Running a Zero-Infrastructure Company, Part 2b: Collaboration for our Shop

Collaborating without Microsoft Office: GoToMeeting, OpenOffice, Google Apps and MS Office 2007 (okay, you're not really getting away)

Sharing information and communicating down the long-hallway posed a significant challenge. It could have been very expensive – except that as a startup we drink the Fruity Frugalistic Kool-Aid™ every day.

GoToMeeting – our choice for sharing screens and collaboration. The toughest part about doing agile remotely is not being able to share the cards or the whiteboard markers. GoToMeeting provided us with a conference number and unlimited usage for $50 a month. Shortly after signing up, we got a break when they offered us access to the v4 Beta, which included VOIP, for the same cost. Now we keep a developer's channel open all day long. We call it the crèche, like emperor penguins use for young ones, except we use it for our developers to help each other through tough spots or for long sessions of eXtreme Programming. We also signed up for a second plan, and now pay $100 a month, but it's worth every penny.

OpenOffice – if you don't have the cash and you like to experiment, get OpenOffice to replace Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It's free, and now there's a plug-in to open .docx files. This is IMHO still just a necessary evil especially when you need to work off-line or need better controls over your formatting than what Google Docs can do for you. We consistently introduce our clients and vendors to Google Docs whenever possible.

Gmail – this may not seem so new and cool now, but back in May 2007 when we wanted to have a centralized email repository for the newco, this was the obvious choice. No Exchange license fee. No hosting fees. No backup concerns. No spam-filter concerns. Uptime had as good a guarantee as most. 6 gig of storage space meant never having to delete an email. Best of all, we could manage users through the Google Apps domain manager.

Google Chat – not only does Chat serve us consistently throughout the day for solutions, it's a way to grow a personal relationship with a co-worker you'd like to get to know better without having to disturb 4 other people in the same room (we have 5 people in a room meant for 2 or 3). It also grew to be our In/Out board, as many people work from home, work late, work weekends, work remotely (we work a lot). Lately it's been a fun tool for learning machine-translated foreign language phrases.

Google Calendar – another stellar, free service that keeps us from paying for Exchange hosting and licensing. Google Calendar allows everyone in the team to have their own calendar, and view others as needed. Calendars give reminders via email, mobile device or pop-ups. They also integrate nicely with Google Maps using the location box. I hear there are services to sync your Google Calendar to your mobile device, but we have not adopted anything in the company.

Google Docs – I bold this, specifically Google Spreadsheets for its collaborative abilities that are a natural evolver of ideas. Here's how it works: you have some data, perhaps just a to-do list. If it's not a sticky-note, start it on a G-Sheet no matter how simple. Don't ever use Notepad or Excel again. Save it. You can organize these into folders. You can invite friends to look or edit. Best of all, you can see their edits within seconds, and you can always roll back changes according to the revision log. We tend to use GTM for voice communications, but it also has a chat window – a fun feature here is to click on their name in the window, focusing your view on the cell they are currently editing. If you need mass-input, create a form within minutes that can be emailed or linked to, and data entered is time stamped. When you're done, export a PDF for a snapshot to those who care. This one app replaces sticky-notes, pens, Excel, a screen-sharing tool, a revision tracking file system, a backup system and Adobe Acrobat (or PrimoPDF). It promotes ideas to fruition with ease.

Then there's Google Document and Google Presentation – both of which are great ways to add collaboration to things like Word and PowerPoint, but still need to capture the layout capabilities to the extent that you could get with OpenOffice or MS Office.

Which brings me to MS Office 2007 – through the MS Action Pack – for $650, we were able to get a huge list of software from Microsoft. There were a few different reasons for this: We needed Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2005, and we kept getting that new .docx format from everyone else, for which there was no OpenOffice plug-in at the time. So, the Action Pack had 10 seats of Office 2007… and the rest is MS business as usual. Besides, who can resist that cool new ribbon header? I'm actually using Word 2007 to write this post and publish auto-magically to Blogger.

Next Time: Part 2c, The Not-so-Hardware of our Shop