Working in the Cloud Challenge: Collaboration

Personalities, life stages, experience all make it challenging to work together as a team even when you’re in the same room.

The distance that comes from working in the cloud adds another set of challenges in communication, collaboration and community.

Here are some tools we use at Timbuktoons to overcome collaboration challenges…

We’re not big fans of meetings because we’ve probably lost months of our lives to unnecessary meetings. And most want to be left alone to do the work.

But we still need a means of knowing: what’s been done, the next actions and what’s needed to finish.

Project Scope and Ideation
Typically a project with us starts with a phone call, a Basecamp message, a txt or sometimes a Skype session. Once we feel like the scope and expectations are clear we check-in and project manage through a mix of those.

We try to be “artfully intrusive” in our communication…not pushy but definitely in-the-know of the workflow.

Writing
Again, we like to use a mix of tools so our clients and teams have options. When writing as a team we’ve tried several different things. Writeboards in Basecamp (Classic version) are great for tracking changes but not for formatting. Google Docs is also good but not always intuitive and can be slow.

For scripts we’ve used Celtx since it synchs with the iPad and desktop and it formats really quickly. Also we share Evernote notebooks for writing content as well as research, especially for show development and pitching.

Approvals and Asset Management
We try to be sticklers about our naming conventions…it’s really easy to get lost in a sea of versions, especially in post-production. Proofs, full renders and patches all start to look alike at end of a project!

Basecamp is great for tracking to-dos. We use the new version of Basecamp as an intranet for our in-house team. It’s also good for keeping a record of feedback and approvals for development and pre-production.

But for sending proof files and tracking versions, not so much. Also video files are typically bigger than what Basecamp likes to post.

So, instead we use a combination of YouSendIt and Dropbox. Really this depends on the team member and the client. Some have Dropbox accounts, some don’t. Again, we try not to force a solution on someone.

Some files are bigger than YouSendIt can handle (2GB) so Dropbox is the alternative.

And sometimes it’s quicker to physically mail a flashdrive than it is to upload and then download a file.

We used to use a product called ConceptShare. We even had a hand in getting it integrated with Basecamp. It has some really great features like converting Flash files to video for marking-up individual frames.

But scrubbing was clunky and they switched to the per user/per month format which made it too expensive. It went from being around $20 per month with unlimited clients to over $100 for just 5. Their sales and support team is top notch though!

Another great product is Shotgun. It has everything good about Basecamp and Conceptshare together. Several big studios use it but for smaller teams working primarily in short format and sometimes illustration and print design it proved to be costly and more complicated than we needed.

Also our clients didn’t take well to using it, especially those familiar with Basecamp. The interface is a little intimidating but it’s customizable and every version gets closer to what we’re looking for.

At Timbuktoons we try to overcome these challenges with technology…

But we’re still in the “wait and see” mode in several areas. Different tools have elements we like but none of them are an all-in-one solution for us yet. That’s why we keep trying new things to make working in the cloud as efficient as possible!

Other posts in this series:
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Communication
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Community
Working in the Cloud: Benefits