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Blog posts tagged collaboration
Riding the Google Wave to better business collaboration
November 03, 2009
We've all played email tennis, either with friends, family or business colleagues. That's fine, if you have the time. If you're working on a proposal document and you're using Word, you can bounce revisions around forever and a day. That's also fine, if you've got the time. Problem is, time is a premium asset these days and if you want to get the most out of your time, you need to save as much of it as possible. And what time you do use, you do so as efficiently as possible — that's where Google's new collaborative communication tool comes in.
Wave is email and revision-aware word processing combined into a real-time web application that allows more than one person to edit the same document at the same time. So imagine starting a new "wave" (which is Google parlance for a new page or document) and then inviting friends to contribute.
Once your colleagues have accepted your invite, you can see them typing in the new wave. Better yet, as you all make additions and changes to each others' copy, you can scrub the revision time line back to a specific point and start again.
The benefits of working with Google Wave are:
- collaborate live with colleagues / clients from anywhere you have an internet connection;
- a complete revision history of all additions and amends throughout the life time of the wave;
- more than one person can edit a wave at the same time;
- you won't have to worry about having the correct version of the software to edit a wave.
Because Wave is free, the only additional time you'll spend will be learning how to use it. And if you can use Word, you can use Wave, too. With all the time you'll save, you could learn to play tennis!
Knowledge is power
April 16, 2009
The Marketing Donut is a truly collaborative project and we’ve used some of the best people available to create this fantastic new resource. Central to this is the involvement of more than 100 expert contributors.
We’ve always worked with experts at BHP and believe their involvement is key to the practical and unbiased nature of the content we produce. It can be a challenge to incorporate feedback from different experts, each with their own views. But there’s a real sense of achievement when after the umpteenth round of corrections, you end up with a piece of content upon which everyone agrees – and that still reads well.
We’ve struck gold with the Marketing Donut and have some great people working with us. From high-profile marketing writers through ex-marketing directors of blue chips to well-known social networkers, plus, all the key marketing bodies – they’ve all given their time, knowledge and support. We’re very grateful for this.
Currently, we’re recruiting for the next Donut – so if you’re an expert in start-up issues, please get in touch.
Marketing Donut - much longer than an elephant
January 15, 2009
Baby elephants, like humans, stay in the womb for a long time. But even by elephant standards, the Donut project has been a long time in the making.
The team at BHP have heard me talk about donuts since 1996, when we drew a “donut diagram” to show how we would pull off a seemingly impossible collaboration: 500 experts would help us write 150 briefings for small businesses (SMEs), meanwhile we’d have pre-licensed the content to 80 websites by the day the content was completed — and the whole thing would be funded by sponsorship from 20 leading brands.
Well, we pulled it off and launched on schedule. By the year 2000 we had 250 organisations using the content (the Directors’ Briefing series) on their websites and in their call centres, including major websites like BT and learndirect.
The Marketing Donut is simply a variation of the same model. The website is an extremely focused channel for reaching SMEs with one thing on their minds: marketing.
BHP’s publishing and marketing activities have always been aimed at SME end users, because I find SMEs and the whole challenge of running a business single-handedly (which is the reality for most small businesses) fascinating.
I’ve always admired people who have the guts to run a small business. Having started up BHP and an earlier business (in Tokyo of all places) myself, I know how challenging it is. The point of running your own business is that, while most owner-managers are considerably less well off than we’d be as employees, we enjoy a unique kind of personal freedom that would be hard to put a price on.
Recession or not, 2009 is looking good. At BHP we’ve done loads of projects over the last 17 years, but the Marketing Donut is definitely the coolest and the most exciting.
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