(OOC) EVE Skills Help in RL!

When I started playing EVE two years ago, I set out immediately to start my own industrial corporation. We were just a few RL friends mining and building ships. We set goals, and started growing. We're still a small corporation by all standards, but the corporation makes isk. We make enough isk to invest most of it in new ventures, and still keep the profit. I never really thought of myself as a leader before being a CEO in EVE.

Now, in my senior year at game design school, as I began to treat RL team management like EVE team management, I noticed that the skill carried over.

I was elected as project manager for our graduation project by my class. I realized right away that I was approaching the group with more confidence and assertion, due to my dealings with my EVE corporation. I layed out goals, set plans, and assigned tasks. I ran into some EVE-like problems though.

Real people, like capsuleers, have their own agendas, keep their own best interests, and are always looking for something other than the grind to stimulate them. By implementing group communication techniques that are new and trendy, and keep people using new technologies, group interest in a project can stay fresh.

One thing that has helped our project is a Wiki. This is an awesome project management tool. If you're like me, just having a wiki to edit makes me 'want' to post content and create pages. The rest of the team follows suit and the ability to comment makes team members feel like their opinions will be heard by the entire team, where in a board-room-type setting they might not speak up.

Social networking sites like twitter and facebook that offer SMS updates to be sent directly to or from mobile devices are also a neat utility. Team members can send and recieve instant updates to the entire group. Having that information instantly gives a much more 'live' feel to the project. It makes it feel like it's running 24/7 which keeps the team more actively involved.

EVE runs 24/7. There is a live feel to the EVE universe because it never stops. Even when the servers are down for DT, characters continue training, POS's continue churning materials, and the isk printing machines(corps) keep printing isk. People from all over the world can contribute to the corporation because of being able to utilize in-game communications methods as well as external web based resources to convey corporate goals, policies, and tasks.