{"id":116542,"date":"2020-08-10T16:31:49","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T16:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=438672"},"modified":"2020-08-10T16:31:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T16:31:49","slug":"vaccine-alliance-gavi-turns-to-microsoft-teams-to-launch-jab-fm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/08\/10\/vaccine-alliance-gavi-turns-to-microsoft-teams-to-launch-jab-fm\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccine alliance Gavi turns to Microsoft Teams to launch \u2018Jab FM\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The show\u2019s seven-member crew works for Gavi<\/a>, a Geneva-based organization focused on providing vaccines for children in the world\u2019s poorest countries. As the organization\u2019s approximately 280 employees turned to working remotely when the coronavirus pandemic struck, Mends, Gavi\u2019s director of operations, worried some might become isolated. He pulled together other members of Gavi\u2019s social club, which he runs, to think about ways to help their colleagues connect.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that really resonated with me when we were having that conversation was the power of music and the familiarity of hearing people talking,\u201d Mends says. \u201cSo I came up with the zany idea that we do a radio station.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also Mends\u2019 idea to use Teams, Microsoft\u2019s collaboration and chat platform, to power the show. He looked at various technologies for connecting audio to create the effect of the crew being together in a studio but found them overly complex and unstable. Instead, he uses a professional microphone that picks up audio from the hosts and guests that is streamed out of a laptop via Teams. A second laptop runs a web radio app used to mix in music and jingles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat a simple Teams meeting gave us was that ability to sound like we\u2019re all in the same studio,\u201d Mends says.<\/p>\n

For Milena Lawrence-Samuel, Gavi\u2019s communications and change manager, the breakfast show is a way to connect with colleagues she no longer sees around the office.<\/p>\n

\u201cGavi is a really interactive and somewhat informal environment, and I love being able to walk around and have a quick chat with a friend or someone I\u2019ve never interacted with professionally,\u201d says Lawrence-Samuel, who does a tech tip of the day and runs a quiz question on the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose people have fallen off my radar. This is a way of getting that back. It\u2019s a touchpoint to our colleagues that we don\u2019t get to see every day anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Gavi helps vaccinate almost half the world\u2019s children. Here, nurses attend a training program on vaccine and health procedures at a clinic in Sri Lanka. (Photo by Mithra Weerakone)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jab FM (\u201cjab\u201d is Brit slang for an injection, a nod to Gavi\u2019s mission) launched with its first breakfast show in late April and has so far attracted almost 5,000 listeners on every continent except South America, according to Mends. The station plays music around the clock, but the breakfast show is its only live broadcast.<\/p>\n

The show airs Tuesday and Friday mornings and is heavily music-focused, with themes often reflecting Gavi\u2019s diverse workforce. One episode focused on African music, with Gavi employees from African nations coming on to request songs and talk about their significance. Another episode was French-themed. Others have celebrated disco, Bollywood music and movie tunes.<\/p>\n

The show aims not just to attract Gavi listeners, but actively engage them as guests.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople feel when they ring in that they\u2019re participating in something,\u201d Mends says. \u201cIt\u2019s that sense of community that has motivated people. But the primary purpose was really to give a bit of a lifeline and a bit of normality to those people who were feeling isolated in the beginning (of the lockdown).\u201d<\/p>\n

Mends even had jingles created for the show and each crew member to surprise the team. \u201cAlthough it\u2019s not a professional station, I just thought we wanted to wow people and make them feel it was a real thing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The show is an international effort \u2014 Mends broadcasts from his basement in Perroy, a town about 15 miles from Geneva, while co-host Ardiff works from his home across the border in Ornex, France. The other crew members are scattered around the Geneva area.<\/p>\n

A high point for the show was its live broadcast during Gavi\u2019s Global Vaccine Summit in early June. Held every five years, the event is Gavi\u2019s main fundraising effort, and the stakes this year were especially high.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Parents bring their children to a health center in Dedza, Malawi to be immunized against two deadly diseases, measles and rubella. (Photo by Jacques Schmitz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The summit, attended by 52 countries, was originally to be held in London and was instead going online for the first time. Staffers wondered if vaccine funding would be a high enough priority during the global pandemic to meet Gavi\u2019s target of $7.4 billion. Funding was needed for Gavi\u2019s routine vaccination programs, and the organization was also launching a program<\/a> to distribute an eventual COVID-19 vaccine to impoverished countries.<\/p>\n

Nerves were running high as Mends and other Gavi employees gathered in a room at the Global Health Campus in Geneva, at desks spaced apart, to track donations and monitor the event. As Jab FM listeners tuned in, Mends interviewed colleagues to get their read on how things were going, holding a microphone attached to a length of bamboo to maintain a safe distance.<\/p>\n

The tension was palpable as the crew waited to hear British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announce the fundraising total. As Johnson began speaking, a cheer went up and Mends jubilantly relayed the amount \u2014 a record $8.8 billion in funding for 2021 to 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201c$8.8 billion, Barry!\u201d Mends tells his co-host.
\u201c$8.8?\u201d Ardiff says incredulously.
\u201c$8.8!\u201d Mends repeats.
\u201cThat is extraordinary,\u201d Ardiff says. \u201cI think Andy sounds like he\u2019s going to cry.\u201d
\u201cNo I\u2019m not. I\u2019m fine,\u201d Mends says, laughing.
\u201cThat is absolutely amazing,\u201d Ardiff says. \u201cBrilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though anyone could tune in to the virtual event, Mends thinks the radio show gave listeners a unique perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt portrayed a real, inside view on the emotion and tension that\u2019s the same for a virtual event behind the scenes as it is for a physical event,\u201d he says. \u201cIt captured the essence of why we did it, which was to bring people together so that they felt joined up even though we were all very apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Children at a school in Myanmar show off their certificates after receiving a vaccination for Japanese encephalitis. (Photo by Jacques Schmitz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though Jab FM represents Gavi\u2019s most innovative use of Teams, the platform has become a go-to tool for the organization in other ways. Gavi\u2019s \u201cdemand hub,\u201d which promotes vaccine demand and provides guidance to countries, adopted Teams so employees could work on documents together in one place and avoid endless email threads.<\/p>\n

With Gavi partners working across different time zones and regions and on many different workstreams, online collaboration was important. When the pandemic hit, the ability to quickly share information became even more critical.<\/p>\n

Tala Ghalayini, a digital innovation consultant for Gavi, researched various platforms and settled on Teams because it allows users to have video meetings, chat, upload documents and collaborate in one place. She used Teams to create a channel where partners in various countries can add links and updates on their regions. While some employees were initially reluctant to adopt a new application, she says, the pandemic changed that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause COVID is so fast-moving and every day there\u2019s so much happening so quickly in so many different places, it\u2019s hard to keep up,\u201d says Ghalayini.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is where Teams comes in, because it\u2019s easy to quickly share a guidance note or an in-country survey that could be useful to somebody. I think this is where Teams really did catalyze the movement to using it more rigorously. I\u2019m shocked by how quickly it\u2019s taken off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gavi\u2019s office culture might be informal, but its work is a somber business. Since launching in 2000, the organization and its partners have helped vaccinate more than 760 million children from infectious diseases, preventing an estimated 13 million-plus deaths.<\/p>\n

\"Photo
Polio vaccinators in India, where the disease has been eradicated, immunize children wherever they are \u2014 in cities, remote regions and transit stations. (Photo by Manpreet Romana)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before the pandemic, Gavi employees were expected to report to the office. A formal work-from-home culture didn\u2019t exist. Suddenly, employees had to figure out a way to work remotely without slowing down the organization\u2019s critical work. Gavi had access to Teams but hadn\u2019t rolled it out officially or trained employees to use it. Yet during the first week of remote work, Gavi employees held more than 830 meetings and more than half were on Teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople figured out really quickly that it was a great way to meet online,\u201d says Cagen, the former Seattleite who is the senior manager of Gavi\u2019s monitoring and evaluation team. \u201cIt\u2019s suddenly had this boom of activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The informal nature of remote work and video meetings \u2014 kids popping up in backgrounds, pets making random appearances \u2014 has brought a newfound levity to Gavi, employees say. Cagen\u2019s group launched a \u201cfun channel\u201d on Teams where they\u2019ve posted photos of their dogs, traded tips on traveling in Switzerland and held a happy hour during which they walked around with their phones and laptops, showing each other their apartments.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil lockdown, you didn\u2019t see everyone\u2019s inner workings,\u201d Cagen says. \u201cNow I know that Milena has the really cool kitchen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ghalayini recalls an early Teams meeting when her manager set her background to one with bouncing balls, to her amusement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do serious business and it\u2019s hard to inject some fun, especially amidst the crisis, but it was very humorous,\u201d she says. \u201cEven just seeing that, it felt like a cultural shift. Other people were uploading sunsets in the background, and beaches, and it was really funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the Barry and Andy show, Mends hopes it will go on even after Switzerland continues to move out of lockdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has opened up another channel of communication with staff and an opportunity for us to connect in a different way,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a unique thing to the organization. I think it would be sad to see it go completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Top photo: The Jab FM crew is all smiles during a recent episode of Barry and Andy\u2019s breakfast show. Clockwise from top left: Shelby Lyon, Milena Lawrence-Samuel, Jane Mulder, Maria Isabella Paez, Andy Mends, Barry Ardiff. Bottom row: Rod Abson. (Photo courtesy of Gavi). Audio segment produced by Sara Lerner.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The show\u2019s seven-member crew works for Gavi, a Geneva-based organization focused on providing vaccines for children in the world\u2019s poorest countries. As the organization\u2019s approximately 280 employees turned to working remotely when the coronavirus pandemic struck, Mends, Gavi\u2019s director of operations, worried some might become isolated. He pulled together other members of Gavi\u2019s social club, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[156,50],"class_list":["post-116542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-news","tag-microsoft-teams","tag-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}