Business - Written by Jeff DeChambeau on Monday, August 11, 2008 21:07 - 5 Comments
Living the Dream with Google Docs
Google Docs are not new. All the same, last week Caleb, Will, Jude, Ben and I decided to try using them for a project at the office. Up until then, I had only ever used Google Spreadsheets as an in-the-cloud host for files I was working on, or to share files with people easily for asynchronous editing. This was not the case for our project. Instead, we used it synchonously.
The project was to go through our research catalogue and back-tag existing content with a standard set of tags. To accomplish this, we needed to define the standard set of tags in a way that was easily accessible for all of us, and somehow it didn’t seem like that we’d enjoy much success copying and pasting from a physical whiteboard. So, we figured we’d try out Google Spreadsheets for an in-office project. It was awesome.
When we loaded up the document and had everyone invited, you could see the color-coded selection boxes of each other user as they went about adding content to the spreadsheet. We would ask each other questions and then see the answers appear near-instantaneously in the document. It was really cool, and it was really functional. Earlier today, Naumi argued that sometimes synchonous work is overrated, this was not one of those times.
What was really striking was that for every edit that we made, the information had to be sent through our router, to our ISP, to a backbone, to Google’s serverfarm and then back again to each other user. What was remarkable was that the data was able to travel several hundred miles through an online spreadsheet faster than it was able to travel across the room if we were speaking. Our experience was greatly enriched by using an online collaborative technology in a face to face setting.
Man, I’m a dork for thinking this is as cool as I do.
5 Comments
renxiang
Liz Sumner
You’re not a dork, or at least you’re not alone for thinking it’s that cool.
Ben Letalik
This experience was so good that I will be forcing all my group members to work with it next year at school.
Either everyone in the room working on this at the time is a dork (very possible) or this is actually so cool that anyone can appreciate it (even more possible).
Brent
I’m not sure whether this has been revised but the last time I used Google Docs, I had some trouble with the resulting file in Excel in that all of the formatting did not come out properly.
At work, we use Microsoft Office Groove for collaboration, but I’m not a huge fan of it.
I’m with you. On my first book (Use Cases: Requirements in Context) I worked with my co-author by shipping Word documents back-and-forth through e-mail.
On this book (Agile Plus Rigor), we are using Google Docs, and it is utterly seamless. We both make changes to the files, we don’t have to worry about “who the owner of this chapter is” and all the inevitable overwrites. Plus, everything is backed up and versioned all to heck.
Love Google Docs. Love collaborative computing.
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In the Google’s project,the key,i think,will be how to difine the standard tags and how to promotion the commercial process.
In my opinion,Google will be a flat-top building that provide users tools and opportunities which make mass collaboration more convenient and low-cost.In order to achieve it,the tag should be more uncommercial,and then trustworthiness can arise.Trustworthiness will attract more people and organizations use Google.
Online collaboration only is a way to make reality integrate more efficient.The commercial process is not only based on the online information,also on socielty how to use it.So Google should keep eyes on helping people and organizations use the information coming from the online collaboration.