What a thing of beauty it is when documents are not tied to a hard drive or a physical memory device. That’s why I’m kind of in love with Google Documents. You don’t every have to worry about emailing a document or forgetting your flash drive somewhere. All you need is the Internet.
Web-based apps like Google Docs are even better when they’re used in a collaborative way. No more clogging up people’s inboxes! No more sending a document back and forth countless times!
Here are some real-life testimonials of when Google Docs has saved the day for me in regards to collaboration:
- I do work for an Aids in Africa non-profit (website is a work in progress!). Every year we have a booth at ComFest. In effort to get appropriate “staffing” for the booth, we created a schedule with a Google Docs spreadsheet and emailed all volunteers about it. Since everyone had access, each person was able to go into the document and schedule themselves for a time slot. Genius!
- In a slightly more delightful way, I used a Google Docs spreadsheet to get people to sign up to bring meals to some dear friends shortly after they had their first baby. No one, including the less-techie people, had any problems using it and people even took the initiative to add a few columns such as “What dish are you bringing?” Two heads are better than one!
Overall, I love how Google Docs removes wire-crossing email mistakes from the equation. Much less room for human error! And, you don’t even have to have a gmail account to access a document. You can share a document with anyone, no matter what email provider they use.
