Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Wiki's Again

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Don Marti <dmarti [at] zgp.org> wrote:


> We're now using 37Signals.com, which is
> a hosted service that's easy to use and offers email
> notifications.
>
> --clipped--

>
> had a good experience with it until moving
> to 37Signals for an integrated package of discussion,
> project management, calendar, etc.
>
> --
> Don Marti
>

Since it was a favorite tool for a key team member and another team member
really wanted to learn it, the 2010 National Cohousing Conference team used
BaseCamp (37 Signals) to help organize our work. This tool offered very
little THAT WE ACTUALLY USED that wasn't available in the free Yahoo Groups
product (which I've used for many years, but actively dislike).

I really hated paying $24 of Coho/US funds each and every month for the
privilege of using BaseCamp - what I thought to be an inferior product. The
tool that I found most useful for the 2010 team was a large, poorly
organized, Google Spreadsheet. The ability to simultaneously edit during a
telephone meeting was very helpful.

The 2011 National Cohousing Conference team is using a well-organized set of
Google Docs, with folder-level sharing. This means that I can work on a
Google Doc file in one folder (shared with one particular group of people)
and then just casually move it into another folder which is accessible by
another group - or by everybody on the web.

I've used the Google Docs "publish to web" feature a bit here at Songaia, as
its much easier for those who have problems figuring out googles
confusing system of account management. Here's an example:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1FDUYE1OA2UEqMDFg1O1xrWS7jzeZVIzPnIWpQJ5YVDI

(note: the above URL may be broken by your email client and you may need to
copy and paste it into your browser)

If the conference team starts using this feature - in addition to the normal
Google Document sharing, we will be able to easily expose any conference
planning document and, I hope, easily integrate it into the conference
website (Catya, if you're reading this, we should discuss this approach).

As a (now former) Microsoft employee, I became very comfortable using great
tools from big companies and have no hesitation to use Google's many
offerings. That being said, I do appreciate the political stance which some
hold about proprietary software.

Craig

Note: Coho/US does not endorse or recommend any particular product or
service. We use the open source Drupal and CiviCRM systems for our website
and contact management system. Both serve us well, but not without some
struggles.