Remote Collaboration: (Skype/Unyte, Wiki’s)

From Web2forDev

Giacomo Rambaldi - Skype and Unyte

COmbination of skype and unyte allows people to share their desktops and work collaboratively regardless of physical proximity

Up to 9 people can share documents remotely. Participants can invite each other to make changes etc... to documents, and can share responsibility for saving etc..

Sharepoint is a shared file storage facility that makes it simple for people to access and work on files collaboratively. Versioning protects against revision problems.

These facilities can be used for training people online, and for delivering presentations. Remote delivery of presentations is good for the environment and people's work schedules.

THe use of unyte is a complement to voice presentations, and makes communication much more efficient. It allows for desktop viewing and other control options. You can integrate with skype.

System requirements - Windows 2000 or above. You need to install a client on the computer.

'Comments and questions' What are the system requirements for sharepoint?

Sharepoint is not integral to using unyte - it is a separate platform designed for sharing and collaborating on documents.

Would you reccomend institutions using this facility?

Skype can reduce communication costs substantially. It works for up to 9 participants. If you need functionality for more than 9, you may need a more advanced pay-for package.

THere are often problems with Skype when participants are in low bandwidth areas. How does this effect unyte?

People with dial-up can have problems. Always follow the rule of getting the person with the highest bandwidth to initiate of the conference. SHaring desktops increases the load on bandwidth.

Wikis - Karel Novotny, APC

A wiki is a simple website - hosted on a server, simple to install, simple to edit.

Can quickly grow into an elaborate structure.

Wikipedia is the most famous example of collaborative editing on a wiki.

A wiki allows a group of people to all publish and contribute, adding pages and content, and growing the resource.

The emphasis with wikis, is on easy and accessible editing. Every page is editable and the site is extendable. New pages are created simply by virtue of creating a link to them.

The easy editing and page-creation of wikis allows for anarchic structuring of content. Any one page can link to another one, simply by using the double-square bracket syntax. The only rule is that you should not attempt to create a new page that has the same name as another one.

Wikis are great for:

• collaborative project development
• logistical planning of an event
• documentation projects (commonly used by open source software projects)
• note taking at events

With the chaos that can emerge on wikis, it can be useful to have someone with 'gardening' responsibilities.

Case Study - Kabissa's wiki, Tobias Eigen

http://www.kabissa.org/wiki/start - used for a range of activities including housing Kabissa's Time To Get Online training materials and the Web 2.0 in African civil society paper. The tool used may look like MediaWiki (as in wikipedia and web2fordev wikis) but is not! It's produced using the simpler Dokuwiki tool[1] and a MediaWiki template[2].

"Time to get online", Kabissa's training manual, was originally presented as a word document. This presented problems with sharing and updating. Now the document has been wikified and it can be updated continually, easily navigated. Kabissa has customised the wiki platform to also make it easily printable and downloadable.

Document is currently managed by Kabissa but aim is to have trainers updating from the field.

'Questions and comments' Does the wikification process take a long time (conversion of a word doc to wiki doc)?

No - it was just a case of copying and pasting from word to wiki and getting used to the wiki syntax If you are converting an existing text from HTML format to Wiki, you can use http://diberri.dyndns.org/html2wiki.html.

To create the printable version, Kabissa just used a print-friendly style sheet.

Some wikis also include an 'export to pdf' function. (see tikiwiki for an example).

How many management roles do you have on the wiki? What people resources does it consume?

THe management of the wiki is all through a web interface so management can be distributed.

NB, you can set up email alerts so that you know when a page is updated.

How do you track changes on a wiki? and how to you quality control?

If there are content elements that you want to restrict editing access to, then you can implement access control by locking.

Wikis are based on trust. A wiki is an open space for collaboration.