Thing 12 Collaborative tools

My most recent collaboration was with Saoirse when writing our communication strategy. We did this through email and sharing documents over google drive. I am a also member of the WRSLAI group and we use a lot of different tools to work together to organise our events. We are a geographically spread committee so use a lot of different tools to communicate with each other. For all the criticisms aimed at google it offers a lot of tools that allow that to happen hangouts allow us to have face to face interaction, google docs and google drive allow us to share and create and edit documents. 

Doodle polls I have used to mostly decide when people want to meet up. 

The last group project I worked on was the organising of the group seminar held in sixmilebridge. 

 
Did you work face to face, virtually or via a combination of the two?

We worked face to face by using hangouts and by meeting in person to discuss issues dole out jobs etc. It is easier to try to meet people in person even virtually as when not it can take days to get responses from everyone. This way the majority of the committee met and decided a course of action. 

  

Was your experience positive, negative or neutral?

Mostly positive I find that to live in a broadband area is a must for almost all online tools. As I live in a blackspot my inaction with the committee in online meetings was patchy. However using google drive and doodle was grand. I was able to upload work for others to see and edit and I was able to do the same.

 

Did you use any of the tools outlined above?

 

Google drive and doodle

 

Have you used any other collaborative tools that you have found useful?

 

freedcamp is used by the group to post work done by the committee for review by its members, to divide jobs when organising events, to put together to do lists, etc. Its a very useful and easy to learn. Its like a mixture of twitter in that you can have discussions and doodle.

If you had to do that project again what tools outlined above do you think would have been the most useful?

 

Probably google drive it offers a massive backup drive for everyone to use and review. Pictures can't be lost, paper work can always be accessed by everyone entitled to it, good stuff.