Thing 9 --Collaboration Tools

The Googledoc to which I contributed was total nonsense at this point, so I hardly added anything. Fortunately, I've used Googledocs several times before; they're sort of the standard way of doing group projects, at least in the telecom department at IU. One of the first things we do when we have a long-term project between more than two people is set up a Googledoc. We use it a lot for design documents for games (this is the text description of a game's assets, rules, functionality, etc.) and it works really well for that. I just finished contributing to a Flash game last semester. Here's the portion I worked on (just the art assets, I don't know Flash). There's a whole other game that comes before this but I only really worked on this boss battle. (I designed the boss, that's about it.) Anyway, the point is that we did this mostly using Googledocs with the occasional in-person meeting.

(A disclaimer: that game's not all the way finished, but the rest of the problems belong to the Flash programmers, so don't blame me if it's kinda hard to play.)

Googledocs and the like work marvelously when time is at a premium. You can collaborate without having to show up at any particular time. I think committees could benefit from this sort of communication greatly if they use it effectively. Googledocs can deceive you into thinking you've made progress when all you've done is change some wording, but if you're on the lookout for that then it works quite well.

Another collaboration aid I love: Doodle. This lovely thing allows you to forward a link to a group of people which allows them to put their individual availability on a collective calendar. That way, at one glance you can see where your schedules intersect or conflict with other people's. It's a wonderful tool for scheduling. I think most anyone who works in groups that have to meet in person would find this beneficial. We use it all the time in my group projects.

Zoho and Googledocs don't look that different to me, although I didn't investigate too deeply. I've just developed this weird loyalty to Google that makes me inclined to use it. It's just that if you already have a Google account, you can use all its features without signing up for anything new. I already have at least two, so it's the easy way for me. The same is usually true of my collaborators in projects, so we go with Google.

Don't ask me what the Founding Fathers would think. Here's a kitten with a duck chicken: