Collaborative Authoring - Part 1: Introduction

As you've heard from me before, Collaborative Authoring is going to be a big thing in our industry. This means that big changes are in store for the author, review and approve cycles that all of us are used to.

So, I'm going to introduce you to one of these collaborative authoring tools in a series of posts over the next few months. The tool I have chosen for this is called Writely. Until recently, Writely was a startup company.

Then

came along and snapped them up. Smart move...

Just so you know, I don't own any Google shares. Never have. Unfortunately. I have also not talked to anyone at Google about my decision to use Writely to demonstrate collaborative authoring. And yes, there are other tools out there that also do a fine job and even have more features than Writely.

So, why did I choose Writely?

Several reasons.

1. Everyone knows Google. So, I don't have to explain why I chose a small company with a great product that no-one has heard of.
2. Our industry is very conservative. Did I need to tell you that? Anyway, it's hard enough to introduce a new software solution to our industry and nearly impossible if a start-up is involved.
3. Writely is free! Google can do this while others can't. This should appeal to the CIOs and CFOs of the world.

I have other reasons but the above should suffice.

So, in my future posts in this series, I will introduce you to the features and functions of Writely. If you like what you see, I'd like to encourage you to also sign up with Google for a test drive of your own. It will work best if you invite others and learn together.

I hope you will find this series informative. Don't forget to send back comments.