The point? The vast majority of people cannot do what you do with data. The vast majority of people would not understand what you wrote.
Online, collaborative tools are useful. For barcamp we've used the online spreadsheets to track spend and income. Wikis and collaborative work processing docs help people create work together. I've used them to write business proposals, reference docs etc. they work and they are easy enough for people to use with only limited technical knowledge. that's the point
Yah, you get it Rachel. I'm trying to help people see that a 'word' file is not really anything - but in fact it's something we've categorised data as. We have confused output with process. So, the process for me is collecting data, the output is whatever format it becomes. Businesses would be better served by working out what their data needs are and finding ways to optimize their IT processes for those specific processes rather than just switching one set of generic solutions for another.
2007-06-21EDT15:28:12+00:00
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Amen! I totally agree with Tom. I have used Google docs for a while but it actually kindof sucks. First of all because it just doesn't work propery (although woring cooperatively on a spreadsheet was fun, I think one could make a specific tool for this that is actually MEANT for this). Second, I simply don't need documents anymore. These days you can send anyone (professor, peer, mate, whoever) to a website where you keep the data in any format you want and then present it to them in something web-readable.
2007-06-21EDT21:28:08+00:00
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How the data is held is one thing. But these are tools to create data for most people. Cristiano, you may be able to send people a URL to present data but how does the 'average' person create it. they need tools - and online docs are one way of doing that.
2007-06-21EDT22:16:04+00:00
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