Today, my professional bacon has been saved by Near-Time.net . Here’s the story.
I’m deep in project planning and execution at the moment. Clients are coming from all directions and keeping all the balls in the air is becoming a bit serious. On one project, I’m creating collateral that explains how the role is more important than the function. In the first one, I’m looking at the CFO/FD. This is not an easy trick to pull off.
My client operates almost exclusively for service industries and has business across both public and private sectors. I need to address each sector in the terms and language they understand. And we have to demonstrate a passion for the things this client does. In addition, we’re exploring how we could use podcasting as a way of emphasising and supporting the message in client engagements. The idea is to get the customer to speak.
In and among all this, the kinds of question I raised caused issues around how brand values are defined and demonstrated. This led to an extension to the contract while we went off and sorted that one out.
Apart from the logistics involved in receiving information, undertaking research, figuring out the timing for getting things done, understanding who is in the team and their roles – deep breath – I’ve also got to organise the documentation so everyone can see what’s going on while switching courses temporarily in midstream.
I did one stupid thing. I didn’t think through clearly enough the issue of how to share what is an ever deepening pile of electronic data. And sod’s law being what it is, my machine got hosed and the collaboration tool we were using became totally inaccessible to me – period – forever – gonzo.
We rescued the situation but it was a pain in the backside comparable to having severe piles. So as I’m getting close to completing the first full set, it struck we’d wasted time because I only got certain critical information after the first cut, we were using email where we could not be sure who was in the loop at any particular point in time and I was never certain whether I had everything I need. Today, I found the answer to that kind of meyhem.
Near-Time.net is a virtual, collaborative service that’s available by invitation only. I can get you invitations if you wish but you’ll need to let me know. Here’s what I think so far:
- It isn’t perfect but to me it’s the dog’s nuts because it gives me 95% of what I need to manage even the simplest of projects among a handful of people.
- It’s a bit quirky in the way it does postings but I’ll figfure out the bits I don’t understand and provide feedback to the developers. Because it is worth the effort.
- Information can be gathered and disseminated in a fraction of the time it takes to do stuff over email.
- Document version control is a snap. The only place you can find the master document is on the site. And rather than have comments smeared all over a Word doc, I request comments to a page where the document is attached. Exactly as you would do with this medium.
- There’s no reason for people not to use this tool because everyone has a vested interest and the faster we can work, the more productive we all will be.
- Everyone on the team can receive automatic updates. I don’t have to do a thing – it’s built in functionality.
- It’s free (at the moment) – but I would gladly pay for this facility on a use case basis.
- It’s a very safe environment that is password controlled and where access can be restricted to different classes of user.
Highly recommended and perfect for things like year-end tax planning among specific client groups or the dissemination of information erlated to an acquisition. Think of the time savings alone of having an interactive, multi-media environment? What about inviting clients in? Now that’s radical.
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