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

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Sun, 5 Aug 2012, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:

> 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.

Perhaps just limited encrypted Usenet?

Also perhaps:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistant-like-dropbox-but-with-your-own

with a daemon that labels files, presents histories, and such like.

oo--JS.