Collaboration

Preparation

The following sites can be demoed. If you plan to do demos on any of them, you’ll need to set up an account ahead of time–it’s not something you can do during the demo.

• Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/
• Google Docs: http://docs.google.com/
• Dropbox: http://www.dropbox.com/

If you’re planning to do slides, you’ll need to set them up for Present sections and anything else you want to cover.

Summary

Present

There are fewer things to cover, so we’re going to take the time to go in depth for some of the tools.

We’re going to cover wikis, office applications, document sharing and text editing.

Wikis

Present

A wiki is a web-site that allows users to edit the content and easily create links between different pages on the wiki.

The most famous wiki is Wikipedia [1] which is a free encyclopedia of knowledge. Wikipedia is run by a non-profit called Wikimedia [2] which created the wiki software that Wikipedia runs on. This software is called Mediawiki [3] and it’s Free Software so anyone can install and use it.

In fact, Wikimedia uses the Mediawiki software for a bunch of their other web-sites: Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and so on.

Many communities use wikis for collaboratively building knowledge bases. For example, software documentation, recipes, and tips for video podcasting.

There are all kinds of wikis. Most of them differ in the formatting markup they use for the text.

[1]	http://wikipedia.org/

[2]	http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home

[3]	http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Demo: Mediawiki

If you have access to a Mediawiki instance and can demo it, demo the following things:

1. start on the front page and navigate around
2. pick a page to edit
3. make some changes and save them
4. show the new page and the history for that page
5. show how to link to other pages

Demo: Wikispaces

Using a wiki account you created, demo the following:

1. start on the front page and navigate around
2. pick a page to edit
3. make some changes and save them
4. show the new page and the history for that page
5. show how to link to other pages

Office applications

Present

Who here has been in a group working on a document where someone edits the document, changes the name in some way indicating that this is a new version of the document, then sends that in email? Has anyone been in a situation where this workflow deteriorates and you end up with a bunch of emails with a bunch of documents where it’s likely there are new bits in multiple documents and you’re stuck trying to figure out how to merge them together?

That’s crazy. Some office suites like Microsoft Office and OpenOffice make it a little easier with functionality that tracks revisions in a document. But it’s still crazy and when you hit problems you spend a lot of time fixing them and it’s very easy to miss important changes.

There are several services that offer word processors, spreadsheets, presentation tools, and other office suite applications. Using these services, you’re able to write documents, build spreadsheets and presentations, and do many of the sorts of things you do with an office suite like OpenOffice or Microsoft Office.

However, they also let you collaborate with other people by storing the documents on their servers and letting you share those documents with other people.

This does three great things for you.

First, it allows you to work on and store documents that are important to your program online. You can access these documents from any computer with an Internet connection. This lets you work on these documents regardless of where you are: your office, your home, a cafe, your best friend’s house in the Azores, and so on.

Second, it allows you to share documents with other people allowing everyone to edit a set of documents in a central repository rather than editing documents and sending them around in email or requiring that all document editing happen on one computer in one place.

Third, it doesn’t require anyone to go out and purchase an office suite or upgrade the suite they have which can be very expensive.

FIXME - Zoho falls into this category. http://www.zoho.com/

Demo: Google Docs

Make sure you have an account with access to Google Docs.

1. create a document
2. write some data into the document–show off formatting, styles, and the kinds of things you’d do with a word processor
3. save the document
4. show the document in the document list
5. show how to share the document with someone else with read-only access
6. share the document with someone else allowing them to collaborate

Demo the spreadsheet application.

Demo the presentation application (if you’re not already using it for presentations).

Document sharing

Present

There are times when using web-site versions of office tools is a total drag. Especially when you’re working with applications that don’t have an online equivalent.

There are several services that give you a bunch of space “in the cloud” where you can save documents to.

You can use one of these services to store all your RE-related documents. This allows you to:

1. have a backup of all the important documents so it doesn’t matter if you lose your computer
2. gives you access to these documents on your computer, and any other computer with a web-browser
3. allows you to share documents with other groups of people so that you can collaborate
4. maintains a history of saves of the document so you can see who did what and go back to earlier versions

Dropbox is an example of such a service. You can get 2 GB of space for free.

Activity: Watch the Dropbox video

Watch the video on the front page of the Dropbox site. It’s in Flash, so you need to have Flash installed to view it. Additionally, you’ll need a projector or large monitor and also speakers.

http://www.dropbox.com/

The video shows how Dropbox can be used to share documents with other people–easier to show the video than to demo it.

Demo: Dropbox

Demo sharing documents with Dropbox.

1. create a document on your machine and put it in the Dropbox folder
2. show how to share the document
3. explain that when you edit that document and save it, anyone else who is sharing that document gets alerted that the document has been changed

It’s hard to demo this effectively since the interesting parts require another Dropbox account. Best to watch the video.

Text editing

Present

Sometimes you don’t want all the high-falutin text formatting to deal with and you really just need to get down and dirty and flesh some text out with other people live.

There once was a company called Etherpad which had a service and software that allowed you to do this. It has since been bought by Google and the Etherpad service was discontinued in April of 2010.

Piratepad is an Etherpad instance hosted by the Pirate Party in Sweden.

Demo: Piratepad

If you did the covenant with Piratepad, then pull up that pad and:

1. show off the pad
2. show the history of the pad–everyone can see everyone else’s revisions
3. export the document

Workflows

Present

We’ve talked a lot about collaboration tools. Let’s talk about things in your program that you could use these tools for.

Activity: Using collaboration tools

Discuss as a group the collaboration tools we covered.

Spend 10 minutes to about their properties and what kinds of things they could make easier in a program.

When the conversation peters out, bring up one of the following:

• meeting agendas and minutes

  Instead of sending out meeting agendas and minutes, is it easier to keep them in Google Docs or Dropbox, share the links, and let people make adjustments as needed?

• policies, procedures, proposals

  These are things a lot of people need access to. Instead of maintaining them in a binder, putting them on a wiki that people know about and can access will make your program more transparent and make it easier for people to get the information they need when they need it.

• schedules for resources

  Maintaining schedules for resources, room assignments, and other things is a natural for spreadsheets. These spreadsheets need to be available.

• attendance

  You could maintain attendance records in a spreadsheet online. Attendance is one of many ways we quantify how an RE program is doing and whether it’s growing or shrinking.

• working out information text

  When working out text for brochures and other informational resources that are handed out to new parents, new members, and new volunteers, you can throw it into a PiratePad and work it out in a sprint without dealing with formatting, layout, or other issues.

• brainstorming

  Piratepads are great for collaborative brainstorming.

• making your documents more available

  Using Google Docs allows you to access documents from any computer with an Internet connection. If you don’t have an Internet connection, you won’t have access to Google Docs. You can save your documents one by one to your computer, but you’ve created a separate copy of the document and any changes you make have to be uploaded to Google Docs for people to see.

  Using Dropbox allows you to access documents from any computer with an Internet connection. If you don’t have an Internet connection, you can continue to use the documents because they’re also on your computer. The next time you connect to the Internet, DropBox will synchronize the documents that have changed with the DropBox folder in the cloud.

• backing up your documents

  With both Google Docs and DropBox, your data is in the cloud. If your harddrive dies, your computer is stolen, or anything along those lines happens, your data is safe and available.

• tools that require accounts vs. tools that don’t

  Some things you can do with Google Docs require everyone who’s participating to have a Google account. DropBox requires a Google account. You can set up a wiki to require an account.

  Some things you can do with Google Docs don’t require everyone to have an account. PiratePad doesn’t require an account. You can set up a wiki not to require an account.

If people mention things that aren’t on the list, work with that, make a note of it, and send it to me for feedback.