Are You Collaborating Enough?

Listening to Marketing Over Coffee on the way home, there was a very small section talking about GoogleDocs and how you can activate a form to collect data for you. It also made me think further on the question about how much we’re collaborating (or not collaborating) online.

We had to create a wiki for our social media class, and of course, wikis tell you how much (or little) someone edited the final output. It was noted that a handful of people contributed the majority of the content, which made our Professor, Michael Netzley, less than thrilled. I brought up the point that though a few people may have been the actual ones to enter the text, doesn’t mean the whole team did not collaborate together. Both sides are debatable, but that’s not the point.

I’m an assistant scout leader for my alma mater’s scout troop and every year around this time we have a camp. As with previous years, the emails pile up, meeting minutes get distributed, camp schedules get sent and changed and re-sent and re-changed until eventually, no one knows what in the world is going on anymore.

To solve this, I set up a wiki for the leaders. It’s a private wiki so I’m sorry I can’t share the link. I will however say that we’re using PBwiki, which I find to be superior to Wetpaint in terms of editing as well as help. But that aside, so far it’s been helping us keep track of personnel and manpower, topics of discussion, a couple of things to be noted, schedules, equipment lists and so on.

No more losing of minutes on paper, no more “can you send me the latest schedule? I can’t find it”. Everything is up there and updated. To the minute.

So why aren’t more of us doing this? Is it the challenge of working alone as Michael brings up? Or an unwillingness to change our styles of working?

Does it make sense for us to share our items on Google Reader (my shared items are here)? Or on del.icio.us? How about collaborating on Google Docs in the classroom? In the office?

To me the biggest problem is convincing the people you’re working with that it’s worth their while. In my scout case study, I knew the people who were primarily going to enter the data would be the younger adult leaders, while the older leaders would keep and eye on it from time to time. To both of these groups, you gotta speak their language.

To my peers, it was the idea of collaboration. To see everything in one place, to have links and for easy reading. To the senior leaders, it was the idea of streamlining information. Not losing paper, not having to distinguish whether schedule(final).doc is the true schedule or schedule(final)THISISTHEREALFINAL.doc is the true schedule.

So how’s collaboration working (or not working) for you? Are you using wikis regularly? Online document processors or software based? Is it a challenge convincing your classmates/colleagues to use it as well?

How Was Your Read And Comment Day?

What Read And Comment Day?

Yesterday was Read and Comment day, where you have to make an active effort to comment on blogs and join the conversation. It was suggested by Chris Brogan, and true to form, he even left a comment here as well. Read and Comment day also inspired me to encourage people to strengthen their links to people on Twitter, especially the weaker links.

My Report

I put aside an hour last night to really go through my Google Reader (learnt how to use it yet?) and properly digest blog posts and comment. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of when I first started blogging in January when Prof. Netley advised us that we should comment twice as much as we post to establish a presence and drive traffic. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I forgot that along the way, but Read and Comment day really reminded me how important it is not just to create my own content by blogging, but to add value to others’ content as well.

How About You?

Have you found yourself commenting less than usual? Something holding you back from joining the conversation? Go post a couple of comments today. You’ll feel great!

My Conversations

• CC Chapman had a Twitter story I could totally relate to.
• Chanced upon how to get placement on blogs with a great example by Jason Falls. Read this before pitching a blogger please.
• Frederic talks about how bloggers are filters but not gatekeepers
• Found a great blog by Deirdre Breakenridge and a great post called the Twitter addiction
• Decided to follow Louis Gray’s social media consumption workflow for a day, and was pretty happy with it. Slotting in FriendFeed last makes sense.
• Finally, Steven Hodson’s post on the danger of social media falling in on itself.

All great topics, especially if you’re into social media. Why not read and comment on them (or right here) yourself?

Social Media Breakfast: Singapore – Blog Coverage

Taking the place of Icio Links this week, some great online coverage of SMB: Singapore.

First up, Michael’s video. 12 minutes of awesomeness (you have to click on the link because as usual, WordPress is giving me problems with video).

Hisham gives his recount of a crazy weekend .

Amsie the foodie of course has her food pictures up.

Andrew too had a busy weekend but made the time to appear for SMB

YuHui’s post is here.

Prof. Michael dropped in for awhile but then followed the various conversations online to chime in as well.

Jeff Pulver (from whom we borrowed the personal tagging idea) picked up our video and we’re also very happy to have been picked up by Mitch Joel in Episode #97 of Six Pixels Of Separation. If you haven’t listened to this podcast, you need to. It’s the spark that got the collaboration for SMB off in the first place!

Truly a remarkable experience with great connections and conversations going on as well as a great community being formed. Don’t miss the next one!

It’s very possible I didn’t get all the pingbacks/trackbacks/links/Google Alerts, so if you posted something up on SMB: Singapore. Do let me know and I’ll add you in!

Edit:

Also picked up: a comparison between journalists and bloggers.

Nabilah has a recount of the whole social media adventure of hers from class to our audio interview to the SMB.

Sheylara wrote a lengthy post (with lots of great pictures) that you should check out as well.