Nine Easy Web-Based Collaboration Tools

"I am endeavoring, Madam, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins." -- Mr. Spock, trapped on Earth in the year 1930.

Most workgroups are stuck in the stone-knives-and-bearskins stage of collaboration tools. Their entire collaboration toolset consists of passing documents back and forth by e-mail. But the Web offers a variety of choices for workgroups looking to implement more advanced technology.

The Web offers tools to allow groups to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets, and to build libraries of reference materials, project documents and shared to-do lists.

Tools from companies including Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) and Zoho allow workgroups to get started at little or no cost. And they're easy to set up, too--you don't need to be an information technology (IT) manager to do it.

However, bear in mind before you jump in that you're giving information to a third-party company to store. If you're not in IT, you should talk to the IT department to be sure you're not violating company policy by using these services. And, even if you're in IT, before you use these services, you should talk to your company's legal and compliance offices to be sure you're obeying the law and regulations with regard to managing company's information.

Don't want to give your information to a third party? Wikis--aka Web sites that allow visitors to add, remove and edit available content--provide a good alternative for organizations looking to maintain control of their own software. Organizations can install wiki software on their own, internal servers.

Google Apps For Your Domain

The free Google Apps for Your Domain allows organizations to set up private-label versions of several of Google's collaboration services, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk chat. Basically, it's the Google services with your domain name instead of theirs.

Google Calendar

Small Biz Resource reviewers gave the free Google Calendar high marks for the way it deals with shared calendars: "You can add as many iCal-based or shared private calendars as you want--Google lists them all on the side of the window. You then check off which ones you want visible on your calendar at any one time, which means you can have a load of shared calendars available without crowding your interface with all of them at once. For example, you can uncheck your kids' schedules and just look at your business appointments."

Google Docs and Spreadsheets

For more advanced collaboration, the free Google Docs and Spreadsheets allows users to create Microsoft Office-compatible word-processing and spreadsheet files. Mostly, people talking about these applications focus on how well they function as replacements for Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Office. But they also have collaboration features: Users can invite others, by e-mail address, to share documents, edit them simultaneously and publish them to the world.

Google Apps Premier Edition

Google advanced the state of Web-based collaboration tools significantly on Thursday, Feb.22, when it announced Google Apps Premier Edition, which combines Google Apps for Your Domain and Google Docs and Spreadsheets, with features designed especially for business.

Google Apps Premier Edition includes e-mail, calendar, chat, word processor and spreadsheet, plus 10 gigabytes (GBs) of online storage, and application programming interfaces (APIs) for integrating the services into businesses' own software, priced at $50 per user per year. Google also makes support available for the services.

Google Notebook

The free Google Notebook allows users to compile libraries of Web clippings of parts or all of Web pages, including text, images and links. The notebooks of reference and research materials can be shared.

Other companies offer services similar to Google's collaboration tools.

Zoho

Zoho offers its own free word processor and spreadsheet, which Small Biz Resource reviewers preferred to Google's offerings. Zoho Notebook won high marks as a tool for collecting and collaborating on text, line drawings, images, Web pages, video, RSS feeds and other media. It's currently in a closed test.

Zoho Projects is an online project management tool that combines task management, calendaring, reports, time tracking, forums and file sharing. It's free for open source projects, and starts at $5 per project per month.

Bluetie

Bluetie offers a suite of tools for online collaboration, including e-mail, scheduling, to-do lists, contact management, file back and file sharing. It's free for up to 20 users, and $4.99 per user per month after that.

Basecamp

37signals makes the collaboration tool Basecamp, which includes to-dos, file sharing, message boards, milestones to keep track of due dates and time tracking. Basecamp is free to manage a single project, and $12 per month for up to three projects with 200 megabytes of storage for file sharing. The price continues to escalate based on the number of projects and amount of storage for file sharing, with the highest-price plan buying unlimited projects and 20 GB storage for $149 per month.

Wikis

Wikis are the grandparents of Web-based collaboration tools. A wiki is a dead-simple way of building Web sites; using simple text syntax on Web pages, users can, without much technical knowledge, create links from text to existing Web pages, either inside of our outside the wiki, and they can easily create new pages as they go while simultaneously linking to the new pages.

In their pure form, wikis allow anyone to edit them, but many wikis nowadays offer access control and workflow tools to keep meddling hands out, and minimize damage by the well-meaning clueless.

Zoho offers a free service to let users create wikis.

Google-owned Jotspot was a commercial wiki pioneer; they're temporarily closed to new accounts now.

Socialtext offers wiki software with a twist--you can copy the wiki to your desktop, work with it disconnected from the Internet and then merge it with the online version; Socialtext is based on TiddlyWiki, a popular single-user Wiki that stores both data and JavaScript code in a single Web page that can be stored locally on the desktop or on a server.

Socialtext is available for free for up to five users and for open source projects, and pricing starts at $95 per month for up to 20 users. The company makes its software available as open source for free.

For people who prefer to roll their own, there are a wide variety of open source wikis available--just install the software on your own server, either on the public Internet or a private intranet or extranet, and you're good to go.

Of course, Wikipedia is the big daddy of all wikis, and it's a great place to start learning about wikis, and finding links to wiki software. Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki software, which is open source, and therefore available for you to build your own wiki.

 

IT Hot Spots: Niches, Industries, Regions

As the country climbs out of its longest recession in recent history, many companies are forsaking their foxholes and making a reticent return to the economic arena. After a five-year hiring hiatus, businesses are conveying their fiscal confidence by making an effort to reinforce their ranks. This national trend applies to the IT industry, as well, with 14 percent of CIOs expecting to increase employment in the first quarter of 2007, according to the Robert Half Technology Hiring Index and Skills Report.

“We finally got past the ramifications of the war and so many other factors that contributed to the downturn,” said John Estes, vice president of IT placement firm Robert Half Technology. “Projects from so many companies are finally being dusted off and pulled from the shelf, and people are hiring again.”

Yet, this growth has not been spread evenly across the board. As always, certain regions, industries and niches are hiring more IT professionals than others, with some elite fields and focuses paying more than the rest.

Industries
The highest-paying industry for IT pros is research and development. As the economy rebounds, companies are using their enhanced profits to find the most effective methods for making more money, said David Foote, CEO of Foote Partners LLC, an IT workforce and compensation research firm. As industries become increasingly competitive, corporations must dedicate more resources to collecting and analyzing market data.

IT professionals, including data warehousing and business intelligence specialists, are needed to secure storage and build predictive models to help corporations get the edge on their competitors, he said.

“Exxon Mobil made a ton of money this year — they set a record for the amount of income they generated, and now they’re spending a lot of time and money trying to find where oil is buried,” Foote said. “That’s IT, as well. That’s GPS systems, that’s looking at patterns. All this stuff comes down to data and computers holding that data.”

With the recent rise in military spending, IT pros in the defense industry also have experienced a boost in salary. Since Sept. 11, classified documents and counterterrorism activities have gained more media attention, creating an even greater need for qualified security professionals in this field.

“There’s been a lot of money going toward homeland security and national defense,” Foote said. “It’s not talked about a lot, but it’s created a whole job path for people, and it’s put a lot of people in security to work.”

The next-highest-paid industry is transportation, which is also experiencing the most growth. With 24 percent of CIOs expecting to add personnel in the first quarter of 2007, this field sits 10 points above the national hiring average, according to the Robert Half Technology report. This growth also is due to the recovering economy, Foote explained. As household budgets and disposable incomes increase, transportation is one of the first areas where people begin to spend more money. While last year the average person spent less than $700 on travel costs, this year the amount was nearly $900, he said.

“The airlines are having trouble making ends meet because of the price of energy and oil, but people are traveling like crazy,” he said. “And that’s an industry that has a lot of IT — there are all the reservation systems, there are all the inventorying systems. So much of it is IT.”

The manufacturing industry also is anticipating a high level of growth, with 19 percent of CIOs expecting to increase staff.

Regions
The East Coast is experiencing the greatest surge in hiring right now, with 22 percent of executives in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee (which are in the East-South-Central region of the country) expecting to look for new recruits at the beginning of 2007. Twenty-one percent of executives in the Middle Atlantic States — New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — also expect to hire more IT pros.

Estes said although most regions are experiencing some sort of bump in hiring because of the national economic upswing, a lot of the East Coast is recovering faster because it also experienced a much quicker downturn. He said this pattern is part of the normal recessionary cycle, but the region took a harder fall this time because of the added stress of Sept. 11.

“When 9/11 happened, it was literally like a light switch just went off in regard to hiring — it was almost at a standstill,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, everybody was affected, but not to the degree the larger cities, particularly the larger cities on the East Coast, were affected.”

Foote added that the East-South-Central region also has grown because it has a relatively low cost of living and an agreeable location. With companies looking to use their returning surplus to expand operations, the cheaper real estate and lower wages required in this region make it a prime location for doing business.

“It’s really tough to get people to move to areas of the country where the cost of living is very high,” he said. “So, the question is, ‘Do you want to work in Montana? Do you want to work in the Mountain States, or do you want to work in the Sun Belt?’” he said.

In relation to pay, in-demand locations such as the Bay Area, the greater New York City region and metropolitan Boston generally offer the most for IT skills. The elevated salaries generally correspond to the demand created by the high concentration of companies there, as well as the cost of living, Foote said.

Globally, research firm IDC reports that although the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — will continue to drive worldwide growth, the “beyond BRIC” countries will provide the best financial opportunities for business in 2007. These countries include the “Emerging Asia” countries, Latin America’s Southern Cone, the Middle East and North/East/West (NEW) Africa. IT spending worldwide is expected to grow about 6.6 percent in 2007, but many of the countries in these regions will grow twice that amount, said Stephen Minton, IDC analyst. Some of the highest-performing countries include Turkey, Indonesia and Argentina, which have expected growth rates of 15 percent, 12 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

Minton said this expansion corresponds to increased buying power, which has created a market for international technology companies such as Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

“Those regions represent very small and immature technology markets, so that’s the main reason why they have such high growth at the moment,” he said. “The penetration levels are very low in terms of the overall number of people or companies that are using technology compared to the more developed parts of the world.”

Alone, the IT market in the Asia/Pacific region — excluding Japan — will reach $132 billion in 2007, up 10 percent from 2006. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam are expected to see increased spending power and infrastructure budgets, pushing them closer to the growth rates of the BRIC countries, according to IDC.

“The region’s astounding rates of economic and IT market growth have resulted in dynamic and rapidly evolving corporate and consumer markets,” Eva Au, managing director for IDC Asia/Pacific, said in a press release. “The region’s economic empowerment has created more discerning and demanding IT users who now require technology that is sensitive to the region’s unique demands.”

Niches
It’s no surprise that Microsoft Windows administration skills continue to be in high demand, with Robert Half Technology reporting that 77 percent of CIOs expect to hire those specialists in the first part of 2007. Network administration (Cisco, Nortel, Novell) and database management (Oracle, SQL, Server, DB2) skills are also highly marketable, with 71 percent and 63 percent of executives looking for specialists in these fields, respectively.

Because of the recent trend of aligning IT performance with business goals, customer-facing skills such as applications development and Web development are also hot right now, according to Foote Partners.

In the past few years, many companies have been forced to focus large portions of their budgets on complying with evolving government regulations, but now more of that money is free to focus on the customers, Foote said.

“For years, a lot of IT was in the back office, doing transactions and network security, but a lot of IT these days is customer facing,” he said. “You’re building applications in order to work offline and online with your customers and to deliver products and services.”

This shift is being reflected in hiring increases in related fields. Jobs in project management will experience an increase of 36 percent, programming/systems development jobs will grow 33 percent and help desk/tech support positions will increase by 30 percent, according to Foote Partners’ research.

When it comes to pay, enterprise business applications and Web/e-commerce development are the noncertified skills experiencing the highest pay premiums. Oracle Developer, SAP NetWeaver, IBM WebSphere and Microsoft BizTalk Server are just a few of the proficiencies earning 9 percent to 16 percent of base pay.

In the certified category, IT security and project management skills are earning professionals the biggest bucks. SANS/GIAC Certified Forensic Analyst (GCFA), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Project Management Professional (PMP) and IT Certified Architect (ITCA/Open Group) are just a few of the certifications worth 10 percent to 14 percent of base pay.

In 2007 and beyond, finding a specialty will be extremely important for IT pros, Foote said. As customers become more demanding, companies are looking for people who understand their specific consumers and can help them look into the future.

“It’s becoming more and more important that an IT person has instinct and real experience beyond simple technology,” Foote said. “Companies are saying that it’s a lot easier if you hire people who understand what the customer’s asking and who have been in this industry.”

Niches are becoming narrower, and specialists have to add more focused faculties to their already-concentrated skill sets. For example, where certified Oracle database administrators used to be marketable for their database skills alone, hiring managers are now looking for candidates who have experience working with specific types of data, Foote said.

“What we’re finding is, not only do you need that specialization in technology, but now you might need more than that,” he said. “The very definition of what a specialist is has changed from a person that’s specialized in just one thing to that person having to specialize in several things that surround that.”

The 'Young Boss, Older Employee' Dilemma

When Jim Schneider was the boss, he viewed older workers as dead weight. "I had the perception that older employees were tired, not as productive and couldn't do work that younger people do," says Schneider, the former owner of a major regional auto parts recycling center, now 63. When he came out of retirement a few months ago, however, he found himself on the other side of the age divide.

Just because older employees like Schneider want to work, doesn't mean they want to be in charge. After 25 years as the boss, Schneider wanted to be active and challenged without all the responsibility of running a business. That task rests on his new boss, Jeffrey Schroder, who is 20 years younger.

The "younger boss-older employee" dynamic is becoming more common as the number of over-55 workers grows. Numbers aren't available on how prevalent that scenario is, but the number of older workers in the workforce is skyrocketing: >From 2000 to 2005, the number of employees in the workforce ages 55 and older increased nearly 30%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Demographers expect that trend to accelerate over the coming years. Meanwhile, the number of 25- to 54-year-olds in the workforce increased just 1% between 2000 and 2005.

In Pictures: Five Tips For Managing The 'Younger Boss, Older Employee' Dynamic

The generations' different work styles and perceptions of each other can create many challenges. One of them is the perceived difference in work ethic. For instance, older workers tend to believe in face time at the office. "They show up early, work through lunch and on the weekends," says Linda Gravett, co-author of Bridging the Generation Gap: How to Get Radio Babies, Boomers, Gen Xers and Gen Yers to Work Together and Achieve More. "Gen X and Yers were raised in the Internet era, where it doesn't necessarily matter where the work gets done, as long as it does."

Jill Arlinghaus, an assistant controller for Burke Inc. in Cincinnati, sees that difference in work style all the time. There are a few 50-somethings on her team, and they generally arrive around 7:30 a.m. The 20- and 30-something employees tend to trickle in around 8:30. She says she can't help but notice that the work ethic of the older employees is stronger.

Another difference: Older workers are used to meeting more regularly to discuss projects and goals, whereas younger bosses are more likely to hand an employee a project and let that person run with it. "The communication styles are different," says Robin Throckmorton, co-author of Bridging the Generation Gap. "Younger bosses tend to say, 'Shoot me an e-mail.'"

Technology can be a sticking point. Arlinghaus says her younger employees grew up using computers and Web-based applications, so learning new ones comes more intuitively to them. "It's not that older workers aren't willing to learn," she says. "You have to walk them through it. The younger people are more willing to figure it out for themselves." Arlinghaus says it's important to show older employees that she is always happy and willing to answer technology-related questions.

It's not a one-way street. There are plenty of times Arlinghaus taps into her older co-workers' knowledge base. She's been with the company for six years, versus some of her employees who have been with the company for two decades or more. Those veterans offer insight on the temperaments of other employees and on details of past projects.

Loyalty is also a difference. Two older employees are celebrating their 20-year anniversaries with the company, Arlinghaus says, while the younger ones rotate in and out more frequently.

As for Schneider, one of his frustrations stems from no longer being in charge. After selling his business last year, he realized just how much he missed working. So he went to work for Schroder's auto parts recycling business Car-Part.com. The Kentucky-based Web site helps consumers find used auto parts. Schneider's wealth of experience is a huge addition to the 10-year-old company. He works in industry relations for the Web site from his home base in Washington state.

"The only thing that's been an issue is a little bit of eagerness on my part to get things done, because I made my own decisions before," says Schneider. "I don't have that same freedom now, so I have to go through the channels."

Lots of older workers deal with that--especially since they're not necessarily working out of need. "I'm still productive," says Schneider. "I get up at a reasonable hour. The older generation hasn't quite aged to their years." Schneider also went back to work to get health insurance.

His boss, 45-year-old Schroder, deals with the generation gap by recognizing Schneider's years of experience and expertise. After all, that's why he hired him in the first place. Instead of Schroder telling Schneider what to do, they meet regularly to discuss which projects Schneider wants to work on.

"I need to be very much in tune with what he needs," says Schroder. "It's a great thing to have an employee who has such a high level of expectations. It raises the bar for everyone."

http://www.forbes.com/leadership/2007/02/27/younger-boss-advice-leadership-careers_cx_tw_0227bizbasics.html?partner=rss