Global collaboration for artists, courtesy of Google Apps

Editor's Note: Continuing our “Going Google Everywhere” series, we’re pleased to welcome guest blogger Itamar Kubovy, Executive Director of Pilobolus, an innovative modern dance company that has gone Google. Itamar has been producing, writing and directing theater, dance and film since 1985 in Europe and the US. He joined Pilobolus at the beginning of 2004 as the company's first Executive Director. Last week, Pilobolus opened its 23rd summer season at the Joyce Theater in New York City, premiering new works and showcasing beloved classics. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map.

Pilobolus is a small company with 50 people strewn all over the world at any one time. We perform 200 shows in 30 or 40 different countries each year and have two different dance companies, so each week we have people moving around the world for performances and educational activities. There are a lot of logistics and moving parts that keepPilobolus going.

We moved to Google Apps Premier Edition because we needed enterprise-level collaboration tools, without the high cost and maintenance. Most of us have iPhones and we keep track of 20 to 30 Google Calendars at a time. We also use Google Docs to manage our travel arrangements. Before moving to Google Apps, we would print out piles of travel itineraries that constantly kept changing. We estimate we are saving about 12,000 pieces of paper a year with Google Docs, if you consider that each dancer had about 10 pages of printed travel instructions for each venue!

So much of the information we need to share is visual – rehearsals, performances, and such. It used to be difficult to share visual information when performances were kept on videotape. There was typically just one tape floating around, and if we wanted to share it with a choreographer or other dancers somewhere else, itwasn’t easy. Now, we upload all of our performances onto Google Video for business , part of the Google Apps Premier Edition suite. We have found that there is a lot more discussion happening, and we’ve been able to collaborate in real-time with choreographers and artists all around the world.

In one instance, we worked with a couple in Tel Aviv who was helping us choreograph a new dance. The woman of the couple was due to have a baby any second and couldn’t travel. From a studio in Florida, we were able to collaborate together with the team in Tel Aviv using video streams of the rehearsal over Google Video. The power of Google Video for business for global collaboration is dramatically changing the way we work together and collaborate. It's so important in terms of communicating what went right or wrong, pinpointing a weak link in the performance, communicating changes to the choreography, or in asking questions of choreographers located in different places around the world.

Video is a great collaboration tool when it comes to rich media – it’s the way we bring together a team that is spread all over the world.Google's tools have definitely made it easier to put our best foot forward!

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps Marketing