Tools for a Group Project
Working with a new tool requires patience. Learning how to use it often takes time from the very thing that you wanted to use the tool for.
I recently worked with five busy professionals to put together a panel discussion on freelancing. Tiny decisions about who, where, when, what, and how had to be made around multiple schedules and across geographical distances.
At first, we communicated by email. But the volume of email soon got out of hand, and some information got lost in the shuffle.
I set up a Google Sites wiki as a virtual meeting place. We were able to write updates, introduce ourselves to one another with short biographies and photos, store contact information, post target dates, and work together on the questions that we would discuss. Best of all, each panelist could check in at his or her convenience to see what others were saying.
But some panelists hesitated to add to the wiki, perhaps intimidated by not knowing how to use the tool. Others were not checking in regularly. So we reverted to emails that said things like “Don’t forget to check the wiki!”
Although everyone agreed that we should meet before the night of the panel discussion, finding a time and place to meet in person proved too complicated.
To schedule a meeting time that would work for the greatest number of people, I set up a poll through Doodle.com. The panelists and our helpers could then vote on when they could attend.
We eventually held two conference calls on FreeConference. The service was not quite free, but setup was relatively simple and the call automatically recorded for later use.
The February 24 panel discussion, Tips for Surviving and Thriving as a Freelancer, went very well, with 75 people seated in the Mechanics’ Institute meeting room and café for the meeting.
Publicity had reached Bay Area Editors’ Forum, the Northern California Translators Association, the Northern California Science Writers Association, San Francisco Women on the Web, readers of the Sin and Syntax site, and likely a few others.
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