Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with collaboration

Successful collaboration on large, technical Word documents?

Jacqueline — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:22:32 -0800

Scientists and other academics: Please advise on strategies for successful collaboration on large, technical Word documents. I work at a research institute, and half my job is an administrative/accounting position supporting a team of scientists and engineers. Basically, I'm their Girl Friday. Unfortunately, ever since they figured out that I have a decent grasp of grammar, punctuation, and usage and an eye for nit-picky details, I have also been their copyeditor. ohgodpleasemakethepainstop.

I've come to the realization that roughly 25% of the time we spend on document creation, collaboration, revision, formatting, etc. is unnecessarily wasted time caused by the fact that many (most?) people here either a) don't how to use Word very well and/or b) don't plan their collaborative writing projects very well.

My coworkers' Word skills run the gamut from treating Word like a typewriter (i.e. hitting Enter several times when they want to start a new page instead of inserting a page break) to a decent comfort level with styles, captions/cross-references, citation management, etc. No one (myself included) knows how to use Word's advanced features for managing long documents. I plan to address our Word deficiencies by mastering the program myself, then I will assemble links to existing online videos, documentation, etc., into a little self-study course customized around the type of documents we produce. (So, heavy coverage on things like captions/cross-referencing for figures and tables, and no coverage of never-used features like mail merge.)

I don't know how to teach them to plan their collaborative writing projects better, though, because I don't know the answers myself. I just know that there has to be a better way than how we're doing it now! For example, it's only AFTER they've already written most of a 100+ page document that they will confer and then come to me, the copyeditor, to tell me about all the different variations of terms the four authors of the document have used and which particular consistent term and spelling these should all be replaced with. I ask them, "Shouldn't you have agreed on this sort of thing BEFORE you all started writing?" Their response is a sheepish, "Probably," but these large collaborative writing projects are infrequent enough that they don't seem to ever learn from their mistakes.

I need to fix them! Or I will lose my mind! (Most or all should be receptive to being "fixed" -- everyone agrees that the way we're doing things now is painfully inefficient.)

So, any advice? Resources? Books, articles, checklists on how to do the collaboration thing more efficiently? Anything specific to scientists, engineers, or academics would be especially helpful.

(Unfortunately, new software better suited for this type of work is not an option -- half my coworkers have resisted upgrading from Word 2003, so there's no way I'm going to convince them to learn a new program even if it is a much better tool.)

Thank you!

I need help naming my blog.

seandq — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:50:49 -0800

I need help naming my blog. I'm doing something a bit new, a bit random. I'm basically a high school senior who is taking on some friends with me to create a group blog on everything - mainly sports, entertainment, news, politics, etc.

I originally thought of hosting this blog on my domain and then just outsourcing my friends' posts as guest posts. Then it struck me it might just be a good idea to put all of our work together on its own site.

Ideas I'm hovering towards involving the phrase "Vox Populi", "Hive Mind", or "Groupthink". However, finding an open domain with those in there is a very hard thing to do. I want to emphasis the collaboration aspect, and possibly to a lesser degree the fact we're teenagers, and soon we'll be college students.

Thanks in advance!

Recommend an online collaborative translation tool.

tkbarbarian — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:01:01 -0800

Can anybody recommend a good collaborative online translation tool? Not an automated translator, something to help manage and co-ordinate a translation workflow in a team of people. As an example, I have an excel spreadsheet or a database with a list of (not necessarily unique) questions and response options grouped into questionnaires for particular user groups.

I'd like to be able to upload this / import it into an online tool that then:

* breaks up the questions/responses into unique "translation snippets"
* allows individuals to propose translations for snippets in a number of requested languages
* allows moderators to review translations
* support back-translation for moderation as well.
* allow the completed translation "matrix" to be exported into a useful format (either the original database, an internationalisation po file etc.)

I've already got an excel sheet that does this in a specialised case with some scripting for a particular set of questionnaires. Looking for a more general purpose system that's online to ease collaborative headaches.

Any thoughts or starters for how to get this?

I'm explicitly not looking for a "upload your document and have it translated automatically" service. This is in the context of a community of volunteers, experts and internal staff we want to hand-select

How do academia and industry collaborate?

gadha — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:31:21 -0800

I'm looking for non-traditional collaboration models between academia and industry (any field) or between companies/consortiums. Any pointers? As a personal project I'm trying to map out how academia and industry collaborate. It seems to me the de facto model is one in which academia either works on specific projects for industry (with IPR rights agreed on beforehand) or academics spin out a company. However, I'm interested in other, non-linear examples of different modes of collaboration. Examples or pointers both welcome.

Intra-company knowledge exchange

philosophistry — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:08:02 -0800

How to increase knowledge exchange in a tech company. (i.e. imitate Google)? I work at a tech. company, and often we have redundant work. For example, someone spent a full day digging through implementing something from one API that another person knew how to do in 10 minutes. The thing is, former didn't know the latter knew about it, and the latter didn't know the former was working on it.

How do you increase the knowledge exchange within a technology company?

Are there books/resources on this?

I know Google has a lot of good strategies in this arena. Their most famous one is an excellent and open cafeteria which simply increases socialization among normally narrow developers.

Less famously, they also have heavenly snack rooms that keeps developers chatty.

Some in our company suggested wikis where people post their knowledge, but I believe that those strategies tend to fail as developers become wiki-shy.

K.I.S.S. - CRM

namewithhe1d — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:11:06 -0800

My company needs simple CRM - we don't need the thousands of bells and whistles that come with other products. Also, we need buy-in. What are my options? I've been looking at and loving the Highrise option, but there seems to be some negativity out there in regards to transparency and security. Though I do like that it's hosted and easy to use/easy buy-in, but are the contacts really shared? Is the visibility such that 2 people aren't working on the same account without knowing it??

I need something that simply does this:
* Shared database of contacts
* Sales tracking (we aren't high volume... don't need marketing options)
* Management dashboard with the ability to view/track activity with all clients/prospects.

We just need everyone on the same page (10-15 users) for our international clients, thus the ability to divide a company into "regions" would help too.

I've looked at:
SugarCRM - Too complex, high priced
Salesforce.com - Too complex, high priced
FreeCrm - Bad interface
Act - Too complex, high priced

Anything I'm missing?

How can I swap large .wav files back and forth for a long distance music collaboration?

markjamesmurphy — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:37:47 -0800

My cousin in New Hampshire wants to collaborate on music with me. I'm in Seattle. I'd like to figure out a convenient way for us to pass large .wav files to each other. I can pull his completed rock songs into a multitracking program and create vocal tracks - then I need to pass the vocal tracks back to him in the form of .wav files so he can add them to the mix on his end. I know there are web based file storage sites, and I can randomly try some out, but I thought I'd start with the hive mind: Can anyone recommend a service like this? I'm thinking free, uncomplicated and capable of handling large file sizes. The files don't need to live there for a long time - just a reasonable window of time to pass them back and forth. Have any of you done this kind of thing?

Collaborative Learning Environments for Dummies?

soma lkzx — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:40:27 -0800

I'm trying to organize a series of classes based on a collaborative learning environment, but I need some information about how a non-hierarchical classroom could actually work. Backstory: I want to learn things, other people want to learn things, but none of us are really experts. So let's all do this together! Think recurring book club on steroids.

There's some stuff on Wikipedia about collaborative learning, but most of it is business or task-oriented. We'd be working through a book on bookbinding together, not trying to build a spaceship. It seems pretty easy when you're making things, but the further you get into the intellectual realm the more difficult this seems to get.

What I've got so far: One person is designated the instructor and acts as a mediator, reading ahead and keeping everyone on task, but beyond that I'm pretty lost. The more structured it is and the more power we give the instructor the easier it should be, but the whole point is acknowledging that the person in charge doesn't know much more than any given person in the class, and everyone's input is valuable. We'll also be charging participants to trick them into valuing the class and keeping things a little more serious (although we'll probably refund most of their money at the end of the series).

I'm looking for info on organizations that foster a similar type of environment, anecdotes about how to successfully manage people in this type of situation, or pointers about systems that we could learn from or emulate!

and if you live in NYC and are interested in being a guinea pig, memail me and we'll see what we can do!

Movies about creative collaboration?

oulipian — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:48:04 -0800

Examples of movies about people collaborating on creative projects? I'm looking for examples of movies that are about groups of people working on creative projects together. I'm teaching a class for artists and designers that focusses on collaborative creative work, and may show some of these movies in class.

A couple of examples I've come up with so far: My Best Fiend, about the troubled working relationship between director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski, and I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, a documentary following Wilco during the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

I think documentaries would be most useful for my purposes, but feel free to suggest fiction as well, or even other media if you think it might be helpful.

Artist groupware. Please find enclosed a list of requirements.

monocultured — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:31:35 -0800

We're a group artists in a non-profit and are currently using Facebook to organise ourselves. I find it lacking - it's not a platform with collaboration in mind, so I'm researching alternatives. Hlep! The ten of us are spread out globally and try to run projects, apply for grants, inform each other of work or other opportunities, and plan exhibitions and publishing. The usual stuff, with a mix of people both tech savvy and digitally challenged.

We're using a closed Facebook group at the moment, but there are some limitations that we've run into already. Most notably there's a limit on how many threads and uploaded photos/videos you see at any time, so the lack of overview is annoying. Notifications on updated threads and such is missing (or I've missed it) and there's no tagging / categories of threads. A calendar tied to the threads would have been nice.

Also, we're recruiting underwriting members and would like to give limited access to our material (say, an exhibition schedule and invites to parties) and if we could have the members registry in the same db as the regular work db there would be less risk of messing stuff up. So a tiered membership option would be awesome, although it's not a dealbreaker. (As long as we can export a members list and dump it somewhere else, we'd be set)

The motivation for learning a new tool is very low for most members, so "painless and pretty" is my approach right now. I can host it myself but don't want to spend too much time being codemonkey if I can help it.

I've looked at Basecamp and Goplan, and the latter in particular seems worth pursuing, but the there's no chance in hell our team will have time enough to evaluate or settle in during a 30-day trial. I'm thinking that many of you have been in the position of hearding cats and might offer suggestions.

Oh, and "non-profit" translates into "we eat bark and pay with pebbles and hugs" so there's not too much money.

Looking for a website where users can get together, share/critique new ideas, and volunteer to collaborate on new projects.

Muffpub — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:28:54 -0800

Are there any sites out there for organizing people to work on collaborative projects or new ideas? I can't find anything on AskMe about collaboration that doesn't involve specialized tech-related projects or collaborative office software. Am I missing something? If there's something out there on the internet that can do this I'd love to be a part of it. For example, "Write for my blog," "contribute to my map of the area," perhaps even more cerebral stuff like "critique the new political system I invented!" If there's a fun, useful wiki/crowdsourcing type space where people can get together, brainstorm, and work together, I want to find it.

I'd like to emphasize that I'm looking for something as open-ended as possible. Ubuntu Brainstorm would be a wonderful idea if it weren't limited to Ubuntu. Think that, but for the whole internet! Where is it?

(The history behind this question: This MeTa thread I posted last week ended up morphing into a discussion on the existential nature of MeFi Projects and the possibility of a collaborative space on Metafilter, but an important precondition to that discussion was whether or not sites like this already are out there on the internet. If you don't know of any other site on the internet like this but think it may be a cool idea to propose that we do it right here on MeTa, say so, but please remember that AskMe is not for talking about Metafilter.)

Apologies if this is impossibly open-ended or chatfilter.

What are some great ways to program collaboratively?

mockdeep — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:46:28 -0800

Some friends and I are starting out in the computer science / technology world and we would like to start working on projects together, mostly focusing on web based applications. Bespin looks like one really cool technology developing to aid online collaboration, though it's still very beta. What other technologies work great for managing a project between a small group of people, especially at a distance, preferably on a shoestring? By all means, please include any tools that can smooth the process--not strictly programming platforms.

Online collaboration tools.

mmahaffie — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 07:13:51 -0800

Please help me identify online collaboration tools that might be appropriate for a national (USA) organization of (mostly) state agency staff. I am communications committee chair for the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC). We are an organization of state-level GIS coordinators. I'm looking for online collaboration tools to facilitate group discussions of policy, large-group communication, and development of documents and web-published information. Preferably open-source or low-cost. Go....

Collaborators on film

cazoo — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:11:37 -0800

Films about war time collaboration? I'm searching for a list of films which deal with the idea of war time collaboration. More specifically about those that collaborated with their aggressors/colonizers and how they were treated by their countrymen.

A recent example which fits this theme would be "Lust, Caution". Other examples might be "Casablanca". The genre, war, and nationalities do not matter so much as the theme or the premise. It seems like there must be quite a few set in WW2, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

Thanks hive mind.

How to encourage casual collaboration at work between different offices?

Tilon — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 09:37:34 -0800

I'm part of a group of about 70 people (at a company of tens of thousands) spread across the country and we're having a hard time communicating, especially casually. Anyone have any suggestions? Being spread across the country we lose a lot of the casual water cooler conversation and the chance encounters they bring. "Hey, you're working on the Henderson account? I know Bob Henderson, we should talk", "I'm starting a new project next week similar to one I hear you're working on...can we chat about how your's is going?", "You might know something about ABC software, can you give me a hand?". Those sorts of things.

We're a fairly diverse group -- from slightly aggressive, outspoken folks to quiet, leave-me-alone-I'm-coding types -- but we're mostly technical and often exhibit some of the Dilbertesque cynicism that comes with that.

We've tried wikis and message boards in a few small places, but interest has been almost non-existent.

Does anyone have any ideas, thoughts, books, or anything else that might encourage the sort of casual collaboration we lack? I'm thinking smaller steps at first to combat some of the cynicism, but we'll certainly look at anything that has been shown to work elsewhere.

Distract Us

Yakuman — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:15:59 -0800

My wife and I need a distraction from the gloom of current events. We're looking for a collaborative online game we can play together. Something relatively addicting would be nice, but not a World of Warcraft or Second Life. Not a RPG, but not a board game where we play against each other, either. Any ideas?

Looking for wiki-type software that does the heavy lifting automatically

scrm — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:21:36 -0800

I'm hunting for a 'smart' knowledge management system for an organisation, to write documentation collaboratively. It should be able to receive information in multiple ways, categorize it automatically, and publish it to a webpage. Kinda like an intelligent mashup of Evernote and wiki software like Mediawiki and Dokuwiki.

Ideally, the system would have the following:

Support for input from multiple users

Multiple input methods. Ideally email (like Evernote), or a simple one-line form that interprets entries (like the Google Calendar 'Quick add' box)

Automatic categorizing of information based on keywords. So if the output document has several sections, the system will know automatically what input to put where

The ability to output the results on a webpage, and to customize how they look

A close-to-zero learning curve. The people who will use it aren't technical so it has to be straightforward

A low price tag

Any ideas or am I just dreaming? All pointers much appreciated.

Name that website: annotated multi-user arguments reaching consensus?

ajp — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:25:51 -0800

Name that website: annotated multi-user arguments reaching consensus? I'm sure that I saw a website, many moons ago, that allowed collaborative "arguments", or discussions. It might have been intended as some sort of reconciliation service, allowing multiple people with differences to debate their points.

The aim was to encourage productive, rational discussion, rather than a free-for-all.

Some of the features:

# Paragraphs or sections of text were given a reference number -- like a Biblical verse, or a legal sub-paragraph reference number type of thing.

# Once the parties had agreed on a point, I think the previous cruft of the debate was hidden, leaving only the jointly agreed wording.

# Multiple users could contribute to any discussion.

# The aim of any discussion was to remove anger, aggression, and all that nonsense; and to produce a final written statement or consensus that all parties could agree with.

I might have this all slightly wrong, it's from a fuzzy memory. But I'm sure there's something similar out there. Somewhere. Trawling Google and del.icio.us has not revealed what I'm trying to find.

Much obliged.

Looking for an online tool to create, edit and share video content

3rdparty — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:07:01 -0800

Looking for an online video tool (or combination of tools) that ideally support capture, editing and sharing of content Looking to have a bunch of people spread out around the world easily capture video (similar to how youtube or seesmic allow you to record directly from your webcam), privately share it with me, then I need to be able to edit it together online (or download and edit offline), then download the finished product so I can burn it to a DVD (or at the very least view it online)

Unfortunately Youtube has discontinued remixer which possibly would have fit the bill.

Making the most of meetings so we don't have to meet again

brandnew — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:08:06 -0800

How do I become a better facilitator / collaborator? I facilitate a lot of meetings between teams of technical collaborators. The majority of the teams are fairly young (under 30), and they usually have great ideas. However, they will often come up with ideas that are way too complex or way too simple. I usually have to step in and judge their ideas and redirect the conversation.

This role feels uncomfortable. I feel like a lot of times I'm squashing their ideas. A lot of times they just go with what I say, because I say it. I don't get a sense that they believe what I'm saying. So, I have to go into detail about things, and it feels like I'm lecturing a class.

To be honest, I have more experience than most of them. I can understand their perspectives, as well as the current conventional wisdom. It's my responsibly to make a good judgment. Just because something is in style, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

However, I don't want to turn them off. I just want to be a good guide. And, I absolutely don't want them to blindly accept my ideas.

How do I become an expert at facilitating collaboration? How do I get more from a group than the sum of their individual controbutions?

Superhero Help Needed

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:16:43 -0800

Imagine coming up with an idea for a new superhero, but having little artistic talent. How would someone pitch an idea to a comic artist, or find a collaborator willing to draw it?

wow me with the wonders of web2.0

brandnew — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:13:54 -0800

collaborative tools, "web 2.0", community - evidence that the tech is really worth the price? I want to propose the development (or adoption) of a set of intranet collaborative tools for my company that I think will support better communication, and knowledge persistence across work groups. I believe these technologies work, because I use them myself, but I want some hard evidence that supports that position.

Where can I find the hard evidence that online collaboration tools (i.e. web 2.0) actually increase knowledge transfer and productivity. Is it possible to calculate a ROI?

Also, I had read somewhere that only x% of site users create site content. Where can I find that finding?

Sharing Windows computers on a home network

lunchbox — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:54:59 -0800

What's the best way for two people to collaborate on their Windows computers that are on the same home network? My parents work together at home. One has a Vista computer and the other has XP, both with Office Ultimate 2007. Their work is tightly integrated, and they have no information that needs to be kept separate. Ideally, it would be great if both computers shared all documents, including OneNote notebooks, and "My Documents" (XP) or "Documents" (Vista) folder. In other words, the more unified and in sync the two computers are, the better.

What is the simplest way to achieve this unison? I am thinking of just putting "Documents" from the Vista computer on a network share so that it becomes the de facto "My Documents" for the XP computer. But I am concerned that this will not be a seamless experience for the person on the XP computer. Also, since OneNote will always be open on both computers, there might be some file locking issues. It would be great if these OneNote notebooks could be shared so that they could be open on both computers at the same time.

I have access to SharePoint, Groove, and several other groupware applications. What's the simplest and best solution to unify these two computers?

the Dr Frankenstein of collaborative software

brandnew — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:18:17 -0800

Easiest, most effective way to stand up a collaborative portal? I'm interested in standing up a collaborative portal for a new digital community. I want to take advantage of new advances in web software over the last 3-4 years.

I want to include as many of the following "features" as possible (in order of preference): membership profiles, social relationships, social bookmarking, search, content management, file storage and sharing, wiki, messaging, discussion boards, ratings & rankings, chat, sub-group creation, whiteboards, project management, time management, web-casts, surveys, polls, blogging, collaborative filtering, and Q&A.

Sure, I can implement these features from the bottom up myself - it would take awhile and be quite expensive. However, I really don't want to re-invent the wheel. I know most, if not all, of these features already exist in some form or another, either as either hosted services or separate web products.

So, a few questions:

1. First, is it even possible to mash up all of these various hosted services into something that looks like one cohesive site?

2. If yes to 1, are there patterns, best practices, examples, or support groups to help execute such a thing?

3. Otherwise, if I host it myself (to protect sensitive data), would it be easier to build it from scratch (assuming I'm an expert developer)? Or hack together a bunch of separate products?

Quick, easy group chat with Facebook integration

Skwirl — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:02:26 -0800

What is the most user friendly and computer accessible way to set up group chat for a Facebook group? There is a group of conference attendees that I'd like to stay in touch with, share best practices and moral support. Currently we have a Facebook group, but it would be cool to integrate and schedule group chat sessions. To my knowledge, Facebook's standard chat doesn't allow group chat.

Is there a simple way to accomplish this? Can you add Facebook apps to group pages, or would it have to be a separate link or an app on a particular users' page?

What's the most widely used, most accessible or most user friendly app for this? Few headaches on the user's end means more people will use it and it will be more sustainable.

I see articles about Meebo Rooms integration in Facebook, and I've seen at least one Facebook Game App uses Meebo Rooms. Meebo Rooms seems nice because it would link Facebook users' accounts to the service on one hand, but still allow non-Facebook users to chat via other protocols, if I understand Meebo's MO. But, I don't see any clear way of setting it up short of integrating it into my own custom Facebook app. I can code, but learning a new API and finding hosting just to reinvent the wheel sounds not-so-fun.

AIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, Yahoo and all are nice, but everyone is likely to have a different favorite and, since these discussions might take place from work, I have to assume some users' computers are locked down to new software.