted Citrix security, ease of use and broad device compatibility were big reasons why. With GoToMyPC for her and her team, leaving the office to handle personal affairs is no longer stressful. They can just connect back in through GoToMyPC to finish work from wherever they are. "Our office does not compete with our personal lives, but enables us to live more fully the way we really want to," Kaydee said. Check out Kaydee’s video below to hear how GoToMyPC has changed the way she personally works. Whether spending time with her kids or taking off for a vacation, she can relax knowing she can still get her work done when she needs to. Want to be in the next Small Business Story? Click on over to our video gallery where you can record a short snippet about you, your business and how you’re using GoToMyPC. We’ll post each one to our web and social channels, and our favorites will be featured in our Small Business Stories here on the GoTo Blog.

Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2013 offered an enormous mix of inspirational ideas. It had 1,250 expert-led sessions in four days, an estimated 120,000 people registered and Twitter lit up with more than 569 million potential impressions around the #df13 hashtag. During the week in San Francisco, we listened to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Yahoo!’s Marissa Mayer, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and the one-and-only Deepak Chopra. But a few ideas really stuck with us after the sessions wrapped and we headed back to work. The four tweets below from Dreamforce capture some of the big trends in 2013 that are changing how business is done. #DF13 Highlights: "We need to become customer companies," said @Benioff during #SF1 launch. We couldn’t agree more pic.twitter.com/DsGo2HlqqJ — GoToMeeting (@GoToMeeting) November 21, 2013 The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we connect and communicate with each other, including the companies we buy from. More change is coming. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) is poised to radically transform how consumers and companies communicate with one another. Cisco explains the IoT in more detail here with a handy infographic. They expect 50 billion devices—from cars to coffeemakers—to be connected by 2020. So what does this mean and what is the impact likely to be? As more and more products have the ability to automatically share data with one another, companies will learn a lot about their customers. They will also be able to connect with customers in entirely new ways through direct one-to-one relationships. It will—as Salesforce’s CEO Marc Benioff says—result in successful companies being more customer-focused as they respond to habits and needs. Mobile caught a lot of people by surprise, says @Marissamayer. Many companies haven’t kept up with the fast growing demand #DF13 — GoToMeeting (@GoToMeeting) November 20, 2013   Mobile has exploded. In 2013, mobile Internet traffic grew to 15% from 1% in 2009. In the U.S., smartphone use is growing 28% year over year. Users report checking their phone an average of 150 times a day with 63% of female respondents and 73% of male respondents reporting they don’t go more than an hour without checking. At Dreamforce, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, talked about growing their business in the mobile category to meet users’ needs. According to Mayer, Yahoo! reaches 400 million users on mobile every month. Comscore says 82.2% of U.S. mobile users turn to Yahoo! ‒ which is just behind Facebook’s 84%. Since joining the company in 2012, Mayer has grown the mobile engineering team from about 60 to over 400. She’s also heavily invested in content creation in 2013, according to The Independent. She’s hired David Pogue, an ex-New York Times technology columnist, Matt Bai, the former chief political correspondent for the New York Times magazine and, most recently, Katie Couric, who will be the company’s global anchor. How prepared is your company for the mobile revolution? By 2015, more than 80% of handsets in mature markets will be smart phones. "The only sustainable content strategy is to think of the core human things that inspire people to share," says @peretti #DF13 — GoToMeeting (@GoToMeeting) November 20, 2013 More than 70% of B2C marketers say they are producing more content now compared to a year ago, according to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). And 60% of B2C marketers expect their organization’s content marketing budget to increase over the next 12 months ‒ up from 55% last year. As for B2B organizations, 93% are marketing to customers and prospects with a wide mix of content-based approaches, and 73% are producing more content than they did one year ago. This means the content marketing is only getting more competitive. A new report from DigitalSherpa.com on content marketing in 2013 and the trends for 2014 found that 58% of organizations saying they plan to increase their spending in this area. So what is your company’s content marketing strategy? After all, companies with a documented strategy are far more likely to consider themselves effective at it and less likely to struggle with content creation, according to the CMI. Would the world be a better place if more women were in leadership roles? Let’s try it, says @sherylsandberg #DF13 pic.twitter.com/YJyCbWQhn7 — GoToMeeting (@GoToMeeting) November 21, 2013   Only 4% of the CEO’s in Fortune’s top 1,000 companies are female. Of the Fortune 500 companies, 50 have no female board members at all. Women like Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg are loudly calling attention to the desperate need for gender equality in leadership roles. Earlier this year, Forbes named the rise of female leaders as a major trend in 2013. A recent Booz & Company report, called The Third Billion, found that if female employment rates were to match male rates in the U.S., overall GDP would rise by 5%. There are many studies on the positive impact female leaders have in businesses. Here are just 3 compelling facts: Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors, says a report from Catalyst An extensive 19-year study of 215 Fortune 500 firms shows a strong correlation between a robust record of promoting women into the executive suite and high profitability, according to a report by the European Project on Equal Pay 27% of newly incorporated companies with one female director have a 27% lower risk of becoming insolvent than comparable firms with all-male boards, says research from Leeds University Business School If things don’t change, it will take 3 centuries for women to reach parity as CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, according to HBR.com. We’re inspired to make that happen faster. Whether through the IoT, mobile technology, or the rise of female leaders, how we do business is undergoing serious and exciting changes. The transformational ideas, captured at Dreamforce, will no doubt continue to influence us in the year to come. To see more of our coverage of Dreamforce 13, visit our newsroom. We also took a lot of pictures. Check out our Facebook album, our portraits, and a collection of pictures from the Marketo party GoToWebinar co-hosted.   Photo Credit: jdlasica via Compfight cc

Have you heard the news? GoToMeeting 6.0 has launched, and it’s featuring some new features that make collaborating online easier and more effective. ‘Round here, we had the pleasure of testing the new features prior to launch. So we’ve gathered some insider tips to help you get started with GoToMeeting 6.0. GoToMeet.Me Beta GoToMeet.Me Beta is a new way to invite people to meetings. When you set up a free personalized landing page through GoToMeet.Me, the custom link to your page is all you need to invite anyone to on-the-fly meetings. Your custom page features your job title and photo from your LinkedIn profile and offers a simple Join My Meeting button so people can easily join your meeting right from the page. Why we love it: Having a single URL to copy to meeting attendees simplifies the process of starting a meeting online. For consideration: GoToMeet.Me works on iOS and Android too, so be sure to have the GoToMeeting app downloaded for a seamless meeting initiation experience. GoToMeeting 100 Good news for the head honchos out there: GoToMeeting can now accommodate sessions for larger teams and groups. With the new tier of GoToMeeting, up to 100 users can now join your GoToMeeting sessions. Why we love it: Some teams and companies are bigger than others, and it should be just as easy for a department to meet online as it is for small teams. For consideration: If your large team is meeting online for training or presentations, GoToTraining or GoToWebinar might be a better fit for your needs. Current customers can upgrade to GoToMeeting 100 by contacting their account manager or logging into their account at gotomeeting.com and navigating to Change Plan. New customers can purchase GoToMeeting 100 at the end of their GoToMeeting trial. GoToMeeting Labs Found under the File tab of GoToMeeting, GoToMeeting Labs gives you the opportunity to try out the new features we are building to improve the meeting experience. Not only will you now be able to see what we’re working on, but we hope you will also provide feedback from using the features so we know whether you like what you’re seeing or not. Why we love it: Customers can more easily and directly affect the features and functions of our products. For consideration: The Labs features will be in Beta, so please understand that the Beta process is to test something that is less-than-perfect in order to perfect it before formal launch. And that’s just the start! Read about the other new features and updates to GoToMeeting that we’ve launched (or are about to launch).