Maintaining Good Collaborative Practices

It's difficult to introduce a tool into another's work habits. And, as I've come to realise, it's much harder to keep a tool in another's work habits.

This point has left me with a bit of a conundrum lately. There are a number of tools that offer collaborative features that have been very useful to me lately. However, I've been running into the very large stumbling block that it's has been very difficult to keep my colleagues that are working on the same project using these tools.

Particularly, I've been extensively using Basecamp, Writely & CiteULike. These have all become indispensable tools in my work. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the data contained in these tools up-to-date as my colleagues have been inconsistent in their usage of these tools.

I do save time by using these tools; I waste time because others are not using these tools. I'm not sure if on the balance I've gained something.

What to do?

Vitaly Friedman's Notebook: List of nifty tools for drawing diagrams, charts and flow-charts

Vitaly Friedman's Notebook: List of nifty tools for drawing diagrams, charts and flow-charts

That article contains a nice list of tools for the creation of charts and diagrams, items that are often needed in scientific writing. Some allow for collaboration and some not. I'll need to take a thorough investigation of the tools on this list to see how they stack up. Future posts will probably follow with some analyses.