Conference Notes - written collaboratively, using SubEthaEdit

by Jack Seay and others - November 28, 2005

I'm not exactly sure how this works.

Is someone else supposed to work on this with me so that I can understand how it works? I don't know either...

If several people wanted to work on a document, such as the notes for an upcoming conference, they could work all together at the same time right here (or on another server). Permissions could be set to allow only certain people to be given the capability to make changes and certain others to be able to read only. Or everyone could both read and write, as is the case here. Those participating could be living and working all over the world. Thus huge amounts of time, money and fossil fuel could be saved. The conference itself could be conducted inside SubEthaEdit documents. How cool is that?!!

Conference on the Use of SubEthaEdit for Collaborative Editing of Conference Notes

  • Disadvantages of requiring physical proximity for conferences.
    1. Expensive. Hotels, airplane tickets, restaurant meals, catering, tips, etc.
    2. Time consuming and exhausting. Travel time, jet lag (exhaustion), air-sickness, extra time needed for planning logistics
    3. Wastes energy. Jet fuel, taxis, electricity used by hotels for heating, cooling, and lighting individual and conference rooms.
  • Benefits gained from using collaborative software rather than "the old (pre-information age) way".

    2.1 See above points.

  • Easy to keep records of everything said. It's automatic.

    2.3 Everyone involved can participate at the same time.

    2.4 Being able to edit any parts of a document is much better than email or chat.

    2.5 Much easier to use than wikis, as no mode change is required, and no formatting tricks need to be learned.

  • Faster feedback and turnaround time: more innovation. Conferences can be planned and conducted "on the fly", as needed, quickly, cheaply. They become a "throw-away" commodity, rather than a very expensive proposition requiring months or years of advance planning.
  • This is a big one: All the corporate big-wigs will have to buy Macs. In reality, not much chance of that happening very often; but if it did, they might learn a thing or two about user-friendly and secure operating systems and software.
  • Imagine extreme programming that doesn't require two people to be in the same room, (or country). Now apply that to every endeavor involving at least two people communicating.
  • Telecommuting becomes a no-brainer. Just do it! At least where someone's job involves little else than working on a computer. Even supervision from a remote location is possible if you have a group of motivated people (and if you don't, you better start motivating them or looking for someone else).

    • home