Reinvention and collaboration
The Research Cooperative Network is in a perpetual state of reinvention, according to the whims of the present owner, director and sole user. Suggestions for possible research-related collaborations are welcome. Our aims change from year to year, and according to our familarity with internet tools (not necessarily a rising curve, given the high turnover in tools available)
Currently under construction is a new collection of forums at The Research Cooperative .org. Enquiries about this new site are welcome.
'Basecamp' and its offspring
Project Management Utopia is offered by a product called Basecamp. Components of this product can be used separately, e.g as an online Writeboard, which is in effect an unpublished blogsite where registered team members can log in and work together on a shared document.
Free trial versions are available and are interesting, but half the battle might be finding a group of people who all agree to use the system. Sharing documents via email is already an easy and well-known way to work collaboratively, but there can be problems with people using different computer systems and word-processing programmes.
Basecamp and its offspring would be good for companies that have scattered employees and regularly handle many reports or other documents. An editing company that wished to run a single document past a group of editors, or series of editors, could use this as a kind of unifying company system.
