plamb - Aug 29, 2006 2:26 pm (#1 Total: 20)
Paul Lamb

Below are some Free or Low-Cost Online Collaboration Tools & Reviews that I have used or are recommended by friends. Please add your own suggestions and/or share your experiences with these and others you may have used.

Voice Communications:

Skype: Free Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) for all Skype users. Requires a computer, Internet connection, and headset plugged into your computer. Free calls to land lines and cell phones (non Skype users) in the U.S. and Canada through the end of 2006. Can use of conference calls. Requires you to download their software.

Gizmo Project: Similar to Skype only this is open source and has some interesting additional features like the ability to record your conversations and share.

http://slawesome.com/: Send recorded voice messages via email, without having to install any software on your computer.

For paid online meeting tools combining conference calling and realtime Internet interactions, see http://www.readytalk.com/ or http://www.webex.com/

Discussions & Community Building

Email Groups: Set up basic email listserves, group calendars, and discussion forums, create your own announcement lists, mailing lists and public discussions. You can bookmark topics you're interested in, and have new replies to that topic delivered to your email inbox. http://groups.google.com/. http://groups.yahoo.com/

Blogs: Allow you to set up and archive linear conversations, post pictures, audio, and video. Generally only allow for the posting of comments, followed by responses or comments. Blogger, TypePad, WordPress.

Wikis: A kind of webpage that anyone can view and allowing group participants to edit and share information. Socialtext, wikispaces, tiddlywiki

Social Networking for collaboration:  Group editable websites that integrate such tools as discussions, reviews, calendars, online maps, etc. (http://www.ning.com/ ). Also some new tools that allow you to Instant Message to a variety of services and in multiple languages using a single website (http://www26.meebo.com/, http://gaim.sourceforge.net/ ) or Text Message whole groups of people on their cell phones simultaneously: http://www.twitter.com/. 

Project Management: Tools that help you to create project schedules, timelines, calendars, and to share notes/documents and send reminders to project participants: http://www.basecamphq.com/. http://www.iteamwork.com/

Document, Photo, Video and Website Sharing and Editing

Tools for joint editing of documents (http://www.writely.com/, http://www.writeboard.com/ ), photo sharing (http://www.flickr.com/) and collaborative video sharing and remixing (http://eyespot.com/). Also check out shared listings of categorized readings or “tagged” webpages (http://del.icio.us/,  http://www.furl.net/ )

Social Software: Reviews on various software, some of which is aimed at collaborations in the social sector: idealware, techsoup, and socialsourcecommons

kanter - Aug 29, 2006 2:55 pm (#2 Total: 20)


Well, instead of electricity you can use alternative power sources - solar power and even this unlikely source: http://beth.typepad.com/cambodia4kidsorg/2005/05/dung_powered_co.html

In many remote areas, there may not be a Internet or phone cable, but there are satellite links, cell phones, and some wifi. And, of course, the digital pony express:

http://www.firstmilesolutions.com/projects.php?p=ratanakiri

Here's the description: On September 1, 2003 FMS launched "Internet Village Motoman" for 15 solar-powered village schools, telemedicine clinics, and the governor's office in a remote province of Cambodia using 5 Honda motorcycles equipped with FMS Mobile Access Points (press release) and a 256 Kb/s Satellite uplink. Each of the schools can send and receive email and also browse the Internet using a non-real-time search engine. The network was implemented within one month by a team of three (adjacent) at a cost of approximately $500 per village. The project was implemented for American Assistance for Cambodia, which operates 225 rural schools throughout Cambodia with funding from private donors and the World Bank.

I've been looking at technology use/barriers in Cambodia and have lots of other collected information here: http://beth.typepad.com/cambodia4kidsorg/webtech/index.html

ifpeople - Aug 29, 2006 3:33 pm (#3 Total: 20)
ifPeople


Great points by kanter and thanks for sharing that story!

I wanted to share a few tools from the empowering world of Free/Open Source software** for this mix.

- Project management: dotProject (www.dotproject.net), a web-based project management tool that is free and run on all Free Software. You will need basic skills on a server to set it up (or get a host to do it for you for cheap hosting cost)

- Collaboration with a Content Management System (CMS): many CMS are now well-equipped for enabling collaboration. We use a system called Plone (http://plone.org) to build intranets and collaboration spaces. It makes it easy to create secure areas and to integrate a wide array of community products for surveys, blogs, wikis, forums, etc etc. Note: learning curve for wielding this is steep, but you can get relatively cheap hosting for it and then don't need to bother with that. For larger, more complex setups, we have customized workflow, roles, and security to make it match with an organization's internal processes. This is the same system used as the backend to the organization of Burning Man!

*Free Software refers to the license, not to the price, though often times it also has no cost. Free Software guarantees you the right to copy, change, distribute, and use the software as you like. Click here for an overview of Free Software and its Benefits.

To un-geek for a minute...when I read the title of the session in the newsletter, I thought we were going to be discussing processes, not technologies. I think that is perhaps more important than the technologies (though a good toolkit is good to have). Many online collaborations fail because of lack of attention to the people processes and the disruptive nature of introducing new technology. We have a document available on best practices for building online communities. This has been born out of a talk we often give at conferences for non-profits and mission-driven organizations on Building Successful Organizations and Virtual Communities: Best Practices and Free Software Tools, which combines an overview of the technical and process/human factors of collaboration.

Thanks for starting the conversation, Paul.

Sincerely,

Chris

--

ifPeople - Innovation for People

www.ifpeople.net

thirstyfish - Aug 29, 2006 3:39 pm (#4 Total: 20)
CEO, THIRSTY-FISH Story Marketing


My favorite new tool and platform is called CollectiveX (http://www.collectivex.com)

The basic platform is free to use and allows you to create and host a private and/or public online social network for any ad-hoc membership group, association, or network.

The functionality is very intuitive and professional. Includes document uploads, calendaring, social networking, and more. With affordable add-on services depending on your needs. Its like a private Linkedin that really unleashes the social capital and productivity in a group.

And you can get set-up hosting a network in just minutes. I think it holds the potential to revolutionize the online collaboration/social networking space for nonprofits, membership associations, boards, task forces, and other ad-hoc working groups.

Jeff.Mowatt - Aug 30, 2006 12:13 am (#5 Total: 20)
P-CED


A Netgear wireless 11a/b/g hotspot in my roof space creates a local presence in a spot where cellphones do not reach, I'm counting on the up and coming use of voice over Wifi to create both a small revenue stream and a part of testbed for social purpose technology elsewhere.

Running a software support operation to fund overseas activity, I need to make the operation as virtual as possible, so I use a nonprofit VOIP service which allows me re-route calls via a web interface to any worldwide location. I experimented with Gixmo and Skype but now use a Zoom X5v modem linked into Sipgate to make all my calls VOIP at more competitive rates. I can also use their low cost SMS service when needing to contact my overseas colleagues when they are off-line.

I use the VOIP re-routing service to serve as my answerphone set up to drop voicemail into a helpdesk/knowledgebase application such that any member of my small but international support group can pick up a support task and keep progress visible to all others.

We shouldn't forget that radio hams were doing similar things with the technology at their disposal long before most of us started. Indications are that linking technology may be yet another means of digital enablement.

Meanwhile a social purpose digitally enabled community, a three year research project so far and what this funding has been going toward , is now complete with detailed costings illustrating that we can deploy Wimax+Vsat based "villages" at a fraction of the cost of potential for profit competitors and still return large revenue streams to social objectives also keeping the model protected from for profit intrusion.

DotnetNuke is my preferred content management platform, it's elegantly simple compared with some of the other rather overdesigned CMS products with the capability of producing dynamic web portals rather than something that looks like a blog, plus the ASP and SQL technology behind offers great potential for customisation.

beautiful complexity - Aug 30, 2006 8:06 am (#6 Total: 20)
Learning at the Intersection of Art, Enterprise & the Environment

A timely discussion,  I am just starting a complex collaborative design & development process and have been researching on-line tools to support the evolutionary nature of the project.  The project involves sustainable design & development of a physical property as well as creating a social/environmental learning enterprise to develop and operate the facility.  It involves collaborating multi-disciplines of design (architecture, engineering, interior, product, landscape, graphics, communications, business & systems) within a strata of educational institutions (universities, colleges, secondary schools) and industries (real estate, development, education & training, hospitality).

The communications process is evolutionary.  First steps are to create a good story with the use of photos, video and drawings and to invite participation by indicating where meaningful work is required.  As the site is remote, we need to make the abstract tangible by including numberous photos & drawings.  Next, we need to create a safe place where everyone has a voice (and the ability to express it). We need a tool that profiles the individuals and acknowledges their contributions while protecting their privacy.  To support community forums, we need to create a conversation tool to engage people and ask them to contribute their creativity.  There will be multiple projects, multiple systems for people to get involved with and we need a tool that is flexible, adaptable with the capacity to evolve quickly.  Because the the involvement, the reliance on graphic information and the multi-faceted projects, I see this project growing & evolving exponentially in a very short period of time.  We need a collaboration tool that would be up to the job.

I am not a technical person but I see great potential in the use of wikis and other collaboration tools.  My concern is that for the complexity and size required by my project, that we might outgrow a wiki or other off the shelf tool very quickly.  I am looking for a software solution, or suite of tools that would be able to grow as rapidly as the project.  Perhaps I need to engage the colleges & universities to help solve this challenge?

Any suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated.  I do not have the expertise to assess the match between the needs and the technology. 

Cheers,

Nancy

 

plamb - Aug 30, 2006 11:16 am (#7 Total: 20)
Paul Lamb

Folks: Some really good ideas, specific tools, and suggestions/questions so far. Please keep them coming...

Beth (Kanter), thanks for the info on collaborating without electricity or Internet Access. The Cambodia projects you mentioned, in particular, are really impressive.

Chris, appreciate your important points about free software and your mentions of project management tools like www.dotproject.net and content management platform http://plone.org. To address your mention of tools vs. processes, I plan to do both, but thanks for getting us started on the CRITICAL discussion of people (and not just technology) centered collaboration. BTW, the tools selected for my list above, were largely chosen on the basis of non-techies' ability to use them.

Michael, thanks for the mention of collaboration tool (http://www.collectivex.com). Have you checked out http://www.ning.com/ which appears somewhat similar? Any thoughts?

Jeff, Zipgate as a VOIP alternative sounds interesting. Hey, is there a link to that 3 year study on "a social purpose digitally enabled community" using Wi-Max (wide area wireless network) and V-Sat(satellite) technologies? Have you also checked out http://www.civicspacelabs.com/ as a content management platform?

Nancy, you might want to take a look at CollectiveX.com and Ning.com (mentioned above) as some pretty user friendly and free online tools for getting started on setting up multiple function collaboration portals. Other thoughts for Nancy, folks?

Carry on...

Cheers,

paul

 

tutormentor - Aug 31, 2006 11:56 am (#8 Total: 20)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection

The posts that have been submitted thus far illustrate that there are many choices for the tools that people might use to host a collaborative process.  To me the challenge is a) finding the right people and encouraging them to participate; b) facilitating a common understanding of the problems; c) outlining choices of solutions that could be used to meet the group project goals; d) then building concensis that motivates people to take roles that need to be filled to acheive the goals.

I think that someone has to have a vision, or an assignment, in order to invite people to come together to collaborate or solve a problem.  The more powerful the vision, or the greater reward from solving the problem, the more likely it is that people will respond.

However, even if you can get people together, I think there are special facilitation skills that keep the group together and lead them toward a solution.  Finding these people to help facilitate problem solving and collaboration is difficult for volunteer-based organizations who have little money to start with.

What do you think about this? Where would such volunteers be found?

HeatherCarpenter - Aug 31, 2006 1:00 pm (#9 Total: 20)
Assistant Director, Aspiration


I encourage folks to check out http://www.socialsourcecommons.org where people can list what NP software they use and also see what their friends are using. Currently Social Source Commons has listed 15 wiki tools, 2 collaboration tools, 3 voip tools, and 2 project management tools. New tools are being listed each day and it is exciting to see what people are using and learn about new tools.

Heather Assistant Director Aspiration http://www.aspirationtech.org

Jeff.Mowatt - Aug 31, 2006 3:21 pm (#10 Total: 20)
P-CED


Hi Paul, yes but only as much as we can risk going public with. The background for this comes from our website http://www.p-ced.com where we relate the early recognition of the enabling power of information based development. I say risk because being aware of the commercial potential, we recognise that such a community must be based on a model that protects the social purpose and have also used strong encryption as part of our toolkit. In the projects section you will find, aside from earlier proof of concept for the economic approach in Siberia, a topic on children's Death Camps and therein in a very long dialogue along with some inevitable "noise" commentary. The social purpose is described together with our proposal for a national level investment involving microfinance combined with social purpose business to effect childcare reform on a major scale. We acknowledge that at a projected cost of around 1.5 billion dollars and a sceptical audience, even amongsts social entrepreneurs, this is something we may fail to pull off, though irrespective we have already had sufficient influence to cause government there to place childcare reform at the top of the social agenda, so whatever we do is not in vain.

Rather than blogging in an unfocussed way, we've taken a more direct approach by engaging with local journalists to promote the cause eg http://en.for-ua.com/analytics/2006/05/11/115154.html

ifpeople - Sep 1, 2006 2:16 pm (#11 Total: 20)
ifPeople


Great comments by tutormentor. A lot of the successful communities online I have seen actually lock in a facilitator and have that person help the community in the ways you mention. I think it is important to note that most communities aren't totally self-organizing in that sense...they do need help to stay together. For example, check out TechSoup.org's forums.

One other e tools I realized make sense for this conversation -

OpenPlans: designed to be the no-barriers-to-entry community organizing and collaboration tool, OpenPlans is built in wiki-style and focuses on user-friendly. It is a hosted environment where you can quickly create your project and start collaborating without any technical knowledge. The features are being rolled out progressively and by a good group of folks; it is also built on Plone.

Also for instant messaging, I like Gaim, a Free Software application that runs on all desktops and can use many IM protocols. Our business, ifPeople, is built on microenterprise collaboration, so we use it every day to work across a team of people in the US, Argentina and Chile. Some things are just best done in real-time...

That reminds me, we designed some of our systems based on a collaboration article in HBR article called “Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?”. Is a good study of what does and doesn't work in virtual teams; already a couple years old, but still useful :)

Regards,

Chris

-- ifPeople - Innovation for People

plamb - Sep 1, 2006 4:09 pm (#12 Total: 20)
Paul Lamb

Dan (of Turormentor): Great points, particularly about the importance of having good facilitators. I don't have any good answers for finding qualified volunteer facilitators (does anyone else?) but this would certainly help the quality of virtual collaborations.

This leads to the larger question of leadership. As Web guru Marnie Webb of Compumentor often reminds folks, the tools themselves can be very helpful but the success of such collaborative processes depends largely on having at keast one of the collaborators taking a strong leadership/management role and also having a consistent feedback loop in place. The art of facilitation in person, where peer pressure and encouragement are quite effective tools, is often quite different from the art of facilitation over digital time and space. Perhaps we have just discovered an up and coming career pathway: "virtual facilitator"?

Even with good facilitators/leaders, in my experience we often forget that the learning curve for even the best online collaboration tools can be quite steep. Also, many of the available tools (blogs, wikis, content and project management, etc.) are designed with a particular group of elite professionals in mind and not developed for by or with the average end user. Finally, we still live in a largely English-centric Web world where collaborations favor English speakers.

Your thoughts?

Cheers,

Paul

 

tutormentor - Sep 2, 2006 5:29 am (#13 Total: 20)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


In May 2006 I hosted a discussion on Social Edge titled "Building Networks of Purpose". One of the participants posted a link to an article that described a process of identifying what people/skills need to be involved if an enterprise is to succeed. That article can be found at: http://hq.unhabitat.org/cdrom/governance/html/st.htm

I've talked about mind mapping, GIS, and other forms of creating visual models that illustrate what you see in your mind, but cannot always express with your words (or in ways that others understand because they interpret your words based on their own life experiences).

Since I believe facilitators are so important, I reach out to colleges, business consulting groups. professional trainers/facilitators, and on line forums where deliberation and discussion are the focus. I believe that if I persistently seed these forums with invitations to apply their talent to my cause, I'll eventually find one, then many, who will take this important role.

At http://www.midwest-facilitators.net you can read about a network of facilitators who meet quarterly in Chicago. I've attended their meetings for more than 5 years and always learn new ideas and meet new people. As a result, some have begun to lead workshops within the conferences that I host in Chicago every six months.

As Paul said, someone has to take a strong leadership/management role. It takes time, and a clear focus. It's not easy because unless you have a high credibility rating (based on who you are, who you know, or what you have achieved, or your last name), most people won't take the time to understand what you are saying and why they should be involved.

Mark Lewis - Sep 2, 2006 11:16 am (#14 Total: 20)
CEO/Executive Director; Strategic Business Intelligence Group

I work off a broadband wireless on my laptop, meaning I can stay in real time for things like file transfers, emails and access to our Yahoo workgroup space...no waiting on trying to return to the office and access a desktop.  This cuts down on wasted time and lets me conform my schedule to those in the project group.  I think I add two hours a day to productivity by being able to go wireless on the web anywhere/anytime. 

Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Sep 4, 2006 1:13 pm (#15 Total: 20)
HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates


Paul asks:

What ideas do people have for making virtual collaborations fun and interesting, not just efficient?

That’s a very important question, I think, and I hope others will contribute their ideas.

I have a family of games I’ve been working on, known as the HipBone Games. They’re designed to be played in online environments for a variety of reasons ranging from education and therapy to conflict resolution.

I recently received the draft of a paper on the HipBone Games in online education, which is to be presented at an upcoming conference. The conclusion includes the following:

In summary, the major benefits [of the HipBone Games] appear to be: less superficial messages; increased elaboration and critical thinking; increased creative thinking; ensured collaboration as students must link according to the boards; greater clarity over expectations; more equal participation (students each play the same number of moves, unlike in discussions where one student might be more dominant or less dominant than others). The use of metaphors and the use of quotes have made the games seem more personally relevant to the students, who are encouraged to link their intellectual ideas with their personal experiences and interests. This ties in with assessment approaches that foster learning with personal relevance.

Another simple use of the games is as an ice-breaker in online conferences. I’ve described this process here, as part of a series of documents on the use of the games in conflict resolution:

http://www.beadgaming.com/hipdocs/06iceBreaker.pdf

More on the slowly-developing HipBone Games website at http://www.beadgaming.com .

I’d be delighted to correspond with anyone who might be interested in using the games in online environments for social entrepreneurial purposes.

Thanks, Paul -- and a tip of the hat as always to Dan at Tutormentor!

Mark Lewis - Sep 6, 2006 4:48 pm (#16 Total: 20)
CEO/Executive Director; Strategic Business Intelligence Group


SBIG's working on a website that should launch shortly, initially with a basic information access look to it, but with an installed infrastructure capable of supporting virtual office applicatoins like video conferencing and online meetings.  It makes sense to build an online collaboration environment both for the organization's flexibility and in terms of enabling capacity, but also so that we can engage people outside our organizations in what we're working on.  Eventually, I envision web based streaming media content, interactive smart documents that automatically adapt their structure, content or design as users needs change by scouring the web for updated information, dynamic meetings where white board applications embed multimedia files, web links, live video and even connections to other virtual office groups...the sky is the limit for these technologies.  The larger problem is gaining wide organizational acceptance and facilitating an understanding about why we should remain on the leading edge of the technology even when it appears we don't always need to do so at the present time. 

plamb - Sep 6, 2006 10:43 pm (#17 Total: 20)
Paul Lamb

Dan: going back to your mention of facilitators I recently came across an interesting group and process for offline and online collaborations through meaning-filled conversations. Check out http://www.theworldcafe.com/index.html

Charles: Great icebreaker games. Can't wait to try them out...

Mark: good point about the challenge of gaing organization-wide acceptance of new collaboration tools and innovations. Getting the tools themselves is often the easy part. Training and integration into the work flow is a much harder challenge...

Speaking of tools. Another interesting one for collaboration is http://www.wetpaint.com/. It is a do-it-yourself website that combines, blogs, wikis and social networking.

Next I hope we can talk more about best practices and processes for virtual collaborations...

But keep the questions and excellent comments coming!

tutormentor - Sep 7, 2006 4:59 am (#18 Total: 20)
Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection


The growing list of places to visit and learn just reinforces my frustration and belief that a single person just cannot comprehend and apply the constantly expanding range of opportunities.

Thus, the only way to get more work done in 24 hours is to have more people working together to gather, understand, reflect and share the information being accumulated.

Most of us don't have funds to expand our staff to do this. Thus, expanded manpower needs to come from volunteers or from students who might volunteer time in service in exchange for opportunities for learning.

While there are probably thousands, or even millions, of programs that have students involved in service, internships and/or research, I wonder how many of these are "PROGRAMS" with a sequence of new students each year picking up from where the previous group of students left off so that the impact of student involvement on a charity or social service grows over time, and the knowledge accumulated by the school and the students doing service also grows.

Such programs would be ideal partners in our efforts to make greater use of the knowledge and social networks that are growing on the Internet.

Mark Lewis - Sep 14, 2006 10:29 pm (#19 Total: 20)
CEO/Executive Director; Strategic Business Intelligence Group


I'm in the process of designing a project where we'll be using wiki technology to both collaborate and build data sets.  I'd love to speak to anyone with prior experience using wikis and especially if you've got familiarity with more than one wiki environment.  You can reach me on our website at www.strategicideas.org

SandraDickinson - Nov 6, 2006 9:18 am (#20 Total: 20)

Recently launched: http://selearninggames.wikispaces.com/

Selearninggames is a wikispace for social entrepreneurs to make a learning game together that will solve the mystery of nonprofit earned income venture profitability. 

 

What’s the game?  It’s making the game! 

 

The meta-patterns that solve the mystery of profitability are hidden in our collective experience.  Discovering patterns is what makes learning fun!  During the collaborative process of making the game, we will explore our common problems, and common solutions will emerge.  Our tacit knowledge (stuff we don’t know that we know) becomes explicit. 

 

As we apply, test and refine together, the most effective set of solutions become the meta-patterns accelerating profitability for our own ventures.  These meta-patterns become the design principles of the game we make.

 

Please join us for fun and profitability!  It’s free.  You can easily edit pages, upload files, join in our discussion.

Feel free to share this invitation with like-minded folks you know :).