[Freedombox-discuss] Who's interested in project management & collaboration tools? And...

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Sun Aug 5 04:07:26 UTC 2012


Hi Melvin,

>
>
>     http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th
>
>
>     So... I'd really welcome any feedback on the questions who cares about
>     project management & collaboration tools, how to reach them, and what
>     might motivate them enough to take a look at what I'm doing?
>
>
> Have you seen bettermeans?
>
> www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g 
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g>
>

Have now, and in a sense it's the exact opposite of I'm working on - it 
imposes its view of how to manage collaboration, and it's a centralized 
system.

Most of the feedback I'm getting has been telling me that I need to to a 
better job of differentiating what I'm doing from the mass of project 
management products and services, so...

1. Simplicity: The model is more about keeping everyone on the same page 
(like actors following the same script) than about lots of process.  In 
the case of project management, a script looks more like a list of 
action items - hence the reason that an awful lot of project managers 
end up simply keeping track of things in spreadsheets.  The trick is how 
to share the same "script" across the net.

2. Distributed and Peer-to-Peer:  If you're happy with sharing a 
GoogleDocs spreadsheet, this project isn't for you.  If you like linked 
spreadsheets, but wished they actually worked across the net, and used 
open formats and protocols - that's what I'm shooting for. Write an 
action item list in a spreadsheet-like format, email it to 
collaborators, then as folks update things, those updates propagate 
automagically - no sorting through tons of emails to extract updates.  
(Also allow more wiki-like things, for Q&A, background materials, etc. - 
again, distributed rather than all running on a central machine).

3. Open everything.

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra




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