What do you use/do to stay in touch with business partners that are in a different geographical location?

IM works great for one-on-one. If you need to conference all, maybe Skype, but I'm not sure what the max limit is in it. These are free tools. If you're all in different time zones, some sort of bulletin board accessible only by the members would probably be great; that way each can chime in any time they have time, especially moms...

I work for a tech company with branches at Mexico, BRazil, Japan and China. We use skype/msn for short communications and with few people at the same time. If the meeting is going to be longer or more people is involved we use webex to share a "board", PPTs, etc. We have an internal wiki too to share information too.

It depends a lot on what you mean by "stay in touch" and what you want to accomplish.

Are you wanting to have instant, spontaneous communications? Or more like weekly, report-type communications? Or more personal, interactive methods? Or automated, emailed notes / newsletters? Or all of the above? :)

You can do a combination of all of these: combine emails, newsletters, your website, maybe a forum or forums on your website, webinars, phone calls, IMs, etc.

One company with whom I'm familiar does a great job doing all this, and they have to reach many parts of the globe, not just the US. They do quite a few webinars, for example. They present each one once, but record each one and make the recording available in a members-only forum. I frequently cannot attend live, and love that I can see the whole thing at a time that's convenient for me. Each webinar is accompanied by a live chat room, which is terrific for building community, for getting feedback, and even for helping answer questions. (If you're going to do a lot of webinars, my guess is you'll want to look at a pay product. GoToMeeting seems as competent as any of these.) They also use Aweber to automatically send out a variety of timed emails (reminders, thank yous, etc.).

For voice-only conferences, I've used Skype very successfully. Skype is free, and has come a long way in the last three years. There's a built-in IM client that's good.

Facebook might provide a useful platform, as well. It might be sufficient for a lot of things, in fact, but your group/community would need to be open to it (many business types are resistant to Facebook).

If you're just getting started, you could do a lot with a website that has one or more forums, Skype, and a service like MailChimp, which has a great free starter offering.

HTH,

Mike

We have an IRC chat room that is always on and it is what we use for most daily conversations. We also Skype, DimDim, GoToMeeting, and email, but I would estimate 75% of our communication goes through IRC.

My company, while virtual, is smaller than that...however the open source projects I'm involved with are not. What we've found works best is:

• An IRC channel or MUC room.
• IRC /msg or Jabber
• An issue tracker
• Email discussion list, private NNTP server/group, or web forum
• Some sort of web space to stick documents and info everyone should have available for reference.

It sounds like a long list, I know, but the more tightly integrated it is the easier it becomes to use. For example, a service like GitHub can give you a private repo with a rudimentary issue tracker, a nice revision-controlled Wiki, getting you halfway there. Things like Active Collab or Open Atrium give you many of these tools in one place, too.

Important characteristics of what I have suggested:

• I always focus on text-based communication because it is loggable, and it scales well. I can search for things I missed/forgot, or to get clarification about what was said on a topic, at any time. Also, I can carry on multiple conversations at once without losing track of any of it.
• There should be a central place to follow action items so everyone stays on task.
• It should be easy to reach an individual or the group via synchronous (instant) or asynchronous (when they check their inbox) communication.
• I choose open protocols/formats/apis wherever possible -- I like people to be able to choose their own clients so that following what's going on is as quick and convenient a part of their overall workflow as possible. The easier it is, the more people will actually use it.