Workspace Utility

Communication Planning:

If you have a larger team organizing the event it may be useful to have an email list for that group so that no one gets left off the cc list on critical messages. If you find yourself using the list to exchange files frequently you may want to consider using a web page (either a development page or a private workspace) as a place to store important files that need to be retrieved quickly (e.g. to avoid the--I'm digging through my email for the attachment--delays during planning calls).

Facilitating a Team or Small Group

A workspace can be useful tool to support the ongoing internal work of a team or project. By default workspaces have very little structure, just a starting blank page and a file archive page where uploaded files can be found easily. There are a number of common practices structuring a workspace that you may find useful.

If the group meets regularly keep meeting notes on a separate page within the workspace. You can either use one long running page for all meetings are start a new one for each meeting (or perhaps less frequently). You can build the agenda within the space before the meeting taking advantage of the ability of any member of the group to add items to the list as they think of them.

When you upload files embed them with the [file] tag in a page that provides some context. While the file archive at the back of a workspace is a handy way to find all upload files, take advantage of the fact the with the [file] tag you can also embed each file into the text of a page. Include some details about what is in the file within the web page and place it near related information in the page (e.g. place a document next to the area where it will be discussed on the online meeting agenda). While this approach takes a little extra work it will pay big dividends down the road when you want to find a particular file. The context provided by the web page will provide clear guidance: you won't have to dig through a directory of files with cryptic names.

Link effectively within and to resource outside your workspace. If the workspace is providing structure for work that is also resulting in a public website, make sure you link from the workspace to the relevant parts of the public site so you can quickly navigate from workspace discussion about some material to the material itself. Also take time periodically to think about how you might link among pages in your workspace (perhaps spliting existing content across multiple pages) to make work go more smoothly. For instance you may find it useful to periodically move old material to a separate page so that it is still available for reference but isn't in the way of day-to-day work.

Workshops

Use workspaces to record group work as it happens. Notes from discussions and working time can be entered as the event proceeds directly in a workspace pages. If groups record their notes directly online (rather than in a Word document or the like) other groups members and event leaders can easily see what everyone is working on as it happens.

Pre-populated workspaces pages can jump start small group work. Rather than having participants contribute through a form into an existing templated format it may be more flexible to create a workspace with assigned pages for each individual or group. You can enter prompting text into each page before work begins to encourage a common format and help participants stay focused on the goals for the work. The results may end up more free-form than if you'd used forms and templates, so this approach is best when use for formative work who's audience is limited. This is great approach for helping to structure note-taking during working group sessions, or to build a set of pages that shares results within a community during an event.