Virtual+Collaboration+Tools


 * Information systems, tools and methods for 'green' collaborative activities **

One area of promise for 'Green IS' is the use of virtual collaboration tools. These tools can directly reduce carbon footprints by replacing videoconferencing with travel. They can also provide a foundation for education and social advocacy in support of social changes in support of sustainability.

On this page SIGGreen members can post comments of links to information on virtual collaboration tools. Alternatively link from here to a new page with more detailed information.

Elluminate could be a possibility tool/application for the virtual workshop. Here is a link to a test session. The link is open from now to the end of September. Feel free to click and play around. [] See the Discussion on the home page

Some other tools to investigate are [|www.huddle.com], [|www.comindwork.com], [|www.yammer.com], [|www.zoho.com], [|www.lumoflow.com] and [|www.flowdock.com] Some for researchers are [|www.mendeley.com] and [|www.researchgate.net]

[|CrabGrass] - Software Libre for Social Organizing open source tool under development Here is their home page description: "Crabgrass is a software libre web application designed for social networking, group collaboration and network organizing. Our goal is to create communication tools that are tailored specifically to meet the needs of bottom up grassroots organizing. The internet may herald a deep change in democratic communication, but the internet is simultaneously the most effective tool for mass surveillance ever devised. Crabgrass is a secure alternative to for-profit social networking and organizing platforms."

[|EVO] an academic meeting tool from the Australian Research Collaboration Service.

[|DimDim] another free meeting tool

A list of video hosting sites is [|here]

A list of online meeting tools is [|here]

A list of social networking websites is [|here]


 * Requirements for information systems support for the SIGGreen Global Virtual Workshop **

This page will be used to identify and describe the system requirements and relevant use cases for the use of virtual collaboration tools to support the activities of the SIGGreen group. These requirements by extension are relevant to any other research group that is distributed globally and wants to rely more on virtual tools for interaction. (please add to these)

1) It could be one system or a collection of tools 2) Cope with different time zones 3) Presentation need to be online in a variety of forms (text audio, video etc) 4) Accessible from different devices 5) There may be access restrictions in different countries 6) There needs to be ongoing discussion plus realtime chat or audio and a permanent record of these 7) Cost, sponsorship considerations 8) It could be a hosted system or one in the cloud 9) It must have a robust time scheduling mechanism so that parties who want to participate can be notified, can register, and can be reminded of the event. This would require some kind of event management or calendar software (such as Google Calendar).
 * Experiences from 2010:**

1) virtual synchronous meeting with robust connectivity (approximately one hour) 2) virtual synchronous 24 hour workshop that supports and archives synchronous and asynchronous participation 3) many to many chat with archive 4) recording and archival of conference meetings and presentations 5) extended project with synchronous meetings, asynchronous interactions, storage of reference material, common document 6) set presentations with audience questions 7) business meetings with discussions, voting 8) brainstorming events
 * Use Cases:**