The Evolving Worker

There are many collaborative tools available on the internet – including complicated ones. While discussing with friends the other day, I realised that some of the tools I use on a regular basis were unknown to them and that they would be worth sharing on this blog. That’s the purpose of this article.

These tools share a few common points:

• I find them simple enough to use to think they are worth sharing
• they are ‘hosted’, which means you don’t have to install them yourself prior to using them (as a consequence, you will rely on the quality of the hosting as well).
• they are free, or start with a free version

Dead simple rendez-vous planning and surveys

With Doodle, you can create a survey in minutes then send a link to people to get their opinions. I find it very effective to:

• collaboratively choose a date to meet, based on each person availabilities. Especially useful when more than 2 people are involved.
• ask a simple question to a group of people

Once you create a survey, you’ll be given two links. The first is an administrative link you’ll keep for yourself, while you will send the second to people you want to participate to the survey.

Simple, yet very effective !

Single page document editing

Writeboard is another tool I use frequently. It provides:

• collaborative single page document editing
• revision history, with rss notifications
• export to txt or html

I’ve used it to share details about a meeting (where / what / when / why), to brainstorm remotely in small groups who can’t meet physically, or just for myself, to drop informal notes on a specific subject.

Wiki – for more than one page

If you want to share more than a single page between a group of users, Stikipad is a product worth trying. The free version offers 30mb of content and attachments. You may want to look at the detailed list of features.

I’m very happy with Stikipad as long as it is used as a private wiki, but have seen it spammed when used as public (as on Mephisto documentation).

If you go wiki, be sure to check out how to start and keep your wiki alive !

Shareable todo lists

Tada-list (by the authors of Writeboard) provides easy-to-use todo lists that can be shared.

They are convenient to use. I like the ability to have the list emailed to me.

Spreadsheets, word processing, presentations

In case you need more advanced stuff in a shareable fashion, I suggest using Google documents. I’ve been using it since the initial release, for a variety of purposes including:

• working collaboratively on a contract
• sharing a budget spreadsheet
• sharing my expenses with my accountant
• work backlog or time-tracking
• preparation of an article together with a group of authors

I’m a big fan of the pdf export and revision tracking for instance. The nice thing with Google is that they improve their stuff continuously. I’m amazed each time they add features !

I hope you will have learned something useful in this list !