Today’s Use Case for the Collaborative Tools Project is a difficult one to give an accurate title. It can be thought of as a site that promotes the work of a department or aims to attract a community of like minded people. It might have lots of media such as photos or videos from conferences or even lectures.
The teams I have that need this are…
- The Sustainability Forum – who want to raise the awareness and debate around the University of York’s sustainability
- The Philosophy Wiki – a Community of Practice about, er, philosophy (currently they are using MediaWiki)
- Humanities Research – a cross departmental research department (currently using the WordPress service)
- History of Art
An important part of this Use Case looks to engage potential students and impress funding bodies and attract collaborators. It is very much an “outreach site” and aspects of social media marketing or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or being well ranked in Google might even come into play.
My first thoughts for providing service this was WordPress…. and then the Philosophy team turned up and complicated things. Who’d have thought?
The challenge here is to give people what they want.. and what they tell me they want is…
- Something that looks shit hot
- Something that is very much “their look and feel”
- Something that is the beginning of a niche community
- Something that is theirs.
It’s a tough nut to crack.
At first I thought that a shared WordPress Multi-User environment, with a shared look and feel, although being easy to administer, might not be appropriate at all. It would be just “too corporate”. And WordPress is woeful at wiki integration and wiki thinking so it wouldn’t do for the philosophers at all.
But on the other hand, maintaining the upgrades on multiple installs of WordPress isn’t something I would look forward to doing.
I am struggling here to decide what is the best approach to providing great-looking, easy-to-use sites that broadly support self-promotion, blogging, community-building and wiki working that are public-facing and look to engage the wider world in discussion or even content creation.
I currently am thinking of providing workshops, templates and guides to using Blogger, WordPress, PBWorks effectively and then make sure that we aggregate the items created centrally. This sort of gives people the “best of breed” service for a few pounds a month. They could even hire their own designers if the look and feel of free templates isn’t up to their very high specifications.
What would you do?
Plone! Django! Find budget, call us!
Hi Tom
I’ve been playing with Google Sites – great for a team wiki. I’d like to try collaborative stuff on Posterous, but there are still only 24 hours in a day:-)
I have only begun to explore the potential for Google sites, but it is fun (and a useful back-up when the server goes on strike).
Some of a departments are using Google Sites here too… but many departments can’t use it because at the end of the day, Google are an American company and the servers are in America. Some of the research funders are very sensitive about that.
And in general there is a greater degree of suspicion about the “doing no evil” empire anyway…
The lack of branding ability on Google Sites is a challenge too (or can you do that now?) Google have a particular style that well…you either love or hate.
@doug… Want Python Find Budget Call Us should be your band name
Sensitivity – I have come across that too, but it conflicts with my appreciation of open learning. Scepticism is appropriate, but I wouldn’t throw out the treats just because they are bad for me.
I think there may be more opportunities for branding, judging from the Google Site templates. For me, it is all about collaboration tools. In an ideal world I would have all the Google stuff without Google.
I know what you mean, I’m an idealist too, I think.
Despite Google’s obvious benefits I still hold out hope that there are better ways of doing things, when design is more closely coupled to what you actually want…. rather than having to fit yourself to the tool.