IS WRITEBOARD THE RIGHT BOARD?

I thought so. In a recent collaborative online writing effort--my first, actually--I had the opportunity to experiment with Writeboard, and I had no complaints. However, since I am a novice in such matters, my evaluative criteria is fairly simple. As long as there is a decent product at the end and no major snag that I am forced to spend hours correcting, I leave the desk with a smile on my face!

With Writeboard, no snags! As a web-based collaborative writing tool, Writeboard is an easy interface to use. Truth be told, there was one snag: the bold, italics, and other font modifications didn’t work for me. What I mean to say is that I couldn’t get them to work properly. As this was happening, I simply thought, “I must not be seeing how to do it." I am, however, happy to report that my co-writer mentioned the same difficulty in her blog. She describes the Track Changes feature offered by Microsoft Word as perhaps a more sophisticated tool than Writeboard. Until she said this, I never thought of Track Changes as sophisticated either, but I admit to being impressed by the newer version that describes the changes made to a document in little balloons that appear in the margins.

Back to Writeboard: it is a product of 37signals, a privately-held Web design and Web application company based in Chicago. They are committed to simplicity in software design, as evidenced by their credo:

We believe most software is too complex. Too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion. We build easy to use web-based products with elegant interfaces and thoughtful features. We’re focused on executing on the basics beautifully.

With Writeboard, I’d say mission accomplished. It is ideal for the non-tech team. I could easily see using it in human services and other such industries, where wikis and other online apps might add stress. More technologically sophisticated work groups might feel otherwise, but for the bulk of users, Writeboard should be fine. The following users could benefit from it:

• Students and work groups who are not physically on the same campus or worksite
• Colleagues with different skill sets or areas of expertise, all of whom must contribute to a document
• Work enviroments without the capacity to share documents
• Technophobes

A good end-product can result if participants have well-defined roles, i.e., someone who checks for accurate information, another who ensures the writing is cohesive and grammatical, and so on. 37signals seems to favor smaller work groups in their endeavors, and this might well apply to users' intial introduction to Writeboard and online collaborative writing. How big a Writeboard group before the process becomes unwieldy? That aside, it is a great way to see how others work and retain all good thoughts and ideas. Writeboard also allows you to see earlier versions of a document in progress, and gives credit to the contributor.

Bottom line: good show!