Connect the Dots Ottawa

Planning an event is a lot of work as a lot of things need to come together in a short amount of time. It takes team effort to make this a reality asides from long hours by everyone.

When putting together a website, marketing material or PR campaign the story needs to be pieced together based on various pieces of content generated by a large number of people. Typically this content are things like logo files, sponsor information, speaker information, press releases and more. Based on what the content is, it needs to be generated by a large number of people e.g. sponsor logo, speaker bio. Then the various people involved in putting the event together need this information.

Typically all of this content is sent via email and one person tries to keep all of this in place. Sounds simple enough, so you would think. Well a number of people will need some or all of this information and then the crazy email trail starts again. The other problem is that people cc you although that information might not be directly related to what you are working on for the event. It’s done just to keep you in the loop. Since we are email pack rats all of this content now needs to be on your hard drive.

If you stop to think about it, it’s probably the most unproductive way to share information as many people have to take these pdfs’ and convert it into the information they need. This becomes very apparent when trying to develop website content from all of these files. So is there a better way to do this?

Well yes, it’s called a collaborative space or wiki. S what is this? It’s basically a site where everyone can edit or upload files and the information is categorized in a logical manner e.g. logo files, photo of speakers, bios of speakers etc. So the guest speakers can upload their images to the relevant directory, add their bios to the appropriate page and voilla. You have just cut out a few hundred unnecessary emails.

So it was time to put a stop to the email madness and create a collaborative space for the team. I did that and I am pleased to say that the organizing team are now on the wiki. So far about half the team have signed up to see what it’s all about and a couple have gone further than just making minor edits.

Way to go ladies, you now know one of the most under utilized social media tools out there, a wiki.

So the next time you have the urge to send an email with those files, stop and upload to the wiki.