I wondered last week about the ways we can use online tools to collaborate on projects – I had on my mind the etoolkit that David Wilcox (and now Beth Kanter, Emma Mulqueeny, Alex Stobart, Nancy White and Steve Dale…) and I are developing in the open.
My issue was that while wikis are perfect for putting stuff together and bringing together thoughts and resources, they aren’t that great for conversations or throwing out ideas, which is where group blogging can have a great impact. The trouble is that a standard WordPress (say) blog is rather an unwieldy beast for this task, making you sign up for the blog, log in, go to the admin panel, then click write post etc etc…
There’s an obvious solution here, and that’s the Prologue theme for WordPress. Makes it dead easy for people to contribute ideas, with the possibility of threaded conversations using the comments. Perfect. I have started one for the etoolkit here. It’s hosted at WordPress.com which means that while allowing others in to contribute is a little clunky, there’s little harm done or money lost if nobody uses it.