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Team solutions #1: Text development
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Posted by JBfrom
Oct 23, 2011 at 12:05 PM
For sharing BrainStormWFO models, the best way is to output to text file as tab indent and then paste into freemind, then export as html.
The result is very readable.
This doesn’t give editing capability, but often decisionmakers just want to read, not edit. Or they can copy-paste edits.
The important thing is that then can easily navigate and read the structure.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 23, 2011 at 07:00 PM
@ Steve: I’m rather ashamed to say that I have worked very little with Onenote as a personal tool. As a team solution it may be ideal; I had read some time ago here about the collaboration features of Onenote 2010, but I think at the time it was still in beta. I will definitely look at it. My only concern is needing to get everyone to upgrade to Office 2010 (I myself am still in 2007 in my main PC and use 2003 in other machines; apart for the price tag, I confess I never quite got used to the ribbon). It may be worth it though, especially with the 25 Gbytes available to MS Live users.
@JB: good idea; the nice thing about BrainstormUFO* exporting/importing tab-indented text is that it can be read by a multitude of applications, that can then translate it to further formats. I usually import it to TreeSheets or a mind mapper to get an overview. From Freemind or Mind Manager in particular I can get it to a hosted service like MindMeister or Mind42 (my personal preference), thereby providing editing ability to my collaborators as well. This may be indeed another option; I am personally disenchanted with mind maps but for many people they are very intuitive.
*OK, OK, I’ll get it eventually…
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Oct 24, 2011 at 06:21 PM
Alexander,
I think many of the collaboration features are available in the 2007 version of OneNote, if your team has that version.
Steve Z.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Oct 30, 2011 at 07:49 AM
Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions. Funnily enough, this discussion ties in well with another thread I myself had started two years ago “Breaking down a large Word document for sharing” http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/1370/10
The issue I then had was more specific, but in principle it remains the same: what is the most convenient way to work on a large and complex document with several collaborators, giving them easy access to the specific chapters that interest them, while still maintaining an overview? This is very similar to Jose’s requirement for a notetaker using the file system for individual info items here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3166/0/notetaker-that-uses-the-filesystem-and-has-powerful-search
My conclusion following the two threads and some experimenting, is that there are two ways to go:
(1) Use a tool providing collaboration features and including the full content. Onenote with Skydrive or Sharepoint seems to be the most mature solutions in this area. Free/open source alternatives include wikis, Wordpress and possibly more specialised tools like Scenari http://scenari-platform.org
(2) “Render unto caesar what is caesar’s” by using a tool for the overview and another for the broken-down content. This was the solution that I chose the previous time, in a way similar to Jose’s. I still believe that this approach has its benefits, the main one being that collaborators don’t need to learn a completely new tool, as they will do their editing in Word or Google Docs (though it will probably have to be one or the other if they share chapters among them). The individual documents would be hosted in Dropbox, Wuala or similar synchronised storage.
For the overview, an online tool like MindMeister/Mind42 or the excellent MyInfo website export should prove intuitive enough for most. The former would be preferable if collaboration is required on the actual outline, whereas the latter would be read/only (for everyone but the project manager).
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Nov 5, 2011 at 05:50 PM
I wrote:
> For the overview, an online tool like MindMeister/Mind42 or the excellent MyInfo website export should prove intuitive enough for most.
I should add to the list the excellent Checkvist http://checkvist.com collaborative outliner.
By the way, after testing online mindmapping and outlining tools it seems that they cannot handle file:// links so it’s not possible to link to locally hosted files for the various ‘chapters’, only to online repositories like Google Docs.