Whether you’re on a project team, party-planning or seeking customers’ input to improve your product you have
more chance of success with the right collaborative tools.
Often, the trouble is finding the best
Here are some of the tools and ways they can be used to accomplish more with others:
• Brainstorm and plan together, drawing your ideas on the wall. Turn any smooth surface into a “dry erase” place using IdeaPaint.
• Your team can stay on task and be accountable to each other using AtTask.
• Start a learning community where peers, fellow enthusiasts, employees, customers or fans teach each other, using Bloomfire.
• Enable all club or association members or business employees to participate in suggesting innovations and growing great ideas from fuzzy inceptions to solid, actionable projects, with Brainbank.
• Teammates can quickly and dynamically create and refine charts, allowing other users to be invited in to review, comment on, and update a diagram in a matter of minutes without having to go through the process of saving a copy of a file, attempting to email it, making sure the recipient has the same program, and waiting for a reply, using Creately.
• Find out what your employees really know about your business and thus crowdsource innovation, tapping the “wisdom of crowds” to improve what you sell and how you sell it, using Crowdcast.
• For crowdsourcing funding for creative projects try Kickstarter.
• Just as Cisco, with its popular I-Prize, involved BrightIdea and Spigit in crowdsourcing innovative ideas you can use a crowdsourcing tool to tap the wisdom of the crowd. That way you can efficiently filter out best ideas and recognize and reward those who submit them as Ireland did. Jive offers another robust approach to crowdsourcing.
• For your group, start a Wordpress blog-like social network that enables everyone in your company, school, sports team or niche community to contribute ideas, using BuddyPress.
• Co-create maps for that you can share via your mobile phones, using CloudMade.
• In real-time, meet with colleagues around the world, using dimdim to participate in real-time meetings. You can collaborate by sharing their desktops, slides, and other materials with each other. Meeting participants can also chat and speak to each other, as well as broadcast themselves via webcams. Or up to ten people can meet for free online, and share screens and co-draw items using Mikogo.
• Spot a pothole or graffiti when out doing errands? Use CitySourced on your cell phone to report them to city hall for quick resolution. This is an opportunity for government to use technology to save money and improve accountability to those they govern, using CitySourced.
• Effortlessly group text your committee, team or group of close friends with GroupMe. It works on every phone.
• If several of you are planning an event, trip or project and want to easily share and track expenses, use WePay.
What other tools have helped you in collaborating?
Please add them to this list of 97 tools.
Then you might want to peruse this list of collaboration-related books and sites – and add your own favorites, of course, in the spirit of sharing and collaboration.
Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect
Even non-Scandinavians feel their mood dampen with thelonger nights as we head into winter. Luckily there are some easy ways to lift your spirits. Here are three: 1. When describing something that just happened or in yourpast, notice if it is anchored by a positive or a negative incident. Those who are most resilient, energetic, caring and involved with others tend to link their stories to redemptive themes. Those who are plagued by down moods often mark their stories with what went wrong and don’t include a redeeming detail. These narrative themes affect ourchoices –what we think we have to choose from – and how others see us. 2. We each have many personalities inside us. Some situations enable us to use our best talents and display
our best side. Instead of attempting to be a “virtuoso juggler” as many women do, discover the specific situations where you thrive. When you can identify those moments you are better able, like a defensive driver, to see potential danger farther ahead where situations or individuals spark your discomfort or worse.
Conversely, knowing where you shine (temperament and talent) means you can make smarter choices about how you work and live – and with whom. While Marcus Buckingham’s book is intended for women I know three male friends who have found it helpful in how they seek the situations that best serve them, professionally, personally and socially. 3.We each have a set point along the continuum of pessimistic to optimistic. After winning the lottery or experiencing the death of a loved one, we eventually return to that set point. Since those who are on the positive end of that range are more likely to thrive, have friends and advance in their work, you might want to practice specific ways of “acting as if” you are more optimistic that are described in Learned Optimismand Authentic Happiness.
Those who instinctively react more negatively or helplessly to difficult situations tend to experience it as the “three Ps”: Personal (most of all it happened to me) Pervasive (now everything feels worse in my life), and Permanent (it will always be this bad). One caveat that makes it worth having friends at the other end of the spectrum: Optimists tend to be overly rosy about a situation, leaping into opportunities that, in fact, aren't while pessimists are more realistic – seeing what is.
Together they are more likely to see potential problems and to find solutions. They are also more likely to squabble because the other person doesn’t act right – like them. So it helps to laugh when you recognize when it that is starting to happen. Hint: Perspective is potent - “Every day may not be good, but there’s something good in every day.” ~Unknown See links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/
spending less on promotion.
After watching her mother staining clothes while taking her dialysis treatments several times a week, Megan Stengel and her partners began designing functional yet attractive clothing with hidden zippers and other alterations.
spending less on promotion.
After watching her mother staining clothes while taking her dialysis treatments several times a week, Megan Stengel and her partners began designing functional yet attractive clothing with hidden zippers and other alterations.
