Whiteboard Capability?

Dan - Provide an example of how you'd see a whiteboard integrated into a Groupsite? How do you envision it functioning? Is it real time? Or more like a wiki?

Hi Clarence,

Thanks for this.

Example: a dispersed multicultural team including members who do not share a common first language are in the concept stage of a project. Two members in location A sketch a "rich picture" of the initiative and post it to the team's groupsite with a sparse verbal explanation. Members in location B annotate the rich picture, asking questions and adding some ides.  Members in location C provide a new/deeply reworked version of the original rich picture. After members in all locations review they finalize verbal model of the concept with related rich picture. Concept gets approved and they begin planning.  In the planning stage, they need to quickly develop a lot of ideas via responsibility assignment matrices, org charts, work breakdown structures, timelines, etc. Again, whiteboard modesl can get posted to the groupsite and get quickly reworked. Of course, as planning gets more in depth, other tools would be more useful (mindmapping, project schedulers, spreadsheets, etc.) However, I think having the whiteboard functions would help through the concept and early planning stages.  Probably a lot like Shaun is talking about when he mentions "taking things to the whiteboard."

I would be surprised if others in this group were not interested in this
functionality.

In general. white boards support collaboration (synchronous and asynchronous) as a medium enabling teams to develop models in various forms:

a) mental models (back of the napkin drawings, rich pictures, preliminary mappings, etc).

b) verbal models (esp. annotations of the other model forms listed here)

c) structural models, like mindmaps, tree diagrams, flow diagrams, matrices, etc.

d) mathematical models, especially those that explain space(s) or use geometric concepts.

Among services similar to groupsites, Vyewbooks has an especially nice whiteboarding function. 

Hope this helps clarify. Please see what you can do.   Thank you.

Cheers,

Dan