Website Team Communication
 

I was asked to be the team leader of our team's website for the next year. There are a few people helping and I am trying to find an efficient way to communicate so that we don't have to meet (get up and actually leave our computers, lol) and so that we don't have to type, since it takes a long time. We don't all have Yahoo messanger with voice chat, although I might get it if everyone else has it, and not everyone has high speed internet for voice chat and stuff.

Does anyone have any suggestions of ways to communicate over the internet or something so that a bunch of people are in one "chat room" and we can use voice or something to speed up conversation. Most of them have dial-up connections. If you have any ideas, please post them.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Microsoft NetMeeting is the tool for you. Don't let the Microsoft title scare you away---it's the best thing since Notepad. It provides you with Audio/Video chat, text chat, a public chalkboard to map out ideas....check it out. And it comes preloaded on most current versions of Windows, so there's a very good chance that every member of your team already has it. For more information, check out http://www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/. Good luck, and enjoy!

Re: Website Team Communication
 

I know you said "over the internet" but a good 'ol telephone may suite your needs quite well.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

You would need a conferencing system, no?

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Oops, missed the "bunch of people" part. I guess I assumed they wouldn't all be communicating at the same time.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

what about a p2p telephone system, like skype?

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Depending on what exactly you are looking for, our team uses a cross between mailman (a linux group e-mail program) which is similar to yahoo groups but no ads and we have more control. Our web presence is two-fold. We have our general www.bprobotics.com which is for the community, sponsors, media, etc. and then we have our team portal. This is based off of phpnuke. PM and I will send you the link to that private site so you can see what we have done if you are interested.

OK... so I just re-read your question. A bunch of my friends use an IRC server that one of us hosts. If you have a good linux person on your team, they can get an irc server running (however this requires typing to communicate). You could also record audio files and stream them out.

However, it seems like you guys are just too lazy to meet! So, have a meeting every other week and make it quick and use a web site to aid your information disemination!

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Thanks for that information. I don't think that any of those will help in our situation, but maybe it helped someone else. I think that instant messaging is the most effective way to communicate. Unless everyone has Yahoo with voice chat or if they can use Netmeeting or something.

Thanks again.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

I don't know how big your team is, but you may want to consider using CVS in conjunction with a mailing list. That way all the changes that you make are communicated to the other web team members and theirs to you. SF.net has a syncmail script (if you can't find it, I can send it to you) that helps with this (it's written in Python :-)). If you end up using CVS then you can add a quick little note to the change (or leave it blank) so, depending on what it is you were communicating it can make changes a lot faster (ie anyone would be able to make the change and if someone else were working on the same file in a different place, their changes could be merged together too).

CVS is what we use for the openFIRST project. It's pretty easy to setup, and will work on both UNIX-based and Windows systems (as a client and server). If you decide to go the CVS route, I'd suggest looking at SmartCVS http://www.smartcvs.com for the client side, as it's pretty straight forward. http://www.openfirst.org/cvs/smartcvs/ has a graphical tutorial for the setup (tailored to openFIRST, but it's a source for some more screen shots, at the very least)

A favourite thing to do now (for those of us who've graduated and now play mainly administrative roles for openFIRST in order not to cause potential conflicts with the "student designed and built website" rule) is add <!-- TODO: ... --> comments in the source.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Anyone though about ventrilo? I have it runig on my home comp and You could install it on a home comp w/ DSL. Note ventrilo has voice and chat room features. And if you MS Sam (the talking robot sound) install whic his liek MS vioc something. It is standard w/ win XP but you can sent of ventrlo to read to you what otherd say so you dont even have to be looking at the chat to know whats going on. You can do something while in the chat. ie. yoiu could have vent minized and be working in DW at the same time. Useing the voice wont be optminal for what you wanna do for everyone anyways but the chat might.

You guys could try it out on my comp if you want to see how it would work out for you.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

why can't you have meetings? is your team spread that far apart?

anyway, as far as the most effective way to communicat with large groups over the internet, you're looking at it. vBulletin would be great for that. ask Brandon Martus about it.

trust me, i know communications, i'm the guy who got Brandon Martus to add it as a team role lol :p

Re: Website Team Communication
 

Our team tried a message board. The software was free and it looked and worked really great, but people never really bothered to use it. What we do use a LOT though is a Mailman mailing list. I'd say e-mail is like 60% of our team's communication.

Re: Website Team Communication
 

ditto ditto ditto... I can't say this any better...

First our team members complained that they "didn't" receive their e-mail. Now we e-mail out to the team members and their parents (the parents have another list) along with posting the news/info on the team only side of our website. That way there is no excuse of "we didn't get the e-mail" or "we didn't get the news". Now it is "tough" there is a way to either get the data sent to you or find the data... do it...