Collaboration Tools

I am very curious to know what successful collaboration tools everyone is using in and out of the Church environment.


Please tell what works best for you and why. I see a lot of vendors claiming they have the ultimate collaboration tools, but I am not quite convinced of their offerings without on the ground proof that it works.

I have had great success with Google Docs. I am the ward mission leader and have set up a spreadsheet that I share with my 20+ ward missionaries and the ward council members to keep them up to date on what we are doing. Best part is... FREE! Nice!

ProBoards.com is a free forum web hosting site. You can create your own forum in seconds and collaborate with other people. I am using one for alumni from my high school and another for a group of sales people for work.

It depends what type of collaboration for programming I like subversion for documents I like Google Docs for the simplicity and Share Point for the office integration. It really just depends on what you are looking for.

David (thedqs) is right - it depends on the environment. In a business setting where MS Office is used - SharePoint is amazing - 2007 Office with 2007 SharePoint has tons of great integration. For a cost of course

Google Docs seems to make sense for the community at large as it is free and generally available. That said having certain types of information held out in the global collective seems risky.

Having just started working for the Church a little more than a month ago I can honestly say that security and protecting the individual is of key importance. That isn't too say we always get it right, but I have been amazed at how constantly security, privacy, and protecting the data is considered. That will always be a major consideration with anything the Church puts out and also one of the reasons why things move slower (or are more protected) than perhaps people would like.

On this collaboration issue, I have been doing more homework on it. http://www.cio.com has been a pretty good resource to see what the industries thoughts are.

I remember about a year ago in our video stake conference, Elder Ballard who was the featured speaker talk about the churches use of video conferencing.

This is what I enjoy about church callings, the learning process. I have used many of the processes I have learned that the church uses directly into the operation of my business.

Back to the homework. As I collect more information that is related to what we do on the tech side for the church I will post it.

Regards,

EW